Peter’s heart throbbed wildly in his chest as he stood patiently in the long line of other children waiting to register their system IDs with their country’s federal government.
Registering one’s system ID with the state was a legally mandatory thing that every child – no matter their social class or ability - needed to do on the exact day when they first received their system interface. Likewise, the severe penalty exacted on those who did not register in accordance with the law was unique among legal penalties in that the same punishment was also applied regardless of whether one was a member of the [Copper] or [Gold] class.
Peter, of course, was no exception to this universal law and upon waking up this morning and discovering that he now had a system interface of his own, and thus also that it was his 10th birthday today, he had scrambled to his two feet and run as fast as he could all the way from the slums in which he lived on the north side of town to the administrative district in the southernmost part of town so as to register.
The queue that he was waiting in was for [Copper] class children, but even so Peter could feel the judgemental glances being sent his way from the other children in his long line. After all, though [Copper] class may have been the lowest social class recognised by the law, there was a distinct look about Peter that told everyone that his family weren’t just poor, but non-existent.
Everyone could tell by the torn clothes that he wore and the strange way that he talked that he was a slum rat, a member of the colloquially recognised [Dirt] social class and thus unworthy of even the most elementary and base kindnesses such as respect. After all, only troublesome criminal kids were kicked out of the state run orphanages – so to be so obviously deprived meant he had to be a good-for-nothing criminal.
Deciding that he needed to distract his mind away from thinking too much about the other kids’ snide glares, Peter pulled up his status screen once again and began to re-read its contents over and over again to try and come to terms with what it all meant for him whilst he waited patiently for it finally to be his turn to be registered.
STATUS
Name: Peter Wilver
Titles: [NONE]
Age: 10
Class: Mage
Rank: [Copper]
Level: 0 – Progress: 0/1,000 EXP
HP: 25/25 – Max HP regen: 0.01
MP: 45/45 – Max MP regen: 0.075
AFFINITIES:
* [Common]: Air – Grade: [F]
* [Uncommon]: Metal – Grade: [F+]
* [Rare]: Time – Grade: [D], Psychic – Grade: [F]
* [Epic]: Space – Grade: [F]
STATS:
* Physical:
* Strength: [F+]
* Constitution: [F]
* Endurance: [F]
* Mental:
* Willpower: [E+]
* Wisdom: [E]
* Intelligence: [E]
* Social:
* Charisma: [E]
* Empathy: [F+]
* Learning: [F]
* System:
* Luck: [F]
* Skill: [F]
* System Compatibility: [D]
PERKS:
* Enhanced Senses | Type: Physical | Rank: [F] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/1 | Description: Your senses are inherently better attuned to the nature of reality than others.
* Genius | Type: Mental | Rank: [F] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/1 | Description: Far from simple-minded, you possess a mind capable of comprehending even the most obscure, inaccessible aspects of reality.
* Shy | Type: Social | Rank: [F] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/1 | Description: [Inferior] grade scanning skills shall not yield up your status to others.
* Idle Progression | Type: System | Rank: [F] | Progress to Next Rank: 0/1 | Description: It is only by you assigning your bot(s) and waiting the designated amount of time for each improvement that you can improve most system-related stats/phenomena. – Current Bots Available: 1/1
SKILLS:
* General: [NONE]
* Class: [NONE]
“Rat! Get over here and register – You don’t have all day.” A man’s voice shouted in his general direction, startling Peter out of his focused status reading session.
Peter instantly bowed and walked forward, and once he was standing in front of the counter, a small blue rock was handed to him. He felt a slight prick on his palm before the rock began glowing, and the man then gestured for Peter to hand the rock back to him. Peter did so, and the man said, “Now scram!”
Peter quickly obeyed the man’s orders, exiting the large-ish registration centre as fast as he could – thankful that the whole process of registering was now over.
However, now that he stood in the central plaza of the administrative district, the mid-day sun beating down on him, Peter was uncertain what he should do next. He had, in his panic this morning, made it very clear to every other slum rat in a one-hundred-mile radius where it was that he was heading which without a doubt meant that Fred knew for certain or at least suspected that Peter now had a system.
Thus, if he went running back to his usual squatting spot, he’d probably be strong-armed into joining Fred’s gang as a runner – a fate that Peter couldn’t quite wish for himself, for obvious reasons. But, on the other hand, he didn’t exactly have many other options – he couldn’t exactly change his whole situation overnight.
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In short, he currently had no family, very few friends, and a litany of irritating and unflinching moral principles, so there weren’t many avenues to material prosperity ahead of him. So, like countless people in his situation had thought to do in the past, he brought up his status screen and started to try and formulate future plans based on what it said.
Peter knew only the very basics about system stuff – the extent of his knowledge having been acquired through overhearing conversations between the older slum rats. Thus, he doubted much of it was high-quality/accurate information. Yet, even with the limited knowledge Peter had, he knew that his status was a bit of a mixed bag overall.
Sure, he was pretty sure that his stats were well above average – a fact that did wonders for his self-esteem, but this positive aspect of his system was pretty effectively neutralised by the system’s assigning him the [Mage] class, as learning magic of even the most basic kind was beyond out of reach for someone of his pathetically meagre social status. Thus, even if he had quite high mental stats compared to his peers, they were pretty much wasted on him
However, there was a strange font of hope situated near the end of his status. Though he had yet to test it, this ‘Idle Progression’ perk held significant promise if it truly did what Peter read its description to say it did.
