Overlay - Part 2

I looked over the statistics trying to get a feel for them. I had 56 max hp, 83 max mana, and I was 17% toward gaining my next level. My general sense was that I wasn’t a very balanced character, that would make soloing rather hard so I would need to get a party. Assuming that things here worked like a video game, maybe I was the only person who worked like that. I would need to find somebody else to find out.

The next tab was jobs. I had two jobs it seemed. Hero and Elementalist and I was rank 1 in both of them. I concentrated on Elementalist and more windows popped up. That job apparently gave me the elemental magic skill and access to basic elemental spells at rank 1. I was also 9% of the way to ranking up the job. At least I assumed that was what it meant and that I was using the right terms.

Then I checked on Hero because that seemed important too. It listed the features of a rank 1 hero. Starting equipment, bonus starting stats and skills, and improved level up. The first one was self explanatory and the second just seemed like a justification for letting me know things when I first came here rather than having to spend a lot of time learning them. The first one however seemed more special.

I had started to get used to control the menu with my mind so I was able to bring up deals about what that talent meant. It read the follow, “A hero and their party members gain skill points upon leveling up which they can allocate to any skill they have access to.”

There was a lot of implied context there. I mulled it over while switching over to look at my skills. I only had a few skills.

Melee Weapon: Staff — Rank 2 [25%]

Elemental Magic — Rank 7 [34%]

Mana Reserves — Rank 4 [9%]

Three lonely skills. All three of them had been granted to me by my Elementalist class. I had begun to formulate an idea about how Improved Level Up worked and if I was right then it was a dangerous talent to possess.

Sure enough when I switched over to my Talent tab the only item there was Improved Level Up. Abilities was equally predictable. I had three spells, Fireball, Iceshard, and Gust. Fireball was listed at costing 4 mana which was around how much I had estimate it would cost. It seems that abilities didn’t have ranks like jobs and skills though.

I closed out of that menu and began looking at the next one. A party screen, currently only containing me. What a surprise. It didn’t seem to have an associated friends list however.

The last item looks like a gear and indeed when I opened the menu it was a settings page. Mostly it seemed to contain gui options, convenient. I make sure to toggle showing my actual hp and mp total instead of just giving me a bar. There was even a log what I enabled which gave me useful information about the wolves the had attacked me.

For some reason “Show Enemy Status” was turned off. Clearly must have been an oversight to not have that on by default so I made sure it was on.

There was however no option to turn on a map and no other pages that I could find. A pity, maps were always helpful. Maybe I would have to buy a map before I got access to the ui that let me view it constantly, some games were like that. Although I wasn’t certain if this even qualified.

I considered trying to call Iceshard and Gust but decided against it. With only 75 mp remaining it I ran into trouble I wanted to keep it all available. Once I got somewhere safe I figured I could try them out.

There wasn’t any particular reason to head in any direction so I picked one and just started walking. It wasn’t long before I started getting tired. My character sheet had marked my stamina as 11 only a little better than my strength. If I had to hazard a guess I would say that would be the equivalent to what I had back on, well Earth I guess. Things would be confusing if the people here also called their planet Earth.

It took me about two hours before I left the forest. During that time I was attacked by wolves and a bear. Was the wildlife in this world supposed to be this hostile. Normally it would seem normal but with everything being real it felt odd that animals attacked this much.

Now that I knew how to use my magic the battles were quite quick. With my options configured correctly I was able to tell that the wolves were level 3 and the bear was level 6. The encounters brought my level percent to 58% and also gave a little progress to the Elementalist job and Elemental Magic skill. Given the rate of the improvement I had to assume things slowed down at higher levels, it often did in games.

The bear had been a drain on my mp and I was left with only 39 mp remaining. I also learned that my mp restorted itself at 5 per hour or close enough. My character sheet said it was 6% of my maximum mp per hour which seemed rather slow.

But now I was free of the trees and hopefully violent wild animals. If fact my direction finding must have been lucky because up the hill that was in front of me I was what I could only assume was a road.

I pushed myself a little bit longer to bring myself to it. It was farther away then it has looked since it look me another hour to reach it. With that I found a nice spot near the edge of the road to sit down and take a break. I had been walking for quite a while now and needed one.

