"Okay, how could I test this skill without just throwing myself at whatever horror was outside that door?" I wondered aloud.

  I really wanted to test it, but how can I even do that? Maybe I could hit myself on the head? Okay, maybe not such a vital point, perhaps the chest? Oh, maybe I could lie down and drop something heavy onto me and hopefully it works.

  Thinking about that for a second, it seemed super dangerous. Scanning the room for something to use, I briefly considered pissing off Jeremy enough to scratch the hell out of my face. But that just seemed mean and a little scary.

  "I could punch myself?" I suggested.

  That could be a decent start, but only a battlefield test will truly determine if it is battle-ready. That requires leaving this safe room, assuming it's a safe room, and then wandering the halls of an evil blood temple.

  Nope, not doing that unless I am superprepared. Still have a few skills to make and no clue how to do them. The truth was hard to deny; I needed more experience points and to field test my new skills.

  "Alright, we need to get out of here, but first it was robbing time." I turned to the spacious room with a grin.

  The entire contents of the bookshelf went into my satchel of infinity. Actually, I was not sure how big the spatial region was. But I'm sure I'll find out eventually. More items mysteriously fell into my satchel, and so we were ready. Satisfied with my gains, I made my way to the door.

  Reaching out and turning the handle, I didn't feel the familiar give or hear the click. Frowning and a little concerned, I tried again, to no avail. In conclusion, the locked door trapped us inside.

  "Alright, don't panic. We are completely fine, and we can fix this." I hoped.

  Scratching sounds came from the door; claws racked against its wooden surface. Images of clawed monsters just outside, waiting until I finally leave to enter its maw. Simulations of death and pain racked my brain before I noticed Jeremy scratching at the door and wanting out.

  "It's okay, Jer, Daddy will find a way out." I tried to reassure him, but he just kept scratching the door.

  Immediately thinking about the problem to push away thoughts such as being trapped and running out of food and water. I analysed the door. It wasn't a simple lock, and while I couldn't sense mana, I could see the runes hidden within the decorations and the faint aura of the system.

  "Looks like this magic lock was made by a skill. Not purely a magical method, but a system skill derived from a spell or enchantment." I theorised based on my observations.

  A solution presented itself. It was pretty basic, and anyone with a hammer would get the idea. What if I smashed the system part of the spell? Would the door unlock or just go boom?

  Sitting down, I glanced at my to-do list and grinned. Seems like I'll check off that utility skill and get my reward. Wait, what is my reward for this sort of quest?

  "Hey Jen, can you set the rewards as achievements, or perhaps when you are loaded up with enough juice? Actual rewards?" I requested, since it was nice to work towards something.

  She took my request under advisement, and I declared that at least a partial win. With my achievements in the future. I turned to the task at hand.

  "Okay, the locking mechanism seems to be kept in place by a sustained low-level reality warping. Were its getting its power is probably a mana source. Since I can't see anything powering it."

  System energy was nuts, but gods made it, so can't accept it to be normal. That was the power of skills. It's what made them superior in some regards to performing magic the manual way. Oh, I am sure wizards and mages outside of the system worlds would say differently.

  But you can't beat the efficiency of system-empowered automagic. I mean, imagine coming up with a method and some God-level power optimises it and gives you a button to press. Now that's efficiency.

  It would take a while to figure this out. So I guess I'll test my defensive skills. Actually, I could perform a kinetic strike on myself if I kept the newtons down to below my maximum. Invigorated by my brilliant idea, I returned to the lab table, placed my left arm down, and prepared a palm strike on my forearm. Blasting open my chest by accident was not a good idea.

  With a thought, I activated my defensive skill. A noticeable field shimmered to life around my flesh. I had around a minute of run time and so wasted not a single moment.

  Placing my palm over the skin, I inhaled a long breath. Like pulling the pin from a grenade, which I kind of was. Despite my assurance in my intellect and my impeccable programming, bugs were totally possible.

  Psyching myself up, I waited for quite a while before just saying screw it and activated Kinetic Strike. Thankfully, I had the foresight to limit the amount of output and only dropped around twelve points onto my forearm.

  The moment I released the burst of energy, I felt the reactive barrier skill react to the impact. Producing a counterforce to repel the blow. It reduced the impact to mild pressure, which was not exactly what I intended. Still, a success was a success.

