I stayed hidden in the brush for another half hour, dealing with my minor existential crisis. The hawk disappeared after the first fifteen minutes, but I was unwilling to risk leaving the safety of my bush until I was sure no predators were waiting for me. Even when I left, it was only to madly dash to the burrow where I slowly relaxed in the familiar scent of home, surrounded by the happy squeaks and rambunctiousness of my siblings.
But even as my heart rate calmed, my mind was still awhirl. Killing others gained experience points. Others killing me would give them experience points. For some reason, that was so much more terrifying than the simple danger of a hungry predator.
How strong could someone get when the simple act of hunting permanently increased their strength? I couldn’t answer that yet, seeing as I had yet to level and personally see what benefits leveling would bring — but I had to imagine it was something. But it couldn’t be too drastic, I supposed, considering none of the other animals I’d seen demonstrated any abilities beyond what I might expect from an animal on Earth.
Did that mean I truly was special, that other animals didn’t have the same system I possessed? Or were the gains from leveling so minuscule as to be imperceptible? Or was the experience gained from killing things as small as worms or chipmunks not enough to keep improving past the first level or two?
That would be a certain consolation if it meant anything too strong wouldn’t see killing me as worth the effort required. But it did raise some interesting questions for myself.
I still couldn’t bring myself to regret my worm murder spree, but assuming everyone had this same system, and if it was required to kill stronger and stronger enemies to keep improving…where would it end? I doubted most people on Earth would regret killing worms if it meant gaining a ‘level’, but what about killing chipmunks? Or dogs or cats? Or — heaven forbid — other people?
I knew slippery-slope arguments weren’t the best, that they often had sneaky fallacies built into their foundation. Yet I couldn’t help but wonder…what type of world had I been reborn into?
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My feast for breakfast meant I wasn’t too hungry by the time the evening foraging session came around. But I wasn’t so full that I could skip the meal entirely, and though leaving the safety of the burrow after my earlier brush with death made me nervous, I was tired enough from chasing my thoughts round and round in circles for the preceding hours that fresh air sounded appealing. Plus, I was ready to finally get some answers about the system.
The forest had dried somewhat since the morning, and the majority of the earthworms had retreated back into their underground homes. But I was determined, and so after just a few minutes I found the two necessary to push me over the edge.
It was easier, this time, choking down my wriggling dinner. I wouldn’t say easy — honestly, I hoped eating worms never became easy — but there were far fewer tears involved compared to the morning. And after I finally finished the second worm…
Eubluic Earthworm defeated.
+1 exp.
Level Up!
1 GP gained.
Total GP: 1
Exp to level 2: 0/20
I squinted at the window. Twenty experience points needed for the next level…that could mean either linear growth or exponential growth — or anything in between. I wouldn’t know until I got another level.
As for this ‘GP’…I focused on the abbreviation, and a helpful tooltip popped up.
GP: General Points. Can be used to increase stats, purchase or upgrade skills, or upgrade traits.
I closed that window and pulled up my main status. And, sure enough, each of my stats had a little plus icon next to them. I fought the desire to immediately increase my constitution, knowing that was just the lingering fear from the morning’s confrontation. Instead, I scrolled to the bottom of the window and pulled up my ‘skills’ menu, looking through the plethora of options I’d obtained over the previous few days.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
But a moment later I forced myself to close my status. Examining all my options was more than just a few seconds’ work, not something I wanted to get sucked into when I was sitting unprotected out in the open. I looked around and found two of my siblings foraging nearby.
“Peter! Miriam! I’m heading back to the burrow — you’re gonna be on your own up here,” I squeaked at them. After a single glance my way, his cheeks colored purple from berry juice, Peter predictably ignored me as he continued to chew. Miriam gave me a little more consideration, squeaking my way in a manner that I interpreted as ‘be careful’.
Silly girl. I was the one going back into the burrow — they were the ones that needed to be careful. But I appreciated the sentiment, so with a wave of my tiny paw, I dashed across the forest floor into the dark underground of home.
It was time to figure out exactly what this system was offering me.
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Looking through all my skill options didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Digesting the implications of those options, however…I expected that would occupy my mind for days yet.
