Chapter 2: Humble Beginnings, System Start

Shaking himself from reminiscing of the past, Carman sat up.

He looked over the items he had organized around the small room. Discarded machine parts, wood and nails from broken crates, papers printed by the steambird, a few Mora dropped form wallets, and a pile of rags and discarded furniture cushions that he used for a bed.

Picking up a crude slingshot and bag of pebbles and metal nuts from the ground near his bed Carman put them into the pockets of his baggy pants.

"Tomorrow is my 5th birthday, I should try to celebrate a bit, a freshly cooked meal instead of scraps from the dump should do."

Carman said to himself as he made his way towards one of the elevators leading to the aquaducts where aquabusses traveled. Carman never waited at the station and often dashed onto the busses at the last second to avoid being spotted or tracked by the crowd. It had been a month since he had last seen anyone trying to find him and he hoped that the house had given up on finding him.

When he reaches the station, Carman stood in a corner, careful to angle himself in a way that was hard to notice from theain area of the platform and waited for an outbound Aquabus to arrive. It took 20 minutes but eventually a bus arrived, as it was about to depart, the passengers getting seated, Carman dashed through the crowd, joseling a few unlucky bystanders and jumped from the platform onto the departing bus.

Due to his light figure and the weight of the bus, there was very little turbulence, but the Melusine in charge of the boat still gave him a disapproving look for acting so recklessly and disturbing the other passengers. She did not make any comments about it however since it was a thing that children did quite often.

Carman dropped some of the few Mora he had gathered into the payment slot even though he knew Melusine refused to toss children overboard unlike stingy adults. Their cute forms hid an extraordinary amount of strength for their size, meaning they could easily pick up and carry a human adult which was probably why there was devision of law enforcement that was staffed by them.

Carman sat on the bus and enjoyed the view, while half listening to the Melusine's script. It was still strange to him to see the view of Fontaine from a first person perspective, it was surreal and hard for him to believe it was his reality, at some level he still hadn't accepted it and was expecting it all to be a dream or simulation.

The daylight was warm on Carman's skin, with constant pricks of cold as droplets of water were sprayed and carried by the wind, landing against his face.

As the Aquabus made it to the other station, Carman took careful note of the arrival and departure times, not wanting to miss the ride back and have to camp in the wild.

Leaving the station, Carman walked around to find some wild fruits and herbs. However unlike in the game he had to compete with the former NPCs, now residents of this world in for these resources. The often found that goods like apples, sunsettias, and sweet Berries were often plucked by passing adventurers. It took a while, especially as Carman carefully navigated around areas where malfunctioning constructs have been known to gather. However, Carman eventually came across a few trees with fruit on them, climbing up them, he even found some eggs.

Going to a nearby pond, Carman waited. He readied his slingshot and ammo as he sat, watching for his prey.

The first time a bird landed in the water Carman quickly dropped the stone into the sling and pulled the rubber cord as hard as he could before releasing it

-snap-

A crisp cracking noise could be heard around the clearing followed by the voice of a child using colorful language. The stone soared over the bird's head as Carman reacted to the misfire, the rubber slapping against his bare arm, leaving an angry red welt on his skin.

After splashing water on his wound, to ease the pain and reduce any swelling, Carman got back to his patient observation of the pond.

It took quite a while for birds to start coming down again but Carman waited, watching as more and more birds landed in the shallow areas of the pond to start grooming themselves. Carefully this time he placed a brass nut into the fold of his slingshot and pulled the cord taut and made slight adjustments in his grip on the slingshot, when a bird moved into his aim he took the shot.

-thwack-

The brass nut was flung out of the slingshot, hurteling towards the unsuspecting bird. With a hollow cracking sound, it made contact, hitting the bird in the side of the head before it could do more than spread it's wings.

The bird's head was pushed violently to the side from the force of the metal object, it extended as far to the side as it could and then some, the hollow bones not being the most stable thing, snapped from the force.

The bird flipped over and started twitching in the water not knowing what had happened yet. Startled, the other nearby birds flew away.

Carman walked over and picked up the bird, unlike the game, prey did not automatically prepare themselves after being slain. Carman started to pluck out the bird's feathers, pocketing some of them while letting others fall into the pond. When he was done he took out his knife and carefully started trying to field dress the carcass.

He removed the internal organs he remembered were edible first and put them on top of a few newspapers as he took the time to inspect the digestive track and gallbladder, trying to figure out how to remove them without spoiling the meat.

It took him a while but by the time he had to return to the station, Carman had a cloth bag with a few fresh fruits and herbs, and a fully prepped bird. Before entering the station Carman stopped by another pond to clean the blood off of his hands.

