I wake up to loud screaming and someone yelling "Retreat!". I shot upwards and grabbed the stone dagger, looking around in a panic. Seeing that no one was near me trying to murder me I got up and cautiously walked towards the window where the sound was coming from. I opened the shutters and looked outside to a trainwreck of a fight. The group that mugged me before was in front of the inn, only now they were mid retreat. "Did those morons really try assaulting the blacksmith? Fighting those skeletons with sheer numbers won't cut it." I said to myself as I shook my head in disbelief. There was 4 dead bodies littering the entrance to the blacksmith. I also saw some chick with a spear get stabbed through the throat, but simply pull the sword out and scramble backwards.

Her wound closed quickly after and she screamed "Hey boss, my only soul core just shattered! We need to dip. These armoured boneys are too much for us." I saw the boss look at the woman and click his tongue before raising his voice to say "Alright lets back off for now! We're heading back to base. Anyone left behind won't be helped so keep pace!" He then turned around and dashed off into some alleyway with the rest of the group following. I looked and saw that the skeletons chased for a few seconds before turning around and returning to their posts in front of the blacksmith. They ignored the corpses and did little else with them other than move them out of the way from the entrance.

I had an idea come to me at that moment so I snuck downstairs after waiting for several minutes to make sure they really left and some nasty monster didn't come out of nowhere. Once I got outside I cautiously walked to the bodies while keeping a close eye on the skeletons. They followed my every move but didn't approach me yet. I grabbed the closest body and dragged it away and into a house nearby as quickly as I could. The skeletons didn't follow so I breathed a sigh of relief while wondering why they didn't chase. "Was it cause I wasn't near the blacksmith this time? Or was it for some other reason? This is confusing."

I shook my head to clear my thoughts and turned to the body. It was wearing better armour than me but it was still leather so I tried putting it on. The armour was slightly loose for me but it fit well enough so I didn't complain. The body didn't have anything much of value other than the armour. Even the weapon it had was a broken shortsword. Useless to say the least. It didnt even have a handle, it was all blade so grabbing the thing would cut my hands open not to mention using it. I found some of the coins in a pouch and took that bag for myself. Who doesn't like shinies?

I turned to look at the other bodies and saw that some bird monster had snatched 2 of them away and was flying away with them in its talons. I cursed the bird thing for stealing my loot before turning to the last body. Again I dragged the body into the house as fast as possible. I was scared for a second when a skeleton guard walked over to me. I dropped the body and dashed towards the house as fast as I could. "The hell does it want? It didn't bother me last time I took a body so why is it pissed now?" I kept watching and saw the skeleton grab the dropped coins from the bag and put them in its own pouch on its belt and walk back to its post. "Those things also collect money? The hell?"

I creeped back over to the body and dragged it off and this time the skeleton didn't bother me. It didn't have much in the ways of armour except for a leather chestplate, which I didn't want anyways. While searching I found an iron dagger in a sheath on his belt. I took the sheath and dagger and tossed my stone away. "Thank god I have an actual weapon again. Now i'm not some homeless bum with a sharp rock, but a homeless bum with a dagger."

I checked my pouch of money and saw I had 31 coins in it. "The hell are these coins? Freaking creepy ass coins give me the jitters looking at them." I put the coins back in the pouch and closed it as a notification appeared. Great, the sarcastic jerk is back, not that it left.

Drachma: The currency of the Dreadlands. Made from an ancient and long lost forging technique, these coins are the standard money here, traded for various goods and services. That is, if the being you meet is willing to trade. Most encounters result in death in the Dreadlands.

"Alright, so these coins are the actual currency of this place. Didn't know a place like this even had an economy. Might as well start saving up for the future. I was getting up and was abut to leave when I remembered something. "I have some other menues I havent checked. Might as well check my skills menu out. With a thought I pulled out my skills menu from the system or whatever it is that let me see these blue boxes.

