A scream burst from my lungs as I lurched forward, and this time I was unable to avoid tumbling to the ground. It was all I could do to roll onto a ball as I fell, taking the hit on my shoulder as I protected the still-charging book.

  The bruising impact drove the last of the air from my lungs, leaving me in a winded pile on the ground. All I wanted to do was to lie curled up until it stopped, but I knew that would be death.

  Instead, I forced myself to uncurl as the first-stage [Arcane] Bolt leaped to my left hand. Bouyed by panic, I rolled onto my knees and shuffled until I could see my attacker.

  The spear-kobold was a mere two feet away, already winding up for another strike. There was no time to finish charging, so I launched my first-stage bolt at center mass.

  Despite an attempt to duck away, we were far too close for the beast to escape, and the bolt struck with an explosion of red sparks. The creature shrieked as it stumbled back, dropping its spear as it flailed.

  I wasted no time triggering another as I glanced over my shoulder at the corridor. The first kobold was still down, suggesting my risky gambit had worked. I’d finally dropped their numbers.

  It also gave me a decent calculation for how much damage I needed to do. I’d hit the downed beast with two full-strength bolts and two first-stage ones. Four hits in total.

  The kobold I’d just struck down was at half that, one full-strength and one first-stage. If I could just finish it off, I could finish the slinger off one-on-one.

  A couple of seconds after that realization, the pain in my back finally faded, and I stumbled to my feet. The spear-wielding kobold was recovering before my eyes, so I needed to hit it—

  Another scream burst from my lips as something struck my side with a massive crack. My next breath was agonizing, suggesting the blow had broken at least one of my ribs.

  The slinger had caught up; a situation I couldn’t deal with right now.

  I would have to trust that my [Health] would hold out to fix all this damage. It was a shame I had no idea how much I had.

  The instant I had the thought, a glowing red bar appeared in the bottom left of my vision. A shadowed section in front of it suggested I was missing close to a third, no doubt the result of that first hit.

  Alright, I could work with that. Making the painful decision to ignore the slinger, I again tossed my next bolt the instant it reached first stage.

  My continued onslaught knocked the spear-wielder over again before it could reach me, keeping it locked down. I’d now landed three hits on it, though only one at full strength.

  Another slingstone struck my shoulder while the next bolt was charging, despite a clumsy attempt to sidestep. I ignored it again. With the pain from the first already faded, dropping my [Health] to half, the hit was manageable.

  Instead, I still maintained total focus on the other kobold. If I could just take it out, I could finish the slinger without issue.

  While it had taken less damage than the downed one at this stage, my target still had a touch of burn damage when the bulk of it vanished. Trusting that indicated a [Health break], I tossed a final first-stage bolt at it as I turned away.

  A shriek from behind told me I’d struck, allowing me to focus my full attention on the slinger one-on-one.

  After that, it was a foregone conclusion, though a painful one. I took one more hit to the chest before I landed my first strike, after which another four first-stage bolts took it down.

  I’d won.

  I stood there for long moments, heart pounding, chest heaving, as I listened for any sign that more enemies were coming. Twice I froze at faint echoes in the distance, only to relax when they didn’t recur.

  About ten seconds after the fight, a massive burst of progress energy surged within, sending calm warmth rushing through my body. A System screen came with it, which I rushed to minimize until I was sure the area was safe.

  After a full minute, I finally relaxed and let myself sink to the ground, uncaring of the chill moss brushing my legs. While it seemed unlikely I’d just cleared the whole dungeon, whatever enemies remained weren’t about to descend upon me.

  Which was damn good since I’d been a hair short of losing that fight. They would have swarmed me under if I hadn’t taken advantage of the terrain. The delay in my spellcasting was too long to keep that many contained.

  I needed to learn at least one of those grimoire spells ASAP. A task I might be able to accomplish now that I had a moment to myself at last.