The trip back was fairly uneventful, as Carman watched the sunset and the sky as stars started to show themselves in the darkened sky.

After getting back to the city of Fontaine, Carman walked with the crowd of people exiting the busses , hoping that anyone who was following him would lose him in the crush of the crowd.

Doing his best to remain stealthy, Carman returned to his hideout with his bag of food for the next day. After eating one of the apples, Carman went to bed with a satisfied smile on his face.

Waking up in the morning, Carman was excited to see the countdown was at 4 hours.

Taking his bag, Carman waled to a out of the way store that kept a stove outside for passerby to use.

Giving the clerk a few Mora, he got a tiny bit of butter and a bottle of clean water, in the pot, he added the bird, wild herbs, wild carrots, and a diced apple with some water and brought it up to a boil. As the contents cooked, Carman used a Mora to rent a bowl and silverware from the shopkeeper. It took 30 minutes for the meal to finish cooking and thankfully nobody on the street was paying him much attention.

When the soup was finished Carman scooped it into a bowl while humming happy birthday to himself. The soup was fragrant, and while the bird was a bit stringy and tasted gamey, the food was more than satisfying after eating tossed aside leftovers for months

After finishing the food and cleaning up, Carman returned to his spot and sat in the room watching as time went by, patiently observing as the time value on the count down ticked downward at a snail's pace.

Eventually the time was measured in minutes, then seconds. As it neared the end of the countdown, Carman started excitedly counting down with it like it was New Year's Eve.

"10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3...2..1.."

....

...

..

.

-Ding-

[System booting up, this may take a moment]

A loading bar flitted by quickly.

[Congratulations to the host for surviving and earning the [Engineering System], would the host like a tutorial?]

[Yes/No]

Not wanting to miss out on anything regarding the system he had waited years to unlock, Carman selected Yes.

[Welcome host to the Engineering System, a program designed to allow you to gain power through hard work and effort]

[The Engineering System will grant rewards for significant steps in the process of invention and bigger prizes for completed projects. Furthermore, host will also earn points from other people using the devices the host has produced or from others creating the device through blueprints given by the host.]

[Points can be converted into experience to raise your level, or be used in the system shop]

[ Please select what function of the system you would like to explore]

[Rewards/Quests/Store/status/Item Storage/Gatcha]

So the system has a Gatcha, seems pretty straightforward, I probably have to spent points to get random rolls.

Skipping over the Gatcha option Carman selected [Quests]

[Under the system [Quests] tab, host can find Quests that are rewarded by the system, rewards may carry from system points to exp to items. The system will scan the host's mind and environment periodically and publish quests based on the result. There is no such thing as an "active quest" and host can advance and complete multiple quests at the same time, should requirements align.]

Carman navigated over to [Item Storage] and then [Status].

[The [Item Storage] function of the system allows the those to own multidimentional vault operated through the system which is capable of storing inanimate objects. While in storage, items are outside the influence of time and will not degrade, spoil, or change in any way. Items pulled from the [Gatcha] are automatically stored in the vault. Any addition or withdrawals from the vault must occur within the Host's range of touch.]

[The [Status] function of the system allows the host to see their attributes measured in numerical form.]

[By using Exp gained from quests or exchanged from the [Shop] the host can level up, the host has no level cap, however at certain benchmarks, the host must fulfill certain requirements before leveling any higher.]

[Additionally, there is a [Skills] tab which achieves a similar effect for the host's abilities. Skills are ranked from F to S++, although there are some skills that do not fit on the scale and are considered Ex rank.]

[Furthermore, the host can buy Skill Exp from the [Shop] to increase levels of proficiency in their skills, once a skill has reached max level, it is possible to merge it with another skill of the same rank to aquire a higher ranked skill. This new skill will be reset to level 1 but will retain or even improve the abilities granted by the previous two skills.]

[It is possible to learn skills through training and practice, however some skills can only be purchased in the [Shop] due to reasons such as the required information to train it has been lost to the world. Some skills are also granted from earning titles. Should the host be granted a skill they already own, the repeat skill will be broken down into Skill Exp]

Clicking back, Carman decided to end the tutorial after reviewing the shop and rewards tabs and giving a cursory scroll through the gatcha section.

[Exit tutorial? You can revisit any tutorial by clicking the option under the help tab]

[Yes/No]

Selecting "Yes" Carman moved sat down on his bed to process the information bye had just recieved.

"I guess it's time to brush up on my designing skills, though I didn't expect it to play such an integral role in this life."

To be continued...