A Mistake Will be Made

The next time I woke up the hospital room was empty, I wondered how long I had been here catatonic. Again I popped open my stats screen and scrolled down, my ap and sp had not changed, I scrolled down further into my skills and had another moment of shock.

All of the skills had been unlocked at level 0, normally a skill doesn't show up in your options to place ap into until you roll the ability at least once, but in my case I had access to almost ten thousand abilities ranging from "A+ student" to "Zzzzz sweet dreams" with no levels in any of them. it appeared that the old man hadn't been lying, I had every skill. The first thing I did was grab two skills to help out chosing what I wanted to do, "Appraisal" at level 10/10, and "Lucky Dog" at level 1/1, the first skill is pretty standard, most people get at least one level in it at some point by something stupid like chosing vegetables at the super market or trying to size someone up, the second skill was rarer, I only knew about it because a friend of mine had gotten it after spending almost $1000usd on a gacha game in high-school, it simply allowed someone who has the skill to put stat points in luck, weather by rolling them or choosing them with SP, and as a fringe bonus allowed you to view you and others luck Stat with the appraisal skill.

Satisfied with my skill choices for now I swapped back to the stats and looked at my luck. "what the fuuuuuu..." I trailed off, my luck Stat was at -1, not even 0, -1, if this didn't explain all the trouble with my system then nothing would. I grimaced.

I quickly read over appraisal's synopsis of the Stat titled LUC: "improves the chance of a favorable result in all unquantifiable variables, variables within the system receive a larger bonus to this Stat. (continued Appraisal LV3) all luck based factors with unknown variables are affected by this skill, however variables that are known are not affected, EX, in a soccer (football) game if you bet on the less skilled team the team with more skill still has a chance to win in spite of all random variables (wind, the ball bouncing, divots in the grass, weather, and more) being slanted against them, any variable known as fact will be less impacted based on the amount of people who know the fact and how certain they are of the fact. (continued Appraisal LV7) each point generally grants a %.5 chance for a favorable roll up to a soft cap of %50 where this ratio becomes less with each point invested to a max of %98 at 320 points invested, this ratio changes based on the type of luck required, known variables, and the initial chance of success. (Continued Appraisal LV10) Any time luck is used within the system the bonus is doubled (fall off is also doubled) to a max of %150 at 320 points, granting a %100 chance for the most favorable roll and a %50 chance of bonus special rolls."

"Hmm" I thought to myself, at least I was sure that Appraisal level 10 had been a stellar investment! I had to hit level 7 to get numerical values for the luck which was massively helpful, and level 10 had even shown me a hidden part of the skill! I couldn't wait to try appraisal out on a person and see what kind of info I could get, though I did realize that with my low int absorbing all of this information could be quite troublesome, I resolved to invest in int later.

A machine ticked to life near my bed, probably letting a nurse know that I was awake, I paid it no mind. I started to pour points into luck, doing the equivalent of pushing and holding down the button in my head. "let's use 100 points and hit the soft cap" I said to myself, "I definitely need those other points elsewhere" moments later the sedative that the machine delivered to me kicked in and I fell asleep.

I woke up again surrounded by family and feeling less pain then I ever thought possible. as soon as I woke up everybody started freaking out and a couple of doctors came running.

One of the nurses nearly fainted when she saw me with my eyes open, apparently I was taking so many sedatives that it should have been impossible for me to dream let alone wake up unless it was just before they applied the next dose, but here I was.

Closely following the nurse was a female doctor looking for all the world like the most stereotypical female doctor possible, she was even wearing glasses. The second she saw me Appraisal popped up a window with her stats and abilities... and more. The new Stat window given by max Appraisal included a pointless amount of information, below her Stat and skill lists were more things, her degree and medical school, personality type, even her measurements, and below that was her (I kid you not) entire biography, pages upon pages of pointlessly detailed information about her life thus far. I blushed, partly because of some of the... rated R... information appearing in her Appraisal window, and partially because of the way she was staring at me, it was intense to say the least. I tried to activate Appraisal to see if she was using a skill but all I got was "Please level subskill (active appraisal) and/or skill (emotional appraisal) for more information on what skills are in use and what those around you are feeling respectively.

I sighed inwardly, more ability points I needed to use, the system was cruel, I was already down 11 points and that amount would start to dwindle quickly if I had to keep grabbing arbitrarily specific skills.

I then had a thought, if I grabbed a couple hundred points in INT wouldn't I be able to deduce what skills people are using based on body language and other factors plus me knowing the full list of skills? that might work! I made a note to take a closer look at the INT and WIS stats later on.

by the time my train of thought finally reached the station the doctor had finished her battery of medical related skills, no doubt her "Diagnosis" "X ray vision" and "Appraisal (Medical)" skills had been used, along with a few skills with names I couldn't pronounce that sounded like complex medical devices. She shooed my family out of the room before leaning down near my face and whispering "what the **** did you do?" then straightened back up. "I have no idea how it happened but your neck is better aligned then it was last night, and the healing process seems to have sped up substantially because of it. additionally the bone shards in your neck appear to have..." she trailed off, "rebuilt themselves... you are going to be in a neck brace for at least a couple months while the bones knit but you won't need more then a month of physical therapy afterwards. I want to be clear, when I ran these same tests last night you had bone shards obstructing your spinal column, a misaligned neck that we couldn't fix because of it, and you were likely to never have movement below your neck again. Not to mention that your metabolism is working hard enough to consume a week's worth of sedatives in 6 hours. I don't know what you did or how but even with healing skills and millions of dollars of technology this is unprescedented." she exclaimed.

I thought to myself about the LUK Stat, everything made sense, I was lucky enough to have my body move the bone shards to where they needed to be, and lucky enough to have my metabolism kick into high gear to improve my healing but it wasn't like I suddenly hadn't broken my neck any more or my healing was going faster then would normally be possible with my body, the chance of each of those things happening were extremely low but not unheard of unless you consider them both happening at once. "This is only 100 points!" I thought to myself "this Stat is way better then I thought! I may even drop 50 more into it! it would be half my SP but this is worth it!"

I cleared my throat and spoke, sounding like a gravelly voiced old man after a week of not using my vocal chords "I think my system did something strange doctor" I coughed and was inwardly terrified of disturbing my neck, which didn't happen of course, my LUC wouldn't let it, but the doctor still gave me a disapproving look, "I don't think I should talk more."

I closed my eyes and the doctor approving of my choice not to exert myself spoke gently but confidently, "you seem to want to keep whatever is going on with you a secret, I am going to keep it confidential, I'll just tell your parents you seem to be improving but not to exhaust you too much and leave it at that" she turned around and walked out of the small hospital room with her shoes clicking the whole way.