Chapter Text
Quest Completed : 3 Mile Run IV
Quest Reward : +1 Strength Point | +1 Endurance Point | 20xp
I was breathless, my chest hurting. A quick glance at my hud told me why.
[Peter Parker Lv 4 | Hp: 50 — Sp: 0 — Mp: 90]
Affliction : Extreme Exhaustion | Sp regen stopped for 1:59
Cold determination pushed me through the pain, the burning in my lungs. The whole way I totally wasn’t plagued by thoughts that were telling me to just stop and take a breath. Those thoughts aren’t prevalent because the reason I was running now, why I was pushing myself, was because I have freaking super powers. That I was just like the Avengers, like Thor.
Well not really, I didn’t have a hammer capable of flattening a building nor could I fly, or shoot lightning, or have utterly wicked hair. Okay I didn’t have a lot of things in common with him or really any other Avenger out there but still.
I have super powers and when I realized that I was basically giddy with excitement.
Even if my powers were weird, really from what I can tell I’ve got two powers which was twice as awesome as having one power by the way. That's not even talking about the Mp stuff, like I only have two skills that actually use that stuff but if Mp actually means magic points and not something else.
Well I want to be able to throw fireballs yesterday.
Doing three miles runs in twenty five minutes was painful though. Like my running abilities are dirt poor. I haven’t ran a day in my life before doing any of this stuff. I'm fourteen year old and go to a nerd school, for me exercising and running don’t really go together.
I mean it’s actually possible for me to do stuff like that now, my visions normal and I don’t get a burning pain in my lungs every time I over exert myself like I did before.
Who knew getting powers would make everything in my life so much more than before. A whole new world is open to me and I can't wait to explore it. Before this, before this happened to me, I was just going to go through the motions.
Now though I could be my own hero.
That’s the literal dream of every single kid at school right now, and unlike them I have the chance of it actually happening. Take that kids who think they were better than me just because their parents were rich.
Take that Flash, take that and your stupid expensive promssied car that you were bragging about. You can’t buy superpowers off the market can you.
Giggling a little I finally felt my stamina start to regenerate, the Extreme Exhaustion affliction going away just before. Out of every affliction I’ve had, that one has to be the worst. Well maybe right behind Severe Mental Exhaustion. Now that is a pain I never want to experience ever again.
I’ve had my powers for a week now and within that week I’ve discovered a lot about them.
My life is a game and I’m technically not human. At least I’m not human by the standards of common thought.
Leaning against a wall, the busy streets of New York moving around me, I took in a deep breath and just tried to calm my racing heart beat. The feeling of exhaustion being horrible yet amazing at the same time somehow. It was a weird mix of feelings that made me understand why some of the sport freaks at school loved doing this stuff.
Getting a runner's high is an amazing feeling.
Sucks that Ned wouldn’t want to do this type of stuff with me, he'd probably pass out before we make it past the second mile.
With a quick mutter under my breath I opened my menu.
{Quests} {Character File} {Traits} {Perks} {Active Skills} {Passive Skills} {Inventory}
Perks, that's the only option on the menu that I can’t look into. It’s just grayed out, going by the game logic it’d probably unlock sooner rather than later. There’s a problem with that deduction though.
I don’t play video games, that was more of Ned's thing than mine. I was interested in science, in the material world and stuff. Like ask me to rant about chemistry and I’d give you a conversation that’d probably bore you to death on the properties and how Ph affects the decay process of organic compounds.
It’s the same thing with Ned and computers.
Games though, I only have the barrist of a surface level knowledge in them.
Asking Ned in subtle as possible ways is nerve breaking because of a decision I’ve made pretty early in my career as a potential hero, I have to keep my identity secret.
I don’t want my Mom getting hurt because of me, it’d probably make me feel like utter crap if she got so much as a cut because of me deciding to go through this path. I got to keep my life and my potential heroic life separate. Also she’d probably stop my hero carreror right in its tracks.
“Character File” I muttered, moving at the same time to the pathway home. To the apartment building where Aunt May and I live.
I ignored most of the page, it was the bulk of the information and wasn’t really what was affecting me right now. My name and level, they were all really interesting and had me salivating at the thought of trying to figure them out.
Like if I change my name would my name also change, what would happen if I got sudden amnesia. Would my name just be blank? What would happen if when I had amnesia I adopted a new name but remembered my old life, which name would come out on top?
This part I loved, even if I lacked the experience with games to intuitively figure this stuff out I like problems. I like trying to solve riddles and problems that have next to no information.
Ned would probably love to be with me, trying to figure this out every step of the way but I had to resist. He might be a massive help but I got to keep this to myself.
No matter how much I don’t want to.
My stats the things that game says defines me, they were low to say the least. From what I understand with games they are supposed to be though, a player is supposed to work up to the high heights of max level stats.
I was manly looking at two of my stats.
