Gamer-style Introspection (Otherwise known as looking at your character sheet)

John sighed as he finally sat down on the bed in the guest room that Talia’s family had allowed him to use. Frankly, he was exhausted both mentally and physically. Today had been one of the longest days that he had ever had, which was saying a lot considering, when he was in high school, he had a day where he and his friend Lily had gone to SAT tests in the morning, a convention downtown in the afternoon, and a theme park that night. Up until today, he had thought that day of 18 hour non-stop action was as exhausting a day as he could experience, but turns out learning an entire other world exists - along with being told magic and most major mythologies are real - is pretty goddamn tiring.

However, he could not sleep quite yet. Firstly, he still had to change and brush his teeth (thank Gaia he had a toothbrush and some toothpaste in his backpack in preparation in case Frank ever decided to lock him in the changing rooms at school overnight again). Secondly, and more important for him to be able to relax, he had to take a look at his character sheet because, apparently, something big had changed.

A little bit ago, after dinner to be precise, he had gotten an odd notification from Gaia. All it said was:

Version Update: Patch 1.101 Enjoy your updated skills and character sheet. Click for more info.
-The Dev (Aka Gaia)

John had been intrigued, but figured he could take a look at it and analyze what was new when he got some alone time. While, yes, all the members of the household understood John’s powers, they still were a bit creeped out when John seemed to stare blankly into space for a few moments and tap at nothing while he was doing any sort of micromanaging on his screens. So he figured until he learned some more non-physical ways of controlling that, or at least till the others got more used to it, he would try to excessively fiddle with menus only in private.

With that idea set, he made sure not to dismiss Gaia’s notification so that he could see a full list of what was updated for his character sheet, as those changes could be big indicators of where Gaia thought he would falter soon and needed to balance him out. For example, he recalled one instance where, in an MMO he had been playing, a random patch came out of nowhere for one of the classes. It was scheduled a few months before an expansion pack dropped, but no one could figure out why. Sure, it helped that class be on a bit more of an equal footing with the rest, but honestly it didn’t really seem necessary.

That is, it didn’t seem necessary till the expansion pack dropped and several new raid bosses were added to the game. The patch had made it so that the class would actually stand a chance at staying alive for more than 30 seconds in one of the raid dungeons, as the class pre-patch had difficulties dealing with horde battles like the ones in the new raid dungeons. The developers later explained how they knew the class needed this buff and figured it was better to address the problem as soon as they could before the new expansion hit. They guessed if they could get the classes to be more balanced before it dropped, then they could focus on any issues caused by the expansion pack after instead of having to focus on two separate areas at once.

Point was, John figured Gaia must have been doing something similar. She probably knew what was coming up for John to have to fight, and wanted him to be more prepared than he was in his last fight. So, without further ado, John reached up and pressed the “read more” button on the notification.

Patch 1.101

• Added Magical Class System
• Added Party Mini-map
• Added New Achievements System
• Added New Quest System
• Added Quest Tracker
• Updated Skill Tree
• Updated GCS

“...Huh.” John had… no idea what to think of all this. Some of the things were instantly recognizable, such as the mini-map and the new systems for achievements and quests. These were basic things found in most video games, and he guessed Gaia wanted to implement them into his real life. However, he had no idea what the magical class system was nor what the skill tree was going to be. To top it all off, the final thing seemed oddest of all.

“Hey Gaia, I assume you can hear me. What is the GCS?” he asked, but was not greeted with an answer. That is, he didn’t think there was an answer till suddenly he heard a small pinging noise go off in his head. He looked around for the source of the sound, seeing nothing of note till he noticed that in the corner of his vision was a small mail symbol in a box. Also, there was the number one in a circle that was sitting on the top left corner of said box.

‘Guess Gaia gave me a mail system. Good. Having the godly messages constantly popping up in my face while I’m doing stuff could get rather tedious.’ John realized that, unlike his character sheet which would be placed in front of him for him to interact with, this mail symbol was just in his vision and thus could not be touched. He then sent a simple mental command of ‘Open mail,’ and just like that the mail symbol expanded till a new popup was in his vision.

