Waking to soothing birdsong Henry slowly opened his eyes. The cave was large and bare with only the scattered remains of prey animals disturbing the uneven rocky floor. He had made his way to the back of the cave yesterday before passing out from his first real fight in the Zone.

  It was midmorning his stomach growled angerly for some breakfast and before he could go about organizing the spoils of his earlier battle he needed to take care of his immediate needs. Luckily, the bear's corpses were still fresh enough that he didn't think it would be too much trouble to make a simple meal of their flesh. The biggest problem would be starting a fire since he didn't have his flint and steel or any magic to spark kindling.

  Sighing he made his way out of the cave and began the long process of gathering wood and making a suitable fire pit. It took him a little over an hour to make a passable pit with the rocks of the cave and eventually even got a fire going by rubbing two sticks together as he had been taught when he was only a child. *DING*

  "That's useful. And the other skills listed should be pretty easy to get." Henry mused as he took one of the pygmies knives to skin and prepare the bears. He figured that he could smoke most of the meat so it would keep longer and probably dry and prepare the hides. Those were skills that most people on the Border learned from a young age even if they were only farmers it was still necessary to supplement their diet with wild game and often traders would pay good coin to even crude hides. As he got to work an expected *DING* sounded Henry ignored it for now and continued the tedious and bloody process of dressing the large animals. It took him a full three hours to finish dressing the massive bears and start the cooking and drying process. In that time he had heard several soft chimes indicating skill gains and level ups.

  It was finally time to check out all the loot he had gained and examine his skills more closely.

  The first items Henry Analysed were the pygmie spears.

  That was a little disappointing to Henry and Iggy, but at least the spears would be useful for the time being. They had three spears that weren't broken in the battle the best of the bunch having 12 durability remaining. Next came the serrated blades that all the pygmie scouts carried.

  With five of the daggers all of which were in rough shape, Henry began to think that maybe it would be better to melt them all down for scrap. The final item had come from the pygmie leader and looked like a piece of cheap jewelry.

  "I didn't know there was a Perception stat? Iggy what does this mean, are there hidden stats that we'll have to unlock?" Henry was pissed, how could so much be hidden from them. They were just thrown into this experiment as fodder for the Trail Rangers and the U.S. Military.

  "I don't really know if anyone has a clue about all the stats and skills that are out there Henry. Remember that the Incursion was only a generation ago and we're still learning so much about what it all means." Iggy tried to calm his anger but was just as confused as him.

  "Fine, I'll give the adventures the benefit of the doubt for now." His tone icy "Let's look at our status, a lot might have changed."

  "Okay, I'll bring up the notifications that we ignored in the battle and after."

  "The first two are pretty self-explanatory, but Pain Resistance could be interesting and the others I could use a look at." Henry focused on the last three skills for more details.

  "Now for the production skills..."

  "Holy Shit, that fight was profitable for us!" Henry was a little shocked at the number of skills and stats he had gained from a relatively low-level battle. "Iggy let's take a close look at the Status screen and get something to eat, that bear meat is starting to smell great!"

  "Hey, Iggy when did we level up?" Henry was curious why he didn't get a notification about leveling especially since it gave him some unallocated points.

  "I'm not sure Henry. It looks like levels aren't like the old games unlike most everything about the Mana System. Let me look into it quick." Iggy was quiet for about five minutes while Henry tended to the fire and makeshift smoker he had made for the bear meat. By the time she spoke, he was sitting chowing down on a medium rare piece of bear steak.

  "So it looks like Skill Level is the mean of all your skill levels. For you, right now with 12 skills at a total of 28, levels, that's 2.3. Your bouns skill levels are just your total skills divided by 4. Don't ask me why that's just the way it is."

  "Thanks, Iggy. I can't say that it really makes sense to me, but sometimes we just have to accept the world as it is. Okay, so I have 5 stat points to move around and I'm thinking that we should shore up our weaknesses until everything gets to 10. What do you say, Iggy?" Henry began to pace as he thought about their future growth.

  "I don't disagree, but I think we need to talk about skills before we decide after all some of our skills give a bonus to our stats. I'm thinking we need to focus the free point into physical stats and use our free skill levels to get more free stats out of the skills that give a bonus. After that we can train all of our skills and see about getting new ones, those synergies gave some good hints."

  Henry stopped his pacing and looked thoughtful for a moment, "Iggy, that sounds like a perfect plan! We should stay here until the bear meat runs low and get a good skill grind done!"

  Excited about the coming training and all the strength they would soon have Henry put 2 points into Strength, 3 points into Endurance, 1 level into Nanite Control, and 2 levels into Mana Manipulation. Bringing up his status screen to confirm the changes.

  "We're on our way!"