It was day seven and he was level seven. Joe was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to keep up this record. If the cost increased by five times every five levels, by the time he made it to level ten and tried to fight for level eleven, it would be costing him two thousand five hundred experience for that single level, and he would only be getting ten experience per kill. He would have to kill two hundred fifty slimes. Two and a half times what he needed to do at level one. Not too difficult. But at fifteen, he would be needing twelve thousand experience at fifteen experience per kill. He would need to kill a whopping eight hundred plus! This… it’s going to get insane if it keeps going up like this. What am I going to do?
Joe sighed and dropped his head back to the headrest. It flipped back, and kept going as he quickly jerked his head back and remembered that he was now in the land of no headrests and if there were any headrests, he would likely not want to drop his head back onto it since it would likely be made of gold or some other metal or wood. That would certainly be unpleasant to drop his head back on.
Joe quickly prepared for the day, slipping back to his room to pick up his spoon spear and satchel. He came out into early morning light and jogged down the road, as he came out of the village proper and came into the field that stretched out between the village and the forest, he saw several young teens standing in a loose circle. They looked towards him and became excited, so he waved to them and gave them a cheery smile.
“Hello, boys. Good to see you.”
They gave a quick and excited greeting back, each pushing and fighting to come to the front. Why do they want to see me so bad? Is the village really that provincial? He smiled, waved, and continued on his way, his walk turning into a quick jog. But even as he finished greeting the group of boys, his eyes came back forward and caught sight of another boy the same age as the group he had passed. He stood alone, further off the path and looked at him burning with much more than excitement. Confusion painted his face for a bit but he quickly replaced it with a friendly smile and waved and offered him the same greeting he had given the group of boys. Always one everywhere, right? Why is there always one who is excluded? Humanity is just... weird. Joe passed the lone boy and disappeared into the forest.
The next three days were a blur of slime genocide and ooze everywhere overlaid with a haze of sweat, blood, and exhaustion. He saw those boys every morning as he passed them and he would sometimes see them when he returned from the forest. He would always wave to them with a friendly smile and greeting, usually having to offer two greetings since the lone boy was always ostracized. They always responded quickly and excitedly.
At the end of his third day in the forest, he had finally hit level ten that day and was a bit worried about what he would find the next day as he started his journey into the teens. He had taken a look at his status to make sure and everything was exactly as he had expected. He took a deep breath in relief before returning home. He came from the forest and waved to the group of boys but decided to throw a bone to the lonely boy by stopping to shake his hand and clap him companionably on his shoulder. The boy obviously didn’t know how to shake hands, an obviously Earth human custom, but he guided the boy through it and smiled at him over his success.
The boy seemed to grow more nervous throughout this process and he tried to reassure the boy that it was all OK. But then the boy did something surprising, a look of patent fear on his face as he did so.
“You don’t need to be afraid, kid! It’s fine. I’m not ... what the?!?”
Joe blinked in shock when he saw the boy had raised up his status. He blinked at the boy in surprise then eagerly looked at the boy’s window. Ooh... red. Different color. Then what... wait, huh? He stared at the screen and saw that he could not read the boys screen, the lettering seemed to swim and wriggle across the screen in strange loops that would not stay still, each letter wiggling like a twisting worm. Moving letters? Why? Joe squinted a bit, then watched in shock as the squirming letters seemed to drum up into easily coherent words.
Status
Current Job
Available Jobs
Current Skills
Available Skills
Log
ㅁㅈㄼㄴㅍㄷ
Resistance
Status
Resistance
Wind
1
HP
3
Physical:
Water
1
MP
1
Piercing
1
Fire
1
Attack
2
Crushing
1 Ice
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
1
Defense
2
Slashing
1
Magic
1
Magic Defense
1
Strength
3
Dexterity
2 o ?
/\ ?
Agility
2
IQ
1
Wisdom
1
Learning
1
Luck
0
Joe glanced over the boy’s stats and grimaced but then became excited. They were pretty weak but he realized that all he would have to do is find an appropriate job with stats strong enough to support him. The boy’s stats were unusual. He wanted to check the current jobs stats and clicked on the boy’s current job tab, but his finger passed through the screen
Confusion flickered through him for a bit before he finally realized that it was likely that only the user could touch his own screen. Pretty nice security feature!
Joe looked at the boy and then pointed at the tab while gesturing to the boy to press it. The boy looked at him in confusion and Joe finally picked up his hand and took his index finger pressed it at the current job tab and smiled in relief when he saw that his job was still at level one with identical stats. Huh. Adventurer. What kind of job is that and will the stats multiply or simply go up by one from their initial number? Joe pondered for a moment then slipped back to the main status page and then noticed an interesting icon unique to the boy.
It happened to be in the middle of the screen without any real information added. He pondered for a moment then hoped that clicking on it might reveal some information. He had the boy push the button and a new information screen came up and Joe’s emotions enjoyed a roller coaster ride of shock, confusion, surprise, and pity. Simpleton! What a horrible curse for this world! Curse: Simpleton
User is cursed with inability to learn. Learning is capped at 1.
The man looked at the boy and patted him on the shoulder. By the time he was done looking at the lonely boy’s status, the other lads had all run up and began excitedly showing him their status pages. He politely looked at each of theirs but found nothing unusual. All of them had the job commoner and all were level one with identical status as he had when he was level one. Why does he have a different job? Isn’t commoner the basic job? He smiled at each of the boys, shook their hands and clapped them on their shoulders before heading back to his room and end of day ablutions.
* * *
<continued - 1/3>