Strength : (9) * 2 = 18
Dexterity : (12) * 2 = 24
Most of my stats are at ten, my strength and dexterity were the sole exception. The both of them were really low for some reason. Well my dex was pretty high but my strength. Now that stat was dangerously low, like in the beginning it was like six. It was weird how low it was.
Who am I kidding, the both of them were probably low because of the simple fact that I was the kid who never went outside during recess.
Solving advanced chemistry problems or memorizing trivia facts for the decathlon team didn’t leave that much time for outside activities. Even more so with marching band and robotics club eating up time.
Though I can’t say that much on the last two because I quit them. An action that had me horrified and frustrated. I liked those two clubs, they were fun but I decided that if I was going to go forth on this I would have to drop two of my three extra activities.
I kept the Decathlon because if I quit that activity the kids there might actually kill me. All of us have to memorize a subject and trying to train someone to replace me would have probably been a nightmare.
Also it would have given Flash fuel to use against me.
The fact that my stats double, at least for strength and dexterity, was really interesting. Though the reasoning for that happening was because of a trait I had.
Opening the menu again with a quick mutter I navigated to my traits, or trait in my case. I only had one of them.
{Traits}
Novice Attunement (The Spider)
Bitten by a radioactive spider you’ve changed, with half your DNA different from before you’ve found yourself able to achieve things you could have never had before. Now if only there was a way to further your attunement to The Spider.
- Doubles Strength and Dexterity
I got bit by a spider during a field trip, got really sick, got better and then the next day I had all of this around me. A pop up in front of me giving me the basic overview over everything, a tutorial to walk me through some of the menus.
The tutorial didn’t say anything about Perks which really annoys me, that’d be a blind spot if there ever was one for a tutorial.
Again I just got to hope that Ned’s knowledge and reasoning of ‘Stuff like that would probably be covered later dude’ was right.
Biting my lip I decided to take a detour, my steps nearly unhearable in the busy streets of New york. Though Queens has it better than most places in that department, at least we aren’t Hell’s Kitchen.
At least we only have a slight chance of getting mugged in the morning unlike there, in which you have a one hundred percent chance.
There was a dojo, one that seemed to be serious about actually teaching stuff. I wasn’t going to join or anything, we didn’t have nearly enough money for me to spend it on stuff like that but _ could watch and draw.
Designing was one of the three only Passive Skills I had. The other two being Blunt Harm Resistance and Ascended Body.
The former had a really embarrassing story behind it that I’d rather not remember right now, the latter though was really interesting. It made it so that my body wasn't really embiid by regular rules of logic. More specifically, it makes me follow the illogic of the game.
Not really understandable until I realized all that meant was that I'd get some debuffs for doing stuff like not eating or staying up late. The Mental Exhaustion one came from me not sleeping for eighteen hours straight, nearly made me want to pass out.
To say that I won’t be making that mistake would be pretty easy.
Hunger, at least the minor debuff version, just made my Hp and Sp regen slow down. Not my Mp for some reason but that is a whole other beast that I don’t even want to get into right now.
Designing on the other hand was a mixture of stuff, of being able to draw objects, measure parts, and have it all come together for one whole. It’s interesting and a skill that I’ve been making use of constantly because it’s really easy to train.
The dojo was loud, It was loud in the fact that if you were listening you could hear it over the busy streets.
The main reason I came was the fact that there was a pretty big window opening to the main room of the dojo, not that many people were there but I could still have some fun drawing.
Sitting down on a nearby park bench I tried to as subtly as possible take out my notebook and pencil from my inventory.
My inventory, something that I’m probably going to have nightmares about just from how it functions, is a hammerspace from what the internet tells me. A little tiny pocket in reality that I can store and take stuff from, for now though it has a max weight of ten pounds and costs ten mp to actually take or store an item in there.
Really interesting skill and I could totally see how it could be used in the future. If the thing keeps on going up and up in maximum weight this skill could become broken easily. Like could I one day store the planet in my inventory.
I don’t even want to think about how long I’d have to grind the skill to do that, it’s taken me forever just to get it to level two.
WIth them in hand I started to sketch stuff, my novice level drawing decently well at getting the main idea of everything in front of me. I needed at least some skill to be able to create decent blueprints for the robotics club after all.
I’m going to seriously miss that club. Like robotics didn’t have that many big moments but we once had a robo beat down and that was just the best thing in the world.
“Observe” I muttered as a passerby walked.
[Madison Rights Lv 13 | Hp: 40 — Sp: ??? — Mp: ???]
Unlike in any other game from what I understand I don’t get health bars for everyone automatically, I have to first use Observe on them, one of the two active skills I have. The other one being the take and store inventory skill.
Observe takes twenty Mp to use and gives me the name, level, and Hp of a person. Not that much but as the skill levels up I can probably expect for an improvement on that front.
I hope I get a level out of it though because the only skill i’ve been getting constant level ups from is drawin-.
