I awoke in a comfy bed. The air around me smelled sanitised. There were white curtains surrounding my bed. I could hear distant voices discussing something inconsequential. Next to me there was a desk with a paper message telling me to press the rune next to it when I woke up.
I pressed the button-sized rune and a buzzing sound occurred. Within a few moments, a cheerful woman passed through the curtains. “Awake, are we?” she asked.
“Where am I?” I looked at my HP, and it was full, as was my MP.
“You’re at my clinic. I’m a healer. A blond boy brought you here for me to heal. I used my magic to mend your injuries.”
I touched my body all over and saw no signs of the fight I had. “You can use magic to heal people? Amazing. Can you cure other things with it too? Like chronic back pain?” Wait, why was I asking that? I hadn’t had back pain since coming to this world.
“No, silly. Healing magic, and healing potions for that matter, only heal stuff that a body already has the capacity to mend. For example, if you break an arm, we can put it into a splint and heal it quite fast with magic. But, if you cut off your arm, we can’t heal that.”
I bit into my forearm and drew blood. I held up my bleeding bitemark to the woman. “Can you heal this?”
Her cheer seemed to disappear. With a frown she asked, “Why did you do that?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Curiosity.”
“I don’t heal minor injuries like that. Go and buy a lesser minor healing potion from the market if you want it fixed.”
“But I’m flat broke. Wait, do I have to pay for you healing me?”
The healer struggled to fake a smile. “Yes, you must pay for your treatment, but thankfully your friend already paid in advance. Though, he has mistakenly left me too much money.”
Did they not have the convention of tipping here? I should explain to her that Loftus left her that money as a gift. He was showing respect and appreciation for her work by overpaying. It was my duty to explain what the tipping system of our world meant. “He left that money for me, actually. Hand it over.” Why should I have explained it? Tipping was stupid anyway, and I needed the money more. I had not a penny to my name.
The healer ruffled through the pouch of money she was given. “Are you sure? He left a note in here that says he put in some extra money for the pretty lady.”
“You think you’re the pretty lady he’s talking about? How egotistical. He actually calls me the pretty lady as a nickname. It’s an inside joke.”
“But on this piece of paper he drew a cute little doodle depicting me. He also drew an arrow from the word pretty lady to the drawing of me.”
“Just give me the damn money, pretty lady. Stop being so selfish!”
I left the clinic with 50 GP. Only 999,500 GP to go before I paid off my debt. Or was it 999,995? I wondered where Loftus got so much money that he could just throw it around. He was willing to scam an old lady, so he probably tricked that noble kid into giving him some too. Thinking about that girl made me depressed.
What was I going to do? For the first time in my life, I had a genuine desire to kill someone. I planned it all out in my head. I’d kill Loftus, then the others, then all the slavers, then… I’d never get away with it. They caught me so fast the last time I committed a crime.
My goal to change this world for the better was entirely unfeasible. I couldn’t change the minds of an entire nation. Like the professor said, it would take centuries to do that. And I couldn’t make any progress doing grassroots criminal activities.
I had read a lot about monsters in the library, but I couldn’t separate fact from propaganda. It was decided. I had to go and see for myself. Tomorrow I would leave and possibly never come back.
I entered the huge home building assigned to us Earthlings. There were around 50 or so people chilling in the hall. The sun had set and everyone was eager to talk about their days with each other. I saw Loftus sat with a large group of people. They had pushed multiple tables together to make room for everyone to sit.
He beckoned me over by curling his wrist.
Was I supposed to go back to playing nice with him? I walked over and sat by his side.
“We’re having the nightly meeting.” Loftus had no bitterness towards me. It was as if he had completely forgotten about our battle, hours earlier. He certainly wasn’t one to hold a grudge. On the other hand, I was.
I hated Loftus. I despised him with every fibre of my being. He could probably tell that I did by the look on my face. I was glaring at him.
“What is it? Do I have something on my face?”
He couldn’t tell at all! I was scowling at him. I looked like a feral animal, seconds away from biting him, and he had no clue. I decided to stop wasting energy on displaying my animosity. It clearly was going to waste.
“Aargh! No, please no!” A tormented cry came from one of the others sat at the table. I didn’t recognise him. He wasn’t part of Hyde’s squad like me and Loftus.
“What’s wrong?” Loftus asked.
The wailing boy hit his head into the table. “I have to be the unluckiest person here.” The boy had his level up game in front of him. He had been playing it at the table. It looked far too alien for me to try and understand what it was. “I just got one of the worst Titles,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
He showed me his System.
[Assassin]
[Convert half your strength into speed and stealthiness. (Body)]
“That doesn’t seem so bad,” I said. Maybe I could hire him to assassinate Loftus for me.
“Not so bad? Take a look at my status page and see if you feel the same.”
[Name: Cowes] [Age: 22] [Level: 10]
[HP: 55] [MP: 190] [XP: 3021]
[Body: 1] [Mind: 3] [Soul: 8]
[Titles: Hero, Friend of Cockroaches, Dung Sniffer, Assassin] [Skills: Violent Mastication]
Everyone around looked at his status page in disbelief.
“Because of my new Assassin title, my HP has been cut in half. A strong breeze could kill me.”
