Hopping on one leg while supported by his brother sent vicious jolts of pain through his body. Before he even reached the door Ryan gave up and asked William to just fucking carry him already. William hoisted him in a fireman’s carry and managed to carry him to the lounge in a few short moments. Ryan didn’t care much for the indignity of it but bore his assistance in a grumpy silence, accepting his continued immobility due to a lack of crutches.
It appeared as if most of the group was already in the lounge and Ryan was immediately swamped with seeing and trying to remember all the new faces. He only knew a few of the group, Mike, Carmen, Lucy, Alexis, his brother, Lizzy and Stephen besides the group from the city the only ones he could identify. He assumed the older gent was the John William had told him about, Alexis surrogate father.
William introduced him “This is my older brother Ryan, let’s get the show on the road.” he started the meeting simultaneously. “The purpose of this meeting is to get everyone up to date on the information we have discovered with respect to the System and Interface, to summarise our position as it currently stands, to discuss and decide a way forward and lastly to formalise management of this group. So far, John, Alexis and I have mostly just run things, but this method of approach will not remain viable in the longer future, in addition, we’ll need to discuss and set down some ground rules.” William added. “John will summarise all the information re the System we have discovered and once he’s done anyone can add further discoveries please.”
John’s summary was fairly lengthy but except for the information regarding pets didn’t contain a lot of information that Ryan hadn’t been aware of. What was significantly more interesting where John’s conjectures with respect to experience gains, the significant power of classes and the nature of the System. Once he was done he opened the floor for any further submissions. Ryan waited for anyone else to pipe up, but it seemed that nobody of the group had anything to add.
Ryan cleared his throat, sitting up straighter although it pained him slightly ‘I’ve got several things to add, but it would probably be easier if I shared my Character Sheet with everybody so I can explain better. John, you mentioned that you had found a way to share your logs, mind explaining how so I don’t have to figure it out myself?”
John quickly talked him through the process and Ryan shared his status, noticing for the first time that the fight with the sounder of warthog had actually levelled him up another level, he’d need to activate his notifications for that too.
Ryan Alexander Hunter
Level
4
Cultivation:
Mortal Realm (mid*)
Experience
518/600
Energy:
1593/1627
Statistics
Strength
Muscle Strength
17
Intellect
Speed
10
15,0
Tendons
14
12,3
Cognitive
17
Bones
14
Memory
10
Agility
Muscle Speed
15
Will
Resolve
15
14,3
Nerve Speed
15
12,7
Force
10
Cartilage Friction
13
Focus
13
Dexterity
Muscle Control
15
Energy
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Capacity
14
12,7
Proprioception
12
15,0
Efficiency
15
Flexibility
11
Regen
16
Constitution
Resilience
17
Perception
Acuity
14
17,7
Healing
17
11,7
Psy Range
8
Shield
19
Processing
13
Available Points
10
Allocated
334
Affinities
Kinetic (macro)
22
Kinetic (micro)
21
Gravitational
29
Soul
14
Space
73
Time
37
Matter
12
Electromagnetic
19
Biological
19
Psychic
22
Skills
Class Skills:
None
Profession Skills:
518 listed
(expand)
General:
11 275 listed
(expand)
Special Skills:
1 listed
(expand)
Unique:
None
Achievements
First Kill, Sneaky Bastard, David vs. Goliath, Hat-trick
Traits
Protean, Indomitable
Ryan started with quickly explaining how he had raised his Constitution by repeatedly being injured or having his Shield try to protect him from injury, also adding that he noticed significantly faster healing speeds once his stats had grown to the level they were at now. He explained his findings with regards to what he dubbed shield cell clusters but could see that the group was getting impatient, clearly wanting to know more about the more interesting stuff.
“So, I have four achievements. John indicated that achievements could offer a choice of Bonus Stat Points, which I can confirm. I can also confirm that the non-boostable stats, such as Cognitive Understanding, can be raised by such points. Achievements however, can offer so much more.” He explained. Ryan then detailed how he had received the respective achievements, their rarity and the offered rewards, ending with the acquisition of his Special Skill: Dimensional Shift and the experience of the training that had knocked him out cold. He then explained his training regime with the Skill, sheepishly mentioning that he had entirely forgot to use the Skill the two times he had been in combat after acquiring it. It had become clear to him that the Skill was definitely not part of his instinctive repertoire yet and he would need to train it further before he would instinctually use it during combat.
