3 Happy Birthday
CRASH!
Not knowing that Scotty will beam him up to the exact same point of entry - namely the ye olde musty bookshop - Helmut who was slav squatting on a tree, in mid-swing of his improvised Nongfu Spring bottle bat, materialized in mid air and crash landed on a pile of books with the grace of a cow on ice.
A loud noise coupled with incessant german swearing that could make a sailor blush has attracted attention of the old owner who quickly rushed to the scene. Needless to say, he wasn't pleased in the slightest and proceeded hurling bucketfuls of verbal abuse towards the clumsy gweilo ruining his wares.
"Get outta here, stalker. I'm really not in the mood right now."
The atmosphere froze instantly, shock written on the old man's face. He started slowly backing up and ran outside, screaming his head off that "he's being murdered".
It took Barker's brain several seconds of buffering before he put two and two together - an extremely ugly foreigner in dirty clothes with a couple blood splatters here and there was pointing a broken bottle at a shopkeeper and growling in broken chinese. Classy.
"Well that's just unfortunate for me, innit?"
With absolute zero desire of dealing with polite men in uniform, Helmut took off his jacket and worn it inside-out which had a different color, exited through the staff-only backdoor that was thankfully "closed" with naught but a flimsy door chain that a child could rip off if they tried hard enough, and walked away at a brisk, but not too fast fashion, caring both about looking inconspicuous and about his battered heart. After navigating serpentine back alleys for good twenty minutes he reached the cheap motel he stayed at, locked the door and crashed on the bed.
A few minutes of rest didn't exactly work wonders at restoring the accumulated stress and fatigue of a very strange day, but at least they given the hero...villain...asshole?... just enough time to prepare himself to address the elephant in the room.
"Come out."
With a triumphant 'baroo!' Classic of Mountains and Seas came into being and did a little pirouette.
Helmut let out a light chuckle at the happy antics of magical tome.
"Well someone is feeling lively, eh. Care to show me what the heck you picked up from the dead dude? I sure hope it was something better than a dingy 50 yuan bill. But if it was his soul you ate or something, you can keep it to yourself, I'm more of a Bread and Bacon kind of guy."
With an unmistakable aura of childish smugness, the daring dairy diary opened wide and presented the first page.
"Let's see..."
[Current location: Human World]
[No stationary teleportation nodes registered]
[First dive complete, officially registered as 1-Star Elite creature, awarded 1 teleportation node]
[There will be 1 node awarded per each full star reached]
[Amount of available teleportation nodes: 1]
[Note #1: you can change placement of in-use nodes at will at any time, but you can only place them at your immediate location]
[Note #2: there is a 12 hour cooldown between teleportations]
[Note #3: nodes can only be placed in Human World]
[Would you like to install the first one? Y/N]
"For real? I could start an intercontinental delivery service with this... Okay, sure! Show me what you've got."
A ghostly-looking yin-yang symbol appears on the floor and follows Barker's eyesight wherever he looks. Being vaguely reminded of an RTS game, he looks at a corner and intuitively mumbles "confirm", which makes the symbol melt into the cheap carpet and disappear.
Thinking of wanting to change the placement he makes the symbol reappear, then stashes it in the opposite corner.
"Aight, cool. What's next, keep it coming!"
With a turn of a page they arrived to the 'Battle Log' section.
A little perplexed with such an MMO-ey development un-caped baldy reads on in wonder.
Only the juicy bits though, nobody has time to bother with mind-numbing things like checking statistics of a pedometer in written form.
[User senses a Black Beetle ambush in the alley (approx. 200+ enemies). User retreats.]
[Evil Force finds User amusing and takes interest in him. Evil Force lets User go. This time.]
[Styx, a legendary 2-Star Elite Green Dwarf Ninja pounces User from a Concealed state. User rolls a natural 20 and "dodges". Styx falls off a cliff and soundlessly splatters over the ground. Evolution point extra gain bonus for killing a much stronger creature than you.]
[User encounters a compatible Special Ability Holder. Special Ability Holder dies. Extracting the pages post mortem.]
