Alex was looking over his character sheet, trying to decide what he should do with his unused stat points.
First of all, though, he added sufficient stats to lift everything to at least 15.
So, that left him with… a lot more points, assuming he kept his current allocation.
Then, he realized something. He was in an apocalypse situation.
He added two more points to mental fortitude. He would not allow himself to go crazy under the stress of his world ending around him.
Then, he considered.
Mental Agility stood out to him.
From the System's description it seemed like mental agility included perception and noticing things of importance around himself in addition to seemingly being heavily involved in quick reactions.
With high physical agility, he could move quickly along pre-decided patterns, but it was mental agility that would allow him to react more quickly in the moment.
That made the choice easy.
He raised both agilities up to 25, and that left him with three points to allocate.
With this spread—if he understood correctly—he now had a better foundation in every area than any person back on earth had ever had as a maximum.
That was wonderful, but with this much power available, he had to believe that the enemies would ramp up in difficulty rather quickly as well.
He split his remaining points into Physical Power, and Physical Fortitude, giving two points to the first and one to the second.
With the bump to his mental fortitude, that stat would match his physical fortitude, which seemed like a wise thing to do.
“No sense in being alive if I go insane,” he reiterated.
He confirmed his choice.
Level Up:
Alex Johnson
Life-Aspected Human (Rare), F, Level 2
Class: NA
HP: 320 → 340
SP: 290 → 340
Physical Stats:
Power: 13 → 17
Agility: 13 → 25
Fortitude: 16 →17
Mental Stats:
Power: 14 → 15
Agility: 15 → 25
Fortitude: 13 → 17
Magical Stats:
NA - Mana Currently Locked
Unused Points: 32 → 0
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
Brace for alteration.
“Wait… Brace for Alteration?”
Then, the pain smacked him upside the head… from the inside.
Alex thought that he screamed at the pain, but he definitely curled into a ball as his body and mind shifted and changed.
Still, it only seemed to take about a minute for all the stat changes to be enacted upon him.
Notice:
Trauma Is Training, Right?
Stats Trained:
Physical Stats:
Fortitude: 17 → 18
Your Physical Fortitude has been trained. You cannot increase this trait through training again, until after you have fully recovered.
Mental Stats:
Fortitude: 17 → 18
Your Mental Fortitude has been trained. You cannot increase this trait through training again, until after you have fully recovered.
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
It is generally considered unwise to increase any trait by more than 10%—or 5 points, whichever is greater—at a given time.
Stat increases can be spread out over multiple sessions as desired.
Alex groaned, grousing a bit at that, but hey, free stat points.
That was good… right?
Still, he only had a moment’s peace before another popup filled his vision.
Hidden Quest [Stat Training]: Complete
You have trained your first stat!
You’re learning more about the System every day.
Reward:
Experience doubled for training two stats simultaneously to complete this quest.
Safe area detected. Experience granted.
He braced for a moment, almost expecting another level up, but that would be silly. There was no way they’d ever come this easily again.
He had a long road to walk, yet.
He looked down at himself, and he noticed that he definitely looked a bit more filled out. He still had some signs of the starved, gaunt look of having recovered from a ravaging disease, but with his new lean strength, he moreresembled an athlete trying to look their best rather than the survivor of a famine.
His clothes didn’t fit at all, and he was starving.
He’d had a bit of a dad-bod beginning to form in the real world, and he hadn’t even had kids, but that was gone now. It made him wonder how much of this change would have happened without him being plague-ridden first.
He was about to ask, ‘What next?’ but then a door opened before him.
It hadn’t been there a moment previously, and it looked exactly like the door at the end of the hallway with the zombie in it.
Beyond the open door was a large meeting room, in which time was obviously stopped… though, he couldn’t have pointed out exactly what made him believe that. The observation was his mental agility at work, he supposed.
“Is that where I was intended to go right after the hallway?”
That made sense, as he’d only been drawn back into the void because he’d been about to zombify.
He regarded the room for a long moment before nodding, feeling resolved.
He had picked zombies because he wanted to help people, and now, after his levelups, he would be much better able to do just that.
Stolen story; please report.
“Well, I guess that’s where I’ll meet the ‘others.’”
He quickly checked, and his dadao was still in his hand. A quiet self-inspection revealed a sheath on his back.
When did that get there?
Regardless, he took off the sheath, and reslung it so that it would hold his weapon with the handle pointing down for easy gripping and drawing of the weapon.
The clasp on the sheath would prevent the sword from falling free when he didn’t want it to.
