Tsar did not have time to try and look at the notifications that were flaring in the corner of his vision. Well, vision wasn’t the right word for it as he was currently completely and utterly blind. Underwater, surrounded by wriggling things. One of which he was sure that he’d killed. Whatever it was had bumped into him the moment he became conscious and for some reason his instinctual reaction had been to bite into it for all he was worth. For some reason it hadn’t tasted half bad either.
After that the world had become a blur of pain, biting, blacking out, coming too, and fighting again. He really did not know how long it had been. But he was getting pissed off about the words that kept getting pushed into his vision that were accompanied by nothing but agony every time, in big bold lettering
You Have Died
Respawning
He wasn’t sure how many times he’d seen those four fucking words now, but he was incredibly angry at this point. He hadn’t even figured out what he kept spawning as yet. But he didn’t have time to sit back and look at his stat page and read through all of the notifications. All he had figured out at this point was that whatever he was, he was blind, submerged in water but not drowning. And he was getting eaten over and over again. Sure, he’d killed a bunch of whatever was attacking him too. But he’d died so many times now.
Damn was he glad that he’d gotten the Perpetual Rebirth skill. Otherwise, he would have already been dead dead. Like D.E.D dead. Instead, he was just mostly dead, but recovering. His mind was turning to humor to try and counteract the horror he was living and dying through right now.
After what felt like an eternity of fighting and dying over and over in a dark pit under water Tsar found himself savagely ripping apart the corpse of his final fallen enemy with his teeth. He actually didn’t seem to have hands or even arms or legs for that matter. But anyway, the water around him was finally still and he could take a moment to check his notifications and see what the hell he’d been born into this new world as.
Congratulations
Your Skill Perpetual Rebirth has reached Level 10!
If the skill holder has any form of Bound Inventory, skill or otherwise, the contents of the inventory will be retained across deaths.
Congratulations
Your skill Analyze has reached Level 10!
Can now use Analyze to see the five highest stats of the subject Analyzed.
Congratulations
Your skill Zen Meditation has reached Level 10!
Can now use this skill completely recall, replay, and examine memories in detail.
Congratulations
Your skill Mimicry has reached Level 10!
You can now attempt to copy skills you have observed.
Congratulations
Your skill Soul Vault has reached Level 10!
Items stored within the Soul Vault will now be suspended in time.
That was all a lot to take in. But there was more to see yet. The next box was a different color than the rest had been.
Congratulations
You have named yourself and earned the Title: Self Named
Effects: +10 Willpower per Race Level Gained
Most of the notifications were either ‘You killed unknown creature’ or ‘you died’ notifications that Tsar just skimmed through. Though he did get another one that was different.
Congratulations?
You have killed the very first being you encountered on your first day of life and earned the Title: Savage
Effects: +1 strength
Finally, Tsar was done with the notifications, and he could see what was going on with his stat page. He hadn’t looked at it since he’d had the System unlock all of his stats. It was time to take a look at what he actually was and see what his baseline was.
Name: Tsar Bomba
Race: Life-Mote Tadpole(G-)
Race Level: 0
Titles: [Self Named] [Savage]
Class(es): None selected
[Sp 4/5] 0.15sph
Resource Pools
[Hp 5/5] 0.25hph
[Mp 5/5] 0.25mph
Attributes
Strength: 1
Dexterity: 1
Constitution: 1
Toughness: 1
Fortitude: 1
HP Regen: 1
Vitality: 1
Lifespan: 5
Attributes
Intelligence: 11
Wisdom: 11
Perception: -1
Charisma: 11
Willpower: 10
MP Regen: 1
MP Capacity: 1
See next page… 1 of ???
Skills
Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10
Analyze lvl.10
Zen Meditation lvl.10
Mimicry lvl.10
Soul Vault lvl.10
Spells
N/A
BloodLine:
Soul Well
15 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +0.15 per hour to all resource pools
Apparently, Tsar had managed to pick up fifteen souls since he’d been alive? Or repeatedly dying at least. Also, the vast majority of his stats were things that he couldn’t understand at all. The only thing he understood from them was that they were probably not meant to be touched in the first place. Some of them were in the negative values and some of them were in the hundreds and he had no clue what they meant. He quickly discovered that he could set up his Page how he wanted it so he moved all of the stats he couldn’t understand onto a separate page and only left the ones he understood. Then he separated them by Primary and Secondary stats. He didn't really know what that meant but he set it up anyway, The next thing he did was click on the Class section which brought up a menu with available classes. There was only one available.
