Leveling and Looting

Well, now John was alone in this 'Battle Barrier', and he didn't know how to leave it... maybe his Meditate could help him with that once again? However, seeing as how he just got a level up and some loot, he'd spend some time to check out everything that had happened in the last... 30 Minutes? Was it really only that long? Wow, that was quite a lot that happened in that short of time...

Now then, first he should deal with these two level-ups he had. While thinking about the level-ups, a new pop up appeared before his eyes.

Level Up!
You have gained a Level, with it you gain 5 Points you can put in your stats. Additionally, you gain one perk point per 5 Levels.
Perks are powerful passive abilities that are most suited to a specific situation (social, combat, magic, etc.)
Stat points to spend: 10
Perk points to spend: 1

Okay, that was awesome. In video games, perks could always make character builds much more versatile and fun. For now, John would concentrate on the stats first though because he was pretty sure that some perks would have some kind of stat requirement, just like his spear that was happily charging away in his inventory. Now, the question was, whether he would go fast-track to 25 STR so he could use his weapon or if he would distribute them evenly and get everything to a decent point from where he could figure out what he wanted to be build-wise. The temptation was big just to put the points into Strength, but it wouldn't do him much good except for the bonus HP maybe because he couldn't reach the 25 points anyway, so spreading them out was probably a better idea for the time being. So he put 3 of the points into Strength, 3 into Agility, 2 into Endurance, none into Intellect and Wisdom (INT was high enough for now, and WIS got some points through the Achievement before he entered the Battle Barrier), 2 into Charisma, and also none into Libido (He still wasn't sure how a high Libido would positively affect him...). Once he hit Confirm on the stats page, another achievement popped up:

Okay, whoever wrote these achievements had a pretty stupid humor... All these dumb punny names for those Achievements...

"Okay, okay, damn... I'm sorry for what I just thought. The names...aren't that bad..." and in a single moment, the stat points were back on his page. He instantly put another two into Strenght and one into Agility. If he wanted to defend himself, he also needed to be agile enough to dodge attacks. Could he maybe even deflect attacks with his Move? He had to try that at some point when a projectile would not kill him instantly should it not be possible... But that was a thought for another time. For now, he had to look at the available perks!

The list of Perks was quite long, most of them were only shown as ??????, while others were shown greyed out probably because he didn't meet the requirements for them. Some of the perks had rather self-explanatory names like Lightning Conduit, Living Fire, and Living Bulwark. One of the perks instantly jumped into John's eyes, as the name was self-explanatory and it was one of the few available perks written in black:

Well, that was something that would undoubtedly make his life easier. Not only could he then use a weapon with any hand, but he could also improve his overall ability to do stuff with his left hand. Writing with both hands at the same time also sounded like something that could be useful should he ever do homework and the likes again... The other perks were not bad either, but they were very specific in their usage. Deep pockets would grant him more Inventory space, Bully would give him extra damage against enemies below his level and Deep Pools would give him five extra points to any pool he had like his HP and Mana pool. Since he didn't know if he would ever get another pool (did the charges on his spear count as a pool?), that one was out the window, the Bully one was out for now as well because he was pretty sure he would not meet anything remarkable below his level and the Deep Pockets one was nice, but for now he could just stack bags on bags in bags in his inventory, or at least in theory.

So he went with the one that seemed to be the most useful for now, Ambidextrous. And it's not like he didn't get another perk point in five levels, where his situation might look completely different. But for now, that seemed like a good idea.

So, with the level up out of the way, there were only two things left to do: loot, and finding a way out of this barrier. But loot first. Looking at his inventory, he saw that he had four things that could be described as 'loot': the Spear of Amamyra, the ring he got from the **** achievement, the crafting item, and the piece of paper given to him by Brun. The spear he already had looked at long enough with enough longing. Onto the ring then. The ring itself was a crudely shaped ring out of some kind of dark metal. It looked like it had many dents and was forged like one would forge a weapon instead of how one would create fine jewelry by smelting. However, even as rough as it was, it was a beautiful looking piece of jewelry. Now the question was if it had some good stats, too?

Another hidden ability? This was starting to get annoying... But John was pretty sure that he would never like to see that ability revealed because it would mean that he had to die, this time for real... Was it an ironic joke that he got a ring with an ability he would get when he died from an achievement that he got because he didn't die? A cruel joke that was indeed. Especially that he couldn't even use someone else's **** to trigger the ability because then the ring would be utterly useless to him... oh well, getting 2 to all Stats in certain situations and a boost to his Magic sounded nice enough anyway. Without a second of doubt, he put the ring onto one of his fingers, immediately appearing in his used equipment. How many rings would he be able to wear? Normal game rules would say two, but one could never be sure...

Next was the crafting material. The preview in his inventory made it look like a translucent round orb. Once he took it out, however, he could see that it was a small vial with a floating substance in it. The liquid was transparent, looking pretty much like water, except for the fact that it was glowing in a soft light blue hue. The light was barely strong enough to be seen, but it was unmistakably there, and it came from the liquid. A quick glance at the description of the item confirmed that it was water...well, kind of...

Huh, that was something that could be pretty useful as well, should he ever meet those mummies again... But for now, that would sit in his inventory and stay there until A) he knew how to enchant things and B) what to enchant with it.

Oh well, on to the last new item in his inventory: the paper he got from Brun.
Unfolding the paper he could immediately see what it was, and it instantly was probably his favorite thing that he got from this 'battle'. It might not be as powerful as the spear, or as dangerously earned as the ring, or as rare as the tear.

But the content of this paper made it the most special thing he got ever: Her number. That was not only the first time he properly got something from a girl roughly his age, but it was also a kind of promise to him. A promise that he could write her and that he might have a chance with her. Sure, he got the 'date' on Saturday with June, but this was an actual girl that wanted to keep contact with him, and her words heavily implied what she wanted from him.

He would not fuck this up.