Chapter 12

"That was not my idea."

There is a big grin across Maria's face while she looks at me.

"So you aren't trying to create your own little harem?"

"What? No… no… that was never my idea."

Nina is smiling at me, while Kat and Molly look at me with questioning gazes.

'Damn her.'

I have never even thought about it and now she comes here and makes the other girls wary about me wanting to have my own harem.

"HAHAHAHA… you should see the look on your face, I'm just joking with you all."

I can feel one of my eyes twitching, looks like I'm not going to get along well with her.

"Guess now I'm one of your angels..."

She winks again, the grin on her face somehow irritates me.

'Breathe in, breathe out, calm yourself down.'

"You should check the store and choose a weapon and skill."

"Kay boss."

I let Maria take over the computer so she can search for a skill suitable to her. Previously, I did take a look at magic skills, but at least within rank F there aren't many and the ones available don't have much combat potential. Magic skills are mostly for practical use such as a fire spark to start a campfire.

"Nina, did you level up?"

She checks her tablet and nods.

"Should Nina keep using points on agility?"

"Try putting two points on agility so that you have a total of ten."

When she reaches ten agility points, a pained expression appears on her face, it lasts for a couple of seconds.

"Are you okay?"

"Nina isn't sure what happened, Nina's bones hurt."

It must have to do with her agility, I felt changes in my body once I got ten points of vitality, besides the extra health.

'Is it some sort of threshold? Of course it is, I'm an idiot, how did I not see it before?'

"Move around and tell me if anything feels different."

Nina walks, stretches and jump around the room for a couple of minutes while the others look at her with curiosity.

"Nina feels light, lighter than before."

She explains how it became easier to move her body and how she probably can move faster than before due to her body becoming lighter. Considering the pain she felt before, I'd guess there was a change on the weight of her bone structure.

'Which makes me wonder, what changes could appear with each attribute?'

'Does intelligence affect your brain? And what about wisdom? I'm sure strength will apply to the muscles within the body.'

"You will have to get used to it before our next battle, how about you go and run around the village?"

Nina frowns, but nods in understanding.

"What about the remaining status point?"

"Right, set dexterity to ten as your next goal."

That should improve her aim and help her become a better archer.

Nina leaves the room, Maria is still looking for a skill and weapon, while Molly is preparing meat jerkies, which leaves Kat and me with nothing to do.

"Will you go hunting with us? I think you need to level up if you want to increase your chances of survival."

Kat remains silent, thinking for a little while.

"I will go with you, but I have no idea how to help in battle."

"Don't worry about it, just remain by Nina's side and keep any monster from getting too close to her, I only need a couple of seconds and run there to deal with them."

"If you say so."

An awkward silence between us lasts for a couple of minutes until Maria interrupts.

"Boss, did you see this?"

She is pointing at the screen, so I go there and take a look.

[How to survive in Nostalgia for Dummies]

[Rank: none]

[Description: Introduction to the basics of survival, knowledge and system mechanics within the world of Nostalgia.]

[Cost: 50 points]

'Wait, what?'

'Should we get this? Do I even have the points?'

I think the system is quite intuitive and we don't require instructions to learn how to make it work, the basics of survival may be interesting to learn, but it isn't really important, the thing that intrigues me is knowledge about this world, clearly knowing where I am is something that keeps bugging me.

Currently, I have 16 points, plus the loot from the previous battle, 9 bones and skins from the dogs, leaving me with a grand total of 52 points after exchanging them.

['How to survive in Nostalgia for Dummies' has been transferred to your inventory.]

I couldn't hold myself back, too many questions which need an answer. Only 2 points left, we really need to go hunting now.

"I'll read it while you choose your skill and weapon, have you found something good?"

"Magic skills are really limited at Rank F and I don't want to pick a weapon before choosing my skill."

"You will have to keep looking then, when Nina comes back we are going outside the village to hunt some monsters, are you coming with us?"

Maria doesn't even think about it and decides to come hunting with us, I suppose she wants to get stronger quickly, he previous confrontation with those creatures sure made an impact on her.

The book turned out to be a digital copy, it can only be read on the tablet, it's non-tradeable too so I won't be able to sell it later to recover my points. At least, it seems really helpful, description of ranks, status and skills for instance are useful to plan for the future.

There are ranks from F to S, with rank F being the lowest while rank S are items and skills of legend. Some skills and items are unique, meaning only one person in the world will be able to purchase them or get them from monster drops.

[Rank F: default]

[Rank E: Level 10]

[Rank D: Level 25]

[Rank C: Level 50]

[Rank B: Level 100]

[Rank A-S: Multiple conditions to unlock]

To unlock higher ranker skills, it's necessary to reach higher levels, now I have a goal, knowing that I can get better skills at level 10. We will need points to get skills for all the members of team, there is a lot of hunting to be done.

The explanation of each status is quite simple, even obvious for most of them.

[Strength: Improves physical power.]

[Agility: Improves physical movement.]

[Vitality: Improves physical resistance - adds health points.]

[Intelligence: Improves magical power – adds magic points.]

[Wisdom: Improves magical resistance – adds magic points.]

[Dexterity: Improves aim and control, reduces casting time.]

[Luck: Improves chances of receiving better loot and obtaining some quests.]

Every 10 stats points added there are bonuses for the chosen attribute, explaining the additional health for me and the speed improvement for Nina. It is recommended to keep a balance between your stats and skills, there is also a warning to not distribute points to a single attribute as it doesn't have long term benefits.

What surprised me the most is the skill system mechanics, there are no levels to skills, the skills evolve as you get proficiency and it adapts to the user style.

It's also important to keep in mind future skills, as there are requirements of certain skills to learn some higher ranked skills.

There are no classes or something like that, the skill tree is completely malleable by the player, as the book describe us, and you can choose to become a jack of all trades or focus on a single area.

The whole system depends on getting points to purchase new skills, with the exception of skill cards dropping from monsters, which have an extremely low chance of appearing, meaning I got lucky with mine.

There is a focus towards the team system, based on the information from the book, surviving by yourself is too difficult a task to be viable, you could do so at a higher level and only by going against lower-level enemies, monster at your own level tend to be two or three times stronger than a player at the same level.

By the way, the dogs we have been fighting are one of the weakest creatures within the world, as they have low status and are only hard to deal with when found in big numbers, even then, a high level player should be able to take a lot of them on his own.

We are currently located within the 'Initiation Forest', a place isolated from the rest of the world, no people live in here and its only purpose is to get players used to the system.

When Nina returns, I stop reading.

We decide it's a good idea to go hunting one last time before it gets too dark. I'm worried about the countdown, we need to get stronger soon.