Chapter 2: Chapter Two: Magics, Skill Charts, and Stats, Oh My

            The crystal ruptured with a burst of purple fire, washing across everything. As the flames reached each item, they disappeared rather than being torn apart or barbecued.

            Then, Leo was in a forest.

            There had been no sensation of movement, no brief moment of blackness or unconsciousness, nothing. One moment, Leo was in a ceremonial chamber, and the next, he was in a forest.

            Leo blinked back the light of the idyllic forest. Light dappled through the leafy canopy, covering trees in a splatter of illumination.

            A single bunny, which had been nibbling at some grass, twitched its nose and then lazily hopped away into some nearby bushes.

            A babbling brook meandered through the forest, the water crystal clear and mere inches deep over the rocky bottom.

            Where…?

            Leo struggled to make sense of things. All anchors to reality felt like they had been stripped from him in a just a few minutes. His legs gave out. He sank to the forest floor, collapsing onto the detritus of leaves, moss, and sticks. The sword fell to the ground from his nerveless fingers, lying in the dirt next to him.

            I’ve lost my girlfriend, my job, my dreams, my world, and my freakin’ body, Leo thought to himself as he grappled with a feeling of absolute disconnection from everything. Not to mention a comfortable notion of the rules governing the universe that I was pretty sure were basically accurate. I’m nothing but a mind that moved to another body as the result of mystical mumbo-jumbo. I really do hope that Descartes is right, and that I am because I think—since I’m pretty sure my mind is literally the only thing about me that’s still me.

            He briefly thought back to what he had seen from Audrey, Kruegar, that Liam guy, and the others. Although, I’m more inclined now, after witnessing that, to suspect I have a soul and it went as well. Still, I’m down nearly everything that I thought I once possessed and knew.

            He chuckled to himself. And I suspect wherever I am won’t accept my engineering degrees as a basis for employment, either.

            The humor somehow grounded Leo, and he felt strength returning.

            He got to his hands and knees, prepared to crawl the few feet to the edge of the brook. A sharp pain in his arm, the one the big orc had broken, caused him to gasp in air through his teeth. His arm wasn’t fully healed yet. Leo pulled his arm up to his chest, stood, and walked the few feet before kneeling at the edge of the brook.

He stared at his wavy reflection on the water, examining his new appearance.

            Brilliant gold-green eyes stared back at Leo, different than the blue ones he had formerly possessed. A pale face more beautiful than masculine framed them, and a great mane of golden hair framed the face in turn… not blond so much as metallic golden-yellow.

Two overly long ears poked out from the hair. He gently touched his ears. They felt like his old ears; there were just a bit more places he could touch.

He briefly stared at his hands. They were fine and delicate, different than his previous hands, which had been practically mitts. His wrist was thin, although thicker proportioned than he would have suspected when compared to the rest of his extra-thin frame.

Perhaps from sword practice, Leo thought, looking back at the sword that was, apparently, his.

The rest of his body moved with grace and agility but seemed almost feminine to him, the proportions subtly different than his old male form.

With a panicked thought, Leo reached down. Yup, still “male.”

His mouth was dry, and Leo scooped water into it, rinsed, and spat. Then he scooped up a bit more and drank. It was cool and refreshing, although he would have preferred a Diet Pepsi.

Leo sat back on his haunches and gave serious thought to his situation.

            All right, Leo. Enough screwing around and suffering an existential crisis. So you’ve got a secondhand, donated body. So what?

The key takeaway here is that something was done to open a portal and pull you through. What was done once can be replicated with enough knowhow. Ergo, you can get home. You can still re-establish the life you were leading and still show everyone that you’re amazing, while changing the world for the better. You just need to find out where the people are who know how to do it, and what you can trade to get them to do it or to teach you to do it yourself.

You should also pick up Audrey first, assuming she made it.

            With a busted arm, in the middle of a forest, on a world you’ve never been on and know nothing about, without so much as a Boy Scout badge to your name.

No big deal.

            Leo glanced at the forest around him. I know almost nothing, but I do have a brook here. As a general rule, human civilization is found near rivers and other large sources of fresh water. And brooks run toward bigger sources of water, I know that much. So I can just follow it, and eventually, logically, if I follow water downhill long enough…

            Although that assumes I don’t starve before then. What are my assets?

            Leo took inventory.

            He removed his bow and quiver, which was a surprising struggle. At some point, although he had no memory of it, his quiver had emptied of all but two arrows. The bow was quite complex, if a bit smaller than what Leo remembered from movies. It had pulleys at the end, but Leo didn’t know enough to recognize what that meant regarding the technical knowledge of the civilization he was in.

            Or the magical knowledge, he thought, briefly shocked out of his thoughts as he remembered the black insects and his wounds healing.

            Leo gathered himself again and laid his sword down. The straight, doubled-edged steel sword was roughly eighteen inches long. Nothing fancy or unusual that Leo could identify.

            He pulled his satchel off his belt. Inside, he found a small glass vial with a tan-colored liquid in it. A label, in High Averian, indicated that it was a “Least Healing Potion.”

            Technically, as with the speech from the bronze-haired elf, it communicated more than how he translated it in his mind—including that its magic type was “Body,” although his brain didn’t seem to have enough information to parse what that meant.

            “Healing potion, huh?” Leo asked the forest rhetorically, his mind churning.

            Leo had played video games before, of course, including role-playing games with stat blocks and items. It wasn’t something he had done for a while, but he knew what he probably held in his hand.

            And it fascinated him. Especially in relation to his own work. Could this substance heal cancer? Or would the body’s own cells not be considered an injury, even if they were killing the body?