Skill Level up | Design (Novice) 10 -> Design (Apprentice) 1
Speck of the devil” I muttered as I tucked my notebook under my arm and pocketed the pencil.
Novice to apprentice, another thing I’m going to have to ask Ned about. Just guessing I can pretty easily say that I got more proficient at designing stuff, why not level eleven. Why did it go back to level one?
It’s so confusing.
At least I got a new nugget of information to use, a new thing to have and try and understand what my life has become. The new life that I embraced with a happy face.
I wonder what Aunt May’s cooking?
— Gaming Spider —
Kids were shouting, notes being passed and people studying. It was the decathlon club meeting and we were studying in full force, even though we won’t actually be going to a semi official competition until like four months from today.
The wonders of being part of a club dedicated towards the memorization and binging of as much information as possible, how Abe could have lived without knowing the fact that zero isn’t a number I don’t know.
The way he got yelled out for getting that fact wrong was a bit harsh not going to lie.
I got an int point for participating though, which makes me wonder if I was too hasty on my whole quitting club thing. Not like I can go back on that now, while marching club and robotics aren’t as dedicated as decathlon that doesn’t mean they can’t hold a grudge.
The marching club expeccly so, some of the kids there are a bunch of freaking sadists in the making.
“Hey Penis.” I didn’t even need to look at them to take a guess on who was the person that was talking.
Flash Tompson, the local bully. Though calling him that is a bit of a compliment, the dude was smaller than me and had next to no muscle on him. Granted that would be a descriptor for literally everyone else here, me included though I have been filling out a bit with my work, or is it the stat points?
Anyways Flash isn’t one of the senior jocks who are tall enough and have enough sheer muscle to put up the whole bully persona, really the only thing he had above most of the kids here was the fact that he was generally richer than everyone.
I got here on a program, a scholarship for good grades. It’s the only way Aunt May could have even attempted for me to get here, we don’t have anywhere near enough money for her to send me to a stem school otherwise.
“What do you want, Flash?”
Quest Quered : Bite Back
Quest Objective : GIve Flash a taste of his own medicine.
Quest Reward : 200exp
Accept : Y/N
“That’s a lot of exp.”
“What the heck are you saying, Penis.”
“Nothing Flash.” Should I accept? I never really tried to fight back against Flash. I just kinda rolled over and accepted it. It’s just one of those things I was taught not to do, don’t fight people just to make yourself feel better.
Flash doesn’t really target anyone beside me so I guess it’s fine, I mean it’s a bit messed up but I’ve got thick skin.
Letting the quest hang in the side of my view I continued speaking “What’s up?”
“Why did you quit half your clubs?”
Why did Flash want to know why I quit half my clubs? Is he like digging for gossip? Well I already have an excuse querred up for this exact situation. Though admittedly it’s not the best excuse out there.
“I got some stuff happening at home, it’s been eating up my time so I had to drop some clubs.”
“Any risk of you leaving the decathlon.” Flash said it as if he wanted me to leave but I don’t really know if I should trust that, Flash seemed to want to win just like everyone else so he should know that trying to train someone new up would be a nightmare.
Really I’ve only been in his circle of interaction for a while now and I still barely can get a handle on his personality. He’s just really weird and contradictory at times.
Everybody also seemed to take that moment to stop talking and look at us. As if they were waiting for my answer to his question, which they probably were.
“Naw, don’t worry. I’d rather not get murdered in my sleep.”
“As if anybody cares if you're in the club are not.” Flash sniped back heading back to his study group.
Quest Denied.
While getting that chunk of exp would have been nice, I don't have to bully Flash for it. I got another three miles run to do after school anyways.
I guess I could go and do some other exercise, something a bit more fun because while the whole running high is nice and all I've been running for a while now and haven’t been getting any stat points. I guess the law of diminishing returns comes into play here too.
Can’t escape science after all game.
Eventually the club ended and everybody started heading home, most of the kids here were far enough away that they had to take the bus, other kids had cars they could drive home, only a lucky few could just walk home. Sadly enough I was one of those lucky few. Sadly enough because it is currently raining right now.
“God dang Ned.” I muttered, if he was here I could have hitched a ride with his mom.
I guess I can have some fun running home. Home is only like five miles away, maybe three. I’ve ran that before, well I’ve run it and felt like utter crap afterwards but I’ve run it.
It was a poor idea to run in the rain.
My clothes were wet, the jacket I was wearing was not providing nearly enough protection against the cold and quite frankly I felt like I was one shiver away from throwing up.
Of course I tripped when a pop up appeared in my vision. A pop up that had me planting on my face with a smile.
Active Skill Gained!
Through action and work you have gained a skill!
Short Distance Dash (Novice) Lv 1
A mixture of sprinting and hoping you don’t die.
- Max Speed (Hours) : Skill Lv + (Endurance Stat/2)
- Max Use Time (Seconds) : Vigor Stat
- Skil Cost : 10 SP per second.
