Hero's Personal Log 010

Holy shit.

P-System Log

He did level up. From the way his body's reacting to it, it hit him basically the same way the first overflow of W Inertia hit me. He's like, twitching in place, and given his Personal Log I think it's in a good way.

Good to know. I'm not entirely sure exactly what happened in the level-up process, I just know that [W%M;G,P] stepped in to hold my hand through leveling him up. I guess he hit a certain threshold of XP or W Inertia.

I... don't feel that different, to be honest. I don't know if I'm supposed to feel different or anything, but the level for him didn't correspond to a similar increase for me.

Hm. I wonder if my skill has anything to say about this. Hey, weird letter name from the Origin! You got anything for me?

...okay, I wasn't expecting that to work. In that case, time to burn some W Inertia to look into it. Thanks to the skill itself, I know my way around the W Inertia stat now, even if I don't know exactly what W Inertia is just yet. That's how I was able to do my extremely scientific, controlled experiment with Jerome's skills earlier.

Anyway, the point is, I know how to use W Inertia to aid my actions now. Let's put that to use, shall we?

Fuck, man, I can't believe I'm talking to myself like this. Get over yourself, Parker, god(s).

Ugh. It's not like I have anyone else to talk to other than Jerome, and he doesn't seem like the most engaged conversation partner. Some self-conversation is inevitable in this situation, y'know?

Okay. Can't have a crisis right now. There are numbers to look into, after all.

Two points of W Inertia to look into my [Unique] skill.

P-System Log

Wow, straight up an empty box. I don't think I've see that one before.

Fuck it, more W Inertia. I've got, uh...

Current W Inertia: 38357 P-System Log

38357 points worth of this shit, I'll be damned if I don't use at least some of it.

Investing another eight in for a total of ten.

Let's go!

P-System Log Another twenty! Thirty total now! P-System Log Hey, that's progress! Another twenty! Make it fifty overall!

<̶̺́̌͠E̴̤͑̊͘R̸͎͚̲̖̓̓͐͐͗͜

P-System Log Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! P-System Log

Holy shit, Parker, you need to get it together.

Okay. Even without a brain, I somehow managed to fuck things up for myself again. Damn it, I thought that the whole "shuffling off the mortal coil and being reincarnated as an incorporeal being" thing would help the issues I had with getting overly attached to unnecessary tangents, but it looks like that's a part of me as much as the rest of my mind is. At least there isn't a gacha system here. Given what just happened, I think I would've been proper fucked if there was.

Alright... well, what's done is done, that's what my parents always told me, so there's nothing I can do now except deal with the present I've made for myself and look to the future.

The present isn't looking the rosiest, though. I gotta take stock of what I just did. Looking back through my own P-System Logs, I can see that I spent fifty W Inertia. I won't doubt that part, at least--[W%M;G,P] really has been doing the heavy lifting for me. As it is, though, I just wasted an entire wolf or more of W Inertia trying to access a skill that definitely wasn't supposed to be accessed.

I hurt all over. It's a different type of hurt from the thinky-pain that resulted from perceiving the R Beast, and it's a fair bit more intense, though definitely not debilitating. More importantly, it carries a sense of emotion to it. It's really weird to describe, because the hurt isn't the same kind of hurt that I could physically perceive before. In the same way that I can see without sight and manipulate without touch, I can hurt without nerves. It's not quite emotional pain, not quite physical.

The only thing I can say for sure is that it's tinged with disapproval. Given the cut-off error message and how fucked up it looks, I'm fairly certain I definitely wasn't supposed to be poking around in here.

Oh well. The pain is fading pretty quickly, so I'm pretty sure that was less of a "you have touched the holy texts, now die, heretic" move and more of a "hey! don't touch that!", which makes sense. From what I can gather, I'm the first human stuck as a System, which likely means I'm an experiment. Wouldn't do to break one of those this early on, right?

Anyway, that's the situation. Less bad than I thought it would be, all things considered.

Well, that's what I can make of it so far, at least. Decent odds there's more repercussions waiting for me that I haven't figured out yet.

