Chapter 6 – Born for Carnage

There was only one way to find out. The quest panel appeared when he asked what he was supposed to do. Maybe there were other panels as well?

“Menu,” Zac said into the air, somewhat embarrassed, feeling like those LARP’ers he had once seen running around in the park. Nothing happened, and Zac felt he could almost hear the system snicker at him. Not discouraged, he continued to search for some other panels or menus.

“Status.”

This time it worked, and a new bar replaced the one with the quests.

The status screen did indeed look somewhat like what he expected, with levels and stats. There were a few points he did not really understand though. The first was the alignment. Did it need to be specified that it was humans on Earth that he was aligned with? Were there actually humans on other planets or in other dimensions?

He was surprised how much like a game the rest of the screen was. While there didn’t seem to be such a thing as HP or mana, stats did exist. He didn’t have any framework of what the numbers meant though, apart from higher obviously being better. Ironically he saw that his highest stat actually was luck, even though he felt very much out of luck.

Strength seemed pretty straightforward, while the other stats might mean different things. Dexterity likely had something to do with movement and reaction speeds. Endurance and vitality both meant survivability, though he wasn’t sure of the difference. He was pretty sure that his stats were higher than a normal human though, maybe from his level. He couldn’t explain his superhuman recuperation otherwise. While he still felt pretty banged up, he should be lying on a bed dying now with the wounds he’d sustained, not walking around.

Intelligence and wisdom should increase mental faculties. If the world actually had magic and wizards now, these stats would probably make them cast spells better. Finally, he had thirty free stats. A quick count showed that he had gained two points per level-up, if he had started at Level 1. He held off trying to allocate any points though, as he still had no idea what he was doing.