Chapter Six

After distributing his attribute points, he could literally feel himself getting stronger. He flexed an arm and felt how the muscles seemed to tighten in a way they hadn't before. Any fat he had before seemed to harden into thick muscle. At the same time, his mind cleared and he became more focused. He was able to remember things during the fight that had evaded him before. "So this is what it means to level up within the mage's academy?" He thought out loud to himself. He already felt much stronger than he had been previously, yet he was only a level 3, just how much stronger was he going to become?

Jason made a mental effort to calm himself. If he was already freaking out over a small increase in strength, what was going to happen when he was level 20? When he finally returned to his senses, he checked his phone. "Shit, I've been at this for a few hours now. I still need to do my rounds!" He looked at the dungeon menu on his phone and found the 'abort' button. With a sigh, he pressed it. In an instant, the tree he had been sitting against and all else around him disappeared from view. He was sitting in total darkness for a few moments before his home and Selena came into view.

"Not bad gains for your first dungeon." Selena whistled. Jason watched as she looked him up and down. "Level 3, you really went all out, didn't you?"

"What, do I have that information plastered on my forehead or something?" Jason scowled as he waved an invisible status bar away.

"It's nothing like that," Selena giggled. "We are connected through the temporal tome, so whatever you see for your stats, I see." She paused for a moment and looked deeply at him. "It's good that you put points into wisdom, intelligence and mana, but why not agility?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I thought that agility would be redundant with the temporal shift ability, don't you think?"

Selena sighed. "I know you are new to this, but I at least thought you would read the description of each attribute before committing them."

Jason checked his phone, yet he didn't see the description she was talking about. "There's nothing here."

"It was in the tome before you absorbed it." Selena sighed. "Anyway, agility is for more than just speed. It's also for sharpening your senses. You think just because you can use temporal shift, you will be able to escape anything, but how will you know when to use it if your opponent is faster? If he reacts before you notice, it wouldn't matter if you could just shift out, he would get to you before you even realize you should have reacted."

What she said made some sense. If he faced an enemy who had a lightning spell or something, would his mind register the enemy's attack before it hit? He mentally slapped himself for not thinking of it sooner. 'I guess I can begin putting one point into agility per rank I level up.' He thought as he looked at his stats again.'

Selena watched Jason's expression carefully. She could see that he was already changing the way he distributed his points in the future. She nodded before heading back to the cabin. "Just make sure you are more careful in the future. Those points may be easy to distribute, but each point should be weighed as if your life depends on it."

"Even though I'm considered immortal now?" Jason smirked at the thought.

"Yes, even though you are immortal. Can you imagine an eternity of dying and coming back to life, just to be killed again right where you stand?" She glared at Jason with a knowing look. "It would only take a little time for someone to figure out where you will come back, then they would only need to wait for you, then kill you once more."

Suddenly, the world he had just been brought into seemed less safe. He thought of the games he had played in the past. There were those who would do exactly what she had just said. He felt a chill down his spine as he thought of the same situation brought to his own reality. There was much he had to think about, and an eternity to think of it.

Looking at the sun in the distance, Jason knew he was running out of time to think about all of this. If he was late doing his rounds he knew that his grandfather would be less forgiving than the rabbits that had wiped the floor with him. "I need to get to work now." He smiled at Selena. "I hope you don't mind a trek through the forest for a while."

Selena shrugged. "I could use a stretch after the dungeon anyway, that phone is much more cramped than the tome."

Going into the cabin, Jason took two flashlights out and handed one to Selena. she looked at it for a moment before switching it on and off. Satisfied that she knew what it was for, she stored it in her inventory.

"I didn't know we could use our inventory for non game items." Jason thought out loud as he put his own flashlight in his inventory.

"This isn't a game." She raised her eyebrow and motioned him to take the lead.

Jason chuckled and set out down the path leading away from his home. As the sun took its last plunge towards the ground, the woods took to the darkness and they switched on their flashlights.