Jason woke up as his notifications blared to life. Even his closed eyelids couldn’t protect him from the burning bright blue that distrubed his rest. When the hell did this thing decide I was awake. Jason opened his eyes and ignored the system for a minute or two just to take a look around. He wasn’t exactly surprised to find himself once more in the white tent on the makeshift bed.

What was different this time though was that he also had bandages wrapped around his right arm and his head. Including his left eye. As he was trying to get up Baghric came through the door holding a sack and looking exhausted. His immaculate beard was not so immaculate anymore with stray hairs going this way and that. His eyes had bags underneath them and his back was ever so slightly hunched. It was only when he saw that Jason was awake that some life came back into the dwarf.

“Jason me boy! Yer awake! Ye’ve been asleep for an entire day laddie.” Baghric rushed over next to the makeshift bed and started to unwrap the bandages from Jason’s head and arm. Jason looked at his arm and although it looked a bit… odd for some reason it seemed perfectly fine. Jason really couldn’t figure out why his arm looked odd. Not for the life of him.

In fact… everything looked a bit strange to Jason. It all seemed too flat? Is that the right word? Yes… yes I think it is. It’s hard to tell how far away things are. My depth perception is messed up. Jason reached up and touched his eye. Then his hands traveled across to touch the left eye. Or the hole where his left eye used to be.

“Baghric… where’s my eye?” Jason whispered. Baghric sighed and forcefully moved Jason’s hand away from his eye socket.

“Te stick at te end. It took yer eye. I finished off te level fifteen alpha wolf soon after that but yer eye was already gone. I got us outa te fires range then set up te tent an’ immediately got ye taken care of.” Jason was afraid. He wasn’t afraid of losing his eye, the wolf, or the branch. No he was afraid because he didn’t care that much. That easy go with the flow attitude that he felt earlier was here again. It never left in the first place I guess, there simply wasn’t any situation that allowed it to express itself to this degree.

“Baghric… why don’t I care that much?” Baghric flinched at this.

“Jason do ye know how a beast reacts to losing its eye?” Jason stared straight into Baghric’s eyes.

“No, but I see where you’re going with this. But explain to me how I resemble a beast.” Jason wasn’t stupid. He was by no means a genius, but he wasn’t a complete idiot.

“First off, beasties don’t care much. Te pain hurts, but they move on te survive. Laddie ye ate those fruits. An’ survived… that’s not possible. If ye were above level 25 an’ ate a low-level beast fruit then ye could survive through yer own mana density. Yet ye weren’t even introduced into te system boyo. Ye shoulda died. Unless o’ course. Ye had some beast blood in ya.” Baghric was looking confused at this point. His brows furrowed and his mouth in a frown. “But ya didn’t have beast blood in ya. I dealt with yer wounds that first time when ye were unconscious outside te tunnel and ye had no beast blood that I can tell ya. So after that I had ye eat the hearts of some beasties. Again something that woulda killed a normal person. There’s something in yer body boyo. Something that is making it more beast than man. Yer similar to one of them therianthrope ancestors. Humans or other people who could eat and devour beasts.”

So that’s why. It’s definitely not something I already had on Earth. I remember crying just two years ago because I broke my finger. Didn’t cry for long, but still I cared about my body to the point where just breaking a bone made me cry. I just lost a fucking eye for christ’s sake. I should be weeping and screaming right now. No… whatever this is came when I got transported here. Although I still was worried when I encountered that first trap. Then again when those axes appeared.

This is a slow change. Probably sped up when I ate those hearts, but still a gradual change. The question now is… do I let it continue… I don’t know.

“So right now if I keep eating those hearts I’ll become a beast. Am I hearing that right?” Jason got up from the bed and glanced down at his naked body. It seems my clothes have finally quit on me. Damn fire.

“No laddie no. Ye’ll become more beast-like. Ye can choose certain things… I don’t know much. I might be in a group of therianthropes but they all talk bout their ancestors with te greatest respect. Like they’re gods. In fact they might either treat ye like a god or treat ye like a sworn enemy and sacrifice ye to their god.” Baghric shrugged at the end as if it wasn’t a big deal.

Great so every therianthrope I meet will either love or loathe me… yay! What a cursed life. I see now why we’re called the Cursed Ones.

“So I’ll get claws, wings, or whatever I want?” Jason walked out of the tent with Baghric in tow. I’m tired… just so tired. Can I sleep normally for once? Maybe just relax by the fi… the stars. They’re so beautiful. The sky was a black canvas that some painter decided to fling drops of white paint on. On Earth the stars are always covered up by smog and by light, but out here not even a week away from a city Jason could see stars.

There was no milky way, but the sky was still beautiful. For the first time since Jason got here he actually enjoyed it. Ya know… maybe this place isn’t so bad after all. Jason was so caught up in the night sky that he was ignoring whatever Baghric was saying. Instead he decided to pull up his status.

