The novelty of having created his first actual item - though not a tool as of yet - didn’t last very long as his observation showed some imperfections in the metallic structure and the edges were not regular enough for his tastes and the minor perfectionism he struggled with. That didn’t prevent him from throwing a quick identify at his almost completed tool.

Lesser Blacksmith Sledge Hammerhead

basic, unmarked, unaspected, unrefined

Material: Wrought Iron Durability - basic inferior Hardness - high poor Toughness - poor Elasticity - high poor mana conductivity - flawed poor

Identify was a lot more useful for metal stuff compared to anything else. And Nik was glad about that, though he would prefer to have actual numbers instead of wishy washy terms.

He would have prefered seeing something else besides poor and inferior too, sadly life isn’t a picnic.

In addition, terms like “high poor” didn’t really make much sense to Nik. He figured that they were either a fragment of translation, archaic classification or that maybe he didn’t have sufficient knowledge of a correct grading system.

Prodding the system didn’t cause any change in the quantifiers. The infobox was something that was outside of his control - at least for the moment he hoped.

There was an interesting bullet point in the item's description he would have to check out once the hammer was finished, mana conductivity. It rang all sort of bells in Nik’s head, though the loudest was elation.

He already saw himself striking monsters alike the ones he had encountered with a flaming hammer.

The new skills he had unlocked were a different story altogether though. They seemed awesome. Well kind of, it was probably just his excitement talking.

[Iron Proficiency] - Your skills work better in conjunction with iron and alloys that include iron.

[Drawing Out] - Use attunement and stamina with your hammer strikes to draw out.

[Upsetting] - Use attunement and stamina with your hammer strikes to upset.

[Peining] - Use attunement and stamina with your hammer strikes to pein.

[Punching] - Use attunement and stamina with your hammer strikes to punch.

Nik knew what upsetting and drawing out were. Smithing techniques, responsible for increasing the thickness at the expense of length and decreasing thickness to gain length respectively. Punching also made some amount of sense to affiliate that with punching holes.

Peining not so much, he didn’t really know what it meant and had no lead. Some musing didn’t get him anywhere though.

As cool as getting access to new skills was, Nik saw issues coming up rather quickly.

Drawing out, upsetting, peining, and punching were all smithing techniques so why weren’t they covered under something like “Metalworking”. He didn’t have the skill slots.

Furthermore each and every single one of the smithing techniques required stamina and something called attunement.

Attunement was weird. His understanding of the word was mostly music related. Something that didn’t seem to make sense in this regard. Would he have to play some music or hum a rhythm while using them. If yes it was a total no go. His musical senses were abyssal at best.

The fact that attunement was placed right next to stamina gave him another idea.

Could it be another type of energy? One he didn’t have access to? And one that could have been hinted at by the system beforehand.

He remembered one of the system prompts after creating a solid energy piece mentioning five primary types of energy. So maybe that was something he would gain access to later. If ever.

That coupled with the fact that having only three class skill slots as of right now solidified his decision.

He was gonna skip on each of them for now, though Iron Proficiency looked interesting. The skill seemed to have a possible multiplicative effect. Those would be even more interesting if he had a few skills he could use on the metal he was working with.

As of right now that wasn’t important either. He didn’t really see a need to make his hammer hit even harder on the metal which would likely be the thing affected, since [Lesser Hammer Strike] was his only skill that should work with [Iron Proficiency].

“I need more information to actually make an informed decision. I’ll hold off on picking anything until I have a few more skills unlocked. For now I’ll just finish the hammer,” he thought.

Turning away from the skill selection he focused on what was before him, literally. With clumsy hands he began to cut a branch he had gathered for the occasion to shape.

Grossma Branch - A hard and durable wood.

Woodworking managed to help refine the branch into a handle for the hammerhead in just a few minutes. While Nik wanted to get the handle to be as smooth as possible he didn’t pay too much attention to the form.

With another rougher stone he ground the handle down in an effort to have a somewhat pleasant touching sensation. To preserve the integrity of the handle for a longer period of time he smeared it with the remaining nut oil - which he had used for the piston lubrication.

The last thing he needed was a wedge to generate the pressure that would make the handle stick to the hammerhead.

The wedge too was quickly fashioned with the help of woodworking, accompanied by an increasingly tired growing body. Which was odd because he hadn’t experienced something of the sort beforehand.

With a few unexperienced and almost aimless strikes he inserted the wedge into the upper part of the through the hammerhead protruding handle. Resin would hopefully be a sufficiently good adhesive.

Advanced Deed Unlocked - [Class Advancement Step Two: Creation] Create an item in line with your class’ specialization.