  Opening my character sheet, I checked the logs and immediately figured out why the barrier was far weaker than intended. It's because I was siphoning energy for my kinetic strike, and thus there wasn't enough left for a full barrier. The force attribute governed both skills, preventing simultaneous use unless I invested system points.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Unless of course I doubled my force attribute and then I would have sufficient force to use both skills simultaneously. That was an idea for later and naturally requires more experience points to achieve.

  "Literally all my problems could be boiled down to not enough levels." I quantified all the problems in the universe.

  Well, it works, but still needs a field test. The skill was in the beta phase, so alpha testing will be next. And with that done, it's time to bust open that lock.

  Returning to the door, I sat down, got comfortable, cracked my neck and fingers. With a wave of my hand, a keyboard showed up, and what followed was a lot of scanning, speculating, coming up with ideas and then realising those ideas were stupid. Implementing a few that sounded good and then discarding them after testing revealed its futility.

  "I am calm, I am collected and I will not smash this godforsaken door!" I cursed the heavens, making threats I couldn't cash in.

  The bloody door was, and I hate to admit this, really complicated. I mean, I did map out how the system interacted with the spell. Having a high cognition attribute was helping keep all the data points in mind. But unless I got some serious inspiration, I was stuck in this room for all time.

  Sadly, I ended up seated against the door, banging my head against the stable enchantment. This was after I tried doing a full-force kinetic strike on the door and hurt my hand. Need to add a few points to resilience or the backlash will only get worse.

  Still, none of that would fix my problem. The door was too complicated to figure out. I needed to figure out how to develop a skill to counter it. Can't brute force it unless I had a crapton of power? I can't defunct the enchantment without dumping a lot of power into destroying it.

  Around and around we go, and no answer is in sight. The problem was mind-numbing, and I was worried about how long I would be stuck in here. Especially how long my food and water would last. That being the case, stubborn attempts at the problem were the only option. That or starving to death in this horrible but surprisingly pleasant evil vampire lab.

  Okay, maybe I was coming at the problem the wrong way. Turning to my keyboard, I brought up a note-taking program, which was just a partition of the quest log. Typing up a few notes, I got the problem in focus.

  [Need to disable or subvert the system-integrated enchantment locks.]

  [Need to figure out how the system-integrated enchantment locks actually work.]

  [Need to get out of here or we will die.]

  The last one was just motivation, and so I added it to the to-do list. Creating a new task with the correct reward added at the end.

  [We need to get out of here, or we will die. Reward: Not dying. Completed: 0/1]

  Sufficiently motivated with that sweet, sweet reward, I turned my attention back to the problem at hand. Tilting my head to the side, I pondered coming at the problem from another angle.

  "I am trying to create a skill to break the lock. But perhaps I can create one skill to examine the lock and another to break it."

  The idea had merit, and so I delved into creating a scanning skill dedicated to discerning the functions of magical locks. At least from a system perspective. Which turned out to be pretty easy since it was just a more refined version of the inspect skill. But this one was more refined to objects and probably required more juice to work on higher enchantments.

  [Eyes of the System (Basic). Channeling the all-knowing gaze of the system to pierce the veil and understand its workings. Cooldown: 5min.]

  "I knew my naming sense was improving, so I am making it a rule to name all my created skills with the coolest names." Upon making that vow, it was time to use the skill.

  Glaring at the offending door, I activated Eyes of the System, and I felt a rush of energy explode behind my eyeballs, followed by a mad headache. My God, my eyeballs dislike all this stuff going through them. That cognition attribute was getting a serious workout.

  "Oh, that is painful." I rubbed my eyes as spots appeared.

  Shaking it off, I got ready for my second skill, now that I decently understood how someone arranged this. The next skill required knowledge of whatever it was going to destroy with the power of the system gods.

  [Unravel The System (Basic). A formidable power to unravel any system construct as long as the user has sufficient knowledge of the construct and an appropriate skill rank. Cooldown: 5min.]

  "Unravel!" I commanded, hands outstretched theatrically.

  With my will, I commanded the lock to be gone, and by some stroke of luck, and another major headache. I could see the locking mechanism deteriorating through a barrage of error messages as my skill flipped through the script, literally. Took only a minute for the entire enchantment to collapse and the door to swing open.

  Elated, I looked to the world outside and noticed one major thing. The hallway outside looked super different, and off in the distance, the place was crawling with walking undead.

  "Oh, come on, give me a break." I muttered as the nearest undead turned to me.

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