The desire to determine the details of status gripped Tom, and this book had the answers. He urgently flipped to the chapter that would tell him what he sought, and then forced himself to slow down.
He breathed deeply and stared at the mirror. A chubby four-year-old was reflected in the silvered surface. The eyes were unflinching, but the cheeks looked like they were being puffed out. A weak body, restricted by the system from earning a single point of experience - which would have been his most valuable currency for improving himself. What could the person looking back at him actually do?
This urgency was beyond ridiculous. Every moment he still had was to be made to count, but his motto had to be smarter rather than faster . Eleven years, that’s what he had. Time enough to build a stable base; one, that, when he came of age and piled on the experience, could be tempered into a spear that could kill a dragon.
That was what he was about.
No doubts, no being merely good. He would grow and beat the best.
When one looked at those soft unassuming features, the ambitions felt impossible, but Tom knew otherwise. Existentia was a harsh world, but it was also one that gave you opportunities if you were smart enough to seize them.
With his mind centred, he read the book in front of him and noted the critical sentences.
Extracting information for your status sheet before you turn ten is difficult. There are methods in place to help, but please be aware that they are imprecise and flawed.
Every Isolation Room contains a ‘Status Reveal Ritual Interface’ to support discovery.
Discovering unknown areas of your status is best achieved immediately after receiving a notification. DO NOT DELAY. The longer you are away from the incident the less chance you would have of being able to discover the specific change.
The ‘Status Reveal Ritual’ requires recent proximity or exact knowledge, and, if either condition is met, will display the component of your status sheet you are after. In practice, this means any ability or title query more than four days after receiving it will be undiscoverable. The discovery period for lower-tiered abilities can be as short as one day.
Actively using a skill usually counts as recent proximity, but this is not always the case, particularly for tier 0 to 2 abilities.
Titles or Skills that are downgraded from your first Existentia life are very rarely discoverable before you turn ten.
Tom read through the details and frowned at those implications. It was basically saying that titles and skills that hadn’t changed would be easy for him to display once more, but if any of them had altered their name or been reduced in power, the change would leave them undiscoverable.
It was also not something he could change, so he put the issue out of his mind. If he had minor titles or skills floating around, then they would be a pleasant surprise when he got access to his system room.
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With an understanding of what was on offer, he jumped to his feet and hurried over to the dedicated alcove that contained the ritual process. It had a recharge time of slightly under an hour, so, if he didn’t want the next person in the room to know he had used it, then today he would only get one try at this. However, every other future session he would be able to use it twice.
There was no point in digging into his past status, as this might be his only opportunity to determine the exact specifics of the healing spell he had just acquired. Decision made, he released five points of fate to reduce the chance of making a mistake, and then followed the steps displayed on the diagram pinned above the ritual. They basically consisted of activate, wait while mentally focusing on what you wanted, then select the type of information you need displayed. In this particular case, he had to choose spell information.
Then, if he was successful, the screen would update, and that was exactly what it did now.
Spell: Heal Minor Scratches (Tier 0)
This spell allows the healing of surface level wounds with poor efficiency.
The description was suspiciously short, but the implications of what he had created were clear. Not only was it tier-zero - it had a trash rating within that designation. Most of the decent tier-zero spells Tom had researched during the tutorial. He had never seen this one before. That was how bad it was. He wondered what it would cost in the experience shop. Fifty? A hundred? The fact it was less than a single ration bar said heaps about its quality.
Tom shrugged.
He guessed that, given his plan, it really didn’t matter. He was always going to have to evolve the spell multiple times, and this just meant he would need to evolve it within the tier before increasing its grading. What were a couple of extra steps when he had eleven years?
The real question was, how bad was the spell?
Now that he knew what it was supposed to do, he could do a more sensible test. With a frown, he went to grab a knife, climbing up the shelving to get one from high up so he didn’t end up with a toy.
He unsheathed it, then held it in one hand, impressed. There was a nice weight to it, and the edge shone in the artificial light of the isolation room. It was sharp.
This knife was definitely not something a four-year-old should have been playing with. He glanced at the corner of the room and the white gem on a pedestal.
Even with that powerful healing crystal being so close, this knife did not belong in the hands of a child. Then again, children didn’t deserve to grow up in a situation as violent as what they were facing. They needed to learn proper fighting skills, and he guessed that cutting themselves was a risk this society had to let them face.
Tom, however, was not that young, so he positioned the tip over the same spot he had been doing during all of his testing.
Then he pressed down.
Instantly, the skin parted, and the blade disappeared into the flesh. Dark-red liquid swelled up on either side of the embedded weapon. Tom left it in. When he eventually pulled it out, it would gush blood, but that was fine with Tom. When the time was up, a powerful cleaning spell would activate and remove any evidence of any spilled blood.
He left the knife in, then channelled his mana into the system-constructed spell form. When it was ready and poised just above the wound, he yanked out the blade. The blood came, but it was more of a trickle than the flood that he had been expecting. That made sense, because he had deliberately cut in an area that he knew contained no major arteries or veins.
Ignoring the blood, he let the spell activate, and there was an itching sensation as it went to work. In under two seconds, it was done. A splash of water followed by a rubbing with the hand towel left his arm clean.
The spell had closed the wound, as advertised. On the surface, it was a successful heal, but from the description Tom knew otherwise. Experimentally, he poked the faint pink line that had been left. The whole area ached in response.