“Skeletal puppet levelled up skeletal puppet level 4”
Gar hadn’t expected that but it was good training he supposed. The skeleton fish just flopped about unable to do much it tried to do as it was commanded but a fish doesn’t really work on land. Out of curiosity he dropped it in a bucket of water and it sank right to the bottom and fell over. Gar tried to get it to move and it did try, really hard. All it managed to do was knock the bucket over. It seemed that a fishes skeleton couldn’t swim and the magic wasn’t going to help it any. Gar wasn’t too disappointed as he hadn’t known what to expect and didn’t plan on keeping the skeletal fish puppet anyway. With little effort he squeezed the connection to the fish and it broke the fishes head shattered. Gar had wondered if he could end and recreate skeletal puppets as training and he had his answer, no he couldn’t. It also seemed when he chose to end the puppet it didn’t cause the painful return off mana like when the puppet was killed. A quick activation of mana sight showed the skeleton was full of death mana and it wasn’t his kind of death mana it was the natural kind, he was curious if it could be used for something else even if he couldn’t use it for another skeletal puppet as the head was gone.
Gar sat back and dismissed it he would try another time he wasn’t going to start something new the day before he left. Instead he sat back and started to review his thoughts and feelings, he took it slow just reviewing himself making sure he wasn’t keeping anything bottled up. There was the fear and loneliness that had been there for a while there was the feeling of loss from losing B1 and B3 there was also a growing feeling of hope and excitement. He didn’t try to move past any of them or to resolve them he just let himself feel them and know they were there. His mind wondered all over the place and he lost track of time inside his own head. When he stopped and that’s what it was he hadn’t found an answer or an end he just decided it was time to stop so he did. When he stopped he decided to revive his full status sheet as he hadn’t done that in a while and there had been a lot of changes recently.
Race: Gargoyle
Name: Gar
Level: 4
Experience to next level: 73/338
Health: 209/209
Stamina: 188/ 188
Mana: 57/ 82
Constitution: 18 Endurance: 14
Strength: 16 Agility: 8
Dexterity: 6 Willpower: 11 (10)
Wisdom: 7 Intelligence: 8
Charisma: 3 Perception: 11
Luck: 5
Free attribute points: 3
Abilities
Racial
- Grotesque: The grotesque of a gargoyle is its strength, add monster parts to you to truly strike fear into others.
- Dark vision: As a creature of the dark born to stand guard on the night you have excellent vision in the dark.
Personal
- Mana sight: Able to see the mana flow in the world.
Skills
- Observe, level 5: Allows the user to see details of the world around them.
- Fire starting, level 5: learning the basics of getting fire going, makes the process easier.
- Inspect, level 4: Allows a closer inspection of many things to see more information about them, dependant on other skills and knowledge.
- Climb, level 9: Improves ones climbing ability’s reach for higher heights and you might even get there.
- Traps, level 5: Improves your skill with traps whether they be for prey or enemies.
- Basic spear, level 2: The skill of knowing which end of a spear is which, the pointy end goes in the other guy.
- Knot work, level 4: Knowing the difference between a clove hitch and a sheepshank, joining things with some rope.
- Swimming, level 1: Improves as you swim as you improve how you swim. An improvement to your swimming.
- Hauling, level 5: Can haul more, faster and easier as you level it up. Hauling to pull or drag with effort or force.
- Cooking, level 5: Learn the culinary arts become one of the greats, or not just have good food.
- Woodworking, level 6: How to use a bit of wood to do many things. Well some things for now.
- Carving, level 4: Slowly remove material until you bring out the thing you wanted.
- Felling, level 1: See that tree standing there, cut it down, well done now you are felling.
- Throwing, level 1: Use your body and your physical strength to propel an object through the air, throwing things.
- Butchery, level 4: The art of taking apart a corpse and breaking it down into useful parts.
- Mana Control, level 8: Mana that ephemeral base of magic, just make it do what you want.
- Sharpening, level 2: Change things from blunt to sharp.
- Sewing, level 2: With needle and thread anything can happen.
- Cartography, level 6: Draw maps.
- Death magic, level 5: The energy of death itself is yours to command.