  First, however, I needed to get a handle on this whole System deal. Beginning with how my resources were looking.

  After the final round of sling damage had healed, the red [Health] bar was now below 20%. One more hit might have been enough to break it.

  On top of that, I didn’t know the source of the energy I was drawing from for my spells, or how low I was on that. It was probably mana, but that didn’t tell me much alone.

  Or, maybe it did, as a blue bar appeared below the red one the moment I considered it. It was about a third full, suggesting my mana reserves had come through a little better than my [Health].

  Going by my performance so far, I had enough for another kobold, but likely not enough for two.

  My breath was slowly calming as the adrenaline faded, leaving me shaky physically and emotionally. I needed rest to recover, but I also needed to use that time wisely.

  First, I focused on the screen I’d closed earlier

  “Nice,” I muttered, a genuine smile crossing my face as I took in the news. My Prodigy level affinity was paying off already, and there was a good chance that the damage increase had impacted the fight.

  That second kobold had gone down to less damage, after all. Given that my seven times multiplier was a known quantity, it also confirmed that the base skill bonus was one percent per level.

  For some of mediocre affinity, such as me with [Gathering] and [Utility], that would require a lot of levels to make much of a difference. For those of higher affinity levels, the result was much better.

  For me, I’d only need to reach level fifteen for a 105% multiplier, thus doubling my damage. It was a nice dream, but one I put aside for the future as I began searching for a way to see my full set of details.

  User record was the term that worked in the end, bringing up a more complex screen.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  The complete held the answer to a number of my questions, including a few quick standouts. First was the modifier that had to be related to my class: Voracious Learner.

  On its own, applying my seven times multiplier to learning spells was a massive benefit. I could see it paying dividends far into the future on top of helping with my immediate benefits.

  Not only did it seem to be the only thing I’d received, as my stats were several points higher than when I’d allocated them. To be sure, I clicked on the class name to see if it would pull up additional details.

  I had to stifle a burst of laughter as I read over the class details: nice one, Fragment. Somehow, my ally had created a top-tier class by using that ‘induction leniency’ bypass that it was talking about.

  One that seemed based on the flimiest of justifications: there being no possible ‘Legendary Mages’ on a newly inducted world with no previous magical ability. No wonder it had taken the sacrifice of all my other options to achieve.

  From the look of it, the class would already have been solid before its current state. From spells to modifiers, and even eventually a class, it worked to shape you in the image of an already incredible mage.

  Except in my case, all of the ‘your master’s' sections were slashed through. Whether that makes it random or a selection on my part, I didn’t know. What I did know was that it was an incredible boost either way.

  Because none of that high-level knowledge existed here yet. Instead of having to scrape them together from rewards and my study, I’d have at least a small core of quality abilities to fall back on.

  An excellent future to look forward to, but one that I would have to reach first. Moving back to the main record, I continued reading through the information.

  First up were the capacities, two of which I was familiar with. [Stamina] and [Focus] were new, and didn’t have any extra information to access for clues. I could, however, intuit a bit from the amounts I’d spent.

  Stamina was likely physical energy, which explained how I’d felt better after leveling back in the office. Going off the games I remembered, there was a good chance some kind of combat ability or technique would use it as well.

  Going by the same logic, I’d also feel better mentally after that first fight. It wasn’t much of a jump from there to consider that [Focus] was likely my mental energy.

  I’d burned through a good chunk of it, so I likely needed it for intense mental activities such as keeping track of three enemies at once. It might also have been helping my mental state, keeping me functioning when injured.

  The System wasn’t kind enough to give me exact formulas. However, the numbers added up to pretty much what I expected. More concerning was the regeneration speed.

  It would take me almost thirty minutes to restore my [Health] to full, and fifty-one to get my [Mana] back. Could I afford to wait that long? I didn’t even know where I was...

  As with the [Health] and [Mana] bars in my vision, the System responded the moment I gave serious focus to my location.