After carefully repacking his kit and memorizing which pouch held which item, it was time to try the belt on. The leather ends looped around Nick’s waist and fastened at his left hip. The belt was surprisingly comfortable and didn’t restrict his movements at all, even with the canteen attached. It could not have fit him better if it had been custom tailored for him, which for all Nick knew, it had.

When he tried twisting from side to side, he noticed a leather tab sticking out from behind the clasp. Curious, Nick tugged on it and the entire belt slid free from his hips, falling to the ground with a clatter. It’s an emergency release. Cool.

The last box on his inspection checklist was to test out the self-maintenance modification. He took out the hook and used it to scratch the belt’s leather surface, so that he could see how long it took to regenerate the damage. It required a surprising amount of force to create what was more of an indentation than a gouge, but it was good enough for his purposes. It seemed that Nick now had a bit of armor as well, if only across a tiny fraction of his body.

After strapping the belt back on so that he could get used to the weight of wearing it, he put up the hook and took out the scissors, smiling in gratitude at the sight of the simple tool. At last, Nick was going to get rid of his excess hair and trim his nails properly.

With a deep sigh of satisfaction, he cut each fingernail short and smooth, relieved to no longer have to worry about them snagging or breaking as he went about his day. After pruning his fingers he moved onto his toes, wincing as he probed the bruises covering his feet.

Now it was time for the real challenge in Nick’s self-imposed quest to restore his personal hygiene, hacking away at his mustache, locks, and beard. Lining the scissors flush against his skin, he battled with the mess of snarls, reclaiming his face inch-by-inch until his stubble was as short as he could manage without cutting himself.

With each snip, tangled brown strands fell into the sand, and Nick felt more and more like himself. He still hated the hair covering his face, but his new look was a clear step in the right direction.

Humming in contentment, he moved on to his head, cutting his bangs short and straight, so that they couldn’t blow into his eyes. Finally, he drew his hair back into a ponytail, then chopped it off near the base of his skull; short enough that it wouldn’t tangle or snag on protruding branches. The job was rough, and Nick knew that he must look like shit, but at least he could feel the wind on his cheeks again. Better still, he no longer had to stare at tufts of hair sticking out past the end of his nose like unwelcome houseguests.

Feeling better than he had since waking up on the island, Nick walked over to the display and activated the screen. He was thrilled to discover that he had another batch of notifications awaiting his perusal, and he eagerly read through his updates.

You have conditioned your body and improved the following baseline attributes:

Strength has increased from [3] to [4].

Toughness has increased from [4] to [5].

Through use, you have improved the following skills:

Size up has increased from [1] to [2].

Foraging has increased from [1] to [2].

Awesome. That’s just what I wanted to see. While he hadn’t managed to gain another level, Nick was thrilled to have raised two of his physical attributes as well as his core skills. It made climbing the tree even more worthwhile, although he suspected that part of his gains had been earned earlier in the day. As it did not include the free points that he had invested after gaining levels one and two, Nick’s baseline toughness had risen to five, meaning that it would be more difficult to improve via conditioning going forward.

Judging from his experiences so far, it shouldn’t be too hard for him to raise his strength another point over the next few days, given his new exercise routine and the effort required to explore the isle. At some point, Nick needed to figure out the exact relationship between attributes and physical ability, but that would have to wait until he found tools that would allow him to measure his performance or he had a pile of kp to spare. Hopefully, I can pool my knowledge with others once I make it out of the tutorial.

With his attributes out of the way, he turned his attention to his skills. Nick still wasn’t sure how skills worked, but he had already discovered how useful they were. He doubted that he would have been able to find enough food without his foraging skill. He might have even hurt himself drinking brackish water or eating unripe fruit. As learning more about skills had already been at the top of his list, Nick decided to spend one of his newly acquired knowledge points to unlock the basic primer.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Skills

Skills correspond to various actions and procedures. A single skill can be used across a range of related activities. For example, your foraging skill will help you to identify foods that are safe to eat, as well as the ideal means of harvesting them in the wild.

Skills are provided by your class, profession, and other rare opportunities. Skills facilitate growth and success in associated actions, assisting learning and reinforcing good habits. The simplest understanding of how skills enhance performance can be summarized as, “It feels right when you’re doing it right.” In order to receive guidance from your skills, the skill must be advanced enough relative to the attempted task. Or, put another way, advanced feats have a minimum threshold before skills can help you accomplish them. Complex actions may be governed by more than one skill.