Occultist
The Occultist class is only available to those who have the Skills to see, to remember, to copy, and to hold secrets even beyond the grave. This class offers Occultist Class Level% reduction in EXP increases caused by Classes to race level advancement, +5 Intelligence, +5 Wisdom, +5 Perception Per class level and access to the Occultist Skill tree.
Tsar instantly took the class. If he got it to level 100, he could basically take any class he wanted without ever having to worry about increased EXP requirements for Leveling his race. If that was how it worked… anyways after taking the class another screen popped up in his vision.
Congratulations
You have taken the Occultist Class and can now access the Occultist Skill Tree. You are now an Occultist Level 1.
Stat points have been allocated.
You have gained the skills: [Mind of the Occultist], [Auto Translate], and [Find Hidden Things]
Mind of the Occultist
This is a passive skill that allows the user to see hidden information and spot the truth in lies. Applies the Intelligence stat to MP Capacity.
Applies Wisdom Stat to MP Regen.
Auto Translate
This is a passive skill that will teach you any language you see or hear at least three words of.
Find Hidden Things
This is a passive skill that will guide you towards things that hidden or secret.
Tsar wondered if it was just him, or did the System sometimes give out really detailed information and other times be vague as all hell. If he could have shrugged, he would have… Now to address the elephant in the room. he’d been ignoring it since he opened his stat page and saw it… He was a freaking tadpole! Oh but at least it seemed like he could see now. His Perception stat was now 4 where it had been -1 before. Time to ignore the fact that he was a tadpole again and check out his surroundings.
That didn’t really work. The water around him was murky and dark. He was either very deep, in a cave, or it was nighttime… Or his eyesight was just shit. He quickly checked his Mp Capacity and regen to see how much it was affected by his new class skills.
MP[5/85] 1.85Mph
So, one point in capacity increased his pool by five points, and one point in regen increased the speed by 0.1 mana per hour. His current effective stat points in Regen and Capacity were both 17 at this point… That only distracted him for few seconds before he thought about his race again.
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“How is a Tadpole supposed to be its own race!” he would have yelled if it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t really make any sounds at this point. “A tadpole is just a baby frog! Not a whole species in and of itself.” On second thought, tadpoles were also baby toads… Yeah, he preferred becoming a frog. They were cooler looking in Tsar’s eyes.
Now with the mildly disconcerting fact that he was a Tadpole out of the way, Tsar decided that he had better start actually moving around and figuring out what was what before he went and got himself killed again.
Figuring out locomotion was surprisingly not a chore. His body already knew how to move, and soon he was swimming through the murky water with alacrity. A notification had popped up in the bottom right side of his vision as he swam around but he ignored it. He couldn’t be distracted every time the System decided he’d done something noteworthy at this point in his life. It would eat up time and probably get him killed if he was distracted.
As he swam around, he kept running into the corpses of fellow tadpoles. And just because he could he popped them into his Soul Vault every time he found them. You never know when it might be useful to have a few corpses. Maybe he could use them as a distraction if he ran into a predator?
Honestly though, swimming around aimlessly got pretty boring after a while. His eyesight seemed to be improving a little bit, or it was turning to day and there was actually just more light around him now. He decided to go and check. Why not? So, he swam in the direction he felt was probably up until he suddenly broke the surface and was looking up into the canopy of what looked like some kind of mangrove tree.
It was definitely dark out, but it actually did seem like it was getting lighter so he assumed the sun must be rising soon. He was swimming along the surface minding his own business when he caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye. He had no clue what it was, but he ducked under the water and dove straight for the bottom. Then he heard and felt a crash in the water behind him as he desperately dove down to get away from whatever was trying to get at him. Desperately dumping half of the corpses he’d acquired as he explored in a desperate bid to try and stay alive.
He ran full force into ground and felt like he might have given himself a concussion, but he didn’t stop there. As he’d already half planted himself into the mud, he decided to use it to hopefully keep himself hidden. It worked, because after several minutes of waiting and hearing the thrashing of things moving in the water above him everything calmed down and Tsar found himself still alive.
