As Jack continued to explore the alien forest and kill insect-like creatures, every now and then notifications popped up before his eyes.
Your One-handed talent has increased to level 1.
Your One-handed talent has increased to level 2.
…
Your One-handed talent has increased to level 5.
…
Your One-handed talent has increased to level 8.
There were various types of creatures in the forest. Fatflies were one of them. He’d already gotten used to dealing with these flying critters. He could now even tell when a fatfly was about to eject a glob of spittle from its mouth. When a fatly was about to spit out an obnoxious lump of viscous spittle, it would hover in one spot, its wings buzzing louder and faster. It then would open its mouth wide and emit a low hiss, the sound quiet but audible. A second later, a gob of spittle would shoot out of its mouth. When it happened, Jack would duck his head or jump out of the path of an incoming vile projectile. So yeah, Jack dealt with fatflies without breaking a sweat now. They no longer posed any kind of threat to him even when there were several of them against him.
Sure enough, besides fatflies there were other kinds of creatures in the alien forest. All of them looked like overgrown insects, some of them resembling insects from Earth, the others looking unlike anything Jack had ever seen in his life. Some of the critters were aggressive, attacking him as soon as he walked past them, and the others were not, either scattering every which way upon his approach or paying him no mind at all.
Jack killed most of the creatures he encountered on his way, even those who ignored him like green-colored bugs about two feet in size. Those creatures simply sat on or crawled across tree trunks. Sometimes, they flew away when he approached them, but most of the time they did not. He pierced them with his sword, killing them instantly and getting five Essence points for each of such bugs. That was the reason Jack killed everything he could. He received XP for all the creatures, even those who didn’t attack him. And he wanted to level up as fast as possible because he knew it was the difference between surviving and getting killed in this video game-like world.
One of the most dangerous types of monsters he’d encountered so far were creatures that looked like overgrown mosquitos. They were the size of a large dog, capable of moving and attacking with surprising agility and speed. Jack’s very first encounter with such a creature almost cost him his life. However, after killing a bunch of such creatures, he learned the behavior patterns of this type of enemy, and such creatures no longer presented much of a threat to him.
So Jack continued to explore the forest, killing everything he encountered and collecting Essence points for every kill. The smallest amount of XP he received was for green bugs, only five Essence points, and the largest was for mosquito-things, twenty-five points. He lost count of how many insect-like creatures of various types he’d killed in this alien forest already.
His One-handed talent kept improving too. As the number of this skill went up, Jack’s ability to wield his sword improved significantly. The skill point he’d put into the Agility attribute definitely helped too: Jack moved easier and faster than before, which helped him a great deal in dodging enemies’ attacks.
At some point, his One-handed talent increased to level 10, and Jack received another notification.
Your One-handed talent has reached its current level cap. To improve your One-handed talent further, you need to increase the related attribute.
Stolen novel; please report.
Jack stopped and looked around. Not seeing any kind of danger in the immediate vicinity, he pulled up his character sheet to see how much Essence he’d collected so far. When the familiar blue box containing his stats popped up before his eyes, he looked at the first three lines of text.
Level 1 Current Essence 675 Essence to Next Level 250 (Level up: Y/N)
Jack had collected quite a lot of Essence points. He focused on the question and thought Yes. Two notifications instantly appeared before his eyes.
You have spent 250 Essence points.
You have leveled up! You have received 1 skill point.
Jack checked his stats one more time. He had 425 Essence points left, and the amount for the next level now was 375, which meant that he could level up one more time. Which he did.
You have spent 375 Essence points.
You have leveled up! You have received 1 skill point.
Jack closed his stats. A thought came to his mind. Did he always have to open the main menu and switch to his character sheet when he needed to check something out? Maybe there was a faster way to do so? He decided to test out an idea of his.
What is my current level? he thought.
Immediately, a text message flashed in his mind.
Your current level is 3.
“So it works,” Jack said, pleased with his discovery.
He liked this feature because it allowed him to check a particular line in his stats without going through all the effort of pulling up the main menu and looking over all the info in his character sheet.
“How much Essence do I have?” he asked wanting to see if voice commands worked too.
You currently have 50 Essence points.
“How much XP do I need for the next level?” he asked, checking this time to see if the system would understand him if he used words that were different from the system’s usual terminology.
The amount of Essence points required for the next level is 500.
The system understood him perfectly.
How many skill points do I have?
A text message appeared in his mind, telling him that he had two skill points available for use.
“Nice.”
Jack put one skill point into Agility, increasing the attribute to 2. After giving it some thought, he put the second skill point into Perception. He then looked around and immediately noticed that he could see somewhat better now. His hearing improved a little bit too. He could now hear distant sounds that he hadn’t been able to discern before.
Also, if he encountered another transparent slime, he should be able to see it better now. Except for the slime he’d killed in the initial cave, Jack hadn’t run across any other similar creatures yet, but he was sure that sooner or later, he would have to deal with slimes again.
The last thing he wanted to check was his only talent. He gave a mental command, and the info about it emerged before his eyes.
One-handed: 10 [Agility]
Now that he’d increased his Agility to 2, he should be able to improve the One-handed talent further. He also realized that he could get an additional piece of info on the talent by focusing his attention on it.
Name: One-handed
Description: The one-handed talent governs your effectiveness with one-handed weapons such as swords, daggers, battle axes, maces, etc. The higher your One-handed talent, the more skillfully you use weapons of this type.
He read the information and dismissed it with a thought. After looking around, he picked a random direction and continued on.