20th April, Year 54 of the 4th Era. Five days after the awakening.
The chief medic had been very clear : bed rest, medicine twice daily, no exertion of any kind until further notice.
Kevin had nodded at each instruction with the cooperative expression of a child who fully intended to comply, and had spend the five days since doing exactly that --- at least as far as anyone checking on him could tell.
What no one checking on him could tell was that he hadn't rested much.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It started, as most things worth doing started, with a simple question: what, exactly, am I working with?
The window was always there when he though of it --- occupying a space just at the corner of his vision, it could fill it, shrink, etc. he'd confirmed that the much the first morning, it didn't quite require concentration to summon, only attention, though, the way you are thinking about what you ate at breakfast.
str: loading...
dex: loading...
vit: loading...
int: loading...
wis: loading...
...(etc)
passive skills: gamer body(muted), revive(greyed out), entropy user, shop.
scan complete: 99.9%(near full health).
He spent the first two days just reading it and asking questions to the system cause yes this silent system has a voice assistant that answer.
Gamer body(muted): from the system explanation it operates at 20%(at least for health recovery) of the one I saw in the web novel cause I'm not in the plane/world that gave me this thing aka my past life world, reason why contrary to that guy I can be cut and bleed, I couldn't have the gamer mind, my inventory is caped at 10 spaces even though there are work around like many putting things on a bag and in the inventory; I can use it wherever I want in a 1m radius of me( putting things in and out); I also can receive exp when killing animals at least( I tried with a cockroach), I don't have hp and mp bar, can't create things so I my thesis is that my body is kind of semi gamified after all I confirmed that my health grew back quite quickly, we'll see when the scan is complete.
Revive this one turned out to be what brought me here and depending on my trump cards and the way I die later on I will go back some where; so it should be greyed out till my death(I will make it so the system don't show it to me).
Entropy user this one was a bit surprising, apparently the system run on entropy aka change or residue of change or my impact on the world; every time I make a choice, decision, move the system use half of the entropy generated by all my parallel futures that disappear, it really surprise me: when I read novels I never knew from what energy systems works, at least I know mine which also means I have to at some point grow my influence.
Shop, that's where the influence I though of growing come into action because the half that the system fully gives me is fully converted into entropy coins (EC) which is the money/currency used to buy things in the shop. Though, the scan would have to be complete for me to be able to use it; but from what it has told me I should be able to buy nearly everything, we'll see.
The testing began on day three, because by day three he'd run out of things to read and Tiana had temporarily left him alone to fetch his midday medicine.
He started small, deliberately. he called a servant boy --- perhaps nine years old, one of the children who ran minor errands through the palace lower quarters --- who had been stationed outside his door and asked him, politely, to bring a specific book from the public library; he gave him a badge that attested of his identity so that he wouldn't be stopped when going out or when coming back.
The boy did. Kevin thanked him genuinely, because the thanks cost nothing and because he was curious about what counted as influence and how it registered itself in the system.
he checked the window.
Nothing had moved. the entropy coins field still said loading. Which told him that before it finished loading there would be no change.
Patience, he reminded himself. The body is not ready yet, the system is not ready yet, he has time.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Day five brought two things simultaneously: the first morning he woke without the deep bone-ache of the poison still working its way out of his system, and second the anticipation of what was about to come.
Ninety-nine point nine percent. The system had been scanning him for five days and was nearly at the end of it. Which means one of two things: either the body was in worse shape than the medics had told him, or the system's baseline scan was genuinely thorough in a way that would eventually give him information the medics couldn't.
He was betting on both.
Take your time, he though at it, with the sincerity of someone who had decided, very early and deliberately, that the worst thing he could do in a second life was spend it being impatient. We're no in a hurry. Neither of us is going anywhere.
The profession field said none right now. That would change eventually ---- when he declared a path, started training in earnest, gave the system something to categorize. He wasn't ready for that yet. He was still in the part that came before declaring anything: the part where you understood the rules clearly enough that your first move was worth thinking about.
He set the empty tonic cup on the tray beside his bed, lay back against the pillows and looked at the ceiling of the fifth quarter of the imperial palace --- the ceiling belonging to a boy whose mother had just died, whose body had been quietly poisoned for sometime, who was by most account the second most significant prince in this king's descendant and in a court that had more pressing concerns than to notice him,'sigh'.
Good, Kevin though let's count the minutes.