There was a certain set of expectations I carried with me whenever I climbed into bed at night. The first was that I would wake up again, and the second was that I would be in the same relative condition. The third, and perhaps the most important, was that I would wake up in the same place I'd gone to sleep in the first place—certainly not on a beach, with the sound of ocean waves in my ears, the feeling of sand shifting beneath me, and the heat of the sun burning the skin of my neck. There was an auxiliary expectation, but it only really made itself known as I managed to open my eyes.
Status
Name – Sora
Age – 24
Money – 100
Health Points – 100.25/100.25
Mana Points – 100.25/100.25
Stamina Points – 100.25/100.25
Vitality – 10
Strength – 10
Speed – 10
Intelligence – 10
Luck – 10
HP Recovery – 0.25/s
MP Recovery – 0.25/s
SP Recovery – 0.25/s
Mana Cost Reduction – 0.25
Skill Creation Resistance – 0
A flat, opaque panel sitting in mid-air, directly in front of my face, containing an entire list of words that just about anyone would have recognized if they'd ever so much as glanced at a video game. Before I could give it the proper amount of consideration that such an abnormality actually deserved, I began to realise that the sand was growing increasingly hot. It crossed my threshold of tolerance within a few short moments, and by the time I'd made it to my feet, I was scrambling towards the water in an attempt to minimize contact.
The water wasn't anywhere near as cold as I was expecting, but it more than made up for the attempted murder that had just occurred. From my new vantage point of more than two feet off the ground and actually facing the landmass, it quickly became clear that I had absolutely no fucking idea where I was. Trees took over the beach after perhaps twenty meters inland, and beyond that, they stretched far past the point that I could see.
Towering above them in the distance was a massive rocky mountain, far enough away that I couldn't really make out anything about the terrain other than that it was there. When I returned my gaze to the beach, I could see that it curved away and out of sight, stopping me from being able to see much further than a few hundred meters in either direction—I was on an island, obviously.
Intelligence has increased by 1.
"Shut up," I insisted, swiping my hand through the words. "Don't reward me for something like that."
There wasn't any kind of island near where I lived, and there wasn't even an ocean—which meant that I would have had to travel a great distance just to get to a body of water in the first place. Given the position of the sun directly overhead, I had maybe five or six hours before it became night, and then I'd be stuck on an island in the dark. I checked both ways again, weighing which one was the better option and then moved in the direction I thought might be east—I turned my attention back to the status panel.
Annoyingly enough, my Intelligence had risen an entire point, just as the floating words had stated. Nothing new stood out to me about it other than the oddness of the total health, mana and stamina totals having a decimal point and a quarter of a point. It was mirrored by the recovery amounts and the mana cost reduction. Had I suddenly become an RPG character? Able to regenerate health and use mana? Could I cast spells? Maybe there was a spell to get me off this fucking beach—I paused in the shallows as I spotted a dark spot of motion way out in the distance.
