Hana observed the slow dry of the blood on the cobblestone, slick shine dimming to a dull coat of red, before realizing that fifteen minutes had passed.
The blood on her hand had dried within the first two minutes, and it was almost the shade her skin was before she became a bloated, ugly zombie. But it wasn't her skin--not the gentle brown shade that she inherited from her mother.
No, no, this wasn't her hand. It couldn't be.
"Whose hands are these...?" She wondered aloud, speaking as though one of them was not missing. She glaring at her bruised fingers like strangers that had attached themselves to her body. "Not mine, not mine."
She startled at her own words. "Whose voice?"
Hana searched around, looking for a person in the room who was not there. She was alone, in a strange place. She tilted her head, eyebrows furrowing, and her lips pulled down in a scowl.
How had she gotten here? She didn't remember a thing before watching the blood dry like paint on a wall, except strangely more interesting. How odd. How odd.
[Wisdom Check 0/15. Failed.]
[The system has sensed an anomaly in Player 001's mind. Alloting +15 Wisdom from reserve Stat Points.]
The system pinged. Hana blinked.
Her sight cleared, as though a blindfold had been lifted from her eyes, and the last thing she remembered was staring at the dead goat before inevitably consuming it.
The goat's remains laid in a pool of blood on the other end of the room, but when did she get up and move to a different area? Did she black out or something?
Hana dragged a hand down her face, then scrunched her nose at the scent of rotting flesh.
The blue text box in front of her was still there, waiting for her to acknowledge it, and Hana quickly scanned what it said. Given the "anomaly" it mentioned, she had some sort of episode.
Beyond that, the part that peaked her interest the most was the "reserve stat points." What the heck were those?
[Hint: Stat Points are points given to the player to increase their main attributes, usually earned through practical application of the attributes or leveling up. Reserve Stat Points are points that have not yet been assigned to an attribute.]
[Player 001 has 45 SP reserved.]
Hana's eyes went wide.
If she used her SP, would she stop failing Dexterity checks? Dexterity was important after all, considering it dictated how good of a sneak she was, and being stealthy was required for something like breaking out of a mysterious cult's lair.
Ah, right. She still had to do that.
Hana grimaced. It'd been less than an hour since she received the Emergency Quest, but definitely more than thirty minutes, so she expected someone to have noticed her absence. They may have even been looking for her.
"Profile." Hana muttered, praying the system responded to voice commands.
A window appeared and Hana breathed in relief. She wasn't an idiot, thank goodness.
[LV.1 Hana Matsui. 0/300 XP.]
[Kind: Zombie/Undead]
[HP: 0/0. MP: 10/10.]
[STR: 1(1.1)] [DEX: 0] [CON: 0]
[INT: 1] [WIS: 15] [CHA: 0] [LUK: 0]
[SP: 45]
Hana's lips pursed. Zero health points? She supposed it made sense, given that she was a zombie, but still, it was strange to have a character with such low health.
She stared at the reserve SP and began to consider her options.
The two Dexterity checks that she failed, on two different extremes, was stumbling over a stone for 3 points and grabbing hold of a falling ladder for 15 points. The first was extremely simple and the other was fairly difficult for the regular person. The average between these two checks was 9, and because she liked nice numbers, Hana rounded it up to 10.
If she was right, that meant that the average number of points for any attribute was about 10.
Hana kept failing simple things because her stats weren't even average--she was comparable to an easily squashed bug. Her wisdom was above average, which was great, but she was weak, slow, unlucky, and terrible at social situations. Ah, according to her stats.
She placed 11 points into Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. 10 points went to Intelligence. The last 2 points were put into luck.
[STR: 12(13.2)] [DEX: 11(9.9)] [CON: 11(12.1)]
[INT: 11] [WIS: 15] [CHA: 0] [LUK: 2]
[SP: 0]
Before she could take another moment to breathe, the door knob clicked.
Someone was coming.
Hana scrambled for a hiding spot, eyes darting to random objects in the room, before she scurried into one of the wine barrels.
It was dark and crammed, the wooden space forcing her to curl her face into her body, which smelled like death and rotted flesh as it usually did. She raised her head as high as she could, ignoring the twirling body of a goat hanging from the ceiling, and closed her lips tight.
The wooden door creaked on its dry hinges and slammed into the wall. Panicked steps rushed into the room, and considering Hana didn't bother to clean the mess that she had made, the rush of confused curses in a language she shouldn't have understood made a lot of sense. She tensed, curling further into herself with a wrinkle of her nose as the steps padded against the cobblestone and hovered near the wine barrel she hid herself in.
Something clattered on the ground and clinked, maybe the bones of the goat that she had consumed, and muffled thuds smacked the ground around her. A heavy dragging sound passed by her left side, the stranger giving a grunt of effort, before a loud thump echoed through the room. The strangers spewed curses, confusion and wrathful threats on their tongue.
"Intruder...there's definitely an intruder. Someone stole the body. And what the heck is this mess?"
The steps padded to the end of the room where the door was, and Hana slumped. They were leaving.
There was one final intake of breath. Then another. The stranger breathed again, then--
The wine barrel flew into the air and Hana flew with it, flailing her arms and legs as her body lifted up and up and up. She tumbled against the bloodied cobblestone floor and smacked into the wall, her sight going blurry for one brief moment.
She looked up and saw a man clothed in dark purple, a cloak over his shoulders but the hood of the cloak pooling around his neck. The set of his shoulders was stiff and his eyes were dark with malice, a sneer twisting the wide slope of his mouth. He stepped closer and Hana hurried to her feet, back pressed against the corner of the wall.
"I knew I smelled death."