They walked for a few hours through the forest. Every few minutes, Richard was tripping over tree roots and branches, which Evelyn usually avoided, and twice he stepped in a shallow hole he didn't notice and jolted his ankle or his sore hip. It was an old-growth forest without a lot of undergrowth and plenty of space to walk between the trees, but still, travel was slow, and Richard tired quickly.

Finally, Richard had to stop and sit down leaning against a tree.

“Out of SP already?” Evelyn asked.

“SP?

She looked at him funny, “Stamina points? Did they call them something different on your world?”

“We didn't have a whole...number-based system like you do here.”

She looked surprised but nodded, “Fascinating, I did read that that was true of some other worlds. Look at your status and see how many SP you have left.”

“My status?” As soon as he said the word “status”, a blue box appeared in front of his eyes.

Name: Richard Fein

Race: Human (1)

Class: None

Age: 26

Strength: 3 (2.4)

Dexterity: 4

Constitution: 9

Endurance: 5

Intelligence: 24 (28.8)

Wisdom: 4 (3.6)

Perception: 7

Charisma: 11 (13.2)

HP: 52 (Max: 54)

SP: 3 (Max 20)

Divine Class: Champion of Ikar (1)

Humor: 12

Cunning: 0

High Stakes: 0

Glory: -918

Divine favors:

Gift of Tongues: May speak, understand, read, or write in any mortal language (may only speak languages you have heard and only write in languages you have seen).

Special traits:

Offworld Education (Legendary): +20% to effective intelligence, -10% to effective wisdom. Learns skills 50% more quickly than someone with an equivalent intelligence, gains experience 25% more quickly. More likely to learn unusual skills.

Pampered: Compared to most humans, this person has spent his whole life eating the best food, doing minimal physical labor, and generally living what most would call a life of luxury. -20% to strength, -20% to stamina points, +20% to hit points, +20% to charisma.

Without Glory: This person is deeply lacking in Glory, one of the 3 virtues of Toran, and as such may be instinctively distrusted or even hated by followers of Toran. -10 to reaction from followers of Toran.

Skills:

Pratfall (2): You have the ability to fall in a hilarious fashion. Likely to make people laugh if executed well. All falling damage reduced by 20%.

Quest: Try Not To Die. To succeed at this quest, merely live through your first two weeks in the world without getting killed. Shouldn't be too hard...right?

“Pampered? Really? I hardly think...” he grumbled, and then seeing the way she looked at him, changed the subject.

“Do you see the character sheet as a floating blue box the way I do?” he asked.

“You see it as a floating blue box? Interesting, never heard that one before. No. Everyone sees their status it in a way that matches their expectations. I always see a book that I can flip through and read. Some people hear it as a spoken voice, or even as a song.”

She looked up at him, “If you don't mind, I would like to also look at your status. So that I can confirm you are Champion of Ikar if nothing else.”

“You can do that?”

“I have a spell that allows it, yes. If you lower your magic resistance it will be easier to cast.”

“How do I do that?”

“Just relax your mind. May I?”

He nodded, interested.

She touched his forehead gently, focused, and quietly recited something. It wasn't in any language he'd heard before, but he understood it anyway. Some of the spellcasting was repeated sounds that didn't seem to have any meaning as far as he could tell, perhaps as a form of focus or meditation, but he did catch one word she repeated multiple times, which roughly translated to “Insight”. It sounded something like “omm lash tah insight om di di om insight om lash tah insight om di di om insight...”

He felt a strange sensation where her finger touched his forehead, as if a beam of light or heat was shining from her finger into his brain. He had a sense that he could try to stop it if he chose, but he let it happen.

She pulled back. “Ok. Very interesting.” She seemed to be flipping pages in midair as if reading something only she could see. “So, first of all, you are the champion of Ikar, I apologize for doubting you. Secondly...you only have 3 SP left? Why didn't you tell me you needed a break? You could have collapsed and hurt yourself.”

“I would have collapsed if I got to 0 SP?”

She took out a pen and a blank journal. “Yes. Hold on, this is fascinating, there are so many questions we could answer about our world....” He saw her writing down information that he recognized from his character sheet. He noticed she had a type of fountain pen, not one of the kinds where you have to dip it in ink, and briefly tried to remember when those had been invented on Earth. “I'm going to have to write a book about this someday, we have so little hard information about otherworlders and about divine champions. Anyway, yes, if you totally run out of SP you collapse. You'll probably feel tired before you get to that point, though. So yes. I guess we might as well sit and talk for a while, until you recover. This...don't take this the wrong way but traveling with you anywhere is going to take forever with such low SP and endurance.” She wrote some more. “So, because your world doesn't have a System, you don't have any skills or class at all, and you're still a level 1 human, even at your age?”

