A level playing field

[WELCOME TO LEVEL 2]

Before him was a screen showing all of his skills, he had 13 skill points to spend and struggled to restrain his excitement. It was similar to the feeling you got when you level up in the game, times ten.

The idea of improving your body, knowledge, and anything else with a click of a button almost had him recklessly spam his points into a random skill. Fortunately, he was able to restrain himself and actually contemplate what he needed to level up.

His skills were all relatively fine right now, however, when he thought about what was important in Fallout 3, there was a few things that were better than others. In the game ballistic weapons were separated into two groups, Small Guns and Big Guns. Obviously which one upgraded what depended on the size of the weapon you wished to use.

That wasn't the case here though, Guns was a singular skill encompassing every ballistic weapon available. He was tempted to start putting points into it as he didn't think he'd find many powerful Energy Weapons outside of the Brotherhood of Steel.

As of now he was proficient enough to use most Energy Weapons if it came down to it, so he didn't know if he wanted to start putting points into it or not... There were other important skills the he probably needed to level, most would consider lockpicking as useless, but in the game there were many, many things that could be opened with it.

He had no idea if that'd actually apply to real life as you could usually just shoot the locks off of containers and doors, barring some highly advanced ones like the Brotherhood was using for the bunker.

Speech was also important, but he reckoned he could get by with it being a low level for now... Though, he'd level it when he got the chance.

He sighed to himself and raised his Guns and Speech both to 35 before confirming it. As this was level 2 he'd be allowed to pick a Perk, you were allowed to pick these every other level, so the next would be level 4.

Due to this being level 2 there were only a few Perk available for him to pick.

[Confirmed Bachelor] : +10% damage to the same sex and unique dialogue options with certain characters. Afton grimaced slightly at this, it implied that he was homosexual and would be able to take advantage of people using his sexuality... It looked good at first as most enemies he'd encounter would be male, but the fear of the Perk affecting his sexuality made him reject it outright.

[Hunter] : In combat, you do 75% more critical damage against animals and mutated animals. He was able to pick this Pekr due to his survival skill being at 30 points. It looked good, but Afton could remember the fact that most dangerous creatures were considered Abominations, not Mutated creatures.

[Intense Training] : You can put a single point into any of your SPECIAL attributes. This, was an incredible Perk, one he was going to make use of at higher levels when there weren't more important Perks to pick.

[Lady Killer] : +10% damage to the opposite sex and unique dialogue options with certain characters. Heh, nice. Afton couldn't help but want this Perk, but rationally it'd do nothing but help his potential sexual encounters, something that wasn't all that important right now...

[Rapid Reload] : All of your weapon reloads are 25% faster than normal. This, was good. Being able to reload faster in the game was amazing, and he wondered how good it'd be in real life where every second counted. This'd be his Perk of choice if nothing else came up.

[Retention] : Skill magazines last for 3 real-time minutes. This was utter garbage, no point in even considering it. The skill boost you received from magazines was nice, but you'd usually only need it for things that were just out of your reach, no need to increase the duration.

[Swift Learner] : You gain an additional 10% whenever experience points are earned. Afton shook his head at this one, some people would find value in it, but Afton was more akin to a power gamer than anything else. Wasting a Perk point to level up faster was the height of waste in his opinion.

In the end, he decided to go with [Rapid Reload] as it'd likely be the best choice. It would be good now when he was relatively weak, and in the future when he's more powerful.

With that, he clicked confirm and time resumed. He almost tripped over himself as he was mid-stride walking towards Reggie to check on his injury.

"You drunk or something? Or did you get a little bite like Reggie here?" Tommy mocks after seeing Afton almost trip.

Afton shakes his head, "I'm a trained medic, show me the bite and I'll see if I can do anything about it." he says, surprising the rest of the group.

"Huh, only person who knows anything about medicine in Hannigan, and to be honest I don't trust anything the man says. You got any other tricks up your sleeves kid?" Tommy asks, not having thought Afton would be so talented.

Afton shakes his head and opens the backpack filled with the small number of supplies, taking out some some-what clean gauze and dousing it some high-purity alcohol. He cleaned Reggie's wound and packed the gauze on it before wrapping it up to prevent infection.

Reggie didn't react all that much to the stinging pain having Alcohol applied to a wound brought, and just nodding gratefully at Afton after he'd finished fixing him up. "Thanks Doc."

"Don't mention it, try not to get dirt in the wound and replace the bandages in a couple days, should be good as new." Afton instructs just like how he'd been taught.