-5hp
That is horrible yet amazing at the same time. It’s my third active skill, the first skill that I didn’t automatically have yet it was so crap. I could only use it for five freaking seconds before I got to zero Sp and was hit with the exhaustion debuff, if i kept using it even then I’d probably make it instantly to Extreme exhaustion.
I’d rather not feel like my lungs are rebelling against me, thanks.
It’s cool though and I could probably train it intermiddly when I’m just doing stuff and I guess being able to run six miles per hour is pretty cool. I mean most adults can do that but I guess for someone of my height it’d be pretty good. If this is in miles or kilometers it doesn’t say.
Miles is the safe bet I guess, the weight is in pounds so it's probably going to also be in miles. The three miles quest that I get every now and then also being another point towards this being in miles.
It was still raining buckets on me and by the time I got home I was slightly bruised, suffering from exhaustion, cold, and mildly excited. The emotions inside of me clash just a tiny bit. Though the whole excitement won in the end.
By some tiny testing on the way home, in which I almost fell on my face again, I was able to figure out it ran by miles which while making me right was pretty cool.
Setting my backpack down, my clothing really uncomfortable with how wet it was, I headed off to my room to get these freaking wet clothes off of me and into something that didn’t have the chance of giving me hypothermia.
I wonder if there's an affliction for that.
Something to probably not test later I guess. I mean smacking myself to get the blunt damage resistance was already embarrassing enough. A skill that gave me a flat two percent resistance to all blunt damage when not wearing armor, what constitutes armor I don’t know.
Trying anything dnagours would be stupid, like maybe thier’s a slashing and stabing variant of that skill but I’m sure as heck not going to be stabbing myself anytime soon. I don’t need to be trying to get myself sent to a hospital or anything.
Aunt May would ground me for the rest of my life if I did something like that.
With warm, not rain covered clothes on I got to work on a quest that I’ve been chipping at for the past week and a half. Really I got this power soon after I had my power, it was one that had an exp reward that put Bite Back to shame and was incredibly difficult to complement that.
The big quest was called New Web Derived from Faith, I think that game was taking a stab at me there. The whole faith comment saying that I was working through this completely blind and hoping for a solution.
Which granted isn’t wrong but it’s something that I really don’t need to be called out on.
I was trying to create a synthetic silk, a spider web made from chemicals. I’ve gotten pretty close to getting one working but it was way too weak and almost instantly degraded but at least I got a decent foundation working. It’s probably going to take a while though.
I got time to work at least.
— Gaming —
I had some fun today, I found a random street corner and started spray painting stuff. Admittedly the main reason I did that was because of a quest I got, one rooted from me deciding I wanted to draw something bigger which lead to spray painting ideas which lead to this.
Not the most reasonable train of thought but the quest was nice.
Sometimes I get quests and I just refuse or don’t do them until they time out. The game is a wonderful thing and it lets me grow at a very self contained pace but really that’s not that bad. The part that could only be defined as bad is the fact that the quests come from me generally, that leads to a lot of quests that I don’t accept on principle. Like the biting back against Flesh quest.
Either way the quests come from me and they come from every part of me, which means there's a lot of sassing and semi real fights the game wants me to start. The fact that I could be level five if I took one or two of them hurt a little but it’s okay.
I got to things the right way and fighting back against people just to make myself better isn’t something a hero would do, something Uncle Ben would want me to do. Now there’s a thought I haven’t had in a long time.
Been getting so wrapped in my own head that I actually haven’t thought about him in awhile.
Let’s just shut down this train of thought before I start to feel like crap, maybe even wishing that I had powers back then so I could have sav-.
Shaking my head I shaked the can, a bright red sticker on it, and started to spray paint. The soft sound of spraying was the only sound to be heard in the near empty streets. I was in the part of town that was pretty bad. The bad neighborhood with criminals and stuff but that just meant that if anybody saw me they wouldn’t be calling the police.
Granted I might get mugged but it’s not like I have anything on me right now, my wallet and phone are in my inventory.
Black outline, patch work cardboard and tape being used to cover that up, then a healthy coating of blue and silver. Tape being used to keep everything in place. It was a version of the avengers logo. People I aspire to be.
God I love the fact that I can say that.
When I was little, or well more little, I had this whole outfit planned for me being a hero. It was a mixture of Ironman and Captain America, little me would have freaked out over the heroes today.
Though I really won’t be making or using it any time soon, I don’t think I’d be able to fight like them. Be able to fly like Thor and throw lightning bolts strong enough to fry cities or demolish buildings like the Hulk.
It’d be awesome being able to do that, but I have to be realistic. Maybe one day I could get there if my stats pick up pace but that time won’t be now.
Being able to fly wouldn’t be that bad though.
Throwing the now empty bottle behind me, making a mental note to go and clean it up afterwards I grabbed another new one. This one a slightly different shade of red annoyingly enough.