Skill Name Level Aweful Spearmanship 1 Danger Sense 1 Appraisal 1 Rift Portal 1 ??? [Locked] ??? [Locked] ??? [Locked]

I was dissapointed by my skills to say the least but when I saw the 3 ??? skills I was confused. I was even more confused when I saw that the level of the skills was [Locked]. "Do I have to somehow unlock them? But how the hell am I going to do that without knowing what to do to unlock them? This is rigged! Rigged I say! The system is freaking borked!"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Delusional Lvl 3 Acquired!

"...' I sat there and stared at the god damn system's notification. "Why is my highest leveled thing freaking Delusional?" I decided to pull up my titles menu and take a look at them. The skeletons weren't coming near me and I might as well check everything at my disposal.

Title Name Level Delusional 3 Monstrous Potential 1 ??? [Locked]

I sighed as I saw that yes, Delusional was in fact, my highest leveled thing in my entire status. I looked at the second title and looked in confusion. "Monstrous Potential? Why do I have that? Doesn't that imply that I have a lot of potential? You sure your not glitching out system? You saw my potential back when it was first revealed. Also what is up with all of these damn Locked ??? items in my status?! Like sheesh!" I kicked a rock in frustration and started heading back to the inn with my new prizes. I also decided to check the Rift Portal skill's description.

Rift Portal: A skill to create portals at predetermined locations. The amount of locations a user can save is determined by the level of the skill. Saving a location and activating the portal consumes mana. Current Save slots 0/2

"Thats one handy skill. Finally some good fortune." I was glad I had an actually useful skill I could use and instantly tried to activate it. "Wait...How do I activate it?? That's going to be a problem." I had gotten back to the inn at this point and was sitting on a couch in the reception area of the inn while thinking and wracking my brain on how to use the Rift Skill. "Would it just open if I thought of using it like my menu's?" I tried just that and had no luck. Nothing happened so I tried something else. I kept looking with my menu and examined the description, looking for as much info as possible.

~~~

After what felt like an hour had passed. I had finally succeeded in using my Rift Skill. I had stumbled upon the word mana and gotten a description for it. It seemed that mana was in everything, including the very air. It went on into some lecture about what mana could be used for and other junk but I just looked for the info on how to use mana. I then saw a section telling me how to activate mana. It said some weird mumbo jumbo about feeling deep within myself for some foreign energy, so I closed my eyes and tried doing that exactly. I felt like a moron doing that for 20 minutes straight but eventually managed to get a hang of it. It felt like I had some ice cold but energetic fluid coursing through me. How I hadn't noticed it before baffled me.

I then went on to try and use the mana but met with some...explosive results. I ended up blowing up the couch I was sitting on. It hurt like hell and I didn't want to destroy my current home so I had walked outside and went to a random clearing a few buildings away to continue. I had continued trying to use my mana in any meaningful fashion but almost all of the experiments resulted in a glorious explosion, deepening the crater where I stood every time. After 30 minutes of constant explosions and failures I had attracted some skeletons so I had fought them with my dagger, killing the 3 skeletons that attacked me. I was rather pissed with my failures and blew some steam on the skeletons, leaving them as nothing other than broken piles of bones. Not even the armour was worth using anymore when I was done with them.

I had finally had a breakthrough when I just dumped all of my mana out and squashed it into a ball. I had ended up gaining the skill Mana Manipulation Lvl 1. It took an hours worth of explosions and effort but I had done it. What happened after was simply me manipulating mana into a circle in front of me and imagining it was water on a lake. The knowledge just came to me once I got mana manipulation. I had just chalked it up to me having the skill and just needing the manipilation skill to be able to make use of it. The whole ordeal had left me dead tired and in a lot of pain. Lots and Lots of pain. I wanted to try using the mana as a ranged attack like some fantasy mage but I was just in too much pain to bother.

"I'll do that tomorrow. Who knew using mana would be so painful?" I mumbled as I flopped into bed and fell asleep.