“Yes. We don't have anything like classes or skills where I come from.”

“Right, right, of course”. She wrote some more down. “So, did you just get that “pratfall” skill today? What is it, and how did you get it to level 2 already?”

“It's...something some people in my world do, a fake fall as part of a comedy routine, it's supposed to be funny and look real without getting you hurt. I guess, uh, maybe you'd call people like that jesters or something here.”

“Oh. Ok, that makes sense. There are some priest-jesters of Ikar, and I think I've seen jesters do things like that before, so that fits. Still, being at level 2 already on that skill is a surprise.” She wrote some more notes down. “Was that the first time you did a comedic fall in a combat situation?”

“Priest jesters? Wha...” he remembered something. “Oh, Ikar looks like a jester sometimes, doesn't he? Um, as for your question...” he felt his face blush red with embarrassment “No, I've...uh...fallen down in combat situations before.”

“Yes, The Jester is one of the Aspects of Ikar. Ok, so next question; you have by far the most unbalanced stats I have ever seen in a human. How is your intelligence so high and almost everything else so low? Did you spend your whole live training your intelligence and nothing else?”

Richard paused, and thought about his life to date, “I suppose that's...accurate, yes.”

“Interesting. Doing what? Is this where that “legendary education” trait comes from?”

“I've been going to school for...I guess my whole life. Since I was 5 I think? I was studying at a university before I came here.”

Her eyebrows went up. “You've been doing nothing but studying at a school for 20 years? Is that normal? Are you a noble? What have you been studying?”

“It's not that uncommon...uh...almost everyone where I come from is in school until they're 18 or so, and a lot of people go to college for another 4 years. Me, I've been studying...” he thinks about how to explain theoretical physics to her “...I guess you could say I've been trying to learn about the fundamental laws that make up our universe and trying to understand how everything in the universe works. And no, I'm not a noble, almost anyone from where I come from could do the same thing if they really wanted to and were smart enough to handle it.”

She looked at him and smiled. “That sounds wonderful. I wish that was an option for people on this world.” She wrote more details down. “One more question; do you know why Ikar chose you to be his champion?

Richard sighed. “He said something about me having a lot of potential, if I could stay alive. He...also might have thought I was funny.” He paused, and admitted, “And maybe because it pissed his brother Toran off?”

“He...said? You spoke to Ikar? And you...pissed off...the god Toran the True?” She paused, “I saw the...negative glory on your status, but....”

“...I really don't want to talk about it.”

She shook her head and went back to writing down everything he said. “Never mind. You don't need to talk about that right now if you don't want to.” She put her pen and paper away. “So. Ok, let's look at our situation. If it's ok, I'm going to just say this bluntly, because we don't really have time to be diplomatic.”

He nodded.

“You've been chosen as the Champion of a god, which means you are now a major piece in the Great Game. You will probably eventually be expected to do something potentially world-changing, and you will certainly be targeted by all kinds of forces who will want to use you or kill you. Also, followers of Toran will probably hate you, and they're both common and include a lot of the best warriors in the world.”

She paused, letting that sink in.

“We don't totally understand how quests work despite lots of research, but the quest you have implies there's a real chance you won't be alive in two weeks. So, you have no skills, except falling down, no class, mostly low stats except for intelligence, no real ability to defend yourself. With your low SP you can't really even run away from danger very well; even just walking quickly away from danger like we're trying to do right now seems to be a problem.” She sighed. “I have a better ability to defend myself, but most of it comes from fire magic, and the people coming after me right now seem to be protected against that.”

“Ok. Yeah, that all sounds...pretty bad, yes.”

She sighed again. “It might be better for us to separate. I could move faster if you weren't with me, and the solders aren't looking for you, so you're probably not in danger by them. Uh, unless the guys you fell on recognize you I guess.” She thought for a second. “If we could just teach you some skills, maybe that would help...hmm.” She pulled a thick book out of her bag, with the title “System Studies” in silver on its heavy cover, and flipped through it, and pointed to something near the end of the book. “We don't have much information on otherworlders, but according to some sources it sounds like if you had a skill you've already trained in extensively in your own world, all you have to do to demonstrate that skill here and you might get it right away at a higher level. We can test this. What was your highest level...right, you didn't have levels...what skill do you think you spent a lot of time training on your own world?”

