Bed-Ridden (part 4)

After a moment, Frumpkin sat up from the pile of of debris he was buried in, and coughed. His white hair stood straight out at all angles from his head, and most of his exposed skin was covered with black soot.

"Ya know, that's fair. I deserved that." He said, drifting out of the pile. With a snap of his fingers the soot vanished, and his hair and robes tidied themselves. With an absent-minded flourish of his hand, the mess behind him straightened up, until after a few moments, there was no evidence of his recent collision or the ensuing explosion.

As he did this, Jack, still amused, walked back over to the Terminal, and started again.

"Okay Terminal, show me the notifications, please." He said.

With a flash, the screen flared back to life, and began to read out text on its white surface.

"Welcome back, Jack.

Here are your current unread notifications:

[1 unclaimed quest completion reward]

[1 status update report]"

"Show me the status update report first, please." Jack said.

The screen cleared itself, and brought back up the familiar display of his stat sheet, except this time there were several flashing red indicators next some of his attribute values. They seemed to indicate that some of the values on his sheet had changed. He also noticed that the last section had changed a bit as well, and now listed his "most recent" notable accomplishments. This little change wasn't much, but it was another small indicator that he was getting slowly better at this whole hero thing if even the Terminal thought he was stacking up enough accomplishments to merit changing its layout.

"Jack Eames

[Class: Lvl 2 Fighter/Lvl 2 Sorcerer]

Prowess: 36 [+5]

Fortitude: 27 [+3]

Logic: 21

Intuition: 20 [+3]

Persona: 9

Composure: 15

Spirit: 42 [+7]

Tenacity: 40 [+8]

Talents:

- [Immunity to Cold]

- [Martial Weapon Proficiency]

- [Magically Gifted (Sorcery)]

Recent Notable Accomplishments:

- [Stopped a gnoll raid on a village]

- [Saved a companion from a grisly fate]

- [Bested a Gnoll Champion in one on one combat]"

Looking over everything, he was surprised to see how much some of the values had jumped even since the last time he had looked at the readout only a day previous. His Spirit and Tenacity had both increased almost as much as his total Persona value in a single day. He wasn't sure if that was a lot, relatively speaking, but it certainly felt like it.

Thinking about it for a moment, it seemed obvious to him that this sudden stat spike was from him magically pushing himself so hard in the last fight. If his experience from gaming taught him anything, it was that the best way to improve a skill or ability score was to use it a lot. I mean, now that he thought about it, it worked the exact same way for muscles and cardio endurance as well, but first-hand knowledge of fitness wasn't really in his wheelhouse now, was it?

"Hey, looking good." Frumpkin said, hovering over his shoulder and looking up at the screen. "Looks like you got yourself some stat increases."

"Certainly seems that way." Jack said, reading over the screen again. "I'm surprised it all went up so much so fast."

"Eh, it'll be pretty fast at first, from my experience. But the more you gain, the less each additional point will do to increase the total output of that attribute. So those 8 points you just got in Tenacity? Well, they're way more valuable than 8 more points when you have 120 Tenacity, if that makes sense. It's all kinda relative." Frumpkin said.

"Makes sense. A lot of MMOs work the same way." Jack said. He looked up at the screen again.

"Alright Terminal, show me my unclaimed quest reward!"