            Of course, the first thing to do was see if it worked. Leo tugged the bronze cap off and stared down at the tan liquid.

“Bottoms up,” he muttered, draining it in a long gulp.         

Least Healing Potion heals 5 damage. All remaining damage is repaired.

 

            Leo gasped, first at the translucent box that had appeared over his vision, and then at the sensation of his bone setting itself slightly and healing. Warmth washed through his body, and he felt restored.

            He mentally told the box to leave, and it did. A convenient system.

            Leo tested his arm, first gently pushing against the ground, then harder, and finally, he pushed himself to his feet with it. It worked perfectly. All right, so, either magic is real, or I’m in some nano-tech-level civilization running a game. Which wouldn’t be the most illogical explanation, given the information box that just appeared, which is game-like, to put it mildly.

            He sat back down next to the brook and absentmindedly gathered his things again. Idly, he half-wished that the water was deeper, since he was still covered in blood. In the warmth of the day, it was starting to stink a bit.

            Should I ditch the clothing? Or should I assume nakedness will be a taboo? One that I shouldn’t violate, given that everyone I saw was dressed on both sides of the conflict?

            But these thoughts quickly faded before his greater conundrums. Do I have hit points? Am I in a game world? Do I have a status sheet?

            As soon as he thought it, another box appeared in front of his vision.

Status chart generated. Being “Leonard Emmanuel Evans” is a composite being, a soul inhabiting a new body, resulting in an impossible number of perks for his species.   Resolved in favor of allowing the excess perks.   13 skills found that are not applicable. Resolved in favor of not displaying them until the prerequisites for their use are present in this world, except to the extent that multiple base skills were merged into the displayed skill “Natural Sciences.”   The Servants of Telos request that the being “Leonard Emmanuel Evans” refrain from any other actions or existences that require direct intervention or correction.

 

Well, that isn’t ominous at all… and it raises an entire host of other questions. This day is going to make my brain explode. I’ll be thinking over the implications of it for years, even once I get home.

After a brief second, the chart disappeared, and a much larger and more complicated chart appeared in front of his vision.

Leonard Emmanuel Evans
Level One	Body, Mind, Soul, Wyld, Metal
Health	7	Stamina	7	Essence	10
Level Stats
Strength	8	120 base pound-lifting capacity, -10% melee damage, -6% running speed
Agility	20	-50% enemy hit chance, +50% hit chance with all weapons, +18% running speed, +.5 critical modifier
Dexterity	12	+10% base success for crafting and physical skill success rate, 20% chance to raise base weapon damage roll by one step
Endurance	8	-2 base Stamina, -20% Stamina Recovery Rate, -20% base Health Recovery Rate
Toughness	8	-2 base Health, -10% base Health, -10% base Stamina, -1 to resist poison, disease, and physical status effects
Perception	10
Connection	10
Capacity	10
Appearance	14	Handsome
Non-Level Stats You are reading story Elf Empire at novel35.com
Intelligence	20	+100% skill acquisition rate, may gain rare and difficult skills.
Magic	16	+24% Magic Effects. +1 Maximum affinity.
Charisma	10
Luck	10	The Fates neither dislike nor care for you
Secondary Stats
Birth Perks
Race: High Elf		-2 to Strength, Endurance, and Toughness stats base +2 to Agility and Magic stats base Increased chance for Being magics and Wyld magic. Gain an additional ability at Level 2, 10, and every 10 thereafter from one of those magics if possessed. Lifespan average of 400 years. Maximum of 3 perks positive and negative each, with standard chance of inheriting or acquiring at birth.
Rank: Natural		May obtain Level 80 without ascension, access to extremely rare or upgraded magical abilities.
Graceful Body		+4 Agility, +2 Dexterity, +4 Appearance
Predator		+4 Agility, +10% critical chance, +.5 critical modifier
Line of Stardew		+4 Magic, always start with Wyld, gain 1 additional Wyld ability at Level 2, Auras for Wyld are gained 10 levels earlier and this can exceed maximum level, and may gain 2 higher maximum Wyld affinity.
*Genius		+10 Intelligence, increased magic ability access. May gain +2 maximum Mind affinity.
*Being Arcane		With the appropriate prerequisite abilities and stats, upon obtaining Level 30, may gain any or all of the Arcane abilities: Kinesthetic, Cognitive, or Empathetic.
*Aura Mastery		May gain auras as if 10 levels higher, including access to auras that are beyond maximum level once reached.
Acquired Perks
Low-Self Esteem		-2 check to resist despair effects. Failure, especially significant failure, can lead to further negative perks.

 

 

Skills	Level	Effect
Athletics	11	+33% to run speed, +11 to check to climb or avoid obstacles Level 10 Special Skill: Burst Fighter: For up to 5 minutes, all stamina expenditures are halved.
Business	2	+6% to expected income, and -2% to expected costs, for operating any business
Dodge	7	+21% to dodge incoming attacks
Instruction	4	+2% increase in learning rate of someone learning from you per point of difference in your skills
Mixed Arts Fighting	8	+16% to hit and damage with fists, +8% to dodge, +4 to trip, pin, or incapacitate and avoid the same.
Natural Sciences	19	Extremely detailed understanding of the non-magical components of the world and how they work.
Research	8	+16% base rate to discover information in archives, +16% to daily chance to discover something new while researching, modifying Intelligence rate
Seduction	1	People find your attempts to seduce them 2% more favorable than baseline, compared to what they are looking for
Small Blades	2	+8% to hit and parry, +4% to damage, and +4% critical chance with small blades
Sword	4	+12% to hit and parry, +12% damage with swords

 

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