4 Chapter 3 - 1st World: Reality

A few months passed by and nothing really changed that much, the world was still under the constant threat of humanity, politicians were still arguing stupidly about who should be in charge of our country, and in the end, school was still a constant parade of hard work and effort. I leveled up a few of my skills over the months and studying and math are both about to break into Intermediate rank. From asking the system questions it seems like once I reach Intermediate rank skills will level up slower, but I haven't had much of a problem with that, leveling up the Studying skill has been incredibly useful because recently I have been able to focus more on what I am learning and doing, so I have been gaining levels in my Simple skills pretty fast, I even ranked up Geometry, Cleaning, and Role-Playing to Beginner. As well as leveling up Electrical Engineering to level 9. Getting them to rank up once I got them to level 10 took about a month, and afterward, it only took about two weeks to level them up again, so it seems that each tier is a major barrier.

A couple of weeks ago I tried to tell Mike about the system, but whenever I tried my mouth wouldn't move. The system probably has something to protect against telling others about it. However, when I started thinking about that I noticed something, there are two other people with systems out there. It didn't state that they were in this specific world at this specific time, however, it is possible that I could meet one at some point, and in the state, I am in currently, I would have no ability to contest with most people. I am not strong enough to fight off someone, and neither do I have the technology, money, or influence either.

Right now though, Mike and I are hanging out together at a martial arts dojo that allows people to use it when class is not in session. After thinking about it I decided that learning how to defend myself couldn't be bad for me and Mike has been coming to this dojo every Sunday for a couple of hours since he was a kid. It mostly teaches karate and MMA. From what I have learned so far it seems like karate is used more defensively in order to protect yourself, while MMA is used more competitively and while it is not really a style of its own it combines a lot of other styles and has much more offensive techniques such as Submissive Wrestling, which focuses on keeping your opponent on the ground, Amature Wrestling, which focuses on taking down your opponent or using clinches, and Kickboxing, which combines boxing with Karate. While it is a lot more fighting styles than just karate, all the different styles allow it to be used in all the stages of a fight. However, because I am just starting off, I asked Mike to help teach me Karate first because it seems like it will be easier to start off with.

"So can you explain why you suddenly want to learn karate? I came here at 9:00 in the mourning and find you standing here and you ask me to teach you karate, normally you aren't even out of your bedroom until at least 11."

"Because I decided that I would like to learn how to defend myself," I respond kind of shyly "You are literally the only person I know who knows any martial arts and would even think of helping me"

He thinks about it for a bit "I'll help you, but for the next month you will have to use silly voices for all of your NPCs"

"deal" I immediately agree, he could have asked for a whole year of stupid voices and I would still say yes, however, now that I think about it, he will probably try to talk to a ton of random characters so that I have to come up with lots of different voices just to annoy me.

For the next few hours, he teaches me the basics of karate, like how to stand and walk, as well as the Nijukun, which is pretty much just the karate rulebook full of 20 different inspirational quotes like misfortune comes from laziness and you must release your mind. Afterward, a teacher at the dojo told us we had to leave and we ended up hanging out at my house for a good part of the day. We played a few board games and ended up chatting for a couple of hours.

After he went home I looked at my skill list and saw the first new skill in months Karate and it even reached LV 2, it even had its own category of Martial Arts. From this, I can guess that there are probably other skill trees I can learn as well that I should try to discover, but I can't really come up with much. Most of the stuff I can think about could be under some of the knowledge trees, and the life skills branch encompasses most other skills, its possible that there are categories for stuff like psychology, but those are not things I am necessarily interested in. In the end, I decided that for now I am good with the skills I have, any more and it would slow things down to a halt. Talking about skill levels, why is it that for Karate it leveled up so quickly from nothing to LV 2, most of the time a level takes about a week, with my studying skill so high there should be no problem learning it about two times faster but I should still be taking 3-4 days, I try thinking about what was different between how I learned karate and how I learned other things. The only big difference that I can see is that I had Mike teaching me one on one. Thinking about it, that probably made a world of a difference because he was specifically assisting me in doing better, and he has been working at it for years now, so he is probably somewhere in the intermediate rank which would probably make his lessons incredibly valuable, and because of my studying skill, I got even better results from it. Thinking about other people skills, I asked the system if there was any way to check other skills and it gave me two options.

{Status Viewer: item, this item can read other people status but will only give you precise information depending on what quality of Status Viewer you have. The base version can only give precise data to the Simple Tier and equivalent abilities, each upgrade will give it more precision of a single tier, while it can not tell you the specific level of the skill, it can tell you the tier if it is a single-tier above what you can see, otherwise it is hidden.