Now that Tsar found himself relatively safe and hidden from everything that might try and kill him for the moment, he decided that now was as goo a time as any to check those damn notifications that kept grabbing at his attention.
Congratulations
You have Learned the Skill: Swimming lvl.1
Effects: +1 Str, +1 Con, Reduced Stamina consumption while swimming, and increase lung capacity by 1% per level in swimming.
10 EXP Earned
Congratulations
Your skill Swimming has reached lvl.3
20 EXP Earned
Congratulations
You have learned the Skill: Enhanced Eyesight lvl.1
Effects: +1 Perception per level in Enhanced Eyesight
10 EXP Earned
Congratulations
You have learned the Skill: Decoy lvl.1
Effects: When using Decoy increase the chances of escape from hostiles by 0.1% per Decoy deployed.
10 EXP Earned
Congratulations
You have learned the Skill: Stealth lvl. 1
Effects: Makes you less likely to be spotted by anyone or anything through Perception.
10 EXP Earned
That was all well and good. But the real kicker came after he’d read the notifications. It was like he didn’t actually receive the rewards until he acknowledged the notifications. As suddenly, he felt a wave of strength surge through him and a tingling noise as another notification popped up.
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!
Level Up!
Congratulations!
You have reached Race Level 5
Allocating stat points
Evolution Threshold Reached
Would you like to evolve?
Y/N
Of course, Tsar wanted to evolve! But how had it been that easy? He’d assumed it would take him a while to reach level five. Though he wasn’t sure how much EXP he needed to level up It must not be very much because he’d only gained 60 EXP. Clicking the Y option brought up only a single evolutionary option. [Life-Mote Frog(G)]. He clicked it and immediately passed out.
Tsar awoke he knew not how long after he’d passed out. But when he awoke, he suddenly found that he had the need to breath. Which was an issue seeing as how he was buried in mud and who knows how deep underwater. He frantically extricated himself from the mud and pushed off the ground finding himself rocketing up through the water and even breaching the surface. Apparently, he wasn’t really very deep, his tadpole body had just been very small.
Taking a deep breath of air that was heavy with the scent of rotten vegetation Tsar was annoyed when he noticed that there were more notifications blaring in the corner of his vision. He would get to them soon, but for right now he needed to find a safe place to examine what changes he had just undergone. It seemed like he couldn’t go five minutes without the System trying to tell him something.
He quickly swam his way into the roots of one of the mangrove looking trees and hid himself where he was partially submerged. Trying his best to sense every bit of his surroundings. Once he was satisfied that nothing was coming to get him in his hiding spot Tsar brought up his notifications.
Congratulations
You have evolved into a Life-Mote Frog(G)!
Evolution Bonus: +10 to all unlocked stats.
Racial Bonuses: Gain the Skill: Utility Tongue lvl.1
+2 Per, +2 Cha per race level as a Life-Mote Frog
Ok so that was nice, only one notification that was actually pretty straightforward and informative. The evolution bonus to his stats were awesome. He was going to have to see what Utility Tongue did but now it was time to look at his stat page. Again…
Name: Tsar Bomba
Race: Life-Mote Frog(G)
Race Level: 0 EXP 20/100
Titles: [Self Named] [Savage]
Class(es): Occultist(lvl.1)
Death Counter
32
Options Menu…
[Sp 84/95] 0.15sph
Resource Pools
[Hp 80/80] 1.85hph
[Mp47/235]4.85mph
Primary Attributes
Strength: 19
Dexterity: 16
Constitution: 19
Toughness: 16
Intelligence: 31
Wisdom: 31
Perception: 20
Charisma: 26
Vitality: 16
Secondary Attributes
Fortitude: 16
HP Regen: 16
Lifespan: 20
Willpower: 75
MP Regen: 16(47)
MP Capacity: 16(47)
See next page… 1 of ???
