Chapter Seventeen: New Stats

Drake hadn't encountered any monsters before he was forced to climb a tree due to night falling. Drake was stronger but he didn't believe he was ready to go wandering around in the dark just yet. He had been wide awake during the night, perched in the tree and had nothing to do but look at the black night sky. He hadn't noticed before as he had always passed right out when his head hit the pillow, or branch in this case; being exhausted day in and out. He still felt the mental fatigue and a sliver of the physical, but he was certainly leagues above his limits from before.

What Drake noticed about the sky was that there was a lack of, well everything. There were no stars, no moon. So everything was pitch black at night. He could hear things flying above him every now and then but without anything to reflect light he couldn't see jack. Well that wasn't true he could see flicks of subtle red and orange which he assumed were eyes as they came in pairs. But Drake wasn't exactly good with scary stuff so he chose to indefinitely ignore those.

After a few hours of staring into nothingness, wondering if he was actually still on earth or if this was somewhere different from the lack of night time celestial bodies he got bored and went over his stats a bit more. "Well at least people won't be asking what sign I am anymore." He chuckled.

He looked at his two sub 100 stats, Dexterity and Endurance and decided to at the very least round them out, placing the 19 points needed between the both of them to reach the threshold bringing his Free Points down to 79. Doing so, Drake instantly felt even more awake than he did before, a side effect of hitting the Endurance threshold he was sure. As for Dexterity he didn't exactly feel much of anything so he wasn't sure what it effected, he took a guess and thought it probably had to do with fighting. Maybe reaction time or processing speed, but he moved on.

His Strength had also gone past the threshold but he didn't notice the change when it did, he obviously noticed that he was able to stop a charging miniature silverback gorilla but the initial change eluded him. What also struck him as odd was that his physical stature hadn't changed much as he poked his slightly protruding belly.

"I'm not fat, I'm just big boned…" He muttered to no one in particular. But outside of it going down slightly due to eating less he was surprised that the stats didn't affect him much cosmetically.

A few more hours into the night Drake had gotten very bored. And started theory crafting what he wanted his main focus to be now that he had two classes. His anime fanaticism flared for the rest of the night. He imagined a grand wizard, decimating swaths of enemies with a single spell. A warrior that crushed anything and everything under their grip. And funny enough he thought of a particular double ponytailed school girl who wielded an overly large talking scythe, with a finisher move he wanted to try in particular. His imagination unending to the possibilities.

He honestly couldn't decide, and that made his decision for him. He was now a cross class, just like he was in the old days of the game that seemed to have some eerily similar features that the system had. And that class had been an all-rounder, or a jack-of-all-trades type class, that focused on the fundamentals and used stat bonuses, items, and the like to increase those basics to an absurd level. He wanted to feel that again, and he had an inkling that he would be able to. So his next goal was to make his class and stats into the perfect all rounder.

A final sweep of his status showed that he had gotten a new title.

[Rounded]

[You are well rounded. Reach 100 in all stats. +1 to all stats]

"Am I a joke to you?" Drake asked incredulously, looking up into the void. But just dismissed the system's jab, just happy for more stats and that he found a new milestone he had hit.

He just had to have skills to work off of now. And for that he needed to hit level 10 again and reach his class upgrades as quickly as possible.

It had been around six hours now into the night and daylight was soon coming. Drake wracked his brain, trying to think of things he needed to do and wanted to during the coming days. After a few more minutes of ironing out his checklist he suddenly remembered about the other Leader Board for Tutorial Points. He willed the Leaderboard window open and changed the window from the Level Board to the one for TP. Not missing that some of the names in the Leveling board had changed and some had even just disappeared; but Bear was still head and shoulders ahead of the pack.

Going through the ladder he had noticed that most of the standings were similar to the Level Ladder, which made sense as everyone had the same threshold for experience and would have to kill a similar number of monsters giving them similar TP. Drake looked at the bottom of the window and saw his Ladder Rank and TP.

[Rank 27: Shot] [TP: 10,700]

Drake was downtrodden to see he had dropped a few places in the standings, but was also curious at the discrepancies he saw in some places.

[Rank 1: Bear] [TP: 23,800]

[Rank 2 Chris Spears] [TP: 18,500]

There were a few more like this where they were a few spots above their Level Rankings. Drake guessed it was because some quests were starting to give TP as a reward, or these people were actively killing other Participants and taking their TP.

Drake had been an avid PvPer in many games he had played. Even his favorite game that he had modeled his Dual Class off of was centered around it, three races fighting for supremacy of limited resources. But this. This was an entirely different thing, he couldnt understand why people would murder others for a spot on a leader board and rewards. He wasn't necessarily opposed to self defense and protecting you and yours but this was on an entirely different scale, but he conceded that he may just be too stuck in the old ways of his previous world's sensibilities. Maybe the fight for the resources would just be the norm in this new cut throat reality, even if it meant crushing other humans underfoot to do it.

Drake held mixed feelings about the subject and just couldn't come up with a black and white answer.