I got this stuff through bargaining and searching, in other words I dug through some dumpsters behind paint stores. Most of the stuff I found was unusable but sometimes they threw away perfectly good materials.
They do that a lot weirdly enough.
With a final spray of the bottle and a sigh of relief I started to remove all of the markers and cardboard I was using to block the spray paint. Revealing the completed design under everything.
It was okay.
Quest Completed : Illegal Spray Painting Fun
Quest Reward : 100xp | 1 Stat Point
Smiling, I started packing everything up, all the while opening my character sheet and checking the top portion of the pop up.
Player : Peter Parker
Race : Enhanced Human
Player Level : 4 (130/400)
I’m almost halfway there to getting to level five, soon I’ll have two more stat points to not use because I’ve been so indecisive with them.
Ned is in the opening of sink or swim with stats but I can’t really do that, it was probably the only bit of gaming advice that I decided to ignore from him. What would happen if I spent all my points in like vitality to get my Hp regen to something that wasn’t literally a snail with a broken leg pace only to find out that if I did constitution instead I would have been better off.
So yea, indecisiveness and general worry is the reason why I have seven stat points right now.
Either way this was pretty fun to do, heck I have a lot of little designs in the back of my head that I would be totally against trying to spray paint. Though before I do that I would have to get some more bottles because I’m like totally almost out.
Quest Quered : Illegal Spray Painting Fun II
Quest Objective : Spray paint a design onto a public area.
Quest Reward : 100exp
Accept : Y/N
Repeatable, the only one I’ve gotten for that was the three mile run quest. That's neat I guess, it has a better exp reward at least. Though there’s no stat point in the rewards, diminishing returns I guess comes into play here.
Quest Accepted : Illegal Spray Painting Fun II
Well before I head home I can hit some places and see if I can get some more stuff, I was actually throwing around the idea of using some different spray painting styles besi-.
While the area around me was pretty barren of people, right when I moved to head home I realized that there was someone just by themself acting weird. I’d be more worried if they weren't my age and somehow more spendly than me.
I wonder if I put all my points into strength if that would change.
The only reason I didn’t start running was because of the fact that I’m pretty sure I've seen them before, though where I don’t know. They also looked like they were slightly lost which was mildly worrying.
How someone could look lost and shady at the same time I don’t know, ask this dude he did it.
Quest Quered : Lost Scion
Quest Objective : Help the Scion find his way home.
Quest Reward : 50exp | ???
Accept : Y/N
Why wouldn’t I want to help them?
Quest Accepted : Lost Scion
Letting a small smile appear on my face I walked forward tightening the grip on my backpack as I mentallly prepared myself for this. Where have I seen him before?
While I might not have a dictionary shoved in my head like some of my classmates I’m pretty sure Scion has something to do with rich people so that's probably where I recognize him from. Though what rich dude is a whole other question.
“Hey you lost?” They turned widely in my direction, me somehow sneaking up on them in the empty street of the shady neighborhood.
Maybe they should have such an extreme reaction, it’s not like it’s going to help them or anything if they were getting mugged. This is the type of situation where you’d either just run or lose your money.
Good old big apple at its worst. Come here for the super heroes and the street thugs.
“Uh, yea.” They seemed to gain confidence as they looked at me for some reason. “Do you know the way to the Oscorp building?” His voice sounded more confident than he looked.
Okay, interesting that he wants to go there of all places. It was the same place where we took a field trip like a week ago and little more. Holy crap I’ve almost had my powers for two weeks, tomorrow will be the second week officially.
Thats fun, I should celebrate it in some way. Maybe I can get Ned to hang out with me somewhere, while I don’t have that much money I can probably afford for us to hang out at an arcade for a little bit.
Maybe play some games for a bit.
Though we got banned from a lot of them because someone, cough Ned cough, decided that hacking them to get a high score would be a good idea. So we might have some trouble finding one that would actually let us come in.
“Sure, just follow me. It’s like the right opposite of Stark Tower.” I grinned “I’ve got the tiniest feeling that was on purpose for some reason.” A laugh escaped me, a tiny giggle “Though I could even begin to guess.”
Tony Stark, Iron man, is utterly famous for how much he just doesn’t care about what others think. He’s awesome like that, he's super petty but cool about it at the same time. He has so many famous stories about how freaking mood he is that there isn’t enough time in the day to talk about them all.
Turning on my foot and motioning for the dude to follow me I continued talking “So why are you heading there because I got to point out that they don’t just let random people inside.” The person whose name I didn’t know ran up to keep pace with me, standing by my side instead of following behind me.
“My dad works there.”
Cool, is he a scientist” I gotta wonder what project he is working on because while Oscorp isn’t as public with its programs as Stark Industries they still have a lot of interesting projectings going on. Like I heard about some hoverboard initiatives, like actual flying jets. The reports on them looked so freaking cool, I mean they won’t ever beat the Iron Man suit but they’d still look fun to ride.