Skills
Mind of the Occultist lvl.N/A
Auto Translate lvl.N/A
Perpetual Rebirth lvl.10
Analyze lvl.10
Zen Meditation lvl.10
Mimicry lvl.10
Soul Vault lvl.10
Swimming lvl.3
Stealth lvl.1
Enhanced Eyesight lvl.1
Decoy lvl.1
Utility Tongue lvl.1
Find Hidden Things lvl.1
Spells
N/A
BloodLine:
Soul Well
15 [Blank] [Mundane Souls] +0.15 per hour to all resource pools
First off, Holy shit that’s a lot of stat growth! Second! Why the hell was there a Death Counter? Third? What was that options menu all about? He mentally tapped it and was greeted with another screen. This one had a few options that he wished he’s had on before. “HUD” and “Clock” He didn’t know what all the other options were, but HUD gave him a heads-up-display that layered colored bars representing his resource pools into his vision in a very intuitive way. After that he checked out the description of Utility Tongue and found that it basically made it so that his tongue was able to do more things.
Tsar couldn’t help but notice that there were no stats that effected stamina regen. If it weren’t for his Soul Well, he’d have no way of recovering it. His only thought was that SP was normally recovered by eating and sleeping. It made him wonder if the regen he was getting from the Soul Well would make it that he needed less sleep… Less food maybe?
Speaking of food, Tsar was hungry, and he had no idea what he was supposed to eat. He still had a bunch of Life-Mote Tadpoles in his inventory. He didn’t know if his current race was carnivorous or what so he decided to wait and see if he could find anything before he tried eating any of them.
With System stuff out of the way Tsar decided that it was time to explore a little and see what was around. Climbing out of his hiding place onto the side of the tree he was currently under he discovered what his nose had already been telling him. It was a swamp. But with so many trees it might as well have been a jungle. Birds where chirping and singing in tunes Tsar had never heard before, and in the distance, he heard the occasional branch snapping.
This place was an untamed wilderness. Tsar knew very little about survival in the wild. And everything he did know, which was a very small amount, he’d learned from videos online and were things that applied to humans. How was a frog supposed to start a fire? Did he even need to worry about water potentially making him sick?
After a thorough review of his own survival memories using Zen Meditation for the first time. Tsar realized that he actually knew a lot more than he’d known. Using Zen Meditation was like watching his past as an interactive 3D movie. Somehow the skill cause details that there was no way you’d actually remember to be there. Though again most of the knowledge he’d been able to retrieve using Zen Meditation was useless to a frog without opposable thumbs.
So, for now Tsar just decided to explore, get skills, and level his skills. That seemed like it would genuinely be the best way to level up for now seeing as he didn’t have any real combat skills. The first thing he did was really focus on his hearing, the sounds around him. Trying to pick out details and directions of noises. The reason? He’d gotten Enhanced Eyesight and he was pretty sure it was because he was straining to try and see. Hopefully he could pick up something like Enhanced Hearing if that was a thing. If it worked, he would focus on the other senses. Then he’d try and figure something else out. If he could get enough skills, then practically everything he ever did would be pushing those skills up and getting him EXP in the meanwhile.
Long term goal? Evolve into a naturally Sapient Race so that he could join society in this world. Short term goal? Survive! Best way to do that? Level and obtain skills. How to Level and Obtain skills? Do all the things apparently.
It did not take long with Tsar straining his ears as much as he could before he did in fact obtain the Enhanced Hearing skill. Which prompted him start sniffing everything to try and get Enhanced smelling or something like that. The discovery that Skills were practically as easy to get as trying to do the thing you wanted the skill for over and over until you got it led to Tsar being lightheaded as he took deep sniff after deep sniff of the air.
It took Tsar the rest of the day, but he acquired Enhanced Smelling lvl.1, Enhanced Touch lvl.1, Enhanced Taste lvl.1, and Jumping lvl.1. Jumping he’d acquired just by trying to move around, all it did was make his jumps take less energy and move him farther. The interesting thing had happened when he got all five of the sensory skills. They’d all combined into a single new skill.
Enhanced Five Senses lvl.1
All five mundane senses are enhanced beyond the norm.
Easier to see through Stealth.
+5 Perception per level
It was as much as he could have asked for. Now he was going to be leveling that skill with everything he did. It was awesome. Also, each skill he got had given him 10 EXP. So, he’d gained 50 EXP just from learning the skills! Only 30 more to go until he reached level 1.
Tsar was pretty hyped about the days gains as he found a bunch of roots to hide in for the night. After carefully hiding himself between two roots and laying down flat as he could. Tsar found that he was actually quite comfortable and was easily able to fall asleep.
