Chapter 5

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  I woke up to a mouthful of sand.

  I’ve really got to stop doing that.

  Sitting up, which was a fairly awkward process with my limbs currently unresponsive, I tried to spit out the grit in my mouth. Finding little success in the endeavour, I continued to maneuver my arms in front of me. I must have flopped about for at least a minute or two before I finally managed to find the right position, but eventually I got the job done.

  I felt all sorts of weird, like a dishrag wrung out and hung to dry. Everything tingled, and my brain kept sending little spurts of lighting bouncing around my skull. My eyes swam for a minute, and I just about upchucked but managed to hold everything in.

  Ok, what gives? I thought getting “evaluated” would be a simple scan. Why did it knock me out?

  I forcibly moved my dull fingers across the bottom part of my vision, dragging the shrunken notifications back into full view. Oh boy, lookie lookie. More colors.

  The first one to pop up was that same deep red, only now it carried a hint of gold around the borders.

  Uh… not cool. Not cool at all! I NEVER gave permission to change my race! I was perfectly fine being a good old fashioned human from the green planet of my birth, thank you very much.

  After a long sigh that didn’t really make me feel better, I proceeded to stand and shake the loose sand off my clothes...again. I needed a bath.

  Like, more than usual. There was this faint layer of filth covering my entire body, and it did not smell like roses. And unless I was extremely delirious (not impossible), I had just lost about 30 pounds of fat and gained half that in muscle.

  Right. Sure. No problem there.

  I found my makeshift pack where it had dropped, then plopped down on the edge of a dune, while being very careful not to touch any other weapons or items in the area. Time to read up and figure out what was going on.

  I shifted through the notifications and text boxes, organizing them by color first, then number second. Once they were somewhat properly placed, I returned to the screen showing, well, me.

  A picture of what I looked like loomed before my eyes. Seriously, it was like peering at a full body mirror. I could even spin my avatar around in circles, and it would show the full 360 scan. To the right of my image was a small section of details, and I began inspecting them thoroughly.

  A flash of gold filled my screen, and a bit of lightning ran up and down my body. Thankfully, this was a pleasant kind of shock; one that invigorated and relaxed rather than causing any damage. In front, I could see a flashing “Level Up” message.

  Below these interesting tidbits, three other words glowed with a softly repeating pattern. Attributes, Skills, Weapon Upgrades. Alright, let’s see the damage. How badly did I fare in the assessment? Attributes first.

  Each attribute could be further expanded for a few extra details, which I naturally did.

  Five attributes. Alright, fair enough. I’d played plenty of RPGs, so I thought I could get a hint of where this was going. Oh wait, there was more.

  After that wall of text flashed by me, I began to regret my sudden optimism. With a decent amount to digest, I closed the leveling screen.

  Then quickly reopened it to place my available stat point into Expertise. I mean, come on, it was painfully obvious I was going to need all the accuracy I could get. I watched carefully to see what would change. To my excitement, both Expertise and Critical Chance showed improvement, though only by a little.

  Nice. Now I had a baseline for secondary attributes.

  Next up… Skills!