He thought for a second. “Mathematics.”

She tilted her head. “Interesting. Some people study that here, either to keep track of money or to calculate things about the System. Ok, let's try something with mathematics.” She flipped to the front of the book. “This is probably something you need to know anyway. So, your high stat is intelligence, which helps people learn skills faster.”

“Oh? How long does it take to learn skills?”

“The rule of thumb is that for a normal person with about 8 intelligence, it takes about 100 hours to learn level 1 of a brand-new skill. It's...hold on, let me check the numbers.” She pointed at a table closer to the front of her “System Studies” book. “So, let's see...yes. There has been a lot of research on how this works. For a normal person, with an average intelligence of 8, it takes about 100 hours to learn a new skill through training, although they can learn it a lot faster if they're trying to use it in a life-or-death situation like combat. A person with 4 intelligence takes about 165 hours. For a person with 12 intelligence, it takes about 60 hours. For a person with 16 intelligence, it takes 36 hours.”

“Oh? Interesting. So, is it an exponential rate of decay?”

“Sorry?”

“Looks like it's multiplied by 60% every 4 points of intelligence. Let's see...” He started scribbling some numbers in the dirt with his finger. “So, a person with 18 intelligence should be able to learn a skill in 28 hours, is that right?”

She looked at his numbers, interested. “Those don't look like any numbers I've seen before. Is that your language?” She looked back at her book. “Yes, that's about right.”

“Oh, yes. Your language uses something like...Roman numerals, right?” With a bit of thought he writes a number in her language, impressed about how easy it was to use that Divine Favor about languages now that he knew how it worked. Her world's number system did work in a way similar to Roman numerals, although it used different symbols. “Yeah, it's much easier to do math with my world's kind of numbers. Anyway, if that rate continues” he scribbled some more numbers in the dirt “a person with 20 intelligence should take about 21.6 hours, a person with 24 intelligence should take a little less than 13 hours....”

She tried to follow what he was doing. “I don't think any of this has been tested. Almost nobody has intelligence that high, except maybe a 20-level mage or something...”

“And with my intelligence, 7.7 hours or so? Oh, and the 50% bonus...if that's a bonus to the effectiveness of training, making each hour of education 50% more efficient, let's see...so about once every 5.2 hours or so?”

“That doesn't sound right...” she paused “Nobody can learn a skill in 5 hours of normal training, it's supposed to take weeks...”

Skill level confirmed, Mathematics (14).

Level up, human level 2. +1 constitution, +3 additional max hp, +2 max SP. HP and SP restored

“Huh.” He stood back up, suddenly feeling really good, healthy, and well rested. “It worked, I got the skill. I think we can keep going for a bit now.”

She pulled her journal back out. “Can you be specific about what just happened?”

“I just got 14 levels in the skill “mathematics”. And I leveled up to a level 2 human. Restored my SP.”

“Ok, good, that makes sense...you really weren't kidding about spending a lot of time training that skill in your old world, were you. And yes, training skills is the safest way to level...” After jotting down a few more notes, she shook her head and closed her journal, and quickly started to pack her things back up into her backpack. “We'll have to continue this later. Right, now that you have SP again, we need to try and put some more distance between ourselves and the road before people start searching the forest here for me.” They started walking again. “Next time we stop...what kinds of weapons did you train with in your old world, what kind of magic, what other skills can we help you get back to help you defend yourself?”

He looked at her blankly. “There isn't any magic in my world, that I know of. And I've never trained with any weapons.”

“Ok...it doesn't have to be formal training. You know how to fight, right? Sword fighting, or staff fighting, or hunting with a bow?”

He shook his head.

“Even just children practicing with wooden swords sometimes get a level of skill eventually...”

“Nope, never did that.”

“Daggers? Slings? Anything.”

“Sorry”.

“Ok, so maybe we can just start with just punching and wresting, everyone's done that before right? We could at least...”

He shook his head a fourth time.

She stared at him. “Have you ever been in a fight?”

“Not really. My part of the world is very peaceful. Some soldiers from my country go off to other parts of the world to fight, but I've never done that.”

“...even when you were a child, you never got into a fist fight?”

“I mean, I got beat up a couple of times when I was a kid. Never really hit anyone back though, I wasn't much of a fighter.”

She shook her head. “Your world sounds like paradise, compared to this one, but I'm not sure how you're going to survive in this world.”

He didn't have a good response to that, so they just kept walking west, until he tripped over another root and almost fell down again.