Chapter 2 - First Stats and Skill (Patreon)

I may or may not have passed out after the blue screen flashed in my face.  In my defense, I was going through a very traumatizing event and had hit my limit on weird things.  I don’t think my faint lasted for very long because I woke up with my mother attempting to get me to eat.  At first, I didn’t want anything to do with a liquid diet, but then I realized I don’t have any teeth.  Eventually, I gave up and started eating while my mother started to hum.  It was nothing I have ever heard before, but it was soothing enough to fall asleep.

I woke up sometime later feeling like I was in a straight jacket.  The blanket they had me swaddled in made things almost impossible to move.  It didn’t help that my muscles were not responding the way they should be.  After a bit of struggling, I decided to give up on trying to get free.  There must be something wrong with my eyes as everything seems to be blurry.  It is hard to focus on anything.  With no stimulation and no way to get free, I fall back asleep.  Even that little bit of effort has taken all of my energy.

The next time I woke up I had a very unpleasant feeling.  I have no control over my bladder and it is not a nice feeling to be wet.  I made sure to start wailing right away to get this situation fixed.  Thankfully my cries were heard fairly quickly and my situation was taken care of.  I even got a bonus meal before I was put back down to sleep again.

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I’m not particularly proud of it but it took me over a week before I got around to trying to call up that blue screen again.  At first, I thought it was just a figment of my overactive imagination.  But then I got another message that has me wondering if I was reincarnated into a game world.

[Skill gained: Mathematics 1]

I was trying to count the number of times I had been fed to figure out how many days had gone by.  Of course, I figured out pretty quickly that babies eat a whole lot more than 2-3 times a day, and figuring time out by that metric was a pointless endeavor.  Then I started trying to do basic addition in my head to break up some of the boredom.  Being a baby is boring!  There is nothing that I could do except counting things and strolling down memory lane.  Memory lane was a little bit too painful for me right now so I was trying to find something else to occupy my mind.

After seeing that I gained a skill, I started trying to think of ways to bring up that blue screen message I saw a while ago.  Talking was out of the question, I couldn’t make my mouth form syllables so it all came out as babble. Next, I started trying to think commands.

‘Character’

‘System’

‘Computer’

‘Status’

Level 1

Health 20/20

Strength 1

Constitution 2

Dexterity 1

Intelligence 32

Wisdom 21

[Traits] [Skills] [Magic]

Bingo!  No wonder why I can barely move and sleep so often.  My stats suck!  At least my intelligence appears to be high.  Hoping that this was just like all of the games I’ve played in the past I start to mentally click on each word.

Level - (10/100)

Health - Your current physical condition.

Strength - Your physical power.

Constitution - Your endurance and amount of health.

Dexterity - Your agility, balance, coordination, and reflexes.

Intelligence - Your logic, knowledge, and memory.

Wisdom - Your perception, insight, and mana.

That is a little helpful.  How do I increase these stats?  I don’t want to be stuck as an invalid forever.  Why am I missing mana on my system status?  So many questions and nobody is here to answer them for me.  It looks like I still have 3 more things to click.  Mentally crossing my fingers for something good, I begin to click them.

[Traits]

Linguist - The ability to learn written and spoken language quickly.

Limitless - There are no limits on what you can learn.

All of my hard work in school seems to have paid off.  My mother used to say I had an ear for language and it seems that the system agrees.  I guess this means I need to start paying attention to what is said around me so I can piece together the language.  Limitless seems a little odd.  Why would there be a limit on what I could learn in the first place?  I wish this world came with a manual.

[Skills]

Mathematics 1

It doesn’t look like there was anything hidden here.  I wonder how many other skills I can obtain by doing them in my head.  Something to try while I am awake and left alone.

[Magic]

I guess this one makes sense.  I’ve never been able to do magic before so why would that change now?  It is exciting to see that magic is a possibility.  I have not noticed any magic going on around me.  I will have to pay attention to see if I can spot any in the future.  Maybe it is like some books that I’ve read where if I think real hard I will be able to sense it in the air.  Time will tell.  Until then, I think it is time for another nap.

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The next time I woke up was due to hunger.  Unfortunately, it is a common occurrence these days.  I feel bad for my new mother who has to constantly get up with me.  The house we have been staying in almost feels like a hotel room.  There is a bed, a desk and chair, and an opaque window in the room we stay in.  I can tell by how dark it is that it is nighttime.  My mother had to light a candle to see me.