Much to Tsar’s surprise nothing attacked him in the night. Though partway through the night he did wake up due to hunger pangs. His stomach telling him quite fervently that it needed something, anything. So, he had reluctantly popped one of the Life-Mote Tadpole corpses out of his inventory. It was fairly large. At least in comparison to his current body which he had no idea about size wise. He hadn’t so much as chewed the corpse as swallowed it whole. instantly he noted that his SP regen shot way up as his stomach settled and he got back to sleep.
Now it was morning, and his stomach was again empty. Reluctantly Tsar started the morning off with a rare Tadpole steak. Meaning he swallowed another of the corpses whole. Honestly it did not taste bad, it didn’t really have much of a taste at all. Tsar didn’t think he had teeth meant for actual chewing though as he ran his tongue over them, he revised that opinion to he might be able to chew the corpses, but he didn’t want to.
Sneaking out of his hidey hole, Tsar began exploring the swamp again. He had no clue where he actually was right now, but he figured that if he just kept wandering, he’d eventually find something interesting. And find something interesting he did.
As Tsar was practicing his skills, especially Utility Tongue, which was actually damn useful. It practically made Tsar’s tongue into a stretchy hand that he could grab things with. He stumbled upon a scene where two of the swamps Apex predators were squaring off. At least he hoped that they were the Apex predators and not regular old mobs.
One of them looked like a hippo… If a hippo had armor plating made of bone and a pair of horns jutting out of its head. The other seemed like an anaconda. Only someone had gone to the creators of the Monster Hunter games and told them to make it. The two things were hissing and growling at each other while circling what looked like the corpse of a regular old alligator. They were all much larger than Tsar and when he’d stumbled upon the scene, he quickly ducked into the water then hid himself among the tall grass to watch what went down.
Apparently, it was all posturing on the part of the giant monster snake. Because after several minutes of back and forth growling and hissing the snake backed off. Now you might be wondering why Tsar didn’t use Analyze on the monsters… He forgot that he could in the moment. He’d been too caught up in the tension and playing an old British guy’s voice in head narrating the scene to remember. And by the time he did remember the skill, he had long vacated the area.
After realizing that he should have analyzed the two monsters Tsar would have sworn at himself if he could. He vowed to try and use the skill on everything he found. But he was back to trying to level his skills and acquire new ones.
Making noise is something that all frogs do. They chirp, croak, squeal, and make all sorts of noises. Tsar started making noises whenever he heard other frogs around making the same noises. He wasn’t sure what the noises were for, but he was hoping to acquire a new skill from doing it.
And so, the day passed as Tsar slipped from tree to tree. Through murky water and reeds. As he practiced his current skills and tried to get new ones. When he finally settled down into hollowed out rotten log for the night Tsar had leveled his jumping, swimming, stealth and enhanced five senses skill by one, Utility Tongue had gone up by two and he’d acquired a new one.
Singing lvl.1
This skill enhances vocalization range and depth. Enhances lung capacity by 1% per skill level. +1 to Charisma per skill level when singing.
It was the first skill that Tsar had gotten that essentially acted a self-buff for stats. Maybe he could pick up a Bard class and learn some party buffing skills… you know in case he ever actually joined a party. He wasn’t planning on being a frog forever. Especially because he’d gone up by two race levels because of the EXP from skills today, 180 EXP in total, so he was on his way up. It turns out that apparently each level going up required the same amount of EXP. At G Tier apparently that meant 100 EXP per level, and the excess from before he’d leveled still applied. So now at race Level 2 Tsar was starting to feel pretty good about himself. Especially his willpower stat. It was sitting pretty at 97 points now! He didn’t know what the stat affected but having stats that high had to be some kind of record for a level 2 frog. Although if it were a record the system probably would have been bugging him with a new Title or some such.
He wasn’t all that tired so as he sat there to wait out the night, Tsar scrolled through the vast pages of unlocked stats he had to see if any that he actually could read were hidden among the masses. Sure, enough there were. He’d found two already and he moved them over to his main stat page so he could see them. Not that it affected anything because he lacked the ability to place free stat points. He just wanted to be able to see them. The two stats he’d found probably sixty pages in and were Soul at 18 points, and Aura at 18 points which meant that they must have started at 1. He had no clue what they did, but it was nice to see words instead of crazy symbols that he didn’t understand. Someday he would probably learn what all of the different stats did. But not today.