Base Cost: 150}

{Insight: ability, gives information on what tier other peoples skills are, as long as you also have that skill and they are currently using it, the specific level of it and the overall categories and items are hidden. Abilities being actively used can be detected but not displayed or explained.

Base Cost: 1,000}

{Do note that others with systems will be given the option to hide information or block the search entirely and that this can only be used when seeing someone live, somebody that is out of sight or seeing them through a video chat will not work, but directly seeing them through things like glasses or goggles will still work}

After reading through both of these options it seems like Status Viewer will be the better option in the long run, but because the base information is based on how many points you have sunk into it, it will cost a lot to maintain its usefulness and the fact that other system users can block and hide, doesn't scare me that much, because at least for now, I don't have to deal with that. However, according to the system, most people in this world don't have many skills above Intermediate, and that once you reach that tier, skill progression slows down immensely, so I think I will go for it because even the base version should be of use to me. I buy it and see the next upgrade costs 1,500 just like all of the other stuff, it seems like each tier of everything decuples the price. Because of that, it seems like I will have to get the mission done as soon as possible, if I can get it done fast enough I could even upgrade the Hormone Implant, which has been very useful when working out, if upgraded, it could nearly double my strength or endurance. However, I have mostly been using it on Intelligence or Wisdom, I find that putting it on intelligence helps me level up my knowledge skills faster, and putting it on Wisdom helps me level up my working skills faster.

Anyways, the stupid standardized testing is coming up soon, I should be good with Mathematics, and I have always been good with biology and even though they are all at simple tier, I should still pass, but history is going to suck, because I honestly didn't put much effort into it, but thinking about it, there are a lot more science subjects than just biology, so I should probably try to unlock them at some point, but in our district, they teach only very simple basics before middle school and noting that before this point, most of the science was just math in disguise or general logic, its no wonder I didn't unlock any skills, after all, I didn't get a skill for knowing how to lift a couch, so why would I get a skill for learning that diamonds are harder than ruby on the Mohs scale. I can find out what kind of skills I can get by checking out what the teachers have with my Status Viewer, however, I might have to upgrade it in order to see some of my teachers skills, I doubt I would be able to see my ELA teachers English skill because they are probably at least intermediate, but I might be able to see a few skills that I don't have at the very least.

ML: When am I going to be able to have my romance with the MC

Author: Later, I am planning for the slow burn friend --> romance plot

ML: Your 4 chapters in and you haven't even made me a romantic interest yet.

Author: Anyways I hope you enjoy the story, please add it to your collection, comment, and rate, although inkstone(web novels writing platform) is being stupid right now, it claims that nobody added it to the collection in the demographics section but in the novel information section it says that 18 people added it to the collection so *shrugs*. Anyways enjoy the story, another chapter or two is coming out today, I know I originally said 1 chapter every one or two days, but right now I am just trying to keep the momentum because when I stop writing two chapters a day, I will probably not be able to get myself to start doing that ever again so, I guess right now its two chapters a day.

ML: Can you at least introduce me as a romantic interest in a chapter or two.

Author: Well, I plan for this world to be about 20-30 chapters long so probably around chapter 10-13.

I am looking for ideas for the first world he could reincarnate into, it could be everything that could classify as around said level of danger - F(wilderness with possibly dark age level technology, no magic), E(modern technology or dark age w. minor magic), to D(sparse magical/technological/special stuff pike Harry Potter or Artemis Fowl). I am eventually planning to use stuff Lovecraft(SSS), Avengers(S), and BNHA(C), but I feel like the MC is not prepared to survive in any of the above right now.

Status as is right now(might put this in every chapter because of the skill levels and tier changing so fast)

Mathematics(☆)

-Beginner Equations(LV 10)

-Beginner Geometry(LV 2)

-Simple Number Theory(LV 8)

Biology(☆)

-Simple Cell Theory(LV 6)

-Simple Ecology(LV 7)

-Simple Anatomy(LV 5)

Language Arts(☆)

-Beginner English(LV 6)

Technology & Engineering(☆)

-Beginner Mechanical Engineering(LV 2)

-Simple Electrical Engineering(LV 9)

Life Skills(☆)

-Beginner Cleaning(LV 1)

-Simple Cooking(LV 5)

-Simple Organization(LV 7)

-Beginner Studying(LV 10)

Entertainment Skills(☆)

-Beginner Role-Playing(LV 2)

Martial Arts(☆)

-Starter Karate(LV 2)

Items:

Hormone Implant(+1 to any stat, can change chosen stat but will take 1 hour for the change to take effect

Upgrade: 5,000 points for an additional +4 bonus)

Status Viewer(able to see skills of up to Simple tier for their level, and able to see Beginner skills, also able to see abilities that are within the Simple tier)

Abilities: (none)