Zalanir woke up to the unfamiliar sky and an annoying bombardment of sunrays, not the softness of his blanket and the peeled off blue ceiling of his apartment.

  Took him a couple of seconds to remember what was going on, then he bolted awake from the rough surface behind and snapped his mind into reality. Did he doze off by accident? No wounds, and his body was intact. Zalanir let out an outtake of breath. Lucky.

  The whole area was still as serene as yesterday. Clouds drifted in the sky, periodically recalling the sunlight back from their playing down in the forest. No bird chirping yet, but the cool weather and occasional breezing winds were enough to signal a good day ahead.

  If there was any doubt yesterday of this just being a long dream, then all of them were gone now. He did get isekaied, and this was his new life.

  His neck and back hurt like hell, though, probably due to his ugly sleeping posture of sitting-up-and-leaning-onto-the-tree for the whole night. Pain and swelling constantly poked his shoulders, neck, and lower back area. Twisting his head to the sides had also become insanely difficult. It would be comical to see his serve in this condition. He would take it if the ball could even make its way past the net and land in the correct service box.

  He stood up and did some stretching to free his muscles from the pressing stiffness, and realized that he was standing just fine? No itch, no pain.

  Taking his left foot out of the sneaker, to his absolute joy and bewilderment, the two wounds were gone. If not for the two holes on the shoe, there would be no proof of his step being bitten by any pooch. His skin was as clean and smooth as ever.

  Hurray! No rabies. This was a major win and relief for him. Did this mean that the pooch wasn’t infected, or did something happen during his sleep? He wasn’t sure, but still, such good news to start the morning.

  Now, before he got going, he had to check the whole window thing again. Perhaps it would be better to call that a System, as it was the perfect word to describe all the tabs, numbers, and also the weird monotone announcer.

  Fascinating, wasn’t it? He had a supercomputer built in his mind, which had no need for power and could be opened at any time by just a mental click. If only he had had this during his school time. It would make all the exams a piece of cake, and he would have so much time playing tennis and games. Heck, he could also watch any tennis match live whenever he wanted, without anyone knowing anything. Such a wonderful invention.

  Now, first of all, what were those stats represented? He had no free points yet, but perhaps he would on the next level. Never hurt to learn the basics of a System, even though it could be boring to some.

  Popular stats such as Strength or Constitution were pretty much self-explanatory, but it didn’t hurt to double check again, did it?

  Strength: Affecting physical attack, health, and stamina.

  Dexterity: Affecting physical attack, speed, and reflex.

  Endurance: Affecting physical defense, stamina, and stamina recovery.

  Constitution: Affecting physical defense, health, and health recovery.

  Intelligence: Affecting magical attack, health, and mana.

  Mystique: Affecting magical attack, presence, and status effects.

  Awareness: Affecting magical defense, senses, and details.

  Spirit: Affecting magical defense, mana, and mana recovery.

  That was a rather simple explanation from the System, but sufficient for now. Two groups of four attributes divided into physical and magical categories? Classic. He didn’t expect combat-oriented stats such as Strength and Intelligence to give health, or Constitution to give physical defense on top of health. Wasn’t that overkill? Everyone had to be really tanky with this generosity from the System.

  Mystique stood out to him, though. Having a stat responsible for status effects was new, as he didn’t recall seeing anything similar. But to what degree? Was it about the types of effects he could inflict? What about the amount? Was there a maximum at any given time? It also had to influence how long the effects would last, right? Or maybe … all of them? Seemed to be an important stat to invest in.

  Oh, maybe locking down the opponent permanently would be possible with an extremely high Mystique build? What stopped an ice mage from freezing enemies to death, or a sorcerer who specialized in wood magic torturing the opponents in place forever with vines and poison?

  There was also the issue of the degree to which each stat would affect the three general resources. Strength, Constitution, and Intelligence all said that they affected health, but was the effect the same? Should he invest in only one of them if he wanted to become an absolute tank, or should he make the distribution equally? How about other effects, like his lifting strength, or memories, for example? What stats were they associated with, or any at all?

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Guess I can only figure that out once I have any spare points to invest.

  Moving on to the Mastery and Skill tab, Zalanir saw two skills named [Pure Magical Energy] and [Voice Translation] listed there. Mentally clicking on these two skills made the descriptions pop up.

  [Pure Magical Energy] — Racial unique: Adaptability is the race’s forte. Starts out with no magical attunement and +20 maximum to the Essence Bar.

  [Voice Translation] — Common: Cross-cultural exchange breeds creativity. Allows sapient races to hold conversations with other races while still respecting privacy and uniqueness if desired.

  What was magical attunement?

  He messed around with different mental commands, hoping to get an explanation from the System, and got a simple one in the end after he lingered his focus on the words for five seconds.