The break of dawn interrupted his internal turmoil though. Drake shielding his eyes with his hand as he squinted. He would plate his philosophizing for now.

There was a long list of things to get through today.

Drake dropped down from the tree with more ease than usual, landing softly on his feet almost making no sound.

"Well isn't that kinda elf-like? Can I walk on snow now too?" He said aloud, a small crease across his face.

First, I should get a handle on how these new inflated stats feel. He thought.

Drake looked around for a tree a few meters from him. "Yeah that should be about right." He had singled out a tree a distance out that would have taken him around 30 seconds normally to sprint to.

He got into a sprinters starting stance and took off for the tree. He could feel the world around him blur as he took long swift strides, reaching his destination in less than 10 seconds. He just stared blankly at his starting location, amazed with himself. He had reduced his travel time by more than 70%. And he was still breathing evenly.

"I'm a god damned superhero! Haha!!" He chortled. "I wonder if that means I can leap over tall buildings in a single bound and smash rocks with my bare fists." He joked.

But then he thought about it more seriously. He looked at the tree next to him and sized it up. It was around 5 meters tall, give or take. Drake crouched down as if to turn himself into a compressed spring, and pushed off the ground with all his strength. Launching himself into the air.

He waved his arms wildly as he reached his apex, seeing over the top of the tree next to him. The next moment he began his rapid return to the ground. Screaming and flailing all the way. He somehow managed to keep himself upright enough that he landed on his feet.

Drake huffed as he let go of his held breath and soon checked his body to see if anything was broken. But surprisingly he was fine, he didn't feel any pain anywhere in his body.

He then looked towards the trunk of the tree and placed his fist against it, squaring up to it. "Please don't break my hand." He mumbled, bringing his fist back and letting loose a right hook with all his might. A loud crash and splintering of wood sounded in a kick up of dust below the tree, the dirt settling; revealing his fist driving into the tree up to half his forearm.

Drake was a little disappointed that he hadn't felled the thing in one blow like a cool power up scene from anime but was more than satisfied with the results.

"I'll have to come up with a super cool hero name now. Maybe turn an old insulting nickname into my moniker to take power away from it and show I'm above the bully that stuck me with it. Maybe." Drake smiled.

Through some more tests, Drake more or less got the jist of his capabilities. But there was a problem.

"I've never used a sword outside of yesterday. And in my backyard maybe but we don't talk about those days." He coughed. " I know enough that you slash them and stick them with the pointy end, but that's where my expertise ends."

He motioned some practice swings with the sword tentatively but soon stopped thinking he looked silly. "I guess I'll just have to learn through repetition and guessing then, nothing new there. This whole place has just been one whole new learning experience anyway."

Deciding to put more time into learning how to properly swing a sword later he moved on to the next thing he wanted to know. Could he cast while holding the sword. He very well couldn't use his staff now that it had been broken.

[Novice Iron Sword [NG] [Common]

35 to 37 Physical Damage

5 to 13 Magical Damage

Attack Speed: Normal

Cast Speed: Slightly Slow

A starter iron sword made of what it looks like, iron.

"Oh system, you're so funny..." he said flatly.

The sword did have magic damage on the description so he should be able to cast magic through it. He pointed the tip of the sword towards the same tree he was using to test. Reciting his spell.

"Manifest my power. Mana Bolt!" A blue magic circle formed at the end of the blade, but the mana flow into the weapon felt hobbled and rough like he was squeezing it through a straw that was too tight. It took several seconds longer than when he used his bare hands, a total of 5 seconds to fully manifest the Bolt. After shooting out of the blade tip normally, the Bolt hit the tree and punched a fist size hole all the way through it and the tree behind it.

Nice damage but, that cast time. That's a problem. Drake raised a brow confessing to himself. It was good that he knew now as long as a weapon had the magic damage and cast stat he could channel magic through it, but it obviously wasn't nearly as optimal as a weapon that had a better cast time.

He ended up deciding he would stick to using his free hand to cast the spell. Determined he needed the lower cast time over the small damage increase the weapon gave.

"Now for the last and final test."

Drake went off in a mad dash, circling the tree. Placing his hand in front of him trained on the tree, he felt the mana inside him, then began to cast.

"Manifest my power. Mana Bolt!"

After the two second delay a Mana Bolt flew from his hand but missed the tree, flying past it and punched another first sized hole through another tree, burning the bolt halfway through the trunk of the one behind it.

Drake shouted with glee, curling his hands into fists. He was finally able to finish casting while running, and now he could RUN. Looking back at the tree he had failed to hit.

We'll just ignore that I still can't aim… He thought sheepishly.

"Alright! Time to go find some monsties to hunt! No more slacking off!" He yelled pointing with his sword in one hand in a random direction. And he ran off at full speed. But quickly tripped over an extended tree root, falling flat on his face.

"Ok maybe not at full speed just yet…" He said, raising his beat red face from the dirt spitting some out of his mouth.