Hero's Personal Log 011

Uhhh, System? I don't know how this world works, exactly, but aren't I supposed to gain skill points or stat points or whatever for leveling up? P-System Log

Ah, shit. There's one of those unforeseen complications right there.

I've done a little gathering of information recently, which is another way to say that I've been spoon-fed some very handy information by the skill facilitating half the stuff I'm supposed to do as a System, and I'm fairly sure I can increase his stats. The HP barrier that protects him from taking actual damage is the easiest to increase, but all of them just involve various levels of focusing on W Inertia.

So, here we go! Let's try focusing on his HP. That construct doesn't work the same way I'd expect a game's HP to work. Rather than it marking how injured someone is, it keeps them at full health. As I saw with the [Bite]s from the first mob we encountered, Jerome is getting very temporarily hurt before the System just... erases the damage, I guess. The HP barrier prevents him from getting seriously harmed, but the points decrease. I haven't been able to observe the effects of damage on other mobs because the spellcasters--Integrated, sorry, since that's apparently what everyone calls them--are killing them too fast. If I had to guess, though, the protection should last right up until the HP hits zero, at which point I suppose the monster or caster dies.

Come to think of it, this is more along the lines of how a videogame does it rather than, say, Dungeons and Dragons. I always did find it weird how most MOBAs or FPS games wouldn't actually have a functional difference between 1 and 100 HP, but I guess that's how it is here.

Anyway. Since I learned the distinction, I can identify the HP barrier surrounding things. I don't know how I didn't realize it before, but maybe my perception was being limited by my lack of experience. Or maybe [W%M;G,P] gave me the tools to see it, like I receieved a brand-new pair of glasses. I remember when I got my first pair of those. I was nine, maybe? It was like seeing the world anew, seeing what was truly there for the first time.

Agh, getting off track again. Reign it in, Parker.

Let's see how much a single point of W Inertia does for it. This is going to burn the stat without converting it into XP, which I don't think I've actually done except for deeper perceptions so far.

Here goes.

Time to see if that did anything.

Specific-stat-perception go!

Damn, I'm bad at naming what I do.

Jerome Smith (abbreviated) Stat Current Maximum Health 475 503 P-System Log

Three point increase. I remember it was 500 to start. 472 the last I checked, which means that the Health I add to his maximum increases his current HP as well. Once again, unsure if this is a direct conversion of W Inertia to health, but given its use with XP, I think it's probably a rough, random-ish value. Okay, I can work with that!

So how much HP do I give him? I find it odd that the stats from the skills updated automatically, but Jerome's own stats didn't.

Theory: the stats of the skills are universal and predetermined by the Origin System, but since Jerome is attached to me, I need to figure out what to do with his stats on my own.

Whatever the case, I need to handle this, and I need to handle it soon.

Hero's Personal Log 012

System query: help? I would like my points, please?

Gods, I hope you didn't wake up just to return to uselessness. That would be just my luck, wouldn't it?

P-System Log

Ah. Okay, that's important. Don't want to be relegated to "useless shitter" again.

What's a reasonable way to calculate HP? I don't want to give him too much. If he gets into too much danger, I'll just pump it up, and right now I don't want to spend too much W Inertia if I can afford not to. Hmmmm...

Time for my ultimate tactic: random bullshit go!

I'm sure the Constitution stat has some relevance elsewhere, but I can use that. Hmmm... it's not too high, so I'll just scale the boost off Constitution. The Constitution stat times a number between 1 and 1.5, I think, just to keep him on his toes.

Can I do random rolls? I think I should be able to.

1R5 result: 3 Jerome Smith (abbreviated) Stat Modifier Total Constitution +8 23 P-System Log

1.3 it is!

That makes... 1.3 times 23, which is just about 30.

10 W Inertia for the HP stat, then. 9, since I already invested one. Excellent.

Let me just make a notification for him...

P-System Message

Health has been increased by 30.

Stat increases available!

P-System Log And now, to figure out what I should be giving him.