“Uh, sure. Yea he works somewhere there but he really doesn’t tell me things.” A mixture of embarrassment and stutters colored his sentence.
“Yea that makes sense, they work with a lot of dangerous stuff.”
The only reason Stark Industries is open with most of their projects is that they weren't military focused, Stark made sure of that when he took helm of his company. Oscorp on the other hand deals in basically everything, military contracts mostly.
Not that they have that much competition in that part, ever since the incident at the Stark Expo Hammer Industries is pretty much a shell of itself. No one likes working for the company that got hacked and lead to the creation of murder drones.
They pulled a Stark before Stark created the evil Ai thing.
“Cruel joke much.” I muttered, shaking my head before letting out a laugh.
There isn’t that much info on that whole invention thingy besides the fact that an evil Ai appeared and that the internet and everyone else mostly agreed that Stark probably created it. The fact that a little while later the avengers got two new members drew a lot of people's attention and distracted them amusly enough.
Let’s ignore the sky net situation and check out the witch and robot man.
“What?”
“It’s nothing. So what got you out here in the hood?” I raised an eyebrow. “Not the most reasonable place for you to be.”
“For me to be.”
“Dude I can take a pretty decent guess and say that your outfit is more expensive than everything I own.” I might not be the most fashionable person, nor do I really care about that stuff really, but I could tell that his clothing was nice.
He dresses like Flash.
May tried to dress me nice but I only wear that stuff at school, a place where it has a less likely chance for it to get ruined. Though with me working with dangerous chemicals and other assorted things at school that's not saying much.
Next year there’s this metal working course that I am really excited to take, I mean I already know a lot of the material from self teaching but being taught by a real teacher is going to be great. If not then it’d just be an easy A.
“I got lost after an argument with my dad.” He muttered something that I couldn’t hear under his breath right after that. It was probably very rude judging by his tone.
“He’s your dad so you gotta deal.” I shrugged “Never know when he’s going to be gone.”
Uncle Ben’s death was rough for everybody involved. May didn’t really function for a while, the person who she was married to and built her life around was gone. Uncle Ben was rough on me and I don’t feel like revisiting those memories any time soon.
“Sounds rough.”
“Yea, missing him every day.” Giving him a look I continued “The rest of the way is the next left so do you want me to leave or?”
“No you don't, but before that can I have your name.”
“Okay, name’s Peter.”
“Harry”
Quest Complete : Lost Scion
Quest Reward : 50exp | 5 stat points
Cool I got more stat points, a bit weird that they were mystified though. They're not really that special, at least I don’t think they are. They seem to be just like one level above to get a direct stat point into a skill.
Maybe I’m just missing something.
Now I’m wondering what life would have been like if Ned was the one who got the gamer thing, I’d probably still have the Spider thing going on too so the both of us could have been heroes together. That’s a fun thought to think about.
“See you never dude.” I waved at Harry before making the walk home. Judging by how dark it is I don’t think I’m going to be getting the chance to go dumpster diving tonight.
I guess I can do that tomorrow.
— Gaming Spider —
With great amounts of anxiety I decided that I was going to spend some of my stat points. I had twelve of them right now, the work of a solid two weeks of effort and hard sweat. It was probably a decent amount.
Also I was bored out of my mind in history and needed something to occupy my mind as I waited for class to end, ergo school to end because this was my last hour of the day. I didn’t even have practice after school so I could do something.
Aunt May’s going to be home but I can just say that I went on a walk, say I went on a walk in a nice safe neighborhood with all the other rich kids who don’t live in apartment buildings. I could get Ned to support me, though I’d then have to figure out an excuse to tell him that doesn’t make it sound like I’m selling weed.
I have eight stats. Strength and Dexterity, Constitution and Vitality, Endurance and Vigor, and Intelligence and Wisdom. The purpose of most of them are pretty obvious, Strength makes me stronger and Constitution gives me more health. Vitality and Vigor increase the regen of my Hp and Sp respectively. With Intelligence and Wisdom following the same pattern as Strength and Vitality.
Understandable and basic, so what should I pick?
Constitution would probably be the safe bet but I don’t want to dump all of my points in one stat. Ned called that hyperspecialization, the way he described it was a bit weird though because at the same time doing too little of that was also bad.
I think he called it a red mage, a concept that I looked up and was still mighty confused over.
Maybe I should just put a single point in all of my stats? That seems like a bad idea too because I don’t think I need to raise my vigor, getting better Sp regen rates doesn’t matter that much with abysmal regen rates.
Seriously I calculated it and by the looks of it I regen point one stamina per second. It takes five hundred seconds for me to go from zero to full. That's over eight minutes, eight minutes of long gnawing waiting.
Like training my skill Short Distance Dash is going to be a pain with this regen rate.
