"It is, actually. Monte uses it to manage his workload. He spends most of his time in a rig to use the time dilation." Eve shifted to sit cross-legged on her blanket, which behaved more like a flying carpet now.

"Can I get a desk and some furniture in here?" Ryan rushed to get out his question. I can take care of my schoolwork here...long live digital coursework! He itched to get started. Nothing could be done about the delay in finding his pickax, but Syrna was the only other person who could quickly get back to it. There was the issue of it being surrounded by a pack of wolves...

Ryan figured that no one at this stage of the game would have the ability to fight through that pack with ease. Until Syrna told him, it never occurred to Ryan that he should look at the creature's level. He just dealt with things as they happened. In hindsight, she was completely right to call him stupid. Games afford more preparation, and Ryan, as Rydr, had forgotten that he was still playing a game.

However lifelike that game is. He thought to himself.

"You could probably make furniture yourself instead of asking me, you know? You have the most natural talent for mana manipulation I've ever seen. You can't level your skills here, but the mental exercise will help you in-game." Eve leaned forward on her blanket and poked him in the forehead.

"Think of it as a testing ground to try things out. The better you get at manipulating your surroundings, the easier it will be for you to create or modify skills in-game. Just remember that you can't do this stuff in-game without the relevant skill. Trying will just swirl the mana around in the shape of the thing you're trying to make." She waved her hand again, and a timer appeared in the air.

*4:40:23*

Ryan watched it for a moment and realized she had provided him a countdown timer for when he could log into the game again. They talked for twenty minutes without him realizing it. He wanted to thank her, but shaking an all-powerful AI's hand seemed rude. He dithered for a few moments before he decided to bow at the waist.

"Thank you for answering my questions, Eve!" Ryan felt like he should give her something, but how could he make anything that she couldn't make better than he could?

"It's no problem, Ryan. Watching you has been fun. You're one of a small handful of players that have treated my world as an actual, separate world. Thank you!" Eve smiled, and Ryan felt his heart would stop from the overload of adorableness. Her pale green hair covered her sapphire blue eyes, all wrapped in the cherubic face of a child. Modeling companies would have bankrupted themselves, trying to get her to work for them as a child model.

With that, Eve vanished from Ryan's lobby. He turned back to the menu that displayed his coursework and set himself to the task of creating furniture for himself.

*****

Four hours and forty minutes later, a gong sounded through Ryan's lobby. The scenery changed drastically in those four hours. He digitized his schoolbooks and crafted a wooden bookshelf for himself, alongside a comfortable desk chair, metal-framed glass desk, and even a massive bed to relax on.

Ryan turned from his work and found that the floating timer vanished, replaced with a glowing portal in the shape of an arched doorway. Fog rolled out through the edges of the doorway, and Ryan had to admire the effect. It really did make him excited to step back into a fantasy world where he could be anything.

Ryan used the last four-odd hours to work ahead on his course load and managed to complete the next day's assignments ahead of time. If he didn't have to show up in class for many of his courses, he would have kept playing all day the next day.

He stepped through the door, and when he opened his eyes, he was Rydr, the intrepid adventurer. He looked around himself and found that he stood in the center of an overgrown graveyard. A bright light flashed next to him, and out stepped Syrna, the archer he met in the woods. She had died within seconds of Rydr going down under the wolves.

Syrna looked around curiously, the same way Rydr had a minute before. When she looked at him, he gave her a little wave, not sure how to talk about their deaths five hours ago.

Syrna ran a hand through her blonde hair. Dirty blonde now that Rydr could see it without a wolf clamped to his butt cheeks, teeth first. He was anxious to start searching for his lost pickax, but he had many notifications that demanded his attention. Rydr sat down next to Syrna, using a headstone for a stool while he opened his notifications.

"What are you doing?" Syrna asked him when she noticed that he sat down without saying anything to her.

Rydr glanced at her, still unsure how to address their deaths, "A lot of notifications to sort out," he offered by way of explanation. Rydr's chest felt tight and uncomfortable, worried that Syrna was mad at him.

Syrna scowled at him, "You shouldn't let those build up. Only noobs do that. Sometimes those don't take effect until you accept them, which can be the difference between life and death. Try to find a balance instead of letting them build up all the time." Suddenly she lunged, and Rydr felt a blade against his throat. "It can also leave you open to attacks from players or NPC's." Syrna sheathed her dagger on her leg sheath, which Rydr only noticed just now.

