Literature Class

John lingered at the back of the bus for a bit longer than necessary, to keep an eye on Frank. Learning the jock’s schedule for the new term was a useful ‘survival’ strategy, and him splitting up with his girlfriend Vanessa right off the bus meant that the meathead had football practice instead of class Monday morning. That was the one thing Frank wouldn’t risk being late for, so there was little risk of John suffering a random ambush on his way to class.

Learning Vanessa’s schedule would be important as well, but it was less pressing. The aptly titled Bitch Queen was vicious in ways Frank wasn’t smart enough to be on his own, but she was also far less prone to seeking him out, if he hadn’t done anything that reminded her of his existence.

Since it should be safe to head to class, John hurried to do so. Normally, he would drag his feet heading to Mrs. Flung’s literature class, since she was painfully boring. In fact, he was half expecting her title to be something along the lines of ‘Incarnation of Boredom’ or ‘If Grey Was a Personality’. Today, however, he had something much more interesting to spend the time doing. Usually, when starting a new game, he took the time to thoroughly read the information and tooltips provided to him and analyze them to the best of his ability, so as to formulate a strategy. With these mechanics being not just a game but his very life, not doing so in this case seemed foolish.

He slid into a chair at the back of the class and promptly opened his character sheet while ignoring the lesson. Starting in the top left corner, the first part of his sheet to have an interesting tooltip was Level:

Level
A measure of a creature’s competence in its main area of expertise and one or two secondary ones. For non-sophonts and Abyssals, combat capability is always considered either a main or secondary area of expertise.

Well, that came with some bullshit to unpack. Specifically, the part where John was underleveled compared to his peers, but level was based on someone’s competence as described. Depending on if ‘main area of expertise’ was defined based on someone’s societal role or what they were best at, his was either being a student or gaming, and the candidates for secondary would be drawing, along whichever of the two possible main areas wasn’t main. As for his competence as a student, he was consistently getting As and Bs in everything except PE, and doing so without much effort, so he certainly wasn’t below par there.

For gaming, an overall measure was harder, especially since many of his favorites weren’t the e-sports games. That said, for the competitive, ranked games he did play and that gave figures for the overall player base, he was consistently placing in the top 20% without much effort, or the top 10% with effort. So if that was his main skillset, he was pretty sure he should be overleveled if anything.

Art was harder still to measure, and he did not consider himself any more than an amateur. Still, he was aware that he was his own worst critic, obvious trolls aside, and he got mostly positive engagement with the stuff he posted online. Plus, he knew of people with significantly worse ‘technical skill’, so to speak, who were still making money off commissions and digital tip jars. So at worst, it shouldn’t drag him down much, if at all.

That left the possibility that something he sucked at was **** into consideration, and dragging him down as a result. Before getting to the tooltips, he had briefly considered if social standing was a factor in level. After all, his highest leveled peer was the jerk king of the jocks and the highest leveled person he had seen at all so far, his grandpa Sam, was a retired general surgeon who had been both well liked and professionally respected in the local medical community. The tool tip didn’t mention anything about that though, but it did mention combat skill being **** into consideration for non-sophonts and ‘Abyssals’.

John was absolutely worthless in a physical fight, and his only experience, if that counted, was getting beat up by bullies. Mostly without fighting back, because resisting just prolonged his torment. Now John clearly wasn’t a non-sophont, since that basically meant lacking the intelligence to really be a person. Accomplishing that feat as a human being without brain damage was, to John’s knowledge, something only Frank had managed. In summary, it seemed as though John’s low level was caused by him apparently being an ‘Abyssal’, whatever that meant, and being one **** his basically non-existent combat skill in as a factor in his level.

Naturally, that meant John needed to figure out what the hell being an Abyssal meant. The tooltip was worded as though Abyssals were an exception to the norm, so what he needed was something that set him apart from most people, that didn’t already have a different term associated with the distinction. The most obvious answer to that was his newly awakened powers. Seeming the most obvious and likely answer wasn’t the same as knowing it to be true, though, so while he would assume for the time being that Abyssal meant ‘someone with magic powers’, he would also keep an eye out for evidence to the contrary and revise his thinking if needed.

Experience showed nothing unexpected, nor did HP or MP as such, though they did each have details that were important to remember.

HP
Measure of a creature’s ability to withstand harm. At 0 HP, a creature is fatally wounded and in most cases incapacitated. Further damage at this point may hasten the onset of ****.

MP
Measure of magical energy, also known as mana. A creature that tries to use more mana than it has available suffers Mana Fatigue, in addition to the failure of the attempted magic.

Having a bit of a grace period on running out of HP was nice, though saving himself in that case would probably not be possible. On the flip side, he would have to be more careful with his mana than in many games, if running out did more than stop him from using abilities for a time. How much would depend on what Mana Fatigue did, but erring on the side of caution definitely seemed the better idea here. Onwards to ability scores.

Strength (STR)
Governs your body’s ability to exert ****. Increases sprinting speed in a straight line, jumping distance and the **** of blows with fists and muscle-powered weapons. Also increases HP regeneration.

Agility (AGI)
Governs the precision of your body’s exerted ****. Increases manual dexterity, balance and ability to change direction of movement precisely, both for individual body parts and the body as a whole.

Endurance (END)
Governs bodily resilience and endurance. Increases your HP and your ability to sustain physical activity for extended periods, as well as your resistance to poison and disease.