Nik Thems: {(Evolving) Extraterrestrial Human} Level up! You have accomplished the Advanced Deed [Creation]. 18 Stat points have been awarded. One General Skill Slot unlocked.

Class development. 250 exp gained for reaching a class milestone [Creation].

Nik Thems: {Smith} Level 9. Current Progress 600/900 XP

Elated he realized that his level was progressing exceedingly fast compared to just a few days ago. Smithing really was the way to go for him.

Lesser Blacksmith Sledge Hammer

basic, unmarked, unaspected, unrefined

Material: Wrought Iron Durability basic inferior

24 - 361

Hardness - high poor

16 - 412

Toughness - poor

13 - 483

Elasticity - high poor

42 - 9

mana conductivity - poor

1 - 0 - 1

Now that is better. Numbers we are going somewhere. Finally, he thought. A bit further consideration made him quickly realize that without units they weren’t much more useful either.

They were however an indicator of what ranges the categorizations like “basic poor” and such meant.

Though he didn’t care much about that. He had finally accomplished one of the large milestones he had set for himself.

With the biggest worry off of his mind Nik began experimenting with his hammer, stones, and [Lesser Hammer Strike]. He had always felt as though using the same skill on stones was a lot worse than using it with an actual hammer. Now he was proven right.

It was hard to quantify the effect of the skill on different tools without having a tool to measure the speed boost that the skill gave.

It was made even harder by the fact that it apparently didn’t give a speed boost but a momentum boost, the product of speed and weight. Furthermore complicated by the fact that the hammer had a handle and the stones he used for comparison didn’t, which might be another factor.

However, he was able to come to a few conclusions. He had been right. Using a hammer was a lot more effective. Each swing only cost one stamina and had a greater effect than on a stone.

The guesstimation he landed on seemed good enough for his purposes. The skill gave an approximate three times multiplier when used with the hammer and a fifty percent to one hundred percent boost for other tools, specifically stones.

With a big grin on his face he sat down to map out his future. He was stuck here right now, he didn’t even know if there were other humans on his planet. Maybe there were aliens and just as he finished that thought he realized with a smirk on his face that he was the alien now.

Humans seemed to be unlikely he would like to find other sentient beings regardless. Solitude was nice for a few days. Even a few weeks were ok in his book, as long as he had the option to meet others solitude was fine. Once you lost that opportunity it was a different story.

He didn’t mind solitude right now, which didn’t matter when he was busy. In down time like right now he ached for other people. He would be happy to just argue with someone on a web forum, not to mention getting coffee with an actual friend or playing board games with friends.

Finding civilization was quickly added to a mental list and it would stay there at the very top. He also wouldn’t mind getting back home but having others around would be a priority.

He missed most of the people he knew. Especially the friends he made in college. Getting home would be the end goal.

The second place on the list was getting more metal. He accepted that his class was a huge benefit to him. Maybe he was unique among humans now - with noone else having a class.

Maybe there had always been humans with classes and races, though he hadn’t heard of anything like. Which didn’t mean much if you believed one of the many conspiracy theories out there.

Some more pondering lead him to the conclusion that if his class gave some good skills along the road it could be the route that got him home, or at least to civilization. His race skills were and option too for that matter.

Which led him to the next point.

His race evolution and a potential class evolution. He would need experience for the latter.

He knew how to progress both a bit. [Mana Pores] - expelling mana through his skin everywhere - had given him a race level up. Assuming that doing the same with both stamina and health would result in similar benefits wasn’t far off, he figured.

Solidifying mana and stamina had given him two other race level ups and even class experience, so doing the same with health would be on his to-do-list as well.

What trying to compress stamina had done to his hands was still fairly fresh in his mind - the blood errupting from his pores and the accompanying pain - he didn’t, no he couldn’t dwell on it.

He tried to think of something else to do, to plan for but couldn’t.

The only thing he knew helped was a distraction.

He jumped up, triggered [Haste] and rushed off into the forest. Junning had helped him every time he had been down in the last week and a half, so he hoped it would do so again now.

Not too long after, having settled his mind he came back to his forge.

He had not come to terms with having to hurt himself again but he could now at least think about it without freaking out.

That fact alone was kind of worrying to him. He lacked another person to talk about it. Nothing besides soldiering on was an option.

He sat down and internalized the other things he would have to accomplish in the coming days. His run had been helpful in that regard.

Finding metal the second spot on his current to-do-list went to his partially solved list. He knew of a place where there seemed to be a whole lot of metal.

The boulder he appeared on had looked very metallic. Lacking a pickaxe or similar tools he scrapped that for now. He could always pick up more rocks with high iron content - or other metals for all it mattered - in his vicinity.

Which lead him to the next point. His new hammer mentioned mana conductivity. Did that mean that there were other more magical skills he could use with his hammer?