“Oh thank Gaia,” John said in relief, feeling blessed that he would never have to read the cringe worthy uppercase-lowercase text of Surtr’s messages ever again. “So godly messages are now treated like email and have a better system for me to read. Alright. I can get behind that. But now…” John looked back at the update list. The Achievement System would probably need looking at, but more importantly, he needed to figure out what had changed about his skills. So, with an eager attitude, John pulled up his character sheet.

“... Wow. Just… Just wow.” John couldn’t help it as a smile grew its way across his face. Gaia really put her work into giving him a new, more aesthetically pleasing character sheet. He now had a separate tab for his runes and his skills, and considering the update said he had skill trees now, he would probably need it. It also showed his statistics, which were ni-

“Wait… Since when have I had an extra 3 inches on my dick?” John quickly pulled his pants down and took a look. His dick was indeed a bit bigger, even in its flaccid state, and John had no doubt that if it were erect he would see that indeed he had a dick nearly double his old size.

“Where the hell… How did… I mean…” John shook his head and looked back to the character sheet. Something on there should be able to explain it. It probably was not going to be in Runes, Settings, or Inventory. He thought that, maybe, the three erotic skills he had could have improved him. However, only one of them actually involved his genitalia at all. The other two were kissing and fingering, so he highly doubted that was the way to go.

“Maybe… a reward was retroactively added to the quests that gave me those skills?” He clicked on the quests tab, hoping that it would have stored a log of his former quests.

John’s eyes browsed through his new Quest sheet, which also included his completed Achievements. A quick tap on the plus sign on the bottom of the achievement box also showed achievements beyond the six it showed, so it was nice to see where his rewards were coming from. Speaking of rewards, while the achievements did not have the reward he was looking for, a quick browsing of the quest tab showed that, indeed, his increased dick size had come from rewards being added to the quests he completed with Talia. For confirmation, he tapped the still yet to be completed quest of “... And It’s A Homerun!!!” to check the rewards.

Quest:
...And It’s A Homerun!!!
**Lose your virginity**

Rewards:
New Skill: Fucking Mastery
+2 inches to Dick Size

Yep. It seemed Gaia had some pity for John’s lack of size, so she decided to reward him for his achievements in bed. Which was nice, but John did feel like it was a little bit out of pity. Or maybe out of amazement. Who knew with Gaia?

John decided to get off the topic of his penis and instead looked at the quests that were added and the one he apparently completed without even trying. He had gotten four new quests in total, with one of them being completed. He clicked on Egyptian Runes I and hoped it would have some answers for the how, why and what of these quests.

Quest:
Egyptian Runes I
Find Egyptian Runes (1/3)

Rewards:
Egyptian Runic Magic Upgrade I

Well… that didn’t really answer much. His only working hypothesis was that, since each of those quests corresponded to the cultures of the runes that he did have, they probably were unlocked when he first obtained the runes. Or rather they would have been, had these quests existed when he first found them. Following this train of logic, John figured that, if he managed to find a rune from another culture, perhaps Aztec or Chinese, he would unlock that quest for those. And based upon the reward, these quests seemed to be intended to reward John for collecting as many runes as possible. With that said, he clicked over to the completed quest of Nordic Runes I, figuring it would either confirm or refute his suspicions.

Quest Complete!
Nordic Runes I
Find Nordic Runes (4/3)

Rewards:
Nordic Elements I
Quest Unlocked: Nordic Runes II

Alright… Well that confirmed the gotta-catch-em-all aspect to these quests. Rewards for gaining more runes and a new quest every time he completed the previous one. A quick tap on the reward notified him as to what it was that he had earned.

Nordic Elements I
Increase damage done by Nordic Elemental Runes by 10%

Alright. Not… well not great... but it was probably the first in what he assumed to be a succession of rewards. He guessed that the next reward would be an upgraded version of that one, maybe doing 20% instead of 10%. Plus, who was he to look the gift of increased damage in the mouth? He couldn’t really harp on a reward that he got for something he would have done anyway.