Skills increase slowly through training and advance rapidly when used in challenging situations. Skills that are disabled by changing classes are considered to be inactive. Inactive skills can still be used, but cannot be increased until they are active once more. Skills provided by basic classes are limited to a value of ten, although this does not prevent you from improving your proficiency in those areas on your own.

Hrm. So, it’s more like a training program that corrects mistakes and helps me learn more efficiently, rather than a brain modification that directly alters my skillsets. Kind of like a tactile augmented reality overlay. That’s a better scheme than I expected. I don’t like the idea of knowledge being beamed right into my head, but this is more like the System watching over my shoulder and mentoring my progress.

This was the first time that he had seen the term profession mentioned, but when Nick tried entering it into the custom kp prompt, it required ten points to learn more about them. It must be an advanced aspect that won’t be relevant until later in my development. Still, it’s nice to have a heads up for what will be important later on as early as possible.

There was also a reference to changing classes that was beyond the scope of Nick’s question. Once again, the System seemed to be tailoring the entries to his specific situation while providing tidbits of information on related topics as well. Almost like it was going out of its way to be helpful in teaching him the basics of his new life, which Nick deeply appreciated.

The other mechanic that he was curious about was how levels were obtained. Most games rewarded experience for defeating enemies and completing quests, but Nick was hoping that route wasn’t the only way to grow that was sanctioned by the System. For one thing, fighting was dangerous, and he intended to brawl only as a means of last resort. For another, while he was willing to kill if his back was against the wall, Nick didn’t like the idea of slaughtering living creatures simply to fuel his own advancement.

No matter what I learn in the days ahead, I’m not a sociopath. I’m not going to massacre whatever crosses my path for slivers of exp and loose change. It would be easy to lose myself and go full murderhobo once I’m stronger. But that isn’t who I am, and it isn’t the person I want to become.

What Nick read after spending his point let him sigh in relief. While it seemed that fighting and conflict were important for growth, he wouldn’t have to kill to advance unless he chose to.

Levels

Levels represent the crystallization of experience inside the body. Experience is acquired in situations that cause a contestant to challenge their limitations and expand their capabilities, especially when doing so entails a high degree of risk, as well as by completing quests. When critical thresholds are reached, this energy acts as a catalyst, enhancing a contestant along paths determined by your class, or at your discretion in the case of free points.

In addition to developing attributes, levels improve your baseline stamina, mana, and health in a linear progression, although the effective values for each are heavily modified by additional factors, such as traits, attributes, and abilities.

Reaching certain milestones will unlock additional features in your profile. For example, a new class can be chosen every twenty-five levels, and reaching level fifty will unlock secondary attributes.

At last, Nick had been given some tips on how to level up and knew how to change his class. Better still, he hadn’t had to spend a knowledge point on experience in order to do it. Although that primer would probably still be a good choice when he picked up more kp later, as he wasn’t clear on several details related to the process.

He was thrilled to discover that he didn’t have to kill in order to advance, though Nick held no illusions that he would always be able to avoid fighting in the days ahead. But as he had already decided, Nick had no intention of killing solely to benefit himself, although he would do what he must when his life was on the line.

As shitty as it felt to start off with a basic class, at least the free point it awarded with each new level let him develop his attributes in whatever direction he desired. When Nick found his next batch of kp, he needed to learn more about classes, especially how he might qualify for one of a higher rarity. Then he would have to decide between learning more about specific attributes, which would help him allocate his free points as efficiently as possible, and abilities, even though he had none at the moment.

Nick also wanted to learn more about health, mana, and stamina, since they sounded important but were not listed on his profile. Once he took care of all the basics terms he had added to his list, he hoped to learn more about magic in general, as well as the item schema used by the System. But that was a worry for another day.

With this latest infusion of knowledge combined with what he had learned from his aerial observation, he had plenty to mull over for the remainder of his day. As he had found nothing else on the way back, Nick was running low on food, but what he had would tide him over until morning and he still had a canteen full of water. That meant it was time for another evening spent exercising and planning. Although he restricted his workout to light stretches, his muscles hurt enough that Nick cut his routine short after a few minutes of effort.

After forcing himself back onto his feet so that he could take a quick lap around the elevated portion of the beach, Nick tucked himself into his hole in the sand and watched the sunset over the ocean, content that his day had been well spent. He spent some time trying to get the wand to do something before giving up for the day and closing his eyes.