Experience Gained:

Lodenstone of Chance: 1,805

Well of Fortune: 55

Aura of Misfortune: 271

Unnatural Endurance: 121

Unnatural Speed: 121

Wooden Bones: 72

LEVEL UP

General Information

Class: Blessed One

Species: Human

Favor: NA

Experience: 635 / 3,320

Level: 7

Titles: None

Stats

Fortitude:

10

100 / 100 hp

Vitality:

10

5 hp / hour

Endurance:

10

100 / 100 sp

Vigor:

10

5 sp / hour

Focus:

10

100 / 100 mp

Willpower

10

5 mp / hour

Charisma:

10

10 bf

Luck:

40

80% (147%) | 8% (11.0%)

Stat Points Available: 5

Skills and Talents

Active:

Offense: None

Defense: None

Utility: None

Passive:

Offense: None

Defense: Wooden Bones [I] (144 / 200)

Utility: Lodenstone of Chance [VI] (143 / 3,200), Well of Fortune [II] (350 / 500), Aura of Misfortune [III] (236 / 1,600), Unnatural Endurance [IV] (918 / 1,400), Unnatural Speed [IV] (754 / 1,400)

Talents: Touch of a Gambler, Mark of Fortune

Skill Points Available: 1

Jason snorted. Well it looks like everytime something bad happens to me then Lodenstone gets a huge experience boost. It also looks like the more experience I need to get to the next level the more I get from Lodenstone. So if it’s a dangerous event I get more experience. Assuming there were two bad events yesterday. Or was it the day before yesterday? Whatever… the point is that each bad event seems to give around a fourth of my total experience needed to level up. So if four bad events happen in a day I’ll level up no matter what. But I’ll also almost definitely die. I almost died to those wolves and the goddamn branch. Those were only two events. Two more like that and I would’ve died.

Again I see why we’re the Cursed Ones. Now for something I should’ve asked a while ago.

“Baghric. What does the event percentage mean? Is that daily, monthly, yearly, minutely? What does it mean?” Jason turned and found Baghric had stopped worrying and fussing about Jason and his eye and went back to his normal self.

“That percentage is daily lad. What percent is it right now?”

“147 effective percent,” Baghric groaned at that.

“What is yer fortune percentage?”

“Eleven effective percent,”

“Ye cursed bastard. We’re gonna ‘aveta deal with things every day. Hopefully most of the events will just be ya trippin on a rock as ye train. Won’t get ye any experience in Lodenstone but I ain’t fighting a wolf pack every day. I’m a healer not a fighter. Only reason we won is because they were levels 9-11 and the alpha was 15.” Baghric started grumbling and complaining.

“Hey at least we lived. Although I think we can start that combat training since I have a skill point and a defensive skill. By the way what spell did you use to heal my arm like that in the fight?” Baghric perked up at that.

“That was Regeneration boyo. Rank four in the buffs and debuffs spell sub tree. Also yer level seven already? Ye must level damn fast with them luck skills o’ yers.”

“I got wooden bones. Also I only level fast when bad things happen. Good things… not so much,” Jason laid down and stared at the treetops and the sky beyond it enjoying the view. The vision was still weird but Jason was getting used to it swiftly. The worst thing was that occasionally when Jason looked around he could feel his muscles around the left eye trying to move it as well. It felt like worms squirming around his eye socket.

“Eh that’s a good one ta start with. Truth be told, I'm not gonna tell ye how to build yerself. Just gon give ya some advice. Focus on the passive luck skills. In fact passive skills in general are good. The people who do things te best are those who learned it all themselves… not from some active skill forcibly moving their body. Course even te most extreme people ‘ave at least four or five active skills in case they get in trouble. One thing I’ll say as yer hand to hand combat trainer is get yerself a passive unarmed combat skill and then tomorrow we start training.” Baghric without even seeing if there was a response walked into the tent and went, presumably, to bed.

Jason on the other hand just stayed on the ground in a spread eagle and enjoyed the stars. It’s been chaos ever since I came here. The caves, the fruits, then immediate training which made my body ache, then finally the wolves. It’s nice to just lay here.

Five minutes later Jason got up and stretched his body. “I can lay around all day after I learn the language, train five skills to rank ten, and learn how to fight. Just another Tuesday.” Jason paused at that. “Do they have Tuesday’s here? Like how do they measure days… how long are days? Do they even have a calendar or is it just whenever spring comes again everyone is a year older? Why am I just thinking of these things now? Why am I even worried about this stuff? Whatever… yeah yeah whatever… doesn’t matter.”

Jason shook his head to rid himself of silly and inane thoughts. “Ok so I need an offensive skill. Unarmed because that’s what I’ll be learning. Maybe I should get something that will help when I inevitably turn more bestial. Actually no. I might turn a little bestial, but I should be able to keep myself mostly human. After all I’m not a fighter or anything so I don’t need super senses or claws. I’m just gonna build so that what I did in that ‘fight’ could be repeated. Yeah… yeah… I’ll do that,” Jason started out talking normally then quieted down to a whisper and eventually just started thinking.

I need a build in which my current low goodluck will actually be useful. If there are bad things happening all around me, including to the enemies because of Aura of Misfortune then all I need to do is take advantage of them. Similar to the tree that fell on that wolf I just need the instances of bad luck to kill the enemies. All I have to do is be strong and fast enough to avoid and survive both the enemies and my own bad luck. Which if Baghric is being honest, which he usually is curse him, is going to be happening frequently. So I need all the luck passive skills because luck, then I’ll need a good amount of defense and movement with offense falling off. Yes… yes. So I’ll simply be someone who runs around and waits for the environment to kill off things. Sounds cowardly, but I like it. Fits me like a glove.

As for now. Well training starts when the sun comes up but there’s no reason to waste the time I have. Let’s get that offensive skill. Then let’s start running. Jason chose his skill, threw all points into luck, and then started jogging around the fire. Careful to keep his stamina loss at around five an hour.