With that said, he had one last section that was updated: his skills. According to the update notification, he had a new skill tree system, and that would require looking at. He clicked out of his completed rewards and brought up his new skill sheet.

Alright. New information to process. Firstly, John had perk trees. His observe skill was currently at level 2, and it seemed to correspond to the placement on the perk tree. Easy and simple enough. He clicked on the various icons to see if he could get some more info on what the branches were.

Observe Rank 4a.
Allows you to select an Observe subject as a target. Target can be tracked as long as target delegation is not switched. May not work on high level targets.

Observe Rank 5a.
Multiple targets can be chosen. Equal up to 10% of Gamer’s Intelligence. May not work on high level targets.

Observe Rank 6a.
If a target has had Observe used on them, they can be tracked at any time. May not work on high level targets.

Observe Rank 4b.
Allows for the kinds of loot enemies will drop to be learned. Increases the likelihood of rare item drops from enemies.

Observe Rank 5b.
Increases info gathered from targets. Has a random chance of showing weak points on an Observe target.

Observe Rank 6b.
Reveals the maximum amount of information on a target. Allows for basic tracking on party members. Has a random chance of being able to choose a skill to learn from a target.

Alright, looks like at rank 4, John had a big choice to make. One of the branches seemed more focused on observing as many people as possible, and being able to keep their information on hand. The other one was more focused on getting as much information as he could from a single Observe. John had a couple thoughts as to which one he wanted to choose, but he figured that when it came time to rank up his skill he would have a more concrete idea of where he should take his Observe skill.

He had one new skill to look over, that being the Runic Casting skill. In addition, it was also already at level 3 which, excluding Masturbation, was his highest skill. He held his hand above the skill in preparation to click it, but as he did, a small window popped up with some information.

Runic Casting Lvl 3
Allows you to be able to cast Runic Magic more easily. This aids in the memorization of proper writing of runes, basic invocations, and prevents most negative effects of making a mistake in runic casting.
Level up through usage of runes OR discover a new rune to instantly level up.
Rewards unlocked at levels 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36+

Well that at least explained a little bit of what this was. It looked like, had it been around when he first started, he would have unlocked this skill when he cast his first rune. In addition, it seemed to work somewhat like a mixture between the achievement system for runes and the skill tree. It would unlock more rewards as he gained more runes, but could also be leveled up just like a standard skill. And with a quick click, he saw that it also had a skill tree, albeit different from the Observe one.

While the one for Observe reminded him a bit of Skyrim’s skill trees, this one seemed to take inspiration from Borderlands. A quick test showed him that he could put the points available into the bottom two skills, which made sense that he wouldn’t have all the perks unlocked automatically. He only had the first two perks unlocked, as well as having 6 points to put into those skills.

By hovering his finger over the different Icons, he learned of what each one of the ones he could unlock were.

Sword: Increase rune damage by 2% per point

Coins: Enemies killed by a Rune have a 2% per point chance of dropping double loot.

‘Useful perks. Especially if there is no cap as to how many points I can put in them,’ John thought. Granted, it seemed that this was not a full perk tree, as the popup said more rewards than were on here, at least assuming that the different levels were counted as one reward. Plus, he was curious what the other icons meant, such as the glowing man or the one that was straight up just a runestone.

But that was in the future, and John had 6 points to spend now.

After a moment or two of thought, he quickly distributed the points in an equal manner with 3 in the damage increaser and the other 3 in the loot increaser. Small for now, but even the mighty oak started out as but a seed.

Or rather, the mighty Ygdrissil started out as a seed.

John chuckled quietly to himself, slowly laying back down into bed. While he was eager to see what these new perks would do, that would be for another day. Now, it was time to rest and relax. He had one final thought pass through his head as he closed his eyes, the scenes from today dancing though his subconscious.