Rydr remained frozen and stared at Syrna.

"What?" She asked.

"Well, I'm afraid you'll kill me if I open them now," Rydr explained sheepishly.

"Oh my lord, just open them already." She smacked him on the back of the head.

Rydr laughed and opened his notifications one by one. Syrna was a bit prickly, but there was a sense of humor in there somewhere. Never mind that Rydr couldn't usually hold a conversation in real life. He shrugged away his inadequacies and started with his oldest notifications.

Rare Feat! Baby Steps

Congratulations, you are the first diver to create your own Stat. While modest, who knows what this could lead to someday!

· [Balance] Stat Created

· +10 Balance

· +5 Dexterity

· +2 Free Points

[Balance]

You are off to a wobbly start, but your stumbling has borne fruit! Your ability to orient yourself in unstable conditions is better than the average person.

Rydr read the first two notices numbly. He had no clue when he achieved this one. Balance can't be a bad thing. Plus, Rydr netted some free points in dexterity and miscellaneous points for his strength. Before he assigned anything, Rydr opened the other notices.

Epic Feat! No Rules

Not only are you the first to develop your own style, but you are also the first to make others fear facing you in combat! Those who face you seek only the most painful and traumatizing death!

· [Savagery] Passive Skill Created (Level 1 Beginner)

· +10 Strength

· +5 Constitution

· +10 Free Points

· [Intimidation] Stat Discovered

· +5 Intimidation

[Savagery] Level 1 Beginner

What you consider efficient use of strength, others call nightmare fuel. In fights, you are more likely to be avoided than engaged, for fear of a gruesome death at your hands.

· Low-Level creatures are less likely to attack you

o [Intimidation] Doubled while fighting

· +5% Damage while using [Savagery] style

*You Leveled Up...*

*Paragon Triggered*

Balance didn't seem like it would be useful outside of ship combat, or maybe an earthquake.

Rydr numbly checked his combat logs and found that each wolf was normally worth 85 Exp. The suppression from four levels gave him four times the experience. It came out to roughly 100% more experience rewarded per level above his own. The result was 340 experience for each wolf, for a total of 680 experience gained.

While Rydr didn't know if there was an upper limit to experience increases for level suppression, he obviously hadn't reached it yet. He had to assume that beating things stronger than yourself was usually a more difficult thing to do.

Now that he had accepted his notifications, Rydr sat and pondered how to spend his free stat points. He had eighteen...actually twenty-three points to spend since he received five free points because he reached level two.

Wait, wait, wait. That can't be right. If you only receive five points for leveling, that means I'm...Rydr started some mental math while he pulled up his character sheet to make sure he was right.

Name

Rydr

Level

2

80/1750

Race

Human

Class

Fame

170

Infamy

0

Health

270

Mana

470 (14.1/s)

Stamina

100 (6.5/s)

Free Points

23

Strength

60 (5)

Intelligence

47

Dexterity

17

Wisdom

47

Constitution

27 (5)

Charisma

10

Luck

7

Will

22

Balance

15

Intimidation

7

Skills:

· Third Eye (Lvl. 1 Beginner)

· Reinforcement (Lvl. 1 Journeyman)

· Empower (Lvl. 1 Journeyman)

· Consume (Lvl. 1 Journeyman)

Passives:

· Paragon (Lvl. MAXED)

· Savagery (Lvl. 1 Beginner)

Feats:

· The First Feat – Legendary­

· A Flexible Mind – Monumental

· You Broke It – Elite

· Diamond in the Rough – Rare

· Ahead of the Game – Uncommon

· First Mage – Monumental

· Baby Steps – Rare

· No Rules – Epic

Rydr fell off his tombstone seat and nearly knocked into Syrna. She smacked him upside the head again, but Rydr barely felt it. She might have also said something anatomically unlikely. I have the same number of stats as a level twenty-nine player. Thirty if he included the five he just got from his level up.

Rydr stared at his hands as his avatar changed to reflect his new stats. He watched as his forearms filled out, and veins bulged under his skin. His shirt was completely gone at this point from multiple encounters with wolves, and he could see his chest and stomach fill out. His body now looked like a dedicated gym junkie. The kind that doesn't use steroids or other boosters. At least I'm not grotesque. Rydr flexed his arms lightly and marveled at them. They were easily twice the size of his arms in real life, probably bigger.

