The next item of his status he focused on were his attributes and he was able to open a new context menu again.

Attributes are numeric representations of the bodies performance levels. At first, 20 points increase in a attribute means a doubling of the performance. This rate will decrease over time with higher attribute values.

Strength - Influences physical strength and to a lesser degree life energy and damage resistance

Agility - Influences physical speed, reflexes and to a lesser degree stamina

Vitality - Influences life energy and to a lesser degree stamina

Endurance - Influences stamina and to a lesser degree life energy

Mana Capacity - Influences mana capacity

Regeneration - Influences life and stamina regeneration and to a lesser degree mana regeneration

Mana Regeneration - Influences mana regeneration

Toughness - Influences damage resistance

Daniel thought a bit about this information. It seemed like he had to make a choice between concentrating on physical attributes or on mana. He was alone in a dungeon. He had no idea how magic worked and his only weapons were a dull training saber and some kitchen knives. Wasn't there a saying in most fantasy RPGs. Linear warriors and quadratic mages? Usually in the start warriors were stronger but in the long run mages became more versatile and the distance grew larger and larger later on.

While it would probably be suicide to concentrate on magic right now, he shouldn't ignore magic and limit himself in his future. The logarithmic attribute scaling probably meant it would be smart to concentrate on a few attributes and increase the rest with training.

As far as he experienced on earth, it was far easier to train strength than agility. Additionally, it wouldn't be a good idea to get hit without access to healing, heavy armour or a lot of toughness. While he had no idea how to train vitality, maybe getting hit a lot? Endurance training was something he had experience in and it was pretty straight forward. In addition more endurance meant longer training and less danger of running out of steam in a fight. Vitality was probably only a smart choice in combination with strength and toughness. Mana capacity could probably increased by using mana or running low on. Both seemed pretty time consuming without a high mana regeneration. Between the both types of regeneration, the normal one seemed far superior if one wasn't a pure mage. Daniel had no idea how strong the toughness attribute was, but if the system had some kind of balance, it probably wasn't a good idea to concentrate on it without healing. Even if, getting himself injured to train an attribute, wasn't his idea of having fun.

After thinking about the attributes some more, he came to the conclusion that he would concentrate his level ups at the start on agility, mana capacity and regeneration while trying to increase strength and endurance with training. He had 5 days to test this plan. If the training didn't bring satisfying results, he would have to come up with another idea.

With that decided, he concentrated on his perks.

Perks

Dungeon Traveler

A dungeon traveler is a new guest to this world. In order to compensate the years of training and leveling he missed, all his attributes level three times faster from training, all his XP rises 20% faster and all of his primary skills and spells level 50% faster.

"Yes!" Daniel shouted.

While he had no idea how fast attributes leveled without a perk, or if it normally was even worth to concentrate on training them or how long a average dungeon traveler survived. This huge bonus meant that he had the possibility to become pretty powerful in the long run.

His other two perks were nothing special.

Human

A human has no special modifier

Male

A male human starts with +1 on strength and -1 on vitality

Daniel had to hold himself back to not immediately start doing pushups to test his attribute leveling perk. In his mind, it would probably be a better idea to look at the rest of his status window first and concentrated on his skills next.

Skills

Skills support the user at activities in the world

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 4

Open

Open

Open

unlocked at Level 5

That explanation was pretty generic. He tried to access one of the slots, but nothing happened. Maybe, he had to create his skills through activities and actions?

To test his theory he opened his exercise bag and took out the saber. Then, he started to do his basic training routine for sword fighting. At first, nothing happened. But, after he kept going for over 10 minutes and depleted more than half of his stamina, he got a popup.

Endurance + 1 + 12 XP

While he wanted to test if he could create a skill, this message wasn't unwelcome either. He decided to keep going and when his stamina was short from running out, he got another popup.

Skill gained: Swordsmanship (passive) - Rank Novice 0%

Swordsmanship increases focus and precision while handling a sword.

Yes, it worked!. But, then his smile dimmed and he checked his skill slots. His worry came true. It seemed there was no way to get rid of a skill. There hadn't been a question if he wanted to learn this skill either. While learning swordsmanship had been his goal, he would need to be very careful what he was doing while he had an open skill slot. Keeping that in mind, he waited a while for his stamina to regenerate a bit then started his basic training moves with his new skill. The difference compared to before didn't seem that much. But, he was able to notice small differences. It was easier to do precise moves and to hit small targets. If the effect was like this at the start of the novice rank, it would probably become very powerful in the long run.

Before he contemplated what to do about his other two open skill slots, he decided to look at the last two subjects on his status window.

Elements

User can only choose an element where you have a basic understanding. The better the understanding of an element, the faster elemental spells level and the easier it is to create more powerful spells.

At level 1 the user can select one basic element

Basic Elements (4/4)

Air

Fire

Earth

Water

With a smile Daniel mused that maybe, his studying of physics at a university would come in handy. Of course, that was depending on the level of understanding of nature this world had.

He began to think about the advantages and disadvantages of the elements. As far he could tell fire was the best element for attack. But, it seemed useless for defense and focusing on defeating enemies with fireballs would probably mean that he would run out of mana fast.

Earth looked like a good element for utility and defense. He wasn't able to see real synergies with his swordsmanship, though.

Maybe, water could be used for healing, or defense or even attack. But, if there needed to be a water source or humidity around him to use it, he could be screwed if there were dry areas in the dungeon.

That left only air. He could use it for deflecting arrows and attacks with compressed air. Maybe, even to fly or at least glide. In D&D haste was an air spell and if he could use air magic to move the oxygen away from his enemies, he could suffocate them. Then he thought off a japanese manga series he had watched a few years ago. Wouldn't it be possible to enhance a blade's sharpness with air magic? He concluded that if possible, this would probably a pretty mana efficient way to increase his damage potential. Daniel made his decision and selected air magic.

At last he opened the elemental spell window from his status.

Elemental Spells:

Air:

The system will help the operator with the creation of the first spell of an element

When Daniel read the message, he thought about his priorities and which of his applications of air magic would be difficult to develop by himself. His conclusion was, that finding a way to give his saber a sharp edge and to find protection from projectile weapons would be his highest priority for now. Of those two, the creation of a wind blast that moved arrows off course seemed to be far more straight forward.

With this in mind, he started to think about surrounding his weapon with a two blade of compressed moving against each other to create an edge. He needed some experimentation until he started to get a grip on how to use mana and to control air. After a few hours he was able to compress the air along the edge of his saber and he was rewarded by a notification.

Elemental Spell created

Air - Windcutter (channelling) - Level 1

Increases the sharpness of a bladed weapon. Increases blade damage by a fixed value and additionally improves with the sharpness of the underlying weapon depending on mana usage and spell level.

He smiled and activated his spell. What before took a tremendous amount of concentration was easy now. To test how big the fixed bonus was, he struck at the broomstick from his cleaning equipment and was able to cut through the stick in one slash. In his estimation his spell improved the sharpness of his blunt blade to a level of a very sharp blade. If he could sharpen blade itself and level the spell, this would probably become a lot better than the sharpest blade on earth.

After the test, Daniel left the spell active and had a look at his mana level. It slowly decreased by around 1% every 3 seconds. While he was no expert on real fights, something told him that they probably lasted less than 300 seconds. This meant he had a functioning weapon, at least for small scale battles.

For a moment, he thought about leaving the safe zone and exploring the dungeon. It would be a great help to his planning, if he knew what kind of enemies he could expect to face here. But, he discarded the idea. For now it was more important to get the right skills for his skill slots. Facing unexpected situations in the dungeon could lead to an unwanted skill or even useless one that wouldn't help him in the long run.