Putting that together, it seemed like most physical activities used two or three of them in varying balances. Even something as simple as hauling heavy boxes would obviously use Strength and Endurance, but it would also need a bit of Agility to manage any uneven weight distribution without falling on your ass. Meanwhile, shooting a gun would mainly stress Agility, but Strength would probably matter for controlling recoil.

Intellect (INT)
Governs active, conscious cognition. Increases your maximum MP and your ability to perform active analytical thought, benefit from studying and make carefully considered plans.

Wisdom (WIS)
Governs subconscious cognition. Increases your MP regeneration and improves your intuition, sensory processing, snap decision making and ability to absorb information through exposure and subconscious pattern recognition.

That made sense. While John was, in his own totally unbiased opinion, not exactly bad at making calls when caught off guard, he did perform a lot better when he could plan ahead. That aside, it appeared that both stats would be important for a mage build, even if neither mentioned anything about magical power scaling. Presumably, that would either vary by spell or would be entirely about skill levels.

Charisma (CHA)
Governs social expression and presence. Improves your ability to correctly convey the desired emotion, give people the impression you want or otherwise get the intended message across, as well as attract the kind of attention you want. Is at its most impactful with people you have only just met.

And there it was. And on point as well. He had always felt that his issue with social situations wasn’t reading social cues and thinking of the right kind of thing to say. His problem was that for all of his intentions, it often came out wrong and most people remembered that while they forgot when it didn’t happen. But at least now he had a way to do something about it. Or would have once he found out how to get ability points. In other words, onwards:

Libido (LIB)
Governs your sex drive and sexual sensitivity. Increases your desire for sex and the pleasure you derive from having it, as well as how much stimulation you can handle.

So there was an upside to his high libido. Or at least there would be once he had improved his Charisma enough to stand a chance of actually getting with a girl. Still, this Stat seemed to be high enough for the time being.

The rest of his tooltips were less interesting. The Ability Points one merely said that they were gained by leveling up, without mentioning how many were gained per level, and the only skill tooltip that had changed at all was Observe which now mentioned that it revealed his Relationship Score with people when used on them. He also found a Quest Log showing both his current and completed quest, an Achievement Log showing his achievements and what reward they had given him, and an information sheet with his height, weight, age and so on, as well as a bunch of 0s under Sexual Experience.

Achievement Unlocked: Stop and Take Stock
Read every tooltip currently available to you.
Knowing your own capabilities is a surprisingly good first step.
+20 EXP

The ‘surprisingly good’ part felt condescending to John, probably because the other achievements had been pretty snarky. But if being condescended and snarked at was the price for free EXP and Stat bonuses, that was one he was fine with paying.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t really enough information to strategize much. For normal life, all of the Stats seemed useful enough to John that he would want to shore up his weaknesses first and foremost. Then probably focus on Intellect and Wisdom while raising Charisma enough to de-outcast himself and get a girlfriend. The existence of magic, and possibly other special powers as well, put all that down a priority level though.

The problem was that he didn’t know what the rest of the system looked like at all. What kind of mana costs for what kinds of effects, which types of skill combinations existed, and how much specialization was overspecialization. He didn’t know how damage numbers looked for different injuries either, and he wasn’t about to provoke Frank just to see how much damage a punch did. All in all, shoring up his weaknesses while trying to get more information seemed like the best idea for now, as that should hopefully keep all the proverbial doors open.

With about half the literature class left, and an MP bar that had filled up several minutes ago, it was time to get his Observe on. Really, it would’ve been more efficient if he had done that first, then checked tooltips while his mana regenerated, but there was nothing to do about that now. Besides, between the low cost of Observe, the Food Buff increasing his mana regen, and the lack of anything else to spend MP on, it wasn’t like it made a difference in the grand scheme of things.

A round of Observes revealed the Relationship Scores to be discouraging but mostly unsurprising. The other boys’ scores were between -10 and 10 with most of them very close to 0. John interpreted this to mean that they didn’t really care about his specific existence. The girls on the other hand were just sad. The highest score among them was a -19, and the lowest went as far down as -50. Given that he was fairly sure he hadn’t interacted with the latter girl at all, that felt very harsh. However, he knew that some nasty rumors about him were making the rounds, even if he didn’t know their exact contents, so that was probably why.

The only surprising readout was the teacher.

Mrs. Flung
Lvl 6, Teacher
Failed Author
63 years old
Relationship: -100

John hadn’t expected to see such a relationship score on a teacher that had never seemed to treat him unfairly or have it out for him, and whom he had never done anything to antagonize, save for the zoning out that nearly every student was prone to in her classes. Apparently, circumstances and personality had a major impact on how much the Relationship Score was expressed in practice.

Doing this had also revealed a useful little feature: using Observe on a person put the revealed RS in the info above their head, along with a timestamp for when the score had been seen. That would make it easier to track changes over time.

With a bit of class left and no new people to Observe, John quickly confirmed that using it on the same person within a short time didn’t grant new Skill EXP. How long would have to pass in order to remove that effect, he didn’t know, but it made perfect sense even if it was impractical.

He had gotten enough Skill EXP anyways that the ‘new’ faces in his next class should be enough to level it again. Happy with the most interesting, informative and productive literature class he had ever had, he settled back to zone out for the last 10 minutes and daydream about the class that would follow.