After having made sure he had Status and Inventory, Alcor explored these two powers. They were similar to how it was with most RPG characters.
Inventory was of no surprise, it was a weightless storage space that could store any item he wanted. Anything he 'put' into the Inventory was displayed with a high definition 3D icon on one of the squares on the grey translucent screen. He noticed a few limitations to this power though.
To be able to put something into the inventory, it was necessary for the object itself to be able to be moved. For eg: he could not put in a large tree fixed to the ground or a large rock stuck in the ground or a building a mountain or so forth.
Secondly, as he expected, he could not put a living creature into the Inventory. Once dead or non-living objects could be put into it.
However, Status was a more important power than even the Inventory. The status screen was the most versatile power of a player, granting him the ability to manipulate all aspects of himself. There were various parts to the status screen.
Firstly, there was the Attribute Pane, containing the data on the STR, VIT, AGI, DEX, PER, WIS, INT, CHA, and LUK attributes. Of the Nine Attributes, he could only manipulate the first seven. CHA and LUK could only be grown through special circumstances.
Currently, all his attributes had the value of 1 and he had no free attribute points. He could also see a red and a blue bar on the attribute pane, which represented his health and energy.
Secondly, there was the Leveling Pane, which contained information on his base level and the level of the jobs he picked. Jobs were basically the kind of specialties that allow a certain type of action to be done more easily. You could still perform the same activity with another job, but you would find it harder to accomplish that activity to the same level of ability as one who had the job related to it.
For eg: a Lumberjack Job would help you cut trees better than a Fighter Job. You could still cut the trees with Fighter Job, but the Lumberjack would do it Faster, better, and more efficiently.
Every job maxed out at level 100. You could have multiple jobs but can only pick one as your current job at a time to gain EXP. Your base level was the sum of levels of all your jobs. Once you max out a Job, you can use its skills even if you have a different job from your current job.
Thirdly, there was the Skill Pane, containing the list of all his skills. Funny enough, he had a skill called Gaming at LV 75, which he supposed was a very high level for a skill. He found out that he could learn skills through Actions and Jobs, and level them up through repetitions or skill points. He had currently learned Pain Resistance as he tried to punch the tree trunk to learn to punch.
Finally, there was the Perk Pane, which basically represented special talents that could be acquired. He currently had a single perk called Otherworldly Communication, which allowed him to understand all the languages spoken by sentient beings of this new world. Apart from this, he had a Perk Point, which he could use to get a new Perk, but he was holding off on making a decision about it until he knew more about this world.
After having Explored the basics of Status and Inventory, Alcor then decided to find civilization and learn more about this world and how could he survive in this. And most importantly, what was he supposed to do here?
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'How did I get into this mess?' Alcor thought as looked gloomily at his chained hands as he rode in the back of a big carriage along with many other people in chains. He fingered the collar around his neck, which was made of leather-like material with engravings made from metal thread. His thoughts turned back to the moment he had made the first wrong choice in this new world.
After leaving the tree under which he had arrived, he explored the areas in a certain radius from the tree until he found a well-trodden road. Deciding to follow the road to civilization, Alcor started walking in the same direction as some of the wheel tracks displayed clearly on the road.
However, he underestimated the distance he would have to walk and eventually fell prey to heat, exhaustion, and dehydration, and fell unconscious on the road. The next thing he remembered is someone force-feeding some water to him and him opening his eyes in the back of this carriage.
When he opened his eyes, he had found himself on this carriage along with many other humans like him in chains. The only difference between him and them was that they were more ragged and weary as compared to him. All of them had been bound with chains and shackles and had a collar on their necks.
'Is this the rumored slave system that is supposed to exist in Parallel Worlds like this?' Alcor thought as he called forth Status. Luckily, being a player, he could call forth the Status to check all details about himself.
As he examined the status, he found that there was an additional tag next to his name: Enslaved. Which meant that he was right and this was a slave trader's carriage and all of those that were with him in this carriage were slaves.
'Damn… What horrible luck. The first day in the new world and I am already a slave? Moreover, I am an absolute newbie here.' Alcor grumbled in his mind. He had already tried taking the slave collar into his inventory, but it seemed that since it was bound to him he could not do it.
'Hah, let's just see where fate takes me.' Alcor thought as he browsed through the system. Just then he noticed the perk point he had.
'Hold on, don't perks basically mean special unique talents. Let's see if one of them could help me out here.'
He opened the perk list and was astonished to see a never-ending sea of various perks listed there. Some were dumb, some were dangerous and some were really overpowered. It took him a lot of time to wade through them all, but he was able to find one that would help him out.
[Seal-master Perk: No Seal will ever be able to truly contain you. You can ignore all seals made by someone of a lower base level than you. For the seals made by someone of a similar or higher level than you, you will continuously absorb the power of the seal slowly and eventually break through the seal. Breaking through a seal of someone higher level than you will also give you growth in your attribute points.
As a side benefit of the seal, You can also ignore the restriction of a seal on you up to a certain level. You will also gain an innate understanding of seals and how to directly apply seals using just your mana.
Cost: 1 Perk Point]
Alcor grinned as he saw this. He was lucky that he was able to find this perk. While there were other perks that could let him immediately break from the seal while granting him overpowered abilities, their cost was more perk points than he could afford right now.
The Seal-master Perk was better as it was subtly and let him grow stronger through breaking seals of people of a higher level. He immediately bought and applied the perk.
The first change he noticed was that the restrictive feeling of the slave collar on his mind was immediately reduced to almost negligible. This meant that whoever applied the seal could not have been too strong.
Secondly, he could feel the power stored in the collar slowly being drained by him. He estimated that barely in a day or two this collar would be drained completely and that too only because he was practically a baby in terms of stats. As he grows stronger, a collar of this level won't be able to stop him for more than a few minutes.
And finally, he felt a soft rush of new memories and knowledge into his mind related to various types of seals and how to use them. Now that the threat of being permanently enslaved was gone, Alcor relaxed and closed his eyes, deciding to spend this time going over the new knowledge he had gained.