Mid afternoon on a warm sunny day in a big city a man with worn jeans and tattered shoes sat at the corner of a shop-front. He wore an oversized thin hoodie that seemed less than functional. He pushed the sleeves lazily up to his elbows continuously as they repeatedly fell back down. His long mouse brown hair hung just beneath his eye-line which held a striking pair of deep blue eyes. His average features and pale skin seemed rather plain.
The city go-ers bustling about paid him little attention as he rummaged through his pockets and pulled out his phone. He pressed the lock button to check the time but,
"What the..?"
The phones screen was completely glitched out. No matter what he pressed the screen stayed broken until finally it went black.
The crowd in the nearby plaza got louder and confusion broke out.
"Is the battery dead?"
"Yours too? What's going on?"
"Even my laptops doing it!"
Then, a sudden wave swept through the crowd. When the wave hit, some people passed out, and others doubled over. An extreme feeling of nausea hit and the man in the hoodie struggled to stand as his vision blurred. The wave finally passed and his vision began to clear. That was when something even more bizarre began to happen.
Lines of translucent blue text started floating in front of him.
[evaluating status..... complete]
[collecting records..... complete]
[applying beginer compensation..... error]
[tier 1 skill within parameters of beginner skill compensation detected. Lv: 8 --> 10]
[bypassing evolution material requirements, commencing skill evolution..... complete]
[record evaluation complete]
[status available]
After reading the text something resembling a menu window from a videogame appeared before him. He gazed at it in astonishment, confusion, and contemplation. He couldn't tell for sure what was considered average but he was certain that a few of his stats were above normal.
__________
Name: Fern Aferdakt
Age: 27
Level: 1
Class: none
Hp: 70/70
Mp: 80/80
Stamina: 100/100
vit: 7
edn: 10
str: 12
spd: 6
dex: 13
def: 10
int: 8
wis: 42
Skills:
Wisdom (tier 2)(passive)(lv: 0):
+10% comprehension speed.
You can somewhat understand all concepts within your league.
__________
The most eye-catching part was obviously the wisdom.
But before he could further examine the strange phenomenon that had just happened to him, a piercing scream rang out in the plaza. Looking up he saw swirling shadows start to come out of seemingly thin air all around. The shadows solidified into something that resembled humans only with gray colored skin and pure white eyes.
Confusion broke out and one unlucky person who happened to be to close to one of the things was grabbed by the neck. The gray figure then lifted the man into the air as if he weighed nothing then slowly started twisting the man's body untill his neck finally snapped. The remaining gray figures started slowly moving towards the crowd and chaos erupted.
People were fighting, screaming, pushing, and running. Fern noticed that these humanoid like figures seemed extremely strong but also slow. He was panicking. But he was also thinking. He had always reacted to crisis situations this way. A way that many people found creepy. He simply began to solve the problem he found himself in.
He looked around he tried to find something he could use for self defense. There were not a lot of options. He glanced over at a nearby decorative fence and his eyes widened slightly.
He ran over to the fence. It had a series of tall vertical poles about two finger widths wide connected by three horizontal thinner brackets. Additionally the poles all had a conveniently pointy top. He began trying to remove one of the poles from the fence. Grabbing the middle bracket, he stomped as hard as he could on the bottom one. The bracket he was holding on to ripped out of his hands, tearing one of his fingernails. Blood started to drip from his hand and he swore. Grabbing on even harder this time, gritting his teeth to bear the pain, he slammed his foot on the lower bracket again.
This time, fueled by anger and frustration his kick snapped the weld. Fern noticed that he had caught the attention of one of the gray people as it started to slowly approach him. He desperately grabbed the now loose bottom of the pole and pulled up twisting both the final two braces. After giving it a few hard yanks the top weld finally ripped loose leaving the pole dangling along the middle bracket.
Fern then easily broke the last weld by twisting the pole around parallel to the fence. With his crude weapon finally loose he turned to face the gray monster approaching. He could feel his forehead sweating and his heart beating faster as he focused. He gripped tightly on the pole and observed the approaching creature.
As the thing approached Fern thrust the pole and stabbed percisely through its eye. It made a small grunting noise before slumping to the ground.
Before he could try to pull the pole out of its body, it started turning back into shadowy particles freeing the pole. A message once again popped out in front of him.
[Defeated: undead Lvl. 1. You gained +5 Str.]
[You leveled up: Lvl.1 > Lvl.2. You gained +2 attribute points]
Many thoughts began to circulate in Fern's mind. He noticed that his body felt slightly lighter and the pole felt easier to hold.
The suroundings were chaos still so he decided to do the most simple thing possible. Take another step. And just keep moving. One step, two, three, then, he broke into a run.
He killed two more undead in a similar fashion to the first while running. The first gave him +3 str and the second +2 str. Before he knew it he had escaped to a silent empty street. He decided to hide in the remains of a recently demolished building on a construction site and gather his thoughts.
He glanced down for the first time at the stone he picked up earlier after he had killed the third undead. The dull colored slightly translucent blue stone that was barely pebble sized had fallen from the dust of the undead as it disappeared. Blue text once more appeared in his eyes this time floating above the stone.
[mana stone(fragment)(low grade): contains a weak amount of compressed mana]
He decided to keep the stone in his pocket and began to ponder more about mana. According to his status he had 80 mana. He tried to focus to see if he could feel or control the mana he had but his attempts ended in failure.
He sighed and hung his head. He couldn't think straight. Nothing that was happening made sense. It was all insane. Completely crazy, and yet, he stayed calm, thinking of one goal. How to survive. He had just started contemplating when a shadow shot out from the corner of his vision. He threw himself out of its path, but he was too slow.