Chapter 9: Shrugging

It was labeled Inventory, and it had several empty boxes. Harry slowly walked to his desk and sat down with the inventory box in front of him.

He took out an eraser and then pressed it against the box, pushing it forward.

Golden ripples spread across the box, and the eraser disappeared from Harry's hands and reappeared in the inventory, labeled Eraser.

Harry smiled. The ideas were already starting to churn in his head.

That night Harry could hardly stop himself from looking over his stats time and again, agonizingly staring at his lackluster numbers and atrocious levels, bitterly noting that he would need to improve on them all.

The game was reflecting reality, and the reality was that Harry was in atrocious condition for his age.

The inventory was pretty amazing though. So far, he had put several things inside it for safe keeping.

Whatever little sum of cash that he had stolen from Uncle Vernon's pocket through the years now appeared on his status page as a number.

Curious about how the game would identify currency, he tried asking for Francs and to his utmost surprise, he pulled out a note from the French Currency.

Curious about the G, S, and K in his money stats, he asked for Gs and waited.

The minutes passed and nothing seemed to drop out of thin air. Shrugging at this, Harry marveled at this nifty little thing he had discovered.

Dozens of times he had heard Uncle Vernon moan about the atrocious conversion fees they had to pay every time they took a trip abroad, and while Harry didn't quite understand the economic implications of free cross-currency conversion, he knew that he had found free access to something that cost a fair amount of money. And that was enough to put a smile on his face.

A few hours later, having read and re-read every screen he could pull up in his Game, Harry laid down on his bed and as he often did to lull himself to sleep, started counting grains of wood on his roof.

By observing your surroundings you have created a skill!

By Observing a target one will get information about said object

Harry paused a second to read the box before closing it with a wave.

He'd gained a new skill, and it was clear that what he needed to do now was to figure out how in the world was he supposed to go about using it.

Observe… maybe it worked if he stared at something for a long time, Harry thought and proceeded to stare intently at the roof of his cupboard.

It took him five whole minutes of looking like an utter buffoon to decide that perhaps that wasn't the best way to go about it.

'It listened to my voice before,' Harry mused, 'Maybe it'll do it again.'

"Observe," he slowly whispered, having decided that the voice-thing made sense. Much to his pleasant surprise, a box popped open in front of him.

The Cupboard Under The Stairs

This is the room of Harry Potter, where the Dursleys keep him to make sure he doesn't spread his ? to them.

Harry's smile disappeared.

There it was again. That question mark. There sure seemed to be a lot of question marks in his life… things that he didn't know… things that even the Game didn't seem to want to reveal to him.

He wiped the box away with a frown.

What could he possibly have that made the Dursleys hate him? Some disease? Maybe he was haunted? Was it something related to his Gamer abilities? Something related to that magic cult thing Ms. Roemmele did? Even this new skill, 'Observe', refused to tell him what that reason was. It was almost as if it wanted him to find out himself.

Harry paused. Perhaps that was it.

He was the hero of his own Game and this was his quest. To discover who he was and where he belonged… to grow stronger… to find out who his parents were.

Maybe that was his mission. And just as the thought passed through his mind, something interesting happened.

Ping!

Quest Alert!

Find where you belong!

Reward :

Find out about all your abilities.

1000 Exp

Failure :

Death.

YES/NO?

Harry froze. It was almost as if a stone had stuck itself in his throat. In his young age, it took a minute for him to realize what it was.

Fear.

He was scared of dying. Especially now, when he was on the brink of knowing so much more about himself, the word 'death' at this moment scared him more than anything he had ever thought would scare him before.

And it was at that moment he realized another thing. He didn't want his life to end like this. He didn't want to die as Harry Potter, the boy that everyone hated and did just so-so in his class.

He wanted to be something more. Something beyond his pathetic beginnings.

Something great. And to achieve that, he needed to get over his fear, risk his life, and find out who he was.

A strange little phrase that Ms. Roemmele had read out in class a few weeks ago made his way to the front of his mind, sounding oddly appropriate at the moment.

Sic Parvis Magna.

Greatness from small beginnings.

And gulping down that stone in his throat, Harry took a deep breath and pressed yes.

The next morning was Sunday, and as soon as Harry woke up, he quickly started weeding the garden, intent on finishing up his chores as fast as possible and finding new ways of leveling up a few of his stats.

As he moved on towards the edge of the garden, engrossed in his thoughts as he was, he didn't notice as his hand brushed against a small smooth rock with some strange marks on it.

What he did notice very clearly, was when his eyesight started flashing red and a red box popped up showing his mana bar as it started falling rapidly.

Before he could even pull together the mental strength to formulate an actual thought, Harry promptly fell down to his knees and blacked out.

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