Delve

	Total	Base	Modifier
Health	200	200	0 | 0%
H.Regen	100/day	100/day	0 | 0%
Stamina	200	200	0 | 0%
S.Regen	100/day	100/day	0 | 0%
Mana	200	200	0 | 0%
M.Regen	100/day	100/day	0 | 0%

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Movement Speed	10
Perception	10

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<p align="left" style="margin-bottom: 0"><span><strong>Resistances</strong></span></p>
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Heat	Cold	Light	Dark
1 | 0%	1 | 0%	1 | 0%	1 | 0%
Force	Arcane	Mental	Chemical
1 | 0%	1 | 0%	1 | 0%	1 | 0%

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There didn't seem to be anything he could interact with on the panel at first glance. There also wasn't any explanation of how anything was calculated, though there were a few hints based on the formatting.

Humm, ok, scientific method, here we go. Hypothesis: vigor increases stamina regeneration. Experiment: add a point to vigor. Results: check the status screen.

Slowly, Rain reached out and touched the (+) next to the vigor stat. He was relieved to see that an apply button appeared at the bottom of the menu. He looked for other changes.

Good, can't mess things up accidentally. Let's see here. Stamina regeneration is now showing 110/day. Awesome. Conclusion: Hypothesis is correct. So it is 10 points of regeneration per day per point in vigor.

Pressing the (-) that had appeared next to vigor, Rain proceeded to test the other stats, adding and subtracting points. Things worked pretty much like he expected. It was 20 health per point of strength, and the same for the pairs of stamina/endurance and focus/mana. Recovery likewise corresponded to health regen and clarity to mana regen.

Nothing had affected resistances until he added a full 10 points to endurance. When he did, they all ticked up to 2 | 0%. Huh, so 1 resistance per 10 points of endurance. 1 what? Flat damage reduction, maybe? Speaking of units, what the hell does 10 movement mean? Or 10 perception? Nothing seems to affect those anyway. Oh, one more thing. Statistics.

Rain dismissed the statistics panel, but the attributes panel stayed open. He reached up and dragged it over to the right, which worked to his satisfaction. He could now see the window showing his current health, stamina, and mana. With resignation, he saw that his stamina currently showed 157/200. The added, but unapplied points to endurance didn't seem to affect his current stats. He couldn't tell if he would end up with 357/400 as opposed to 157/400, should he apply the points. He dragged the window back to where it had been, subtracted out all the points he had added, and then dismissed it.

I really should put points in vigor, but I kinda don't want to. I'm pretty sure I want to be a caster. What good is vigor for a caster? I feel pretty safe with these guys. Boosting myself a little won't make a difference against something like that wolf. They handled it like it was nothing. Level 18, was it? I won't spend any points for now. 150 stamina or so will just have to be enough for today.

Rain had heard the others start to stir, so he slowly got to his feet and stretched, wincing. I guess health doesn't cover muscle soreness, he thought, glancing at his full 200/200 health. That window was going to take some getting used too. Oh, hang on. Options, Customize HUD.

In the sea of available items, Rain hunted for and found what he was looking for. He was able to change the numerical displays to bars so he could see his stat percentages at a glance. He was also able to lock or unlock the box so he could move it around, including separating it out into multiple boxes.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

He moved the green health bar bottom left, yellow stamina went in the bottom middle, and white mana at the bottom right. Then, not liking that, he moved them all up to the top instead. Next, he changed the color and transparency settings, hiding the blue background windows. He left the bars, though he did set them to 50% transparency. Lastly, he changed the color of the bars to red for health, green for stamina, and blue for mana.

Satisfied, he hunted around for other options. This menu, unlike the others, was fairly intuitive and had tons of options for customizing his HUD, including the other menu screens. Not seeing anything else he wanted to change at the moment, he closed it out and looked to the door. His vitals were floating where he could see them, but not getting in the way. Before he could start to make his way past a loudly snoring Hegar, a dialog popped up in the center of his vision.

