Death

This man was taller than the 5'9 Ricardo, standing at around 6'1. He was far slimmer but was certainly not skinny, possessing more of an athletic look. Claws and fangs slowly started to grow as he approached Brandyn, who wasn't even retreating back as he approached. Orange-yellow fur started to appear across his arms, cheeks and legs together with black spots starting to slowly appear on these areas of orange fur.

Brandyn didn't show an ounce of fear and threw 2 straight punches to his face, actually making his head jerk back slightly.

"You're really gonna let that human move your head like that, Matthias?!" Ricardo said with a condescending chuckle.

This remark made Matthias severely irritated. His facial expression emitted that of rage and violence.

ZOOM!

CLAP!

His first punch released a loud clapping noise, also followed by a more deep cracking noise. This was due to the bones in his cheek fracturing.

Matthias continued with more destructive blows that ended with Brandyn pressured against a brick wall, with no escape. Blood covered his face and hands, and his face had several openings across it.

Ricardo, seeing that Brandyn was unable to continue fighting, shot his mace towards his body.

BOOM!

He landed the most powerful attack that Brandyn had felt that night, to his bleeding chest. His sternum snapped in half and in that moment, he fell lifelessly to the ground, laying next to a green plastic bin.

"We've gotta go! The cops might be coming!" Another accomplice, with short blonde hair, exclaimed, looking around fearfully.

"Fine! Let's go!" The rhino ordered and he then promptly dashed away with superhuman speed, reaching speeds of more than 35 mph. (56.3kmh)

The more agile, speedy cheetah managed to step up to the green bin that Brandyn's corpse was resting on to explosively leap off and land onto a roof beside him. The final accomplice engulfed in a mysterious black energy, and his feline eyes glowed a deep purple.

He leapt across a wall beside him to then jump off it and land onto the roof of the adjacent roof.

Below, Brandyn was left to gloomily stare ahead at the blonde victim, showing no sign of life. His eyes did not blink. His body didn't even twitch.

Weakly, the injured victim held his bloody mouth to then lethargically walk past the corpse, giving one last look to his dead saviour before walking away.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

2 heartbeats could be felt inside Brandyn's body. After leaving his eyes unblinking for more than a minute, he blinked once again to moisturise his drying eyes. Suddenly, life was returned back to him.

"What's going on?! I was dead, I'm sure of it!" He thought to himself in surprise, immediately starting by taking off his jumper.

What he saw was his unbranded white t-shirt, covered in dark and dried blood. This is what he was expecting since he had been beaten up so badly but what he didn't expect was to feel absolutely no pain and also to see no visible injuries across his body.

"Huh? I feel fine! I feel better than before I even fought those gangsters?! How am I even alive?" He muttered, tapping his body in places to actually confirm that he had been left with no injury.

[Welcome to the Rebirth System!]

[Stats]

[Skills]

[Quests]

[Store]

[Inventory]

These notification panels appeared in front of his face and it caused him to scurry back fearfully.

"What are these panels?! They're like some RPG game, are they even real?!" He asked himself, standing to try and touch it to see if they were even physically there.

Oddly, his fingers simply phased through the panel and didn't affect it at all.

"So I can't touch it? How do I navigate this thing, then?! Maybe, I just think about it?" He wondered, and he began by doing just that.

[User: Brandyn Santiago]

[Level: 1]

[Strength: 2]

[Speed: 2]

[Stamina: 4]

[Durability: 5]

[HP: 10/10]

[XP: 0/100]

[Species: Human]

Brandyn wasn't exactly surprised by his statistics. He always knew that he even possessed strength below that of a regular-born, so the stats were expected. However, he was quite surprised by his stamina, since it was the highest physical attribute that he had.

He also wondered how he would increase these stats. There was no information provided to him so he deduced that he would likely be informed at some point about how to strengthen himself. Brainstorming about different strategies, he opened the skills tab to see what could be in there.

—————

[Skills] [0]

—————

Again, what he saw didn't surprise him. He had just been given this weird 'system' and had done nothing with it up until this point.

Next, he opened the quests.

[Daily Tasks: 0/4]

[Run 100m: 0m/100m]

[Lift 80kg: 0kg/80kg]

[Eat 100g protein: 0g/100g]

[Do 10 push ups: 0/10]

"Lift 80 kilograms! I know I can't lift that much but everything else seems doable. Surely, the pushups don't have to be done in one go, right?" He further analysed, focusing on the panels.

Brandyn then began by trying to complete his daily tasks with what he had around him. Just lifting the bin slightly actually caused something to happen.

[Lift 80kg: 12kg/80kg]

Seeing that an update was made, he continued to lift the bin continuously. The number on this new panel slowly increased until the entire objective was complete.

[Daily Tasks: 1/4]

[Run 100m: 4m/100m]

[Lift 80kg: 82kg/80kg]

[Eat 100g protein: 0g/100g]

[Do 10 push ups: 0/10]

Also, he realised that any bipedal movement added to his running meter. Therefore, he decided to jog up and down the alleyway, until the 100m task was completed. Since it was such a small distance, it didn't him long but it also didn't really take much of his stamina to complete. This easy accomplishment actually gave Brandyn a bit of confidence, something that he hadn't felt in so, so long.