He twisted and stretched briefly—following the new, instinctive knowledge granted by his skill—feeling a bit of irritation with some of his lack of flexibility, but otherwise, he was good to go.
He would fix his stiffness as soon as he had the time.
As he drew closer, he saw there were quite a few other doors into the room, all open, all seemingly letting into dead end hallways that all looked to be empty.
Without hesitating further, he strode through the door.
The Watcher sighed as a Superior entered her command and control room.
She had many names, and she had completely forgotten the false one that she’d given Alex as soon as she’d said it.
She also found his calling her ‘cheesecake lady’ entertaining—even if she didn’t understand it—but all of that was beside the point.
“What do you think you are doing?”
The Watcher shrugged. “Overseeing a section of the Apology Tutorial.”
“I was pinged that you have a Rare race under your view. Earth didn’t have anyone with a Rare race.”
“That is correct. It was the result of a Watcher-granted reward which awakened a semi-dormant aspect.”
The Superior grumbled a bit at that, but while it was unusual, it was still within the Watcher’s authority to grant such. “Fine. I also got a notification of someone reaching level 2 due to their Hallway trial. Don’t tell me that was another Watcher-granted reward?”
“No, that was the same person. It actually was a result of the situation the Watcher granted reward was meant to mitigate.”
The Superior’s eye twitched. “What did you do?”
The Watcher explained what had happened first in brief, then in detail at the Superior’s insistence. Per policy, the specifics of Alex’s character sheet were confidential. Even the Watcher only knew the highlights, and the System bound her to secrecy in that regard.
Even without those details, the Superior clearly got less and less enthused as the situation was fully laid out.
Finally, the Superior sighed and cut the Watcher off in her third detailed recounting. “Fine, fine. You did nothing wrong.” The Superior growled, and the Watcher waited patiently. “Just increase the difficulty of his Apology Tutorial as high as the System will allow in order to compensate for this… unfortunate happening.”
“That will increase the rewards, and thus the costs if he succeeds.” The Watcher wanted to be sure her objection was noted, just in case. She had carefully crafted the scenario that Alex and the others were about to enter, and it was going to be thrown to the wind with these forced changes.
The Superior waved off her concern. “That’s why we’re increasing the difficulty. He shouldn’t succeed.”
The Watcher sighed. “What of those who choose to team up with him, if any do?”
“That’s on them.”
“And the others who are to enter the same Constructed World?”
“Overall survival of each initiation’s Apology Tutorial is generally less than ten percent. The System won’t care if a single one of the sub-batches dies off in its entirety.”
“Are we still aiming for fifty percent survival for each tier of the Tutorial?” That was the standard. Four tiered stages, each with an aimed-for fifty percent survival rate; though it never hit the mark perfectly.
“We were, but lowering that will only bring down costs. I want his scenario-unit to fail, but the System won’t allow it to be an impossible task… He chose zombies?”
“He did.”
“Give the undead horde leaders and Plague variants. That should sort things out.”
“Once again, that will increase the chance for quicker gains and higher rewards.”
The Supervisor gave her a long look then nodded. “Understood. Get it done.”
“As you command.” The Watcher turned back to her controls and sighed.
Sorry, Alex. I hope that you find a way to survive despite this change.
As Alex passed through the doorway into the large meeting room, there were suddenly people coming out of almost every other door.
They seemed to be a mix of ethnicities, ages, heights, and—if their attire was any indication—backgrounds. Though, they all seemed to be at least in their late teens ranging up to middle aged, so that was good.
No need to worry about kids, then.
There was a young man with haunted, slightly twitchy eyes coming into the room through the door directly across from Alex.
He had racially ambiguous features, seeming to have the most classically appealing aspects from many different parts of humanity, and his hair looked to have been carefully styled at one point. Though, it was now a bit of a mess, likely from his own scuffle in his own hallway with his own zombie.
The young man’s eyes widened with obvious fear as he seemed to catch the motion from all those suddenly around him, and his hand blurred.
Alex had enough mental agility to know that a knife had been thrown at him with purely human strength.
He reacted before he truly realized what was happening, shifting to the side and catching the knife from the air with his off-hand.
Huh, so that’s the benefit of 25 in both Mental and Physical Agility.
There was a moment of stunned silence as everyone turned to orient on the two of them.
In that momentary pause, a System pane popped up.
Notice:
You have caught a weapon thrown at you with lethal intent.
Reward:
You get to live!
