My stamina, mana, and health all ticked back up to full as I leveled up.

My mangled arm probably would've been lost from the damage it'd taken if I were back on the earth I knew, but apparently in this new world just about anything could heal.

Just like in a video game, I guess.

Character sheet, I thought the words to myself as I slowly came to sit up.

My body was healing, with little at all remaining of my still fresh wounds now, but my brain still felt adrenaline dumped.

My stats spilled out before me.

[Clarissa Ardent, Level 12]

Health: 20 (3 r/pm)

Mana: 260 (5 r/pm)

Stamina: 50 (3 r/pm)

Core-Points to Distribute: 110

[Stats]

Strength: 13

Endurance: 16

Agility: 18

Charisma: 14

Perception: 13

Intelligence: 27

Willpower: 20

Stat-Points to Distribute: 33

[Skills]

Acrobatics: 50

One-Handed: 50

Fire Manipulation: 1

Grappling: 50

Spell Attack: 1

Spell Control: 11

Spell Efficiency: 1

Unarmed-Fighting: 50

Writing: 50

Skill-Points to Distribute: 110

[Spells Known]

Raging Blade [1st]: Summon a blade of conjured fire. Mana cost dependent on blade potency; intelligence score governs your bonus damage with this weapon instead of strength.

[Abilities]

N/A

[Perks]

Elder Blood I [B]: As a member of the caliban race, you gain a bonus to mana regeneration that increases as your mana does.

Trailblazer I [R]: You've led the way as a member of your world. The System will always reward ingenuity. You gain all skills slightly faster to acknowledge your efforts.

Raging Sorcery I [RU]: You can channel strong emotions into your spells, causing them to explode in a violent burst of mana that deals extra damage. Spells that are already concussive/explosive have their range and potency increased.

[Inventory]

Simple Traveler's Garb

A couple things caught my eye. First and foremost was that I'd jumped eleven levels just from finishing off the already heavily damaged skulker.

Somehow I didn't feel like that was a common reward for beating a normal enemy. I was definitely in way over my head right now, as far as the level of this world dungeon went, but at least my rewards for punching above my weight seemed comparative to the danger.

Next was that I had stats to distribute. It looked like I got ten points to spread between Health, Mana, and Stamina per level. Three per level for my physical and mental stats. And then another ten per level for my skills.

That made the one-hundred mana I'd gained from the System as a reward worth a massive ten levels. The Intelligence bump was likewise worth almost four levels of stat points.

I didn't know if I felt all that smarter from the stat's increase, but then again the numbers and math spread out throughout the Character Sheet did seem to be coming a lot easier to me.

Strangely, I'd also gained a seemingly unaccounted for one-hundred-and-ten additional points in mana, which was worth another eleven levels or so in core-points.

That oddity aside, which I fully planned to investigate later, I wasn't really sure how to spend my points.

I really wanted more time to try to mine the System for information on the rules that handled its backend so I could best exploit them. I had a feeling my vastly under-leveled self would need all the help I could get.

Still, as I looked around the darkened forest encircling me, I didn't really feel all that safe and I'd already almost died once.

I rose up to my feet and made sure to keep my ears perked as I made some quick decisions.

My main priority was staying alive, period.

As I'd figured out before, I'd gained at least ten levels worth of mana from the System's rewards alone and another major increase from somewhere else I couldn't pinpoint.

If monsters leveled in the same way as I did, that meant that a level thirty monster like the skulker would have to devote nearly twenty-six of all its level gains towards mana alone to match me in total capacity--assuming they didn't get any special, racial bonuses to mana or what have you.

I also imagined, to my benefit, that most monsters and even other people wouldn't have the benefit of being the first in the world to do something; meaning my own bonuses were probably pretty exclusive.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

For the above reasons, I figured my mana was probably pretty respectable, even when compared to the strength of the highest level monster that I'd seen so far.

Still, the skulker had almost killed me in one hit. My mana might be fine, pending me verifying that against other beings, but twenty health points wasn't going to cut it--that much had already been proven by my brief stint in combat.

I also had no weapons or abilities that used stamina, not yet anyway.

So, with all of that accounted for, I quickly put all one-hundred-and-ten of my core-points into health; that brought me up to a total of one-hundred-and-thirty health.

That meant that my health was still half of my mana.

But, I'd had only twenty health before, so I'd raised it overall by a factor of nearly seven already.

Being able to take nearly seven glancing blows from a level thirty creature like the skulker, rather than barely not dying after just one hit, would be a huge benefit.

Not to mention that hopefully not being so fragile would really help my peace of mind out.

With the aid of my System awarded mana, I now figured I had the cumulative health, stamina, and mana of at least a level twenty-something individual. Though the truth of that, and the effectiveness of my new strength, remained to be tested.

Stat-wise I was much more torn on how to spend my thirty-three available points.

I didn't figure I'd be going toe to toe with monsters in raw strength with only twelve levels total, even if I devoted all my stat-points to my raw physical power alone; not when races like whatever the skulker had been were probably naturally stronger than me already, or likely just had no need to specialize into much other than strength and damage in the first place.

The monster definitely hadn't seemed to have a high intelligence score.

All guesses aside, I really needed more information to make my decision.

System, explain the meaning of each stat to me?

[Strength is your body's physical power; it governs grappling, unarmed damage, and melee weapon damage. If strength is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain ten points in all melee, physical labor, and close-quarters skills per level.]

[Endurance is the hardiness of your body; it governs healing rate, natural resistance to mundane damage, and stamina regen. If endurance is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain extra health-points and stamina/health regen per level.]