Next, he explained how he achieved his second Trait, indicating that he had no idea why and how Traits were awarded and that the Interface didn’t offer any explanations thereof either. In his peripheral vision Ryan could see Miguel and Leah near hopping up and down on their couch, so he turned to them and asked “What has you two so riled up?”
The teen near shouted “Cultivation! How did you do it?” which Ryan answered with a question, “You have an idea what cultivation means? And who are you?” Miguel, often interrupted by Leah, which he introduced as his girlfriend, explained in quick-fire, staccato sentences that Cultivation was an eastern mystic concept, where a practitioner reinforced his body and soul by cultivating energy, such as Chi, Mana, Qi and so forth and that the various realms denoted the power of such a practitioner. Mortal usually being the lowest. He explained that they had been fans of Xianxia novels and that they both had tried to cultivate after system initiation in the hope that cultivation as a system might exist due to the reference to earth’s lore in the Welcome Mat, but that they hadn’t met with success.
Miguel was clearly annoyed that Ryan, who had no idea what a cultivation system was, had managed to unlock his, but simultaneously seemed excited like a kid before Christmas, urging Ryan to explain how he had achieved it. Ryan’s “I was bored while jogging back to town” nearly kicked him over the edge, so Ryan smoothly continued “so I started focusing on improving my running and remembering how stat allocation improved my system I started noticing how the Energy flowed through my body, eventually touching something that the System called my centre. Then I faceplanted!” he concluded.
Their ensuing back and forth took several minutes, Ryan’s understanding of his progress greatly increasing due to Miguel explaining several different principles that he considered as the underlying foundation of cultivation. Ryan shared his thoughts and discoveries, highlighting the significant increase of his energy pool. Near everyone was chiming in with questions the entire time. A loud PING!, apparently audible to everyone, interrupted their conversation.
Local System Notification! Please stand by for System Notification by System Administration in 30 seconds.
30…
29…
The room was suddenly dead silent, the hubbub of voices had died down immediately. Everyone appeared to wait for the notification with bated breaths, unsure what new devilry the System had ready for them. Ryan glanced at William, their shared look speaking volumes, they would deal with whatever was coming together, come hell or high water.
19…
18…
17…
Ryan took in the room, everyone seemed more nervous than excited, only John showing clear signs of anticipation. Hunched forward in his seat, brow furrowed in concentration, a manic grin on his face he radiated expectation. Ryan immediately understood that, whether good or bad news, John was expecting the acquisition of more data.
9…
8…
7…
“Can cut this atmosphere with a knife” Ryan thought.
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
Dear Humanity
The System Administration has fucked up and kindly wishes to convey their sincere apologies to the eventual survivors of the accidental apocalypse. Please take note…
…The Special Basic Skill Package consists of the following free Skills:
Scavenger: Deconstruct (Rare), Absorb (Epic), Scan (Rare)
General: Forager (Common), Suppression (Rare),
Special: Analyse, Inspect, Scan, Survey and several other related Skills have been merged into Identify (Epic).
“Patch notes. The Administration provided us with Patch notes. How surreal can this get?” Ryan thought, barely having skimmed the notification. He looked around the room again, everyone still engrossed in their Interface. Focusing on the content of the Notification. John particularly looked as if he was in a trance, deeply focused. Ryan dove back into his Interface, deciding to start making sense of the notification. While he concentrated on the Notification, deciding which changes were immediately applicable to him and the group, he could hear relieved conversation starting up in the background. He couldn’t decide whether his original impression of their new overlords, the System Administration, as clearly malevolent, still held water. They were clearly less than competent, judging from the contents of this notification, unless it was a cleverly constructed misdirection. Ryan would reserve judgement, but decided that they clearly couldn’t be trusted. Whether malicious or incompetent, their actions had resulted and would result in uncountable harm to humanity as a whole.
When John interrupted his churning thoughts a minute later he was thankful, “I suggest everyone grab a bite to eat and something to drink. We’ll wait for the changes to go live and then I’ll need fifteen minutes to come to grips with the basics. I suggest we’ll continue this meeting after. We still have a lot to discuss people. Miguel, please prepare a short summary of any information regarding Cultivation once the patch goes live, if possible. Oh, and everyone find someplace to sit or lie down when the patch goes live, can’t hurt to be careful.”
Everyone rushed out of the lounge, Lizzy just asking Ryan in passing whether she could bring him something, to which he assented. A few scant seconds later only Ryan, John and Michelle remained. Two invalids and the analyst who was once again immersed within his interface, scowling furiously.