No one was looking at his HP. The other stuff on his status page was far more intriguing. “You picked a Title called Dung Sniffer?”
“Picked?” he screamed. “I haven’t picked a single thing. To use my points from levelling, I have to play the Stardew Valley fishing minigame! The rewards I get are completely random.” He dunked his head into his folded arms. “Why am I so unlucky.” He began weeping.
“Wait, wait. Before you start crying, at least click on your titles so I can read them,” I pleaded.
He refused to listen to me. I pried away one of his hands and tried to use it to press the Dung Sniffer title. It didn’t work.
Loftus pulled my arm away. “You can’t force someone to use their own System, Yarm. It doesn’t work.”
I yanked my arm free. “Stop touching me, creep.”
“Ah, sorry. You must still be in pain from your injuries.” He smiled at me.
I wanted to hit him so badly.
One of the people looking at Cowes’ status said, “He has way more Stats, Skills, and Titles than he should at level 10. Maybe the randomness gives him more stuff to compensate for the lack of choice.”
Someone busted opened the main doors to the building and entered. It was a girl carrying a load of papers. She wore glasses with square frames, and her hair was in two thick braids. She walked over and dropped the papers onto the table. “Pass them around,” she said.
“You finally done, Blyth?” a girl at the table asked.
“I would’ve been faster if anyone helped.” Blyth sat down and everyone turned their attention to her.
“Is she the head honcho or something?” I whispered to Loftus.
“No, but she’s been working on something really important.”
One of the papers got passed to me. It was filled with gibberish. It was just a bunch of numbers and letters. “Can I get an English one please?” The whole table gave me death stares. “Never mind. This one will do.” I hid behind the paper.
Blyth started, “The formula at the top is for calculating the XP thresholds for levelling up. I figured it out from all the data we shared yesterday. First off, we start at level 0 and the XP requirement for level 1 is 100 XP. The XP requirement for level 2 is 200 XP. It would be nice if that linear relationship went on but to attain level 6 the XP requirement is 1200. From there on, the XP requirement increases in 200 point intervals. At level 11 it changes again to 4400.”
I nodded my head. “Yes, yes. Of course. This is well known.”
“In other words, every five levels the interval doubles and the jump in XP threshold doubles too. The sequence we know goes like this: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 1200, 1400, 1600, 1800, 2000, 4400, 4800, 5200, 5600. So far, we have no one in our nightly meetings that is above level 14. Thankfully, this was all we needed to figure out the rest.”
“Wait, but I’ve definitely seen people above level 14 amongst us Earthlings,” I said. “You didn’t want to ask them?”
Blyth pushed up her glasses. “Some people aren’t fond of cooperating. They’d rather go off on their own.” I couldn’t see the girl’s eyes, but her spectacles were directed at me.
“How selfish of them,” I said.
“Yes, how selfish of them to not only leave the main party but also cause trouble for the rest of us when doing so.”
“Yeah, totally uncool.”
“They do not listen to others, they commit crimes, and they seem to have great difficulty understanding social cues.”
“They sound like they need to get their acts together.”
“I’m talking about YOU, stupid!” Her fist slammed onto the table and caused a few papers to fly off.
“Oh, my bad.” I looked at the sheet I was handed. At the top it read:
X=100×L×2^(ceil(L/5)-1)
Blyth explained, “L is level and X is XP. Simply replace L with the level that you want to know the XP threshold for and bang. Bob’s your uncle. For example, if you slot 17 into the formula, you find out that you need 13,600 XP to attain level 17.”
Why was she making this sound so simple? I could easily change the L into 17 but I had no idea what to do beyond that. I raised my hand. “I know I’m not the only one confused, right?”
Everyone looked at me like I was an idiot again.
Loftus sighed. “C’mon, Yarm. Surely, you know how to do a basic equation. Didn’t you go to school?”
“I went like thirty years ago. Give me a break.”
He groaned. “I’ll explain it to you after.”
For as much as I hated Loftus, I couldn’t deny he was helpful. I’d consider being friends with him if he wasn’t a sociopath.
Blyth tapped on the table. “Next up is the formulas for our stats. We know that Body, Mind, and Soul affect a lot of things, but we can only see a quantifiable effect from Body and Soul. Body increases HP while Soul increases MP.”
I wondered, was there a need to know all of this? And wouldn’t the people of this world know more about it? They had Systems too, right? They should have had it all figured out.
“The relationship of these two stats with their dependants is much simpler. At Body level 1 your HP is 110. At two it’s 130. At three it’s 160. Simply multiply your body level by 10 and add it to your HP. For Soul you multiply by five.”
I read the two other formulae on my sheet of paper.
H=B×((B+1)/2)×10+100
M=S×((S+1)/2)×5+10
How were these meant to be much simpler?
“H stands for HP, B for Body, M for MP, S for Soul. Easy enough. What do you think, everyone? I’m a genius, aren’t I?” said Blyth.
“Damn straight you are,” someone shouted.
“These are going to be so useful. Thanks a bunch, Blyth!”
“I really wish they had calculators in this world, but thankfully these equations aren’t too hard to work out.”
Not too hard? I pushed my head into my arms and started weeping like the Dung Sniffer.
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