I snap back to reality, how do I find my attributes? Is what comes to mind after and I start digging in the old memories.

A little while later I found that there should be a tiny tattoo on my left shoulder, it looks like an enormous tree but the roots and branches seem to stop in a circle form. The most left and right upper roots and left and right lowest branches look interlaced with each other. in the places where the wind rose normally shows north, east, south, west, there are now a few simply designed signs, they look like three leaves, without nerves or a stick, laid over each other but one is turned 120 degrees clockwise, the second is turned 120 degrees anti-clockwise and the third stays where it is. all four of the signs are put together in a ring by a set of complicated runes, that I have never seen before.

Let’s try touching it, so I did, a menu popped up before my eyes.

Ayana,

Rank: beginner apprentice

Age: 23

Strength: 0.7, Constitution: 1.3, Dexterity: 0.9 and spirit: 8.

Elementium affinity: Darkness

Known spells: none as of yet.

Known skills: magic reading

It seems that In this world, every normal human being possessed some basic body attributes at birth. After years of research and classification, which had been done by generations upon generations of Deviants, they had finally categorized these into four different attributes: Strength, Constitution (for short Con.), Dexterity (for short Dex.) and Spirit. As one could guess, deviants were differentiated based on these four basic attributes.

Strength was primarily used to quantify a person’s body strength. This attribute was very important for close combat fighters. The strength attribute would affect one’s base damage when using close combat weapons, it also affects one’s precision with them.

Constitution represented a person’s health and endurance. The minimum value for any human is 1. If a human’s constitution dropped below 1, they would die.

Dexterity is used to quantify body synchronization, flexibility, reflexes, balance and of course speed limit.

And last but not least is Spirit, this determines how many things you can do that require magical energy. The path to increase Spirit is through constant meditation, reading spell books, doing experiments, waging war, consuming recourses, the list is endless.

For the skill magic reading, it is used to read magic books, scrolls, tomes, notes and other written stuff about magic. If a normal human reads these kind of things he would only remember that he read something, not exactly what it is that he read about.

Only the Apprentices, who went through strict mind training, could overcome this effect and access the real magic knowledge, hidden within the book.

Hmmm, my elementium affinity is the highest for the darkness element, Unfortunately, this affinity was not considered good in the walls of this tall tower. As everyone knew, Great Master Wilson’s elemental affinity was Water.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

let’s see, there should be an explanation on what to do when meditating. let’s just try the same way of meditation I did back on earth.

I went and laid down on the bed my legs straight and my hands over my belly with the fingers interlaced. When breathing you try to feel the rhythm of your hart, then try feeling it in one of your pelvises, your knee and then your toes, one by one. After the first side is done, try doing it for the other side.

This is as far as the old Ayana has been able to reach. After the lower part of the body comes the upper part.

While maintaining the state of you lower body. start again at the hart, then move on to one of the shoulders, then the elbow, your palm and finish with your fingers one by one. Repeat the process with the other arm and something should happen.

I start with the lower body, this should be easy because it was already completed many times before. Success, let’s move on to one of the shoulders. I slow down my breathing and try to go to my left shoulder, after some time I start feeling a tiny pulse, again success, but then out of joy I lose focus, and it’s gone. Bugger, but on the bright side, I made some progress.

The road to becoming a deviant is going to be a long one, the conditions for advancement to deviant are still shrouded in mystery, the only thing that I know of through the old memories is that one’s own spirit has to reach 20 for pseudo deviant. After that it’s still a mystery.

I tap the tattoo and the menu pops up again, great, my spirit has been active. Just an increase of 0.01 but it’s still an increase, only 11,99 more to go.

I look at the time on the same menu, oeps, 19:45 already and the dinner hall closes at 8. I open the chest and grab the first robe that I see, a black one and walk out the door while slamming it shut. The stairs aren’t even visible with the speed I am rushing down the stairs to eventually reach the dinner hall.

The halls is approximately 300 meter long, 40 meter wide and 10 meter high. Inside the dinner hall are three long wooden tables, they look like those seen in the medieval dinner halls. On the side are rows of pillars, wow those look like they came straight out of the old Greek time. Halfway on the right side is a counter, there is one of the senior apprentices manning the desk and at his back is the kitchen with several apprentices working in it.

Overall the dinner hall looks very impressive when you walk in for the first time. if you come here daily that feeling starts to fade away to once in a while and over time it fades to just being another room.

I rush to the counter to order. I look down to see what today’s dinner is, sigh, it’s soup night. The soup is made with normal bouillon, but for what I can see the meat there is toad meat.

I have to eat something, “one soup please”. The apprentice asks: “do you want bread with it?” “Yes please, is it possible to get two pieces of bread?” “You may have 2 but it will be both white if you pay the normal amount, for two brown pieces, it will cost you 2 gold coins more”. “I’ll take two white pieces, please”. The apprentice grabs a bowl from under the counter and fills it up with toad soup. Next he picks two pieces of bread from the basket on the right side of the counter en gestures me to walk over there.

“That will be 4 coins then, please”. I hand over the coins and he places the soup and bread on my side of the counter. Quickly I pick up the soup with bread and walk back to the stairs that lead to my room.

Gold is the currency used in the tower. In the outside world as well, but that only applies for mortals and apprentices, at least that is what the old Ayana knew. The official deviants should use a different currency, but which one she did not know.

All tasks in the tower award some amount of gold coins, some more than others. The more dangerous the task the more money it awards. The daily rounds in the garden are one of the most dangerous tasks of the tower, so they award high amounts of coins. A special one to note is being the test subject for master Wilsons experiments, that one is the one with the most amount of coins rewarded, but also the one taken the least.

One month ago my neighbour, named Vayentha, took up the task, out of despair, to be the test subject. She returned to her room at the end of the day, completely covered in a cloak and nobody heard or saw anything from her.

Soon I reached the end of the stairs, followed the hallway for a while. The third corridor on you right hand and then the fourth door on the left is mine, the fifth door is Vayentha’s.

I open my door and put the bowl of soup and one piece of bread on the writing desk, walk to the chest to grab a piece of clean cloth. I walk out of the door while shutting it, then turn to left and taking a few steps to get in front of Vayentha’s door. I place down the clean cloth with the bread on top, after which I knock on the door and walk straight back to my own door.

After shutting it again and taking place behind the desk to start my meal, a creaking sound echoes through my ears. That should be my neighbour that’s still alive.

After my meal I went to pick up the cloth and brought back the tray to the dining hall. Maybe she would like a hot meal sometime, but that is noticeable if someone is paying attention. Let’s try tomorrow when there is something different than soup.

After bringing back al the dishes to the dining room, I feel it is time for bed. My spirit is completely drained. I close the door of the room and walk to the bed, my head didn’t even touch the bed or I was already asleep.

As de darkness of night settled over the tower, more and more apprentices went to bed until eventually a deep silence reigned over the tower.

It was at this time that there a shadow started moving just outside the tower. Silently moving toward a specific area on the perimeter of the tower. If Ayana was still awake she would have recognized this as where the boobrie tribe lived.

Boobrie’s are small shapeshifting demons that usually take the form of giant water birds similar to giant auks. They live between the murlock and the kappa and mostly sleep while standing straight up clustered together on a small, just above the water, island in the middle of their piece of the surrounding waters that are protected by the tower.