[Agility is your ability to control your body; it governs the efficiency of stamina-based abilities, reaction speed, running speed, and the damage of finesse weapons. If agility is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain ten points in all of your known agility-based skills per level.]

[Charisma is your overall beauty and grace; it governs your use of trade and social skills, along with effecting your outward appearance. If charisma is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain ten points in all your known trade and social skills per level.]

[Perception is your ability to notice things; it governs your passive awareness, ability to be fooled by illusion magic, and any processing of sensory input. If perception is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain ten points in all your known perception-based skills per level.]

[Intelligence is your mental capacity; it governs the damage you do with spells and the rate at which you recover mana. If intelligence is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain ten extra mana per level.]

[Willpower is your ability to resist mental attack, push through pain, and generally resist debilitating effects put against you. If willpower is your highest stat upon leveling up, you gain ten points in the mental-resistance skill and all non-elemental spell skills.]

Alright, well those text boxes made things a lot more complicated.

Not to say I wasn't glad to have the info.

It at least explained where my extra mana had come from. With the bonuses from the System, my intelligence stat had far and away been the highest as I'd rapidly gained levels; that was what had granted me the extra ten mana per level.

It seemed that the way you built out your playstyle greatly affected your growth.

A part of me wanted to see what would happen if I kept all my stats equal as I leveled. Would I get all the bonuses together?

Doing that probably wasn't altogether feasible, though, even if the System allowed it. It would take away from other cumulative seeming bonuses in the time it would take to take effect, and it'd already be hard to get all my stats equalized, while gaining so few points per level.

It might be easier to get two stats up to an equal state, though. It was something to think on, at least, and to definitely test later.

I'd had a fair bit of trouble reacting to and attacking the skulker, basically being unable to do so until it had chosen to pin me down.

It was probably looking like magic would be my go to attack style for right now at least, making intelligence seem to be a solid pick for my stat-points.

But... my only spell made a damn sword. I needed to be able to hit things with that blade. Which meant I needed to be able to keep up with enemies in close quarters.

Making my second decision of my level up, I brought my intelligence up to thirty-nine and my agility up to the same. Hopefully that decision would let me hit hard enough and dodge quick enough to fall back on magic damage and my increased hit points.

I really didn't want to make the mistake of trying to be good at everything, especially not when my enemies were going to have levels on me.

I was pretty sure the System had helped to catch me up with its gifts, but all that meant was that I needed to lean into those new strengths and try to out-specialize and outsmart any future opponents.

That just left my one-hundred-and ten skill points.

System, explain to me what Fire Manipulation, One Handed, Spell Attack, Spell Control, and Spell Efficiency means.

[Fire Manipulation increases the potency, along with your control over, all fire-based spells and also reduces their mana cost at a higher rate than either Spell Attack, Spell Control, or Spell Efficiency, but does not do the same for other types of spells.]

[One-Handed governs your specific skill with a one-handed weapon of any type. Bonuses to damage and fighting styles may become available as you level this skill.]

[Spell Attack increases the potency of all your damaging spells, without increasing mana cost.]

[Spell Control increases your control over all spells. Especially useful when creating spells or when innovating in their use.]

[Spell Efficiency decreases the mana cost of all spells across the board. This effect is doubly noticeable for concentration-based or long-lasting spells.]

So that made sense: the three skills governing spells made them stronger, more controllable and adaptable, and decreased their cost.

Meanwhile, fire manipulation did all of those things, and did them far better on a pure skill-point to cost ratio, but the skill only worked on fire spells.

One-handed was just a skill dealing with swords and it seemed I had gotten a boost already for my past fencing experience.

Knowing all that, I'd prefer the versatility of the spell skills, but just didn't really have the points to significantly raise three types of spell skills.

However, I only had the one fire skill and I already had a leg-up with one handed.

With this in mind, I raised my fire manipulation skill all the way to one-hundred-and-eleven.

I already felt pretty comfortable with a sword. I was banking on this, along with my increased mana and intelligence to make the [Raging Blade] spell hit hard--or at least I hoped it would do so.

The downside to everything I was doing was that I couldn't really test any of it in combat, unless I was forced back into it.

I definitely didn't feel safe enough to practice out in the open woods, no matter how much familiarizing myself with my new powers would help me get a better idea of how to best use them.

I had also almost died in my very first battle. I needed the strength to avoid doing that again; I couldn't afford to be fooling around with menus in the midst of being attacked.

No, my choices would either have to save or doom me.

But... at least now I felt like I might have a chance, if only a slim one to get a small leg up over future challenges.

I wouldn't let my luck in surviving the previous attack on my life go to waste.

I closed my character sheet and leveling window.

I was going to survive.

My heart had slowed down somewhat as I relaxed into my leveling.

I wanted to get back to my family and friends, that much was for sure.

I also had no idea how I was going to escape this dungeon or find my next meal.

Still... I had fucking magic now! How cool was that?

I also couldn't help but feel the same satisfaction that had always flooded through me while in the boxing ring, or fencing square, at having overcome my first real, life or death, enemy. With the stakes becoming so high, the adrenaline rush of combat that I'd always chased in comparatively calm sports was only higher.

Yeah, I'd be getting home to my adopted family and my friends, one way or another, but, if I could just get a little stronger, I wasn't so sure I wouldn't be able to have some fun while doing my very best to survive.

Leveling up was definitely already feeling addictive. I couldn't wait to do it again... as long as my choices didn't prove to be bad ones.

Still, I wasn't quite ready to jump into battle right away. I needed to find a safe place.

Unfortunately, I had no idea where I was going to go or which direction would be the safest.

Before I could consider this too greatly, however, a glowing orb rose from the skulker's corpse.