He wouldn’t do any experiments in that regard right now. He only had one hammer and the fact that the values associated with its mana conductivity were one, zero, and one didn’t inspire much confidence in that his hammer could handle any mana at all.

The zero implied the exact opposite as far as Nik was concerned. It was also odd. Every other property had come with two values, which he assumed were for the handle and the hammerhead respectively.

That train of thought led him to the next issue. He had somehow completely overlooked the fact that he could use actual magic during his metal refining process. For some reason having to see mana conductivity on his hammer had been needed to make him aware of that.

He didn’t know exactly what he could have done though there was probably something. He had a skill that accelerated his movements beyond anything normal after all.

The last two things he would try to figure out were more magic overall and finally getting a good and safe place to stay at. Building a tree house seemed to be the best and safest contender for that.

Which led him back to smithing and gathering metal as nails and other tools were required for that.

And so Nik went out into the wilderness to gather high iron content nails. And if he wouldn’t find as much as he would like he would go back to the boulder.

Timothy Point of View

The last day had been a mess. At first a major drug operation, then a lost teenager.

Though those paled in comparison to what happened later on. He still wasn’t entirely sure why that boy, Max as he liked to be called, passed out.

The associated mess had been bizarre to say the least. Some weird cat like creature appearing that was insanely fast and strong was just the start. Surviving and being able to sustain dozens of shots without taking any apparent harm was worse.

Suddenly being in another place after having spend some undiscernable amount of time and appearing on a meadow was insane. He wanted to see a shrink asap, genuinely worried about his mental health.

He had a gun in his holster but regardless of what happened, he wouldn’t dare use it. Maybe all of this was a delusion and he could end up shooting a real person.

His situation really was too bewitched to be anything else. If he wouldn’t see - well seeing was the wrong word - the screens hovering inside his vision he would think this to be some weird TV show he had never heard of. That would be better than being delusional.

His whole body shook as he heard a snap. He looked into the direction the sound originated. There was nothing. Not even a branch that could have snapped.

Cold sweat, for the tenth time, gathered all over his skin as he scanned the whole circle around them. He was agitated and had grown more agitated with each minute.

Not spotting anything all around the camp he tried to calm down again. Another point for being delusional he figured.

Especially since neither of the other two he was with reacted.

He was running on fumes as it stood right now. He was tired having barely had any sleep in the last thirty-six hours, hungry and thristy. His so called status confirmed it.

Status: Timothy Evans

Race: Frontier Human [Lvl. 4]

Class: Ranged Figther[Lvl. 0]

Independent Skills: Evolutions [0]

Class: Ranged Figther [Lvl. 0]: 1 free skill slots

[Identify]

[General Ranged Weapon Proficiency]

Stats: 28 Stat points available

[Empty]

Vitality

100 Health

10

Strength

1 Strenght

10

5 H/hour

Race: Frontier Human [Lvl. 4]: 2 free Skill slots

Physique

100 Stamina

10

Endurance

10 S/hour

10

[Empty]

[Empty]

Concentration

100 Focus

10

Clarity

10 F/hour

10

Frontier Human: 0/8 Class Lvl.

Ranged Figther: 0/100 Exp

Not that this weird box thing made any sense to him. It knew his name which was weird but the rest was utterly bizarre.

The worst part besides his delusions was that night was approaching and they were without shelter.

The temperature probably wouldn’t be an issue. Max might suffer from the cold, he was only wearing a T-shirt. He guessed that both he and the medic had lucked out in that department.

His eye hovered over the woman, Vera he corrected himself. She was tending to the still passed out young man. The boy had had moments of lucidness and they were growing increasingly more common and longer.

The treeline was absurd. The small meadow on which they had landed was overgrown with an assortment of dozens if not hundreds of different plant types. From sapplings to flowers, vines and other stuff. And half of it looked completely unnatural.

The situation wasn’t dire, it was just weird. Where were they and how did they get there.

He remembered camp back in his youth. He could still hear his instructor's words, burned onto his mind like a brand mark.

And in the end it was every man for himself. He wanted to survive and he would rather gamble on his senses than assume he had gone crazy. He would restrain himself but only as long as it didn’t endanger him, or the people around him.

“When lost in the wild, first find a shelter. Second find water, third find food.”

He couldn’t leave the two others here though. Vera was a lot more stressed than he was and that was not including that she had to take care of Max.

From the amounts of information he could gather from her, she had a child at home. He honestly was surprised that she wasn’t a frantic mess yet.

He would be for sure.

And as much as Timothy loathed to admit it he had now clue how to do first aid. His courses were long passed and he had never paid much attention. So he depended on the woman, and she probably on him.