Maybe that's more reason for me to pump points into that stat but again, hyperspecialization is a bad thing when you don’t even know the game. I’ve never been in a fight in my whole life and I might be going out fighting crime one day.
The thought terrifies and excites me at the same time for some reason.
I put five points in constitution, three into strength, and put one point into intelligence raising it to a nice and even twenty.
The temptation to use my last three stat points was great but I decided not to, I still couldn’t decide if I should dump them all into one start or not.
After assigning those stats I felt better, not in a mental weight better but in a physical way. It was like, I don’t know how to describe it but it felt really good. Like it was good in the same way that a runner’s high was good.
My Strength was higher than my dex now which was interesting, I hope I did the right thing there.
“Parker.” My head shot forward, the teacher staring at me frowning. “What is the answer to the question?”
A quick glance to the board gave me no hint on what said question would be.
“Can you repeat the question?”
“Stay after class Parker. You what’s the answer?” She said point at someone else.
Well that sucks. Sure enough it did suck because when class did end I had to stay after class and have the teacher talk to me, though it was more of a warning slash rant then a talk. She was worried about me though which kinda made it awkward.
She noticed that I’ve been not paying attention these past two weeks, that I’ve been participating in class not as much and that I’ve been having these moments. She just wants me not to mess up what I have going on.
Because the only reason I can go here in the first place was because of my intelligence, because of my grades.
It was really embarrassing because I didn’t think it was that obvious that I’ve been distracted. I knew some kids noticed me spacing out every now and then but the adults, teachers noticing the fact that I seemed to stare into empty air for seconds at a time, trapped in my own head thinking.
It was very embarrassing.
The thing is that there really isn’t anything I could do about it, I could try and enact a no game rule during school hours but that would be literally impossible and more than likely distract me than anything else.
I get quests during school sometimes, granted that’s only happened a few times with the most recent one being the Bite Back quest that I denied but that’s not really important. I really don’t know what to do because I do like school, I like learning stuff and doing school work. It’s weird but school’s always been fun for me.
I can probably figure something out later, some way for me to balance school and everything else, balance the game.
Shaking my head I started walking home. The way home was much more pleasant compared to last time,
I might have technically stolen some stuff from the chemistry labs, some pressurized carbon dioxide cartridges and chemicals. I figured out what I was doing wrong with the synthetic web quest, the chemicals I was using were not good enough.
I needed high quality materials, materials that you can’t really easily get on hand so I snuck some from the chemistry lab at school. Granted it was a highly risky play and very illegal but quite frankly I couldn’t bring myself to care that much because of how much effort I’ve been putting into trying and getting this thing working and it’s not like the school’s going to be missing them.
My head’s been hurting from the effort.
The house was empty, Aunt May was probably at work, that or she went shopping. Either way I had the house all to myself.
Before all of this my chemistry work has been either theoretical or has been using contaminated chemicals. Things that I scavenged from the house or less than stellar places. In other words I was using materials that I really shouldn’t be using for high sensitive chemistry work.
Observe kinda helped in that part at least, it tells me if something was completely one thing or if it had ‘other trace substances’ inside of it.
Useful and I am waiting for that skill to level up.
Setting my backpack down and gathering everything needed I started combining everything. It needed to be down in a specific pattern at a very dense concentrated pressure. That's where the empty carbon dioxide cartridges come in.
With everything pressurized, mixed and reacted the theoretical substance should on contact with heavy amounts of air turn into a sticky synthetic web like substance capable of lasting for an hour before dissolving into its trace components.
I could have probably finished this a lot sooner if I lighten my goals for the project but I wasn’t going to be doing that any time soon, I was going to do what I set out on and not go back on anything.
Would have been a pretty bad mark on me that I backed down when things started to get rough for me.
Right now the whole thing was just a canister filled with web fluid with a simple nozzle, the trigger being really clunky and uncomfortable. Like it digs into my skin when I try and press onto it in the worst of ways.
Well I can always work on that for the final model.
With great trepidation, holding my breath while doing so, I released the nozzle and watched it work.
Quest Completed : New Web Derived from Faith
Quest Reward : 500exp | Trait : Inspired Inventor
Level Up
Player Level : 4 -> 5
Level Up Reward : 5 Stat Points | 1 Perk Point
Perk Menu unlocked.
“Heck yes, I unlocked it and completed the stupid quest.” I shouted fist raised to the sky in triumph. A solid week and a half of effort and work and I just created a synthetic web.” I let out a relieved sigh.
And for my efforts I got a new trait and leveled up, unlocked the perk menu.
I could barely contain my excitement, a grin on my face as I opened the menu and checked the traits for what my newest gave me.
Inspired Inventor
Others might be able to copy or improve on the tech of others but you are one of the lucky few actually capable of inventing new things. The world is your oyster, let’s just hope you're smart enough to use it.
- Boost Intelligence by 100% when inventing new tech.
