Andrew thought about how to level up for a while before realizing that he actually was extremely dumb, he only had two skills
Surprisingly enough he didn't level up while eating the food, maybe he had to actually eat more to level up. Andrew started to panic, he knew that if he wasn't able to level up by using his skills he would have to kill some fishes in the lake and he really wasn't confident to do it as he clearly was at the bottom of the food chain for the moment in the lake.
He continued using his skill until a notification pop up
He didn't hesitate to open up his status screen to see what was the result of the level up :
strength - 0
agility - 4
endurance - 1
intelligence - 2
magic - 0
charisma - 3
Traits :
Skills :
After analyzing his level up, he noticed that his agility has gone up but also that his overall level has gone up, everything suddenly made a lot of sense, he was enlightened, he has been really shortsighted to not take into account that this game was much closer to real life than all the games he has ever played and as such what mattered to your overall level was actually not some immaterial experience you gain by doing random stuff , but the level of your actual skills. Andrew knew what to do now to level up, he needed to gain some new skills, especially passive skills which could level up just by swimming. Now that he understood that he started searching ways to gain skills.
Andrew thought that if he try to analyze his environment he would maybe be able to gain a skill akin to identify in other games , so while going through his now usual routine of searching for food he started to document everything he saw in his own head, and to experiment with his environment.
Andrew was glad that his hypothesis was correct, even though he wasn't sure if the identification skill was good he was still pretty enthusiastic to test it without further ado he opened his status to see the changes
strength - 0
agility - 5
endurance - 1
intelligence - 4
magic - 0
charisma - 3
Traits :
Skills :
he was delighted to see all his stat go up but more importantly he was enthusiastic about testing his new skill. So he quickly closed his status windows and started to identify everything he could.
.
.
.
until he finally found something interesting, in the middle of nowhere while he was going down the lake. What he found was actually a giant shiny stone.
Andrew was quite curious about the stone as he thought that after the ordinary rank, there would be some ranking such as uncommon or rare, but as it has already happened in this game he was again reminded that he should think about the game as if it was reality, rarity is useful in reality only because you might want to sell what you possess and what's rare is worth more . But in a world where you are totally alone rarity doesn't matter, what matters is whether something is useful or not. Anyway now he has this stone which is useful, how was it useful exactly he wandered. He wasn't able to find an answer to his question so he continued his usual routines but this time he tried to come back to the stone each time he found some food to study it.
Andrew was confused, he couldn't understand how he was able to get a new trait, than he made the link in his mind with the moonstone.
strength - 0
agility - 6
endurance - 2
intelligence - 8
magic - 1
charisma - 4
Traits :
Skills :
It was time for Andrew to think, it seemed like the game wanted him to create his own character, the fact that his intelligence was the stat that was raised the most is probably not a blunder, it fitted very well with his own personality in real life, and by his understanding of the game it was clear that if he'd started to fight every single thing in the lake he would probably turn into some kind of barbarian fish that raises his strength to the maximum, on the contrary, what he has done until now was very wise so it was natural for his intelligence to go up, at the same times he seems to have found the moonstone with luck only, so magic didn't react the same way as the other stats. Maybe it was normal since magic didn't exist in the real world so for someone to follow the path of magic he would probably have to be lucky since it wasn't part of his initial personality. The question that Andrew asks himself right now is whether or not he should actually work towards magic. he quickly dismissed his thought, of course he was going to go towards magic after all the only reason he started this game was to discover new things, what is exactly more thrilling than magic. Also the game is called 'The Creation Path' and not 'Your Path' which led Andrew to think that the path should not be based on what he was in the outside world but from what he wanted to become in the game, as such it was natural for him to follow magic.
Now It was time for Andrew to move on from the moon stone, after all it was deemed as ordinary rank by the identification skill, which led Andrew to think that he didn't need it anymore. And from the moonstone he's got an idea, before he hesitated to go down the lake again because it was extremely cold, but now that he's seen how he the moonstone environment led to an adaptation from his body, he could only guess that if he went downward he will probably get some kind of frost resistant related trait. He started again with his routine, this time with the mana sensitivity skill as well as all the other skills
also he had to stop at some point, this time it had nothing to do with finding a useful object, he actually found something way more interesting, but also something way more dangerous...
a predator