Chapter 1

Mid afternoon on a warm sunny day in a big city a man with worn jeans and tattered shoes sat at the corner of a shop-front. He wore an oversized thin hoodie that seemed to be more for looks than function. He pushed the sleeves lazily up to his elbows continuously as they repeatedly fell back down. His long dark blond hair hung just beneath his eye-line which held a striking pair of deep blue eyes. His average features and pale skin didn't stand out that much and he seemed rather plain.

The city go-ers bustling about paid him little attention as he rummaged through his pockets and pulled out his phone. He pressed the lock button to check the time but,

"What the..?"

The phones screen was completely glitched out. No matter what he pressed the screen stayed broken until finally it went black and the phone stopped working all together.

The crowd in the nearby plaza got louder and confusion broke out.

"Is the battery dead?"

"Yours too? What's going on?"

"Even my laptops doing it!"

It was at this point that a sudden energy-like wave swept through the crowd. When the wave hit some people passed out, and others doubled over. An extreme feeling of nausea hit and the man from earlier struggled to stand as his vision blurred. The wave finally passed and his vision began to clear. That was when something even more bizarre began to happen.

Lines of translucent blue text started floating in front of him.

[evaluating status..... complete]

[collecting records..... complete]

[applying beginer compensation..... error]

[tier 1 skill within parameters of beginner skill compensation detected. Lv: 8 --> 10]

[bypassing evolution material requirements, commencing skill evolution..... complete]

[record evaluation complete]

[status available]

After reading the text something resembling a menu window from a videogame appeared before him. He gazed at it in astonishment, confusion, and contemplation. He couldn't tell for sure what was considered average but he was certain that a few of his stats were above normal.

__________

Name: Fern Aferdakt

Age: 27

Level: 1

Class: none

Hp: 70/70

Mp: 170/170

Stamina: 100/100

vit: 7

edn: 10

str: 12

spd: 6

dex: 13

def: 11

int: 17

wis: 42

Skills:

Wisdom (tier 2)(passive)(lv: 0):

+10% comprehension speed.

You can somewhat understand all concepts within your league.

__________

The most eye-catching part was obviously the wisdom.

But before he could further examine the strange phenomenon that had just happened to him, a piercing scream rang out in the plaza. Looking up he saw swirling shadows start to come out of seemingly thin air all around. The shadows solidified into something that resembled humans only with gray colored skin and pure white eyes.

Confusion broke out and one unlucky person who happened to be to close to one of the things was grabbed by the neck. The gray figure then lifted the man into the air as if he weighed nothing then slowly started twisting the man's body untill his neck finally. The remaining gray figures started slowly moving towards people and chaos erupted.

People were fighting, screaming, pushing, and running. Fern noticed that these humanoid like figures seemed extremely strong but also slow. Fighting against his own panic he began thinking, {Run? But where too? What if other places are even more dangerous. Is it even possible to fight them? And if so should I?}

{No. Overthinking the situation won't help. I need to defend myself}, he thought. Looking around he tried to find something he could use for self defense. There were not a lot of options. {A landscaping brick? No. Too hard to hold, no reach, and there is no way I can out power these things. Tree branch? Too flimsy, probably won't even do damage. Come on think!} He glanced over at a nearby decorative fence. {Maybe?}

He ran over to the fence. It had a series of tall vertical poles about two finger widths wide connected by three horizontal thinner brackets. Additionally the poles all had a conveniently pointy decoration on top. With no time to waste he began trying to remove one of the poles from the fence.

The poles weren't buried deep. The real issue was breaking it loose from the three brackets. He grabbed the middle bracket and stomped as hard as he could on the bottom bracket. The bracket he was holding on to ripped out of his hands tearing one of his fingernails. Blood started to drip from his hand and he swore. Grabbing on even harder this time, gritting his teeth to bear the pain, he slammed his foot on the lower bracket again.

This time, fueled by anger and frustration his kick finally snapped the weld and the pole was now only attached by two more welds. Fern noticed that he had caught the attention of one of the gray people as it started to slowly approach him. He desperately grabbed the now loose bottom of the pole and pulled up twisting both the final two braces. After giving it a few hard yanks the top weld finally ripped loose leaving the pole dangling along the middle bracket.

Fern then easily broke the last weld by twisting the pole around parallel to the fence. With his crude weapon finally loose he turned to face the gray monster approaching. He could feel his forehead sweating and his heart beating faster. He gripped tightly on the pole and observed the approaching creature. His first instinct based on its humanoid form was to destroy the brain.

He stared at it's eyes as he raised the pole and noticed that his whole body was trembling slightly. The monster raised its arms and began to close the now short distance between them. With a shout, Fern thrust the pole and directly stabbed through the things eye. It made a small grunting noise before slumping to the ground.

Before he could try to pull the pole out of its body, it started turning back into shadowy particles freeing the pole. A message once again popped out in front of him.

[Defeated: undead Lvl. 1. You gained +5 Str.]

[You leveled up: Lvl.1 > Lvl.2. You gained +2 attribute points]

Many thoughts began to circulate in Fern's mind. {So these things are called undeads. But most importantly, I got stat points and leveled up from killing it.} He noticed that his body felt slightly lighter and the pole felt easier to hold.

The suroundings were chaos still so he decided to do the most simple thing possible. Take another step. And just keep moving. Don't think, just move. His shaky breathing started to even out and he broke into a run.

He killed two more undead in a similar fashion to the first while running. The first gave him +3 str and the second +2 str. Before he knew it he had escaped to a silent empty street. He decided to hide in the remains of a recently demolished building on a construction site and gather his thoughts.

He glanced down for the first time at the stone he picked up earlier after he had killed the third undead. The dull colored slightly translucent blue stone that was barely pebble sized had fallen from the dust of the undead as it disappeared. Blue text once more appeared in his eyes this time floating above the stone.

[mana stone(fragment)(low grade): contains a weak amount of compressed mana]

He decided to keep the stone in his pocket and began to ponder more about mana. According to his status he had 170 mana. He tried to focus to see if he could feel or control the mana he had but his attempts ended in failure. {Maybe I need a skill in order to use it?} Having no luck with mana he decided to think about what to do next