Rydr felt the slap on his head this time. He glanced up at Syrna, unsure why he deserved violence this time. "What?"

"What do you mean, 'what'? You went from runner to bodybuilder in a handful of seconds. What the heck, dude?" She grabbed his arms and lifted them away from his chest to expose washboard abdominal muscles and what looked like the start of what gym dudes call "lats."

"Did you finish a quest?" Syrna stepped back and pulled him up. She walked around him in a circle and announced, "You have back muscles too!" She stopped in front of him and shook her head. "This is so broken. What stats do you have? How do I get them? I need all the strength I can get."

Rydr wanted to fall into the ground to get away from her questions. He felt more than a little uncomfortable telling her about his passive, [Paragon], but he didn't feel like he could just brush off her questions. Not unless he wanted to destroy the fledgling party he had going.

"I..." Rydr steeled himself against his own anxiety. I am not Ryan here. I am Rydr, and I'm here to wield the biggest weapons and hit harder than anyone else. "I accomplished a few feats, all by accident, and...I didn't have the time to accept them until now." He left out the parts about being the first person ever to accomplish all his feats so far or how many.

Syrna stared at him. A flash of hurt appeared on her face and went away. "You don't have to make things up if you don't want to tell me, you know?" She turned away, and he saw her vanish from his party interface.

Rydr's heart jumped into his throat, and he reached out to grab her shoulder, "I'm not lying! I got all my stats from feats and only leveled up once. I've only finished one quest, the newbie Strength Challenge!" In a panic, he blurted out everything he was thinking. Syrna tugged at her shoulder but couldn't get away from Rydr's higher strength score.

Syrna slapped his hand, and Rydr flinched back, releasing her shoulder. Syrna rubbed her shoulder as she stared at him inscrutably. The leather armor she wore was damaged from his grip. She suddenly spun on her heel again, but instead of storming off as Rydr feared, she sat down on a nearby tombstone.

"Explain feats," she ordered.

At a loss, Rydr explained his best guess. "Feats seem to be a system of rewards based on difficulty or rarity. From what I've seen, they can be triggered by accomplishing any noteworthy...well...feats. They can reward stat points, free or otherwise, as well as skills. They can probably give items too, but I haven't seen any. A far as I can tell, they have ranks the same way items do." Rydr didn't know if he explained it well enough, but he spit-balled a theory as best he could.

Syrna hummed to herself as she tapped her fingers on her tombstone seat. "Okay, let's say I believe you-"

"I'm not lying."

She raised her hand to smack him again but put it down again when she realized he was too far away to hit. Rydr tried to pretend he hadn't flinched. Syrna took a deep breath and continued, "Let's say I believe you. How do I get some for myself?"

"Well, one of mine was given to me because I, apparently, created my own fighting style. At least, something distinct enough to be called its own style. The system generated a feat that gave me my own passive skill, like "Swordsmanship," but it's called Savagery. I also got some Strength, Constitution, and free stat points for doing it." Rydr felt like he added too many details, but he was so desperate for her to believe him that he wasn't watching how much he spoke like he normally would. He decided not to mention the intimidation stat, which didn't seem important.

"Frontier Online...' chase the frontier,' Monte said, create your own skills..." Syrna seemed to be talking to herself, but Rydr was too afraid to talk and risk annoying the only person he knew in-game.

She nodded to herself. "Okay, a lot of things in that launch interview have started to make sense. I believe you." She visibly clenched her jaw before she said, "I'm sorry for overreacting before." Then she made a few motions in the air, and Rydr received another party invite. The relief he felt when he saw the invite almost put him on his ass again. He happily accepted.

"Um, I know we barely know each other, but I actually do need some help." Rydr rushed ahead before his anxiety told him he wasn't worth being helped. "I dropped my pickax, and I need it for a quest so I can learn how to smith."

Syrna stared some more. Rydr tried not to squirm.

"How many feats do you have?"

"Uh...around eight, I think? I'd have to count to make sure..." He still felt uncomfortable when they talked about the feats he had done like he didn't deserve them.

"Hm, yeah, I'll help you out. I've got a feeling following you is the best way to get feats." She hopped off her tombstone and started to walk out of the graveyard. It was a surprise that no one else had respawned in the few minutes they had talked. "We need to find another person for the party, though, or we won't be able to rotate against mobs and bosses."

"Where do we get someone else?" Rydr wondered out loud.

Syrna just smirked and said, "Follow me."