- Bite, level 1: Attack with your mouth (or mandibles) they won’t expect that.
- Leather working, level 3: It’s been dried and tanned now what do you do with it, why not make something nice.
- Mining, level 1: Take what you can from the ground but no one said it would be easy.
- Armourer, level 4: They find it easier to not get hurt if there is something between them and enemies, preferably a wall but armour will do.
- Sneak, level 1: Be quiet and careful just don’t be seen.
Free skill points: 3
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Spell
- Skeletal puppet, level 4: Bind a skeleton to you and use it as you will, boosted. Reserves some willpower for the skeleton.
- Rot, level 3: Cause the target to break down and decompose.
Achievements
- Self-taught arcana: Through perseverance or dumb luck you have learnt your first spell with no outside help. For this feat your first spell shall be improved.
It was a lot to look over as Gar took his time to take it all in. He was happy with his improvement and his increases. There where however some things on his status he wasn’t so happy about, such as the skills that where still at level one. Some made sense such as sneak which was relatively new or felling which would be pointless as he still had large amounts of the first massive tree he cut down unused. It was others such as swimming or throwing being level 1 that irked him they both could be useful skills and he’d had them for a while. He had learnt how easy it was to improve a level 1 skill it would have taken minimum effort to raise those skills at least up to level 2. It was then that Gar realized he needed to do some proper skill grinding he promised himself that when he got out of the hole he was in and found civilization he would grind all of his skills up to at least level 5 that seemed to be a good benchmark for when skill levels went from relatively easy to actually requiring being worked on.
The other thing he decided while looking over his status was that it was time to use his free points for attributes and skills. He planned to try and get past the zombies and death dogs while hoping to avoid the norkers and ogre slugs before attempting a five hundred meter climb he could not afford to leave any possible advantage on the table he was going to go all out it had to succeed.
First were the attribute points he would have liked to put them in the more mental stats like wisdom or intelligence as he felt they were lagging behind, they also seemed to be relevant to mana and magic which was what really fascinated him. Thinking about what he had to do he couldn’t really see how the mental stats could help what he needed were the more physical stats. Looking over the physical stats constitution was his highest stat and he had plenty of strength for the climb. As for the others he eventually put one point into endurance to give him more stamina for the long climb. One point into agility in the hopes of letting him move and climb better and the final point went into luck because he was going to need all the luck he could get to survive and get out of the hole.
Next was the skill points, he had a long list of skills that he could put them into many of which would be useful. There was however one that he was worried about not being high enough. For while he was worried about the norkers and the ogre slugs waiting for him what scared him more about his escape was the climb. It was a very long way straight up with only his makeshift safety equipment. With that in mind he placed the first point into Climb.
“Climb levelled up climb level 10”
He had half expected some sort of celebration or achievement for getting his first skill to level 10 it seemed like a big moment to Gar although the system seemed to disagree. So after a brief pause as he read the level up message Gar added the second point to climb only to not receive the message he expected.
“Climb has advanced from skill rank armature to skill rank novice, climb level 10 is now climb (N) level 1”
Gar read the message twice then pulled up his skill listing for his climb skill.
- Climb (N) level 1, no longer an amateur reach for new heights as your skills continue to improve, better at climbing.
Gar took some time to take it all in, it seemed that level 10 was significant after all it was the last level before the skill went through some kind of rank up that was good what wasn’t so encouraging was that he had only gone from amateur to novice. He wondered if it was the same for all his skills or did they advance at different levels or maybe not at all. It seemed skills were different rank could he earn skills already at higher rank or perhaps some of his skills where higher rank. The new revelation brought up a whole load of new questions and Gar had answers to none of them. Getting frustrated over his lack of information Gar just stopped thinking about it and returned to what he had been doing. He put his final skill point into Climb (N)
“Climb (N) levelled up climb (N) level 2”
This made Gar feel better as while it was a small thing he felt better about not relying on a level 1 skill for his survival even if it was ranked up. With that done he couldn’t help his mind wondering back to all the questions he had about the system and how it worked. It wasn’t that long before Gar thoroughly frustrated with his lack of information went to bed.