Rain jumped but managed to bottle up his alarmed shout. Still not used to that. Examining the dialog, Rain smiled, then dismissed it with a swipe of his hand. Good to know that killing things isn't the only way to level up. I guess that was for yesterday?

Working his way past Hegar, he stepped into the light next to Anton and looked around. The sun was filtering through the treeline, creating pleasant dappled patterns on the grass of the meadow. He could hear the babbling of a brook nearby. Rain walked a little way into the forest, looking for a place to relieve himself with some modicum of privacy. Anton didn't seem to care that he was going off on his own, so Rain felt that it would be reasonably safe. He did his best to ignore his inner voice telling him that the real reason was that Anton didn't care if he got eaten by the wildlife. He wandered towards the noise of the stream, planning on taking a dip after he had finished with his business. Pretty sure I can't get tree leaves in 2-ply.

Finding the brook, Rain was happy to see that it was slow moving and deep enough to submerge himself in. Rain walked a little way downstream the brook, grabbed a convenient branch, and dug himself a latrine. Standing back up, he looked around, then shrugged. Well, either I go now, or later when everyone is up. Modesty is a luxury.

Rain stripped down, took care of his business, hid the evidence, then jumped in the brook to get clean. The water was absolutely glacial, so he wasted no time washing himself off, using sand as an abrasive in lieu of soap. Ok, soap, added to the list of things I should ask about. Wait... would purify work on BO? I... kinda don't want to ask. They would think I'm weird, no, weirder...

Clambering out of the brook, Rain brushed off as much of the water as he could, then decided to use his shirt as a towel. Once he was sufficiently dry, he pulled on his underwear and pajama pants, slung his sodden shirt over his shoulder, and walked back to the clearing.

Anton noticed him returning and said a few words to the others, who were clearly already up and ready to get going. There was no mention of breakfast. Anton led the way onto the road, not waiting for the others, simply continuing in the direction they had been traveling the day before. Ameliah and Brovose followed, moving slightly quicker to catch up. Hegar was grumbling and moving slowly, and Rain caught up to the others from the other side of the clearing in less time than it took Hegar to even get to the road. Damn, he needs a cup of coffee even more than I do.

As he reached them, Ameliah greeted him with what he assumed to be a 'good morning', so he replied in kind. Brovose stared at him, an eyebrow raised at his wet hair and naked torso. Rain shifted uncomfortably. He wasn't fat, but he wasn't exactly in great shape either and being shirtless in the middle of a forest wasn't exactly something he was used to.

Brovose held out a hand and said, "Shirt." Hesitantly, Rain handed it to him. As soon as he had it, he said a word and a wave of heat blasted out from his hand where he was holding the cotton garment. Rain watched in fascination as the shirt dried even faster than the level of heat would suggest. Handing the shirt back, Brovose returned to watching the road ahead.

"Thank you," Rain said. That was one of the phrases he had made sure to learn the day before.

Hegar caught up and the group walked in silence for around an hour before Ameliah reached into her pack and distributed some brownish bar-shaped sort of cracker-cake things. She said the name for them as she handed Rain his. It was as hard as a rock and had about as much taste as one, but Rain wasn't about to complain. Free food was free food. He gnawed at his ration as he walked, trying to soften it up, but feeling like it was a fight that his teeth were going to lose. Eventually, he managed to break off a little piece and choke it down. Finishing the bar took him at least 30 minutes, but it was oddly filling and he was feeling surprisingly good. The swim and the walking were loosening up his muscles, and he seemed to be doing ok without his morning coffee, though a headache might set in later.

To pass the time, he asked for more words, learning things such as 'river', 'clearing', and 'forest'. He was starting to get a sense for the language a little bit. Either he was missing something, or the language was considerably simpler than English. The word for 'forest' was 'many tree' and 'clearing' was 'no tree'. He felt like a bit of a caveman, saying things like 'me go many tree' and 'where rock?', but apparently that was just how the language worked. Deciding that he was curious enough to attempt it, he tried to ask for clarification.

"Why few word? Why no more word? Why same word thing and many thing?"

This was met with confused looks and a bark of laughter from Anton.