The trait made me twice as smart when inventing new tech, that’s absurd. Actually I never really question how intelligence actually worked, does it make me smarter or does it only affect my mp? By the looks of this it looks like it does both.
How would it even make me more smart?
How do any of my stats affect me? Do my points into strength give me more muscles, do my points into constitution make me more dense or something. I have given some thought into how Hp would translate to reality and every time I’ve done so I’ve just ended with a headache.
Okay let’s ignore that and just smile and the awesomeness that is this trait.
Setting the now empty cartilage, ignoring the reality that I was going to have to clean up the wall where the web fluid exploded onto and was currently sticking too, I threw myself on my bed while opening my menu once again.
{Quests} {Character File} {Traits} {Perks} {Active Skills} {Passive Skills} {Inventory}
The perk menu wasn’t grayed out anymore, it was actually unlocked. Heck yea!.
Opening it I felt my eyes widen at the sight of three trees, three different perk trees. Two of them were grayed out though, locked behind a requirement. The name of them was shown though.
Basic, Function, Spider, Tech, and Mystic. I had five Perk trees available to me right now except the Tech and Mystic were locked. They needed twenty five intelligence and twenty wisdom respectively.
I couldn’t see what the Tech and Mystic had inside of them, because of the whole requirement lock on them, but the other three were pretty obvious. First basic was just some perks, they had no set idea or trend behind them.
Right now there were three of them, Quick Learner, Labeled Nerd, and Tragic Orphan. They were cool but they all were weird, they were related to me and even made reference to things i’ve done or have happened to me.
Interesting.
Function on the other hand related to the game itself, changing tiny aspects of it in some way. Like one perk doubled my inventory size while the other made it so that the game was visible to others for a ten percent exp boost.
Really interesting and gives me some options, though I don’t feel exactly comfortable with others seeing all of this for some reason. It’s something to think about later I guess, think about later along with other problems I’ve been forestalling.
Like the fact that May’s been looking at me weirdly.
Spider was focused on the spider, on the weird double strength thing and other stuff. There was a perk that gave me natural webbing, which I don’t even want to think about how it’d work. It also mentions a second tier of perks that would be unlocked after I got three of the tier one ones. That had me interested.
Another cool perk was Sticky Situation that made it so that I could cling onto stuff. Though I don’t really see how it’d be useful at the moment.
All of this was somehow too much yet not enough. I wanted more, to read more, to get more insights and things to learn.
Though before I could actually decide what to do with my sole perk point I had to decide between Tech and Mystic. I had to decide between literal magic and technology. The fact that magic is an option has me literally salivating at my lips.
How magic would even work I don’t know, the fact that I want to know if magic is just a self constricted thing or if it was something that was real, that was in the real world was gnawing at me also.
I have to choose one because I only had eight stat points, just enough to raise my wisdom to twenty but not enough to have both. It was a gnawing decision and one I was tempted to put off but I steeled myself.
My highest stat is my strength at a whopping twenty four, though this was because of the doubling from The Spider attunement trait, with dexterity and intelligence right behind it at twenty. By the looks of it from what I could tell I would be described as a hotmess.
Games have class systems right? There’s mage, warrior, and thief but what i have right now doesn’t match me to any of them.
Impulse aching through me, a mixture of frustration and excitement and pure wanting to know what would be behind the perk tree I put all my points into wisdom.
Mystic Perk Tree Unlocked!
My excitement ran high even as dread sat in my stomach for all those points that I just shoved for this perk tree. That dread went away when I saw the perks. They looked awesome, the biggest one that had my eye was a perk called Mana Apprentice. It lowered the cost of all mana based skills by ten percent and gave me an active skill called Mana Blast.
It didn’t take much thought to realize this skill gave me a literal magic missile. Ned would freak out if he learned I had this.
The other perks were just as interesting as Mana Apprentice, it just sucks that I won’t be getting i-. Who am I even kidding?
Perk Purchased!
Mana Apprentice.
Active Skill Gained!
Mana Blast (Novice) Lv 1
Pure concentrated mana given ballistic properties.
- Skill Cost : Mp Cost 50
- Damage Dealt : Skill Level * 10
Yep, I might have just made the biggest mistake in my whole life but I can’t bring myself to care all that much. Not when I can do this now.
It was a muscle, something that I just knew how to do now, holding my hand out I watched slowly as forty five Mp started to disappear leaving me only with fifty five. An amount that wouldn’t be at max in a long time because of my abysmally slow rate of Mr regen.
Though with twenty wisdom at least my Mp rate doubled when compared to before.
The feeling it created, it was like me being tired but in a much deeper way. It was less body and more mind, like I was getting mentally exhausted except just more. It was a kinda uncomfortable feeling.
Of course, while I was marveling at the awesomeness that I was literally holding a ball of concentrated mana, that I was wielding magic, I accidentally fired it and smashed against my wall. The blast cracking the wall ever so slightly.
Enough to be noticeable if you were looking for it.
“Crap.”