It looked like the sun was a quarter away from setting. What did that mean, like 3 hours of sunlight left? I would have spent more time outdoors if I knew that this was going to happen to me, probably. The next question was which way to travel. I scanned the horizon looking for what might be a town. Hopefully I was close to one and wouldn’t have to camp outside alone.

Smoke, coming from what was probably the east. If there was smoke that probably meant a town, or a fire, hopefully the first one. After a few more minutes I stood up and began making the trek, if I could see the smoke that probably meant that I could get there tonight.

After an hour I realized that I had vastly overestimated my endurance. I must have used up what little I had making the walk through the forest and now I just felt fatigue in my inch of my body. Weren’t humans supposed to be endurance predators, I remember hearing that somewhere.

My breaks became more and more frequent and I could only hope that I would reach the town in time.

When I was startled by a bay and creaking of wheels. I turned around to find a horse pulled wagon coming up alone the road behind me.

Horse, Level 2

However more interestingly was the driver of the cart.

Herbert Southmoor, Level 7, Merchant.

I could see other people’s statuses too, how convenient.

As the cart neared me he slowed down and took a look at me. He scanned me up and down before finally looking a little bit above my head. So he could see my status too.

“Quite the walk you are trying to make. You seem to be having some trouble.” He had a friendly, chatty voice.

I inwardly groaned, I never really got alone with friendly, chatty people.

I did my best smile before saying, “Yeah, my bad, I didn’t realize how long it would take.”

“Are you heading to Dungeonkeep to become an apprentice?”

I didn’t know what he was really talking about but Dungeonkeep seemed like a good place to want to head. “Yeah, that is right.”

“Level 5 is pretty low to want to do that, although since you looked like you can cast magic I’m sure somebody will accept you as an apprentice.”

“That is what I have heard.” Doing my best totally not lying voice, “Do you think you can give me a ride? I have some coin if you want.”

He laughed a little, “Sure, hop on, although I’m only going to as far as Tortburg so you will have to find the rest of the route there by yourself. It will be two copper for the rest of the journey tonight and if you want the rest of the way it will be another two silver. Although you will need to provide your own food and lodging.”

I gave him my best smile, “You really are a merchant” I reached into my satchel and pulled out a silver. “I spent all my copper so you’ll have to take this. I have another silver once this one is done.”

He took reached out and took the silver before moving one side of seat and motioning, “Welcome aboard.”

I was thankful when I climbed up next to him. I was thankful but I did need to still keep my wits about me. He seemed nice but that didn’t necessarily mean much, friendly looking people were the most tricksy and manipulative of people.

As the cart began to move he deciding to make some small talk. This was going to be troublesome wasn’t it.

“You look rather young to want to be an adventurer.”

I spoke the best excuse that I could think of, “My parents died.”

“Ah, sorry.” That kept him quiet for a while.

While truthfully my parents were still alive it was highly unlikely I would see them again, unless there was some way out of this world. I would probably start missing them once everything sunk in but currently everything still felt so, unusual, that everything hadn’t quite hit me yet.

Finally he broke the ice once more, “And you don’t have any other family?”

“A brother, however he is still an apprentice so he wouldn’t have been able to support me.”

He seemed a bit relived to find I wasn’t completely orphaned.

“Still, life as an adventurer is rather dangerous. You might die and he would never see you again.”

“Yeah, I know.” I probably wouldn’t see him again away ways so that was hardly a problem.

“You could have gotten married instead.”

All I could do was make a disgusted face, me, marry? That was such a joke, besides, I was too young to marry. Although based off most fantasy stories I was probably old enough here.

He got my feelings, “All right, all right.” He laughed a little trying to lighting the mood, “You youngsters always wanting to seek our your fortunes. Not that I can blame you, I probably would have done the same at your age if I had Status Magic then.”

I did my best not to freeze. That was something extremely interesting. Status Magic, I could only assume he referred to the gui but the way he said it implied that he hadn’t always had it. I wanted to ask more questions but I couldn’t think of any good excuse to explain why I wouldn’t know about it.

Then having at least some common sense the man changed topics to less dangerous conversion topics like the weather and the travel.

I did my best to nod when he spoke and responded in as little words as possible to avoid giving too much away about myself.

A couple of hours later when the sun was just beginning to set we reached the town. It was a small, at least to my eyes and had all of the trappings of a small fantasy town.