The one time she took me near the window when it was open I could see that we were on the second floor of the building we are staying in.  Thankfully my eyesight has gotten better and I can see almost as well as I used to in my previous life now.  The walls of our room are plain rock.  The rocks look expertly placed but they are not modern-day stone bricks.  It feels like we are living in the past.

The only visitors we have had so far have been someone to clean for us and a person who could have been a doctor.  The doctor didn’t touch me but he seemed to have a lot of interest in my mother.  I feel bad for the person who has to clean.  She brings us food, takes away dirty dishes, empties the chamber pot, and removes and replaces my dirty cloth diapers.  The odd thing is the person who cleans never speaks.  My mother has not even tried to talk to her so maybe they are expected to keep quiet?

When I am not sleeping, I have been trying to gain more skills.  There isn’t a lot I can do in this condition but think.  So far I have gotten two intelligence and two wisdom.  I don’t feel like I did anything special to get those extra stats but I’m not complaining!  I have been constantly thinking every time I am awake since I was born so the stat increases make a little bit of sense.  I still make a point to tire myself out at least twice a day trying to move my arms and legs and move my fingers.  Today I made a breakthrough while moving around.

[Strength +1]

[Constitution +1]

[Dexterity +1]

I started giggling after I got those messages which got my mother’s attention.  She picked me up and smiled at me asking something.  Based on the tone it was probably something along the lines of “what’s so funny little one.”  When she is not writing at the desk, she has been holding and singing to me.

She has been sitting at the desk in our room writing in a journal that she has on most days.  Sometimes she brings out stone tablets from her bag to study.  I wonder if this world has ancient ruins that people study as well.  I am shocked that she has artifacts if those tablets are from an ancient ruin.  Usually, things like that are kept in a museum or research facility so they have less of a chance of being damaged.  Maybe she has copies of the originals?

I wonder why I have not seen a father figure yet.  Is my poor mother going to have to raise me alone?  She is a very pretty woman.  I would place her age at around 25 if people age here like they do in my old world.  She has long blonde hair that she keeps braided in a french braid down her back.  Her eyes are an unreal shade of emerald green.  She has a slim body with hints of muscle on her legs and arms, not enough to be a bodybuilder but enough to leave her firm in all the right places.  I think the funniest part of my new mother is that she has a farmer’s tan. You can see that she has spent a lot of time outdoors as her shoulders are a much lighter shade than her lower arms. She must really like the yellow dress she always wears because I have not seen her in anything else except a sleeping shift.  Are we in prison?  I don’t think so because I have seen her open her door a few times to ask for things.

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After being in this room for what feels like a month, I was woken one morning to something new.  A loud trumpet-like sound was playing something very close to the Reveille song you hear in early morning military camps.  I of course started crying because it scared me.  My mother was quick to soothe me while trying to get her things packed up.  After feeding and changing me I am once again placed on the bed as my mother continues to pack our belongings.  After only a few more minutes all of our possessions were packed and sitting by the door.

My mother was sitting with me on the bed when somebody came to our room and collected our bags.  We followed our baggage down a very long hall until we got to the stairs.  At the staircase, another person was waiting to help my mother down the stairs by offering an arm for her to hold on to. Once we made it down the spiral staircase, the room opened up into a spacious room that held multiple chairs.  We were led to one near the back to sit and wait for whatever was going to happen at the podium in the front.  There was a large raised table right next to the podium that did not currently have anything on it.

It appeared to be time to hurry up and wait while more women with babies were led into this room and seated in the chairs around us.  This is the most outside interaction we have had since I was born and I was excited to see what other people looked like.  Gazing out into the crowd it looked like hair color could be any color of the rainbow.  The only color not present in the room was black, but I don’t think that color was impossible because there was a very dark brown in the crowd.  The lady next to us had purple hair and grey eyes.  It seemed like skin color was all pretty similar to what was in my old world. I saw very pale pink to milk chocolate brown skin around me. It was hard to judge height with me being so small but there didn’t seem to be any huge discrepancies between the women on their height.

One thing I found odd was that everyone was wearing the same cut of clothing.  Every woman with a child had a maxi dress on.  It was floor-length and flowy but more fitted at the top with short sleeves and a slight v neck.  There were various colors but all were the same cut.  Looking around the room at the back wall, there were several women in shift dresses.  This dress was boxy and sleeveless almost like a flour sack that was altered to look like a dress that cut off just below the knees. I did not see a single woman in a pair of pants.  The men in the back of the room were all wearing vests and roughspun pants.  While the people on the back wall had colorful clothing, it was all muted colors compared to the women with babies seated throughout the room.