Keane's breath hung in the cold air, his body trembling against the damp, moss-slick stone beneath him. The forest loomed, dark and silent, its gnarled branches clawing at the surprisingly bright moonlight. His lungs ached, each inhale sharp as a blade, but his mind was sharper at that moment, almost dulling the other sensations, racing to make sense of the impossible. He wasn't in his office after all, and it didn't look like he was dreaming either, everything was too vivid… not to mention, the glowing interface, floating like a ghost in his vision, even that was no hallucination.
'This can't be real,' he thought, his eyes narrowing. 'No way I'm… what, in a game?' He said to himself as he focused on the blue digital interface before his eyes, crisp as the monitors he'd worked on for years, maybe even more.
...
[SYSTEM]
Name: Keane Anderson [Edit]
Level: 1
Class: None
EXP: [██████████]
[STATS]
Strength (STR): 10
Dexterity (DEX): 10
Constitution (CON): 10
Intelligence (INT): 10
Wisdom (WIS): 10
Charisma (CHA): 10
HP: [100 / 100]
MP: [100 / 100]
Resistances: []
[Skills]
None
[Sub Skills]
None
...
Studying the screen before him for a moment, Keane wasn't impresses nor outright disappointed, everything looked normal.
"Level one," he muttered, his voice rough in the cold. "Basic as hell." He stared at the stats, a gamer's instinct kicking in... perhaps, a developer's; strength, dexterity, constitution… standard RPG fare. Of course, the numbers were pitiful, but not unexpected. 'This is beginner shit,' he thought. 'If this is my new reality spawned in the middle of a possible danger zone, I'm not impressed.'
He reached out, half-expecting to touch a screen just like he had seen or read in manga, but his fingers passed through the glowing text, the air undisturbed. "Of course," he said, chuckling, the sound almost bitter. "Not like I'm gonna tap a touchscreen in… wherever this is." He shook his head, his dark hair damp with dew.
'A dream, right? Gotta be. Too much coffee, too little sleep, and my brain's pulling a prank…' Even if he thought these things, he didn't for a second fully believe. The cold was too real, sinking into his bones through the rough tunic clinging to his enhanced frame. His body felt different, taller, stronger, like he'd been sculpted into a better version of himself, a peak version even. 'If this is a dream, it's got some serious realism,' he thought, flexing his hands, feeling the sensation, vivid and grounding.
'Okay, Keane, think,' he told himself. 'Last thing I remember… coding, crunch time, passing out at 5 a.m. Then… nothing.' His pulse quickened, though it didn't show physically. 'Did I die? Heart attack? Bus crash? Bus crash? I'm at the 17th floor, how can it be bus crash…' He snorted, but the thought lingered. 'Heart attack and exhaustion… No way. I'm twenty-six, not some overworked salaryman cliché.'
He focused on the system again, its glow steady. He tried another thing he'd seen in every isekai manga he'd binged, thinking at the system. 'Show me options,' he commanded silently in his mind, picturing a menu.
The interface shifted, a new tab blinking… [Distributable Points]. Words flashed in his mind: 10 Stat Points Available. 10 Skill Points Available. 10 Mastery Points Available… Keane's jaw dropped. "No fucking way," he whispered, his voice almost trembling with excitement. The system responded, tabs expanding.
…
[STATS]
Distributable Stat Points: 10
- Strength (STR): 10
- Dexterity (DEX): 10
- Constitution (CON): 10
- Intelligence (INT): 10
- Wisdom (WIS): 10
- Charisma (CHA): 10
[Skills]
Distributable Skill Points: 10
- None
[Sub Skills]
Distributable Mastery Points: 10
- None
…
'Holy shit,' Keane thought, his mind racing. 'It's Eternal Realms, the damn system I've been working on.' He'd coded this exact framework, down to the sleek font he'd argued for in design meetings and the free starting points for players to gain an early advantage in the hard game. He hadn't realized clearly before, but now he did.
He sat on the boulder he'd woken beside, its cold surface grounding him. 'Okay, slow down,' he told himself. 'This is too good to be true. Since I'm not in hell, not dead… maybe reincarnated, definitely so.' He leaned back, staring at a cluster of stars through the canopy overhead. 'If some god or cosmic coder dropped me here, I owe them a drink. This is a second chance.' After graduating, majoring in the business field, he was ready to take the corporate world by storm… who would have thought that lack of jobs and circumstances would put him working in a game company using skills he honed as a hobby, and suffering with it.
His thoughts returned to the points. Ten free points for each category. In Eternal Realms, stat allocation was permanent, dump points into Strength, and you couldn't reassign them later. Skills and sub-skills locked in too, shaping your build. Skills like Swordsmanship or Fire Magic shaped your build, and sub-skills like bargaining or stealth defined your edge. A wrong choice could screw you against tougher foes.
'I'm not some noob rushing in,' he thought, rubbing his jaw. 'This world's real, monsters, magic, kingdoms. One bad move, and I'm stuck as a glass cannon or a charisma bot with no punch. If I fuck up my build now, I'm screwed when I hit higher levels.'
The more he thought, the more he overanalyzed and doubt crept in. 'Ten points won't make me a god,' he thought. 'Spread them evenly? I'd average at everything. Specialize? I'm screwed if I pick wrong.' He'd coded Eternal Realms with balance and synergy in mind, mana costs, scaling curves... 'If this world follows those rules, one mistake now will definitely haunt me in future.'
'Gotta scout first,' he thought. 'See what's out there, monsters, people, threats...'
His brain churned, weighing risks. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, he sighed, realizing how much he was stressing and overthinking the entire thing. The solution was straight forward. 'It's not when faced with some beast that I will distribute the points… That's why they're free right off the bat after all.'