  Magical Attunement affects the power and cost of abilities, reflecting the user’s commitment and knowledge of the corresponding affinities.

  Not entirely clear what it represented, but it looked like a complicated topic, so Zalanir opted to avoid it for now.

  The second part of the skill mentioned Essence Bar, which he quickly found at the bottom of the tab. 320 essences. This time, with experience tinkering around with the System already, he wasted no time in pulling out a description.

  The Essence Bar displayed the user's essence capacity, limiting the number of skills they could equip. Regardless of the order in which each skill gets equipped, the total essence cost cannot surpass the maximum.

  Oh, a gun magazine then. The skills acted as ammo in this case. So he started with 300 essences, with a bonus of 20 from Pure magical Energy. Wasn’t it really good? Wait! No, he needed to see the cost for each skill first. Why didn’t his starting two skills mention any essence cost?

  Nonetheless, free stuff was always welcomed. No question needed. His heart pounded thinking about all the skills he could add to his repertoire. Imagined having a fireball to throw around. That puppy would be dead from the first hit. Could he fly? Please let there be flying skills in this world. It will be dope to have one.

  The last part of the skill that caught his attention was the racial unique affix. If he had to guess, seemed like only the human race got this skill. Which meant that besides stats, different races would have their own unique advantages to start out in this world. How strong was Pure Magical Energy compared to the rest? No, the more important question was what other race was here? Elf? Dwarf? Mythical beasts?

  On the other hand, Voice Translation, the other skill, was simple enough. The common rarity depicted that much. Though the part about retaining privacy and uniqueness was a bit unclear. Did it mean that written knowledge was unaffected? Or someone could put some kind of “locks” into the conversation to prevent others from eavesdropping?

  There were other tabs as well, such as Specialization, Quest, Fame, etc. However, either they had nothing in them or some were completely blackened out. Perhaps he would need to do something to unlock them later.

  Well, looks like that’s it for now. Uncertainty still lingered here and there in his mind, but after reading all the stuff, Zalanir could feel his heart and mind screaming a single word: adventure. Everything happened for a reason, so no need to be all doom and gloom. Who could tell that being isekaied here was bad? Only himself, and he refused to accept that.

  Zalanir followed the direction of the illuminating sun above. He had no target, anyway, so taking that sphere of fire as a temporary compass would have to do for now.

  People. Were there any people here? He had been walking for probably one hour already, but there was no sight of anything he could mark down as a signal of being man-made.

  Grgg. Grgg.

  Wait. What is that?

  Zalanir hunkered down, the branch stayed firmly in his hand. He glanced around, but there was no sight of anything abnormal. Just an infrequent beast’s sound ringing that was the difference.

  That way! Zalanir sneaked behind one of the big trees, and then tiptoed to another one when he finally found the source of that sound.

  A pooch three times the size of the one he killed yesterday was huffing on one side, its fur greenish orange instead of silver. A stream of silver liquid was flowing from a missing patch of fur near its neck down to its front limb.

  So that sound came from you. Zalanir muttered.

  Opposite it lay a purple hamster-like creature half its size in a hunched posture, the two front limbs decorated with medium-length black claws. This beast was in a worse state, having the skin on its left flank ripped out. Something slimy and long protruded out, secreting red blood and goo onto the ground. It growled back at the pooch, but didn’t seem like it could make a move soon.

  The pooch circled left to right, snarling at its enemy and rushed in, though near the end, it faked out a turn and jumped to the left and slapped the enemy’s head. Twice as fast as the last one he killed. Zalanir squeezed the branch. A funny thought ran through his mind, and he liked that.

  The purple beast curled up its trembling body, but against Zalanir’s assessment of a counterattack, it just hurled its claw in the air and kept on growling.

  You just got a slap in the face, and you are not going to fight back?

  Zalanir shook his head. That was the wrong approach. Willingness to fight was important, no matter how dire or seemingly impossible to win the situation was. What was the point of playing in a match if he was going to fold before the first serve even landed? He would rather indulge himself at home with all the cultivation novels then. Even if the opponent was so much better, made them earn the win, not handed it out on a silver platter.

  As he had expected with that attitude, the purple beast continued to be on the receiving end, collecting wound after wound on its almost-collapsing body. Zalanir wanted to empathize with it, but he just couldn’t. It did nothing to earn his respect.

  Instead, his eyes focused on the dog. Big and strong. Intimidating, but he wanted to do this. Was this foolish? Yes. What normal person would fight a savage dog? But his body wasn’t the same as on Earth. He had no idea, but his heart affirmed him to take it.

  Fortune favored the brave. An old quote that described his current feeling perfectly. This variant was strong, but its condition wasn’t perfect. That left front limb. It could be the key.

  And right at the moment the dog jerked the purple beast’s slimy part out, Zalanir dashed out of his hideout with the slightly oversized branch ready for battle.