That was fine. It wasn’t like I had a shortage of free time.
I had of course already read through all of the skills the system had offered me, but without the means to purchase them I hadn’t given them more than a quick glance — something I now intended to rectify. Since our mother had left three days earlier, I’d unlocked five different skills.
Skill: Kick
Cooldown: 10 seconds
Description: Provides a minuscule increase to the force behind your next kick.
Skill: Bite
Cooldown: 1 minute
Description: Provides a slight increase to the force behind your next bite.
Skill: Climb
Cooldown: 5 minutes
Description: Reduces your weight by a minuscule amount for the next 30 seconds.
Skill: Prey’s Awareness
Cooldown: 30 minutes
Description: Provides a minuscule increase to your perception for the next minute.
Skill: Forage
Cooldown: 1 day
Description: Increases your chance of finding food by a minuscule amount for the next ten minutes.
The unlocked skills…weren’t great. Looking at them together, it appeared skills operated on keywords that signified their strength rather than any explicit numbers, but of my five options, four of them had the ‘minuscule’ keyword while only ‘bite’ used the word ‘slight’. I could only guess what words might have been used for stronger skills because it didn’t seem like I would be seeing them any time soon. The description for ‘GP’ did say that skills could be upgraded, though, so perhaps that would be an option after future level-ups.
I would have to test to see exactly what ‘minuscule’ and ‘slight’ meant, but unfortunately I only had the one GP to spend. Each skill could be purchased for a single GP, but there were so many things I wanted to figure out — I’d need at least two GP to compare the different qualifier words. And that was only the first of the tests I wanted to run.
How much of an increase did a point in a stat represent? With my current stats each sitting at ten, the easy answer was ten percent. But that didn’t feel quite right to me. I had a status menu, but I also had a physical body with strengths and weaknesses — how could my stats be perfectly even at ten apiece? And if each stat point represented an equal increase to a stat, wouldn’t that mean each increase in the same stat gave diminishing returns? Boosting a stat from ten to eleven was a ten percent increase — a decent power spike — but boosting a stat from one hundred to one hundred and one was an increase of only one percent.
Maybe that was how the system worked, but pretty much every game I’d ever played rewarded specialization over generalization. And each stat point giving diminishing returns as the stat increased ran counter to that philosophy. Perhaps it was foolish to apply video game logic to my new life, but that was the best thing I had to go on for now, and it told me that the mathematical ‘optimal’ choice couldn’t be to simply apply increases to each stat evenly.
The fact that I had to choose between stat increases or skills was also cause for concern. I couldn’t imagine how any of the skills I was currently offered could ever compare to a permanent ten percent increase to one of my stats, but perhaps skill upgrades scaled better than stat increases? A few of the skills I doubted I would pick regardless of my circumstances. [Bite], for instance — as much as I often employed my new animal instincts, I had no intention of turning my mouth into a weapon on a regular basis. Plus, compared to some of the other options, it was so boring. A slight increase to bite force? Not useless, but compared to temporarily reducing gravity or magically discovering more food…boring.
How did a skill like [Forage] even work, by the way? The rest I could easily conceptualize, but [Forage]…would it create more food for me to find or just somehow make it easier for me to find existing food? If I had the skill, would I be able to find an earthworm in the void of space?
I attempted to growl my frustration, but it came out as a slightly lower-pitched, adorable squeak. There was still just so much I didn’t know and there was no way for me to find out without experimentation. But with only one GP per level (presumably), and with each level taking more experience than the last…it was going to take a while. And it didn’t seem like there would be an ‘undo’ option after spending my GP, so I would likely have to live with whatever decisions I made while experimenting.
The potential inefficiency bothered me. It wasn’t too big of a deal when playing games in my last life — inefficiency wasn’t that big of a deal when it was just ‘for fun’ and, worst-case scenario, I could simply start the game over from the beginning. But this was my life I was playing with. As Abner had said — I only got one.
But neither could I afford to simply hoard GP and hope to figure out the system some other way. As the morning’s encounter had helpfully reminded me, death could be just an instant’s hesitation away, and it wasn’t like there was anyone around to explain the system to me.
So, after a deep breath and a few more seconds to reevaluate my choice — I made my selection.