So much for that, I guess I'm missing something then. Damn it, this is annoying. I'll stick to verb-noun. Two word max for the caveman for now.

Hegar called a halt at a smallish clearing when the sun was approaching noon. Rain sighed and plopped down on a log, rubbing at his sore feet. Glancing at his stamina, he noted that it had fallen to around 75. Below half, but he should be able to make it until they stopped for the night. Anton disappeared into the trees, probably hunting, and Hegar actually helped Rain and Ameliah collect firewood without complaining. Brovose had fallen asleep. Everything was ready except that Anton hadn't returned, so Rain walked back over to his log and picked up a longish branch he had found and set aside. He thought it would make a good spear and he wanted a weapon of some kind if he was going to be out here for any length of time.

Moving over to Ameliah, he pointed at the knife she had laid out in preparation for dressing whatever Anton came back with. "Use knife?" he asked.

"Why?"

Not having the words to describe what he wanted, he mimed carving at the branch with a knife. She shrugged, then nodded, but stopped him from taking the knife by the fire. Instead, she handed him a different one from her pack. This one was slightly heavier, more like a dagger than a cooking knife. Before he walked away, she stopped him again with a raised hand.

"My knife," she said.

Rain nodded, understanding. "Your knife," he agreed. He then walked back to his log and started trimming off twigs from his hopefully soon-to-be spear. The knife was wickedly sharp and cut through the dense wood with only moderate pressure. He had just started on sharpening the point when Anton returned. He swore and stretched after slamming down the huge, furry form he had been carrying. It looked like a cross between a rabbit and a boar, including size. Anton declined to help skin the animal, leaving it to Hegar and Ameliah to prep the meal. He instead started building a ring of rocks around the slumbering Brovose for some inscrutable reason. Rain shrugged and went back to carving. As sharp as the knife was, the branch must have come from some sort of hardwood tree as it was taking him quite a while to get it down to a point.

By the time the rabbit-boar stew was ready, he felt he had gotten it as sharp as it was going to get. He set down the knife and stood up to test out his handiwork. The makeshift spear was almost as tall as he was, more than slightly crooked, and a bit too heavy. It was better than nothing though. He gave it a few experimental stabs.

It will serve.

Picking up the knife, he walked over to the fire. He thanked Ameliah and trading it to her for a bowl of stew, juggling his spear in the crook of his arm. Sitting down on the ground, he blew on his soup and took a hesitant spoonful. Hey, not bad. Needs a bit of salt, but it beats the crap out of travel rations. My teeth thank you.

Brovose suddenly stopped snoring and breathed in deeply. He climbed to his feet and stretched, running a hand through his red hair and blinking blearily. He started to move over to the fire to grab a bowl but tripped on the ring of stones that the mischievous archer had placed around him. He went down in a tangle of long limbs, causing Anton to spray his mouthful of soup into the fire with a sudden bark of laughter.

The mage looked back curiously to see what had tripped him, then over at Anton. The archer was now choking on his soup due to his unrestrained laughter. Ameliah quickly de-escalated the situation by pulling Brovose back to his feet and handing him a bowl of soup. The mage seemed content with this, though he was scowling at the archer as he ate.

Rain was about halfway through his second bowl when he heard a familiar sounding splortch coming from the far side of the clearing. Shit, another slime?

Nobody else seemed to have heard the noise, or if they had, they were doing a good job of not caring about it. Rain set his soup aside and stood, grabbing his spear. Round two, bring it on, slime. I'm armed and I mean business.

As Rain stood, Hegar glanced at him, then the slime. It looked more or less the same as the first one, perhaps a bit yellower. Hegar looked back at Rain and pointed at the slime, saying something too complicated for Rain to understand. His confusion must have been clear because Hegar facepalmed and spoke again in a condescending tone.

"Rain. Slime. Fire. Far." He pointed as he said each word, pointing over his shoulder toward the furthest corner of the clearing from the fire.

"Yes, got it, no need to be an ass," Rain said in English. He walked toward the slime, then suddenly stopped. Hanging over the slime was a small dialog and a red bar. It read simply [Slime], lvl 1. The red bar had no numbers on it and seemed to have modeled its format after his own health bar.

