A Sinner’s Chance

My name was a given,. Titles were an earned identifier for a person, such as Hero, or various ranks of nobility. Some titles even granted boons to their holders, though it depended on the overall power of what being granted it.

My date of birth was another pretty obvious entry, I'd just turned five, so it was seemed to be fine, though it wasn't like I knew exactly how the calendar here worked. 

I let out a confused 'eh' as I saw the entry for gender. The hell was none supposed to mean? Physically a female, mentally a male, so it couldn’t tell? Or was my race just not gendered in the first place? Arachne were all female, so I guessed it wasn't an impossibility. 

I obviously lacked a class as I'd never used any skills, which was the perquisite for gaining a class. For instance, a cook would have the Cook class, while a guard might have the Knight, or Enforcer class. Supposedly as I used skills my class would change to reflect the use, as well as provide small boosts to related skills or attributes.

As for my race, Ashborn, it wasn't something I was familiar with, it might have been this worlds equivalent Elves for all I knew. I'd have to ask my mother, or perhaps see if I could visit a library in this city to see if I could find any info on it, but that could wait.

The criminal status was something my mother hadn't mentioned but seeing as it was none I figured I could worry about it when it came up.

Experience could be accumulated through various tasks, but killing was the fastest, I felt such a system would cause murder to be rampant, but perhaps the criminal status also had a safeguard against indiscriminate killing.

The eight attributes, Strength, Agility, Willpower, Perception, Charm, Vitality, Intelligence, and Wisdom, weren't too difficult to understand either. 

Strength is one's ability to apply force to the physical word, Agility is one’s ability to control their body, while Willpower is your force of will and relates to your control of magic. The (V) before these three meant Variable, they were things that could be changed through consistent training.

Perception is the sharpness of one’s senses, while Charm affects physical attractiveness, an attribute I felt was strangely unnecessary for strengthening oneself. The (L) meant Limited, they could be raised through external means such as makeup, or magic, but otherwise don’t fluctuate much.

Vitality represents the resilience of one’s physical body, Wisdom is one’s ability to meld mana, and determined one’s upper limit for their mana pool, while Intelligence is determined how quickly one could process information or how much control they had over complex spells. The (N) were Non-variable, they were determined at birth and almost never changed.

The affinities were rather straightforward too, each represented how efficiently one’s internal mana pool could be converted into a different type, the letter rank simply graded the efficiency, though I wondered what the purpose of the blackened entry was, had it just been an empty space, and the Gods decided to fill it for aesthetic or something.

Languages were even simpler, simply stated, it was how fluent I was in a language. I assumed Arachneren the language my mother spoke, probably the language of Arachne in general as well. Common was probably the main language used here, but I couldn't figure out why or how I knew it.

Gifts were explained as blessings from powerful beings, oftentimes mundane, like being able to tell which direction is north, though occasionally powerful ones show up, such as Superhuman Strength, or such. Usually people were born with their Gifts and they never changed, however, in rare instances one may get one as a reward, or lose one as a curse. I didn't know if five was many, but only one of the Gifts seemed like something I should have, Lives of the Past. Of the other four Mynoghra's Shadow, Power of Pleasure, and Heretic concerned me slightly, I had no clue what any of them did, but something with the name of Heretic was definitely going to be troublesome. The last Gift was simply strange, Phoenix Blood. I was born from an Arachne, yet I had the blood of a Phoenix? There was surely something I wasn't aware of that caused such. On top of that I didn't even have an affinity with fire, what kind of self-respecting phoenix wasn't compatible with fire?

My skill set was another troublesome thing, supposedly, the system that was in place tracked things you could be considered to have somewhat learned, but what was up with my skill set? 

Artifice, I guessed, was my knowledge of invention, I had plenty of knowledge regarding technology that would be considered Sci-Fi for this world, but I had never particularly been one to work on crafts. 

Quickened Recovery. It sounded like it would speed up my recovery, it seemed something appropriate for someone with phoenix blood, so I didn't think about it too much.

Masochism. The skill name itself gave me a headache, how did I get it, was it from one of the other Gifts? If it was anything like I thought it would be, it probably meant pain would give me sexual stimulation, not something I was exactly excited about. Along with that I had Seduction, and Essence Drain, was I part succubus or something, and why were they both so high leveled?

As for how Attributes and Affinities were rated, it was a simple system, F was the worst, with S being the best. Having something at F essentially meant it was non-existent, or at least close to non-existent. Otherwise, each letter represents you, as compared to everyone else in the world, with S being something like the 1% of the 1%. They weren’t exact measurements, rather they were broad as two people within the C category, the “average”, could be vastly different, despite being in the same class category.

For Skills, it was extremely similar to an RPG. Skills at level 1 were just learned and only did the most basic of their functions. Level 10 was the apex of that skill, and in rare cases allowed the skill to evolve to a new and better version.

Supposedly the system was developed to help you measure and speed up your training as well as strengthen you, but because the various races of the world were so different, and even individuals had their unique points, it was too difficult to make something that perfectly replicated an RPG system.