“Eh…?”

“Where am I?”

“This place… it’s dark and feels so empty, yet...something feels weirdly solid about it”

“Wait a moment…”

“Who am I?”

“What am I?”

“Eh…?”

“What was that, was that someone asking me something?”

“What do I want to do you say…”

“I… I want to control”

“I want the power to control my own life and those around me!”

And then I lost consciousness.

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“Argh...my head hurts, where am I?”

“This thing under my hand, is this grass?”

I opened my eyes and start to take in the view around me with some difficulty as my eyes wasn’t used to the bright surrounding. What I saw seemed both familiar yet alien to me, there were trees and other flora all around me, I seemed to be in the middle of the forest.

I stood up and looked down, towards my hands and below them, towards my feet. I have a pair of arms and legs that felt kind of short, my stature doesn’t seemed much either. I supposed I looked like a child right now, except that I was stark naked.

I started to think about who I am and where did I come from but suddenly a question interrupted my thoughts on that; Why did I not have a HUD? What is a HUD you ask? It refers to a ‘Heads-Up Display’, something that shows information that are critical in a game, I should have something like that… Wait, how do I know that I should have those in the first place?

I had no idea on how I knew that, but I felt that I should say out loud the word [Status] and I did just that.

“Status”

StatusName:???Title:???Race:???Gender:???Level:1Experience:0%Class:Spores MasterHealth:100/100Mana:100/100Health regen:1/sMana regen:1/sStrength:10Intelligence:10Dexterity:10Wisdom:10Vitality:10Willpower:10Attack:8-12Defence:0

Skills

Class Trees

Spores Controlling [lvl 1]

-Spores Emission(Active)

-Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive)

Other Skills

Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)

“Hmm…”

Some stuff did appear, and it does seem very game like, but what’s with the “???” in my name, title, race, and even gender?

“What is that even supposed to mean!?”

Leaving that aside, my stats were all the same, currently at 10. I wonder if that was supposed to be good.

“Oh well, even if that is bad, I have to start somewhere… “

Now, let’s look at my skills first. I seem to have 1 class tree that has 2 skills under it and a unique passive skill!?

“Since it is a unique skill, I sure hope that it is strong!”

I pressed on the pop-up screen to display their information.

Spores Controller[lvl 1]The tree that encompasses all skills that directly makes use of spores. The level of the skills will all be shared and their effect will change accordingly to the level of the main tree.

Spores Emission(Active)Enables the production of spores into the surrounding. Spores will enter the bodies of living beings once in contact. Enables usage of other spores related skills on target(s) that contains active spores. Spores stays within the body permanently as long as the body remains alive. Cost 10 mana/second. Has a radius of 1 metre from the caster.

Spores Detection(Toggle/Passive)Enables the caster to know instinctively the location of the beings that contain spores within them. Possible to make the spores within those bodies to become inactive. Can be reactivated at anytime telepathically.

Unique Passive Information Processing(Passive)You are able to process large amounts of information easily, but with drawbacks.

Unknown Effect

Unknown Effect

Unknown Effect

I do not know what kind of reaction I should be making for my skills. For one, they don’t seem to be very useful. Another would be that I didn’t even know what the unique passive did, since it is listed as having unknown effects. At least there is a level for my class tree, allowing me to see my progress with it, which will probably unlock more skills later on. One point that I’m baffled on is the description on the skill [Spores Detection]. It says that I can turn the spores inactive, but my skills seems to only work if they are active, so why would I turn them inactive? Maybe there is a reason for that, but for now I wouldn’t know.

I decided to switch on my spores emission whenever I could to improve my [Spore Controller] mastery and also to make use of spores detection as a way to mark my path, so that at least I could know that I’m moving away from where I appeared from, and not moving in circles.

I moved slowly away from the sun and kept my spores emission on. With my current mana and regeneration, I can only keep it up for slightly more than 11 seconds each time before I have to stop to rest. It feels weird to be using a resource that I do not have any experience with, yet it feels so good. That only lasted until I was starting to run out of mana. At which I would feel somewhat dizzy.

I stopped to rest while leaning on a tree trunk before setting off once more, repeating the usage of the skill until I felt sick and then rested to fill my mana before moving off again. After a short while, I heard the sound.

“Ding!”

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 2.

That...was fast. I don’t think that I have drained my mana that many times, and I have already leveled up the class tree? Ah, it doesn’t matter, it just means that I’m a step closer to unlocking a new skill for my class. Hopefully.

I continued my journey the same way as before and shortly afterwards, the sound rings again, but this time twice at nearly the same instance. What popped out was these:

For the continued usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 3.

For the repeated usage of mana from full to none in a short period of time, you have gained a permanent increase of your mana by 20% and mana regeneration by 1% of your max mana.

Ah, that second message was somewhat surprising. Although I had expected to reach level 3 in [Spores Controller] quite soon due to how little time it took for it to reach level 2, I didn’t expect another passive like thing to appear so soon. Heck, I wasn’t even thinking that this kind of thing would happen. But mana regeneration increasing by 1% of my max mana? Does that mean that my base mana regeneration had something to do with max mana? Looking at the status screen again, it seems like what I inferred was true, despite my max mana being only 120, my mana regeneration was already at a notable amount of 2.4 mana/second.

I proceeded with my journey, walking in that one direction for the next few hours. It was mainly uneventful, with no monsters attacking me or anything interesting happening, though I did see a few small creatures roaming here and there. The only event that happened was another pop-up box that appeared when I reach level 5 in [Spores Controller]:

For the usage of spores controlling skills, you have gained a level in [Spores Controller]. [Spores Controller] is now at level 5. For reaching level 5 in [Spores Controller], your [Spores Emission] base mana cost have been reduced to 5 mana/second. You are also able to increase the range of the emission at the cost of higher mana.

After testing for a bit, I found out that it works kind of exponentially with 5 mana/second for a 1 metre radius and 25 mana/second for a 2 metre radius, which is quite a drastic increase in mana if you asked me, but it does help me reach higher and further with less movement.

In my experimentation I also found out that it can reach further than the fixed radius with the aid of wind, although the spores disappear a short while later if it isn’t able to find bodies of creatures to enter. Maybe they behave like leeches, sucking in the life force of the creatures that host them, explaining why they can only work on living creatures. I’m also at level 10 with [Spores Controller] right now, and from the rate of leveling, I believe that I should be leveling to 11 for [Spores Controller] soon. Please tell me that I have some new skill, possibly a new attack, or else I might not be able to survive once I encounter some strong monster. Just as I was thinking about that, the familiar sound rang in my ears once again.

“Ding”

“Oh yes! Now tell me...ah!? ARGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!? MYHEAAAAAAADARRRRRRRRRRRRGHTHEPAAAINNNN”

Just like that, my world turns black.

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