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
Apology Tutorial, Skill Acquisition detected
Reward:
Skill Acquired: Intercept Projectiles (Common)
Apology Tutorial Note:
Apology Tutorial Skill Acquisition has reduced the requirements for acquiring this skill.
Intercept Projectiles (Common)
Throwing things to hurt your opponent is among the oldest tactics known in myriad universes. Trying to catch them is an only slightly more recent development. Not everyone is successful, but you will be… more often than most.
Physical and Mental Agility have a marginally greater effect when you are attempting to catch an incoming physical projectile.
Physical Fortitude has a marginally greater effect in resisting damage to the catching hand.
“Stop!” An older looking woman across the room shouted, raising her hands. “We have no need to fight.” She struck Alex as looking Russian, but that might have been because of the slight Russian accent.
Regardless, her words caused him to look around and see all the eyes on him.
It was only then that Alex realized that he’d loosened his dadao, his right hand clasped on the hilt. Thankfully, he hadn’t drawn it, not yet.
The young man paled, stammering. “I… I…” He swallowed. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t see anyone there, then you all appeared, and after that zombie… I panicked.”
He looked down, clearly expressing shame and remorse. Alex smiled, then turned to look toward the older woman. “I agree, we don’t need to fight.”
He re-tightened his scabbard on the dadao. That done, he began absentmindedly tossing the throwing knife up and catching it as he considered.
Then, he realized how sharp the knife he was tossing actually was. What am I doing?
As if in sequence with his thoughts, he caught the blade instead of the handle, cutting himself quite badly.
Alex grimaced, seeing his health bar tick down.
He grimaced further when he got the System message.
Apology Tutorial Notice:
You have cured Plague - Zombification, level ?? x [0/180]
You have done so using your innate Attributes alone.
Reward not applicable as the plague had not infected anything before it was cured.
Apology Tutorial Addendum:
At least you know not to touch that again… Right?
The cuts on his hand sealed up over the next seconds, Alex’s health ticking up as he took the two steps to reach the table in the center of the room. “Do you have the means to clean that blade?”
The boy swallowed and nodded. “Yes.”
“Then do so.” Alex looked down at the weapon and saw his own blood on it, along with necrotic, congealed blood from what was likely the boy’s zombie.
Oh... that's gross…
He sighed and leaned across the table, holding out the handle toward the boy.
The young man quickly came forward and took the proffered weapon. “I’m sorry…”
Alex met the boy’s gaze firmly and without reproach, “What’s your name? I’m Alex.”
“James.”
“Good to meet you, James.”
Suddenly, everyone else’s eyes unfocused, each seeming to see what he could not.
What…? OH! Initiation. This is the first moment they’ve had that’s safe.
They’d likely been allocated the level up earlier, and only now that they were safe, they would receive their experience—for those who killed their zombie—and they could allocate their stat points by accepting the level up.
“Wait!” He held up his hands.
Everyone paused, several people already had their mouths open to say ‘Accept.’
They turned to look at him, eyes focusing on his face.
He knew he only had a moment or two. “You’re about to initialize. You’ll get some stat points to allocate. I have some information about that that I’m willing to share once you get to that point.”
A man with a pinched face grimaced. “Why should we listen to you?”
Alex shrugged. “You don’t have to. I just wanted to let you know. That way if you want the info, you can get it from me before you make your choices.”
That seemed to satisfy most of them, and there was a chorus of ‘Accept’s.
A moment later, fifteen sets of eyes were focused back on him once more.
Fifteen people… There were twenty doors.
Had five died already?
Yeah, that seems very possible. He sighed. It was hardly the time to focus on that, though.
He quickly summarized how to ask the System for a description of the stats. That, alone, built a lot of credibility with the others.
Then, he explained about the recommendation for slowly increasing stats, but he didn’t say that he’d had enough free-point to go beyond that. None of them likely would.
He also explained that stats could be trained, and the first time that they did so, they’d get experience. That experience would be increased if they managed to train more than one stat at a time.
There were thoughtful gazes from around the table, but everyone seemed grateful for the information.
Eventually, everyone was finished leveling up and allocating their stat points.
Once that was done, everyone looked… about the same.
A few were a bit leaner, some seemed to have bulked up just a bit with muscle, but it was a lot less pronounced than Alex might have expected.
Muscles are probably more efficient than they were before.
He was about to open his mouth to say something—about to fall back into his role as a facilitator—when a System message appeared, seemingly in front of each of them.
Relief washed over Alex. Oh thank you, System.