Chosen, Chapter 4: First Steps

Aidan

The Realms

Unknown date (day 1)

Late morning

Somewhere in the Mistvale Highlands

With a sigh, Aidan walked over to the flat rock the old man had been perched on and took a seat himself. “Well, first things first, I guess?” He mused and re-opened his character screen. Methodically, he went through every part of the screen and focused on it to gather more information.

He also mentally checked each of his spells and tried using Analyze on the items he had been given.

“That’s a lot to take in,” Aidan muttered to himself. “Player characters have a special sub-race, although it sounds like it’s not unique to me given what that old guy was saying. That’s how I get the usual automagic resurrection, plus it gives me some extra stat points so I’ll be better off than a ‘standard’ Helltouched Human. Twelve stats, divided up into five physical, five mental, plus two miscellaneous; even counting the two forced points in Willpower and Charisma, I only get eight per level, so there isn’t really a way to stay well-rounded. Specialization is likely to be essential, but the fact that multiple stats figure into each of Health, Stamina, and Concentration means that there’s some wiggle room there. Assuming everything except Attractiveness and Luck started at 10, it looks like I did get the points for level 1, but they were automatically distributed for me. Commoner is basically a tutorial baby mode Class, nothing I can really do about that for now except level up.

“I don’t really see what the big deal is with Limitless, either, though that might be system ignorance talking. I guess it makes it easier to learn Skills?” Aidan shrugged. “Cunning Linguist at least seems extremely useful if this game has a robust language system. I assume not every player character gets it, or it’d be pointless to include it. Analyze seems like a bog-standard item identification ability, but maybe there’ll be more to it as it improves. The spells … are really, really basic and unimpressive. I hope I get something cooler quickly, or I could be restarting sooner than I thought. I should probably at least test Flame Jet before I leave this safe zone just so I have an idea how everything works before I have to roast a wolf or whatever.”

Finally, Aidan got to his ‘gift’ items. “Wait—capacity ‘special’? What does that mean?” He looked closer at the treasure chest. It looked exactly like a miniature version of a stereotypical fantasy treasure chest. He opened the lid and peered inside, but it was empty. However, opening the chest also caused Aidan to become aware of a new icon at the corner of his awareness. When he focused on that, a small four by six grid of squares appeared in the center of his vision. A two by two section of that grid was taken up by what looked like a hamburger with the number 4 superimposed over one corner, and a one by two section showed a glass vial filled with red bubbly liquid—that icon had a 3 superimposed over it. “Hold on, is this a chest of holding?!” he exclaimed.

Aidan reached into the chest and focused on the hamburgers. He felt something in his hand and, when he pulled it out, he was holding a steaming hot burger, complete with a toasted bun, lettuce, tomato, onions, cheese, and even two strips of bacon. He Analyzed it to be sure.

He lowered the burger—he refused to give in to the pun—back into the chest and let go; it vanished. Then he focused on the vials of red liquid, pulled one out, and Analyzed it as well.

He put that back into the chest, considered for a moment, and then reached for the ruby rod. He carefully fed it into the chest lengthwise and, sure enough, instead of pressing up against the bottom, it vanished into the inventory screen, taking up a one by four square space. With a thought, he retrieved the rod—he didn’t actually want his closest thing to a weapon being stuck in extradimensional storage—and then closed the chest. “Well, well, that actually is a great starting item. It can’t hold too much, but it’s way more than the space it takes up, given that like objects stack. It looks like anything which will pass through the opening can be stored inside, at least up to a point. The free meals and potions will come in handy too, I’m sure. I wonder if anyone who holds it gets the same access or whether it’s keyed to me?” He mused, then shrugged again. “No way to know for now.”

Aidan put the chest into his backpack, attached the pre-filled waterskin to his belt, slipped the straps of the pack over his shoulders, and wriggled until its weight settled evenly, then picked up the ruby rod and gave it a once-over. It was very simple, just a straight stick of reddish wood about two inches in circumference and a foot or so long. It was topped with a thumb-sized ruby cut into a sort of teardrop shape, except that there was no rounded bottom portion, having instead another sharp point attaching it to the wooden rod. He waved it about to no effect, but he hadn’t really expected one; the description made it reasonably clear that its purpose was to help him cast fire spells, not to cast spells on its own like a wand. The question was … how did he cast a spell?

Fortunately, the answer turned out to be relatively easy. Somehow, he knew precisely the motions and words he needed to cast his spells, and how to modify Flame Jet to use the rod as a source instead of his hands. He pointed the implement at a small boulder about five feet away, said a few words (which his Cunning Linguist Trait did not translate), and made a gesture with the tip of the rod. Suddenly, a flamethrower-like stream of fire was rushing from the ruby, arcing through the air, and splashing against his target. Aidan could feel the heat from the jet of flame, but despite emerging only inches from his hand, it didn’t burn him. It also wasn’t hot enough to melt the rock; after the five seconds of the effect was over, the boulder appeared unaffected save for a small blackened patch.

Aidan cast the spell again, this time paying attention to his status page. As soon as he began the incantation, his Concentration dropped to 77/103, and once the spell’s effect stopped a second time, his Concentration immediately popped back up to 102/103. He looked more closely at the bar, and there was a thin darker blue section at the end, presumably 1 unit (or less) thick. Aidan guessed that was the “mental fatigue” that the ruby rod was supposed to help with. Given that two casts only reduced his maximum Concentration by such a small amount, it didn’t seem like a big deal at the moment, but then again, he was only dealing with newbie-tier spells. Raining fire down across an entire battlefield will probably be more mentally taxing, if I ever get to that point.

Satisfied that he had explored as much of the interface and experience of the game as he could from the spawn point, Aidan turned, located the mouth of the cavern, and walked out into the wide world beyond.