Yet this potential source of hope seemed was also a double-edged sword in that the perk also seemed to place an exclusivity condition on Peter’s future growth which would especially suck if the perk proved to not be as good as implied by the description’s language.
Realising that he’d actually have to try assigning one of these ‘bots’ to discover whether or not the perk was all of what it seemed, Peter collected himself and took a deep breath in. Once his mind was calm and ready for disappointment, he mentally commanded that his bot be assigned to upgrade the rank of his Intelligence stat.
A second passed before a blue panel appeared in his vision, and after a moment of brief hesitation, he glanced at the panel’s contents and Peter’s heart sank upon reading the first few words though this was quickly reversed as his heart was raptured up to cloud 9 upon finishing reading the panel.
Cannot assign system bot to upgrade stat: [Intelligence] to [E+], because your perk: [Idle Progression]’s rank is too low!
With a building hope in his chest, Peter once again commanded his idle progression perk, this time, however, he commanded the bot to upgrade itself instead. In an instant, a blue panel appeared in front of him, and Peter felt his heart stop beating for a minute as the full theoretical implications of what was possible with this perk of his became all too real to him.
You have assigned 1 system bot to increase Perk: [Idle Progression], to [F+] rank!
Time remaining until assignment completion: 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes!
(Note: Once assigned to a task, a system bot cannot be reassigned until the assigned task has been completed.)
Peter almost couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the ridiculousness and absurdity of his perk’s potential for exploitation. Was his perk for real?
He’d heard from the older kids that the [System] type system perk was always a bit of a wildcard on one’s status screen in that there was an incredible diversity of different known perks with an equally diverse range of known effects, but his perk was in an entirely different league to any regular [System] type system perk.
If Peter understood his perk and its limitations correctly, in effect, Peter could put in absolutely no effort over the course of the rest of his entire life, and so long as he simply remained alive, he could slowly but surely become a demi-god-like existence capable of rivalling in raw might even the strongest people in the world.
What did it matter if he couldn’t learn magic right now? With his perk, he could increase his physical stats to a high enough rank and then simply change class when he reached [Bronze] rank to a class with more physical-based attacks.
Single-handedly, his [System] type system perk elevated Peter’s assessment of his own prospects from decidedly uncertain to potentially incredible.
Peter’s fantasising about a future where he wielded limitless power was cut abruptly short by a heavy-handed whack to the back of his head that sent him flying forward onto the rocky road below.
Peter did his best to scramble back to his feet in an attempt to try and run away and evade any more blows, but he had been heavily concussed by the first smack and so his vision’s clarity and his mind’s ability to focus was rapidly diminishing with every pain-inducing second that passed.
However, it seemed whoever had assailed him had not been satisfied with getting off just the one hit on him and a litany of further strikes landed on various parts of Peter’s body. Where a fist or foot met Peter’s body, bones broke, and pain quickly became the only thing that Peter knew to be real as he lay completely defenceless on the ground.
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Peter didn’t remember which particular bone breaking or spot being hit that had finally proved the decisive injury to cause him to blackout, but now that he had regained consciousness, he could make an educated guess based on which part of his body was still pulsing with a pain that was uniquely possible due to the particularities of that one region and he was beyond angry.
Not only had he been attacked out of nowhere, by an unknown assailant no less, he could tell from his surroundings that his unconscious body had been casually discarded in some random non-descript back alley in the worse-off parts of town. Whoever had attacked him clearly had done this sort of thing before, and so Peter could only thank his lucky star that he was still alive – though barely.
He tried moving, but his body was still completely unusable due to the sheer amount of damage he’d sustained. Every attempt at performing even the most rudimentary of movements just caused more excruciating pain to flood through his body, and so quite quickly after beginning his efforts, Peter stopped trying to move once and for all. And, with nothing else to do, he decided to check on how far along his upgrade was.
Time remaining until task: [Idle Progression] -> [F+] rank is complete: 5 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes!
Peter baulked at the panel that appeared. Had he really been out for over an entire day?!
Peter realised that this was pretty plausible as he finally came to grips with just how hungry he was. He guessed the pain from his injuries had kept him from noticing his own hunger until he had actively thought about his current state, but now that he had – he couldn’t get the desire for food to go away, even though he knew for a fact he wouldn’t eat for a long time yet.
Hungry, half-dead, and with no clue where he was, Peter felt that he was truly at rock bottom without much hope for quick improvement. His earlier fantasies about attaining true unrivalled power were just that, fantasies, because the one thing he had thought himself eminently capable of – staying alive – was obviously not so easily done, as the beatdown he’d just received proved handily.
However, despite his current miserable state, he couldn’t seem to shake the desire within him to become strong – if anything his current state made him desire power even more. So, he’d just have to endure a few days of hunger and thirst as his body very slowly healed itself back to a reasonably good condition, and then he could begin to try and figure out who had attacked him and then, once he was strong enough, get some sweet, sweet vengeance.