Sam’s leg started to knit back together and he stared at it in amazement. This was impossible! He really needed to stop thinking that. The world had changed, whether for the better or the worse he didn’t know. His mind had started to calm and he began to think more carefully about everything. First things first. He had leveled up and if this worked like he thought it did, he would have acquired stat points to distribute.

Opening his status again, he perused it more carefully. Underneath the stats, there was a list of three things. His health, his mana and his stamina. Currently, his health and stamina were a few points below full.

“Hmm, so leveling up replenished my, uhh, resources. Not fully though, so there is a limit to how much it heals me.” Sam still had a few scratch marks where the deep cuts had been and he scratched at them unconsciously. The basic function of the System seemed to be simpler enough, but it would probably get more complicated later on. His main question was what the Dao was. It had been spelled with a capital D which meant that was important in some way. If he was not mistaken, his special Mark was actually a boon as well as a sign of his uniqueness. More importantly, for now at least, he needed to get to safety. If there was one of those gremlins, then there were probably more. His defeat of the creature was more luck than anything else and he didn’t fancy his chances against multiple of them at the same time.

He started running back towards the diner, hoping to get to his car. As he ran, he pulled out his phone and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened. The screen remained completely black and he shook it with urgency. It stubbornly refused to turn on. Grumbling, he slid it back into his pocket and kept running. The parking lot of the diner came into view and he ran for his car. He withdrew his key from his wallet and turned it desperately in the lock. The door opened and he turned on the car. With a flash of amazement, he realized that his crappy car was probably going to save him. Unlike his phone, his car was an old school model, and it didn’t have a digital display. All of those fancy electric cars would have been bricked by the advent of whatever effect had shorted out the electronics.

He drove down the road and saw more of the gremlins. They chased after the car for a bit, but they couldn’t keep up. Sam had an idea as he was driving down the road.

“Wait a minute, I can just run over these things with my car. How many levels would that give me?” Sam turned around his vehicle and gunned the engine. The car sped down the road, well it was more accurate to say that it puttered, but Sam ignored the sad truth of his choice of transport and pretended that it was going at hundreds of miles an hour. For the first time in forever, he felt alive.

The gremlins chittered as he neared them and as he passed by, he could see that one of them was picking their teeth with something that looked disturbingly like the bone of a small child. He had convinced himself that it was just an animal bone by the time that he spotted a large group of gremlins. They were clustered around something and the sound of chomping teeth carried over the air and to Sam’s ears. He approached them and whooped as he prepared to run the creatures over, but he skidded as he saw what they were clustered around.

A human corpse lay on the ground, barely recognizable as a person. It had been savaged by the gremlins and the closest ones were stained red with viscera. Sam cursed as he realized that he had missed his chance. The gremlins had loosened their formation and were coming after him now. He spared one last look at the body and had to prevent a tear from running down his cheek. He was surprised by the sudden upwelling of emotion for a random stranger, but the way that the person had died was horrific. While he had been distracted by his shiny new System display, people had been dying. It was only dumb luck that had caused him to be spared while this other person had been devoured. Sam needed to get stronger so that this didn’t happen to him.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

He drove down the street like a maniac, not knowing where to go. His small apartment was probably overrun by the gremlins by now and he wanted to find somewhere safe to allocate his stat points. For the next five minutes, he drove straight out of town, eventually coming to a stop at a derelict gas station. The pool of blood that poured out from under the door told him everything he needed to know. Opening his status, he inspected the top part of it.

Sam Atlas

Human

Mortal Tier

G Rank

Class:None

Level 2

( 2 free stat points)

Strength

11

1.00x

Constitution

10

1.00x

Resilience

10

1.00x

Dexterity

7

1.00x

Intelligence

9

1.00x

Wisdom

11

1.00x

Health 100/100

Mana 90/90

Stamina 110/110

Skills:0

Titles:0

Marks:1

Sam had no idea what to increase first. He felt like a toddler in a candy store, perplexed by the multitude of shiny, delectable treats in front of him. He immediately ruled out Intelligence and Wisdom. Both the stats seemed to be useful, Intelligence increased his mana resource and Wisdom presumably made him wiser. Unfortunately, he had nothing to use his mana for and it would be useless. Additionally, with only two points, Dexterity was useless to invest in. Doing so wouldn’t even raise him above the human average.

Instead, he decided to go for Strength. With a surge of energy, a wave of force shot out of his core, spreading through his body and then rebounding back into the core. He felt normal for a moment and then he convulsed as his muscles started to burn. They strained against the constraints of his skin and he felt as if his muscles were going to burst through. After a minute, the feeling receded and he slumped backwards. He raised his right arm and flexed it. His bicep was noticeably larger than it had been before. He had been no slouch in the physical fitness department before, but this was something else. He felt a strange energy within him, as if his new power wanted him to do something with it.

Sam clambered out of the car and dropped down to the ground. He started a series of lightning fast pushups, continuing after the point that he normally would have to stop. He beat it by almost double, which meant that stats didn’t scale linearly over 10 points. It wasn’t overpowered by any means, he knew that he wasn’t even on the level of a professional athlete or anything, but he would be soon if he kept leveling up. He closed his status and reveled in the feeling of potency that he could still detect the last traces of. It was an intoxicating feeling and he knew that it would only get better.