Where was this before? Oh, right, the HUD was off.

Grinning, Rain continued walking towards the slime. It is level 1, I am level 1. Fair fight, and I have allies if I get in trouble. Ameliah would save me at least. Probably. Come to think of it, I've never seen her fight.

Rain's thoughts were interrupted as the slime started moving towards him instead of the scent of boar-rabbit soup. He skirted around it, leading it away from the fire.

Ok, the last one jumped at me when it got close, so I'll bait this guy, dodge back, then stab him. Wait, do slimes have genders? Ew. I'll just file that under things I don't need to know. Ever.

When the slime got to around two meters away, it lunged forward as the last one had done. This time, Rain didn't go for the home run and jumped back instead. The slime landed hard on the ground with a disgusting splutt noise. Quickly, Rain moved back in and poked at it with his spear. It sunk in without resistance, puncturing the slime's membrane and causing it to leak a bit of disgusting smelling fluid out onto the grass. Rain backpedaled, pulling out his spear and scampering back to the safe two-meter distance.

Looking at the slime's health bar, he noted that it had decreased slightly, but less than he had hoped. Oh well, rinse and repeat. And then rinse, ugh.

Rain had to repeat his slime kiting maneuver six more times before he finally finished it off. He hadn't tried to get fancy, and luckily the slime seemed incapable of learning as it kept falling for the same trick over and over. When he depleted its health bar, it simply collapsed and started to lose cohesion. Nice, no fire, no burning vomit explosion. Much better, but still, yuck.

Yeah, that's right, just me, no party, Rain thought, satisfied, as he dismissed the window.

Looking down at his clothes, he saw that he had been splattered with yellow goo despite his efforts to keep out of the splash zone. He sighed and tried to think of a way to ask Ameliah to help him out. Before he could come up with the proper caveman, he was interrupted by a wave of purifying light washing over him.

Turning, he saw that Ameliah had wandered over to him and was now channeling the same purifying aura that she had used before. She wasn't standing with her eyes closed this time, instead, she was walking toward him as the cleansing pulses radiated outwards. The slime started to dry and flake away slowly. It didn't evaporate before it hit the ground as it had before for whatever reason. Nevertheless, the mess was getting cleaned up.

Rain smiled at Ameliah as she approached, thanking her. Then, indicating the glowing pulses, he asked "Purify? Aura?" With some clever pantomime, he managed to learn the word for both, as well as 'firebolt' and 'fire evocation', which had been needed to establish context. Already knowing the word for fire and being able to use Brovose as an example made learning the pairing much easier. 'Aura' and 'purify' had been easy enough after that, at least assuming that he had correctly guessed the skill from its effect. For all he knew, he had just learned the name of a skill and a tree that he hadn't gotten to yet in his exploration of the skills menu.

As the slime dissolved, Rain noticed a white glint sitting in the middle of the rapidly shrinking puddle. He waited a moment for the puddle to completely disappear, then walked over and picked up the small shining object. It was crystalline, opaque, and about the size of a grain of rice. It seemed to be giving off a very faint white light even after Ameliah stopped maintaining purify.

"Tel," Ameliah said, unbidden. Rain pointed to the crystal in his hand for confirmation, and she nodded.

"Tel?" Rain repeated. "My Tel?"

She shrugged and nodded. Then turned to walk back to the camp. Rain followed, peering at the Tel and trying to decide how he was going to keep from losing it. Once they returned to the camp, Ameliah noticed that he was still holding the Tel in his hand and dug out a small glass vial from her pack. It looked like a half-height test tube with a cork. She handed it to him silently. He thanked her again, slipped the Tel inside, and re-corked it, before slipping it into a pocket.

Rain noticed that his remaining stew was gone and that there was a suspicious empty bowl sitting near Brovose. He decided not to make an issue of it, instead retrieving a fresh bowl of stew and retreating to his log. Setting the stew down to cool and leaning his spear against the log, he opened up his attributes screen to check a few things.