"You possess an abnormal amount of sass, be ashamed of yourself and show some class!...and a piece of that hoochie arse? Somehow this wordplay isn't going anywhere, abort mission. Next page!"
The moment he seen what was on the 3rd page, all playfulness left him and his already deathly pale face became even whiter. With shaking hands he gripped the book tightly and wordlessly read on, forgetting to breathe.
Name: Helmut Barker
Race: Human
Gender: Male
Age: 26
Creature Rank: 1-Star Elite
Status: (The average adult male's status value is 10)
Strength: 3.5 (Muscle: 4, Sturdiness: 3)
Agility: 5.5 (Hand-eye Coordination: 3, Flexibility: 7, Reflex: 6, Balance: 5)
Vitality: 2 (Health: 1, Endurance: 3)
Intelligence: 10 (Learning: 12, Reasoning: 8)
Awareness: 11 (Willpower: 19, Judgement: 10, Perception: 2, Intuition: 12)
Charm: 7 (Courage: 7, Persuasiveness: 9, Character: 7, Leadership: 4, Appearance: 9(-6))
Skills: Pharmacology (Advanced), Shooting (Beginner), Language [English(proficient), German(proficient), Chinese(basic)]
Special Skill: Lust for Life (Complete immunity to instant kill attacks from creatures of the same rank or lower, regardless of how powerful the attack is. User will subconsciously warp reality so he could cling to his life by a thread and have a chance to make it out alive. Cooldown: 1 day)
Evolution Points: 350
In such a situation a stupid jock would immediately jump at the opportunity of increasing his muscle mass. A vain person would turn their sight to appearance. A sensible person would immediately grab improved intelligence. A lazy weasely bastard would start to complain that there's no luck parameter to abuse. Helmut, on the other hand...
He didn't say a thing. With eyes filled with desperation, fear of being disappointed once again, and the tiniest tinge of hope... He pressed on a plus sign near the Health parameter.
Seconds passed as available points slowly drained and the numbers near the status he desired so badly raise up.
1...1,1...1,2...<...>...3,6...
Struck with an acute case of abrupt tunnel vision, his attention was so laser-focused on one parameter that he didn't even notice how the penalty to his appearance started to loosen up and eventually disappeared.
Unbeknownst to him, drastic changes started happening both on the inside and the outside of his body.
All he could sense was an alien feeling of tiny amount of warmth rising and an irritating itchiness he couldn't shake off.
He just prayed that it wasn't placebo or self-hypnosis.
After using up 300 evolution points and reaching 7 points in Health, the irritating feeling became distracting to the point that Helmut placed the book aside and torn off his gloves in anger, wanting to scratch those bastard wrists until they bled if that's what they wanted him to do. It was then when he noticed the abnormality.
His previously bony dried wrists that he had to cover up now were somewhat meatier, and while still looking pale and frail, they definitely were leagues apart from what he used to see on a daily basis.
On shaking legs he approached the mirror, daring not to look at it, still mesmerized with the alien look of his arms. Taking a deep breath he tossed his hat aside and peered at the surface of the mirror.
A stranger stared back at him. Instead of a ghoulish man there stood a youth looking notably younger than his actual age. And while his features were frail and somewhat feminine, they were nowhere near sickly.
Then the image started getting blurry, Barked mechanically took off his glasses to clean the lenses, only to realize they weren't the problem here. Before he realized it, he was crying. His legs gave out and he fell flat on his behind, staring dumbly into the void before bawling his heart out.
Possessing limited intelligence, the distressed book flew towards its owner.
Noticing his savior appear before him, Barker struggled to find any words to express what he felt at that moment.
"I...you...you don't even...thank y-"
Overcome with emotions that were bottled up, laughed off and disregarded with defensive cynicism for decades, Helmut planted a kiss on the book's cover and cradled it close to his chest like a mother would embrace her precious child.
Despite letting out deeply offended yak grunts and the ability to disappear into its host's body at will, the book chose to stay where it was.
In a ratty nameless motel room somewhere in Cui Hu city only sobbing could be heard.
The long storm has passed, revealing a friendly ray of light.
Today a person died and got born once more.
Happy Birthday.
