A. N: So, this was definitely planned, and not at all like I completely forgot about the costume thing. I have no idea what you are talking about.
[X] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[X] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill
-[X] Meditation
[X] Research your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action has to be taken two more times to get full effect)
It had taken you two weeks, but you had finally finished making your costume ('your first costume', a voice in the back of your head whispered), and you were satisfied with what you had been able to achieve with your limited resources.
Visits to sports stores had allowed you to pick up quite a collection of protection equipment, all of which were incorporated on the costume (some of which were bought using your reserved money, some of which you got your dad to pay for). You also managed to get a good deal on a used pair of soldier boots, which were comfortable and practical.
For the actual clothing part, you grabbed one of your dad's old black pants and followed some instructions from the internet to modify it, fitting it to you, and weaving lines of silver cloth vertically on the legs to change its appearance. You even got a new skill for it:
Cloth Work Level 3
- The skill to work with thread able fibers such as wool and silk, altering and manipulating designs to suit your purposes. At this level, you are capable of some small modifications, more if you're following another design, but your general ability is still minor.
For your torso, you used one of your own shirts, a gray featureless long sleeved t-shirt that would be similar to tens of thousands of others at least. Over it, you would wear a heavy coat with a hood you had found in yet another thrift store. It had grabbed your attention due to possessing a large number of deep pockets on the inside, which would be useful.
Among the protection items you got, there were also some rather high-quality gloves that didn't affect your dexterity too much. And for your face, you got two masks: One of them being in that small style that only hid the bit around the eyes, while the other was a mouth mask "ninja-style", to cover most of the face.
You also got three useful objects to put in your pockets. A baton, a knife and a flashlight. All in all, producing the costume completely wiped out your money reserves, even with your dad paying for some of it, but it was definitely worth it. It was good protection, good concealment, it didn't hinder your movements much, and it even had style, at least you thought so.
You took a lot of care in hiding it, all parts in different places, just in case.
Besides that, you were also developing a whole new skill. You had chosen meditation, because you eventually wanted to learn magic, and while there were no instructions in the subject to be found on the internet (obviously), but it was reasonable to assume that having an inner understanding and self-control would help with it.
The experience of learning meditation was... interesting.
It quickly became clear that the gamer ability was a double-edged sword in this case. Meditation required an inner calm and peace, but the quiet sounds of 'experience gained', that let you know that you were on the right track, also broke your concentration and made it harder to keep going.
Still, you pushed through, slowly learning to sharpen your focus and make even the distractions seem like nothing. It was difficult to tell how exactly you were improving, given the lack of direct substance of the skill you were trying to develop, but eventually, even the 'experience gained' messages ceased disrupting you, and progress became more steady.
Still, you had not managed to get as far as you had expected at first:
Meditation Level 10
- The skill to reach inside yourself and obtain a better understanding of your own mind and behavior. At this level, you can relieve stress relatively easily, and even without actually meditating, you have a better focus and ability to remember details.
You also decided to work a bit more on the skills you already had, getting them closer to mastery.
A lot of effort went into training your Muay Thai, going further and further beyond what you thought were the limits of the martial art. You had to train your flexibility to a higher degree, just to be able to do some of the movements that were becoming necessary if you wanted to gain any experience at all. You only gained a single level of it, but considering that you were fairly sure that level 20 was the maximum, this was already good.
Muay Thai Level 16
- A martial art developed for warfare, born in the country of Thailand, then known as Siam. At this level, you can be considered a near master, with skills on the level of soldiers who were considered skilled even among the users of this art in war.
Shadowboxing was something that had a lot of potential uses, and you found to your surprise that your training in meditation actually made it easier for you to get better at it, since your focus helped with imagining more and more complex scenarios down to the smallest detail. Your gains were great:
Shadow Boxing Level 13
- The skill to create mental scenarios that help the user in training. At this level, you can create the images of nearly any opponent imaginable, being able to adjust even when you don't have adequate information by creating multiple versions of the opponent with different details.
And of course, your extra training in Muay Thai also helped with increasing the skill level you had in Ambidexterity. More and more, you felt that you were getting closer to true perfection, since you actually managed to write your own name with your off hand.
Ambidexterity Level 12
- Some people are born being able to use both arms with equal dexterity. But what most people don't know is that it is also possible to develop that sort of dexterity with sufficient training. At this level, you can use your left hand with nearly as much precision as your dominant one.
There was also acting, which surprisingly was also something that shadow boxing helped with (you were getting more and more certain that there was a deep level of connection in between all skills at some level), since your efforts to visualize things down to the smallest detail led you to start to notice all kinds of small physical tells and quirks that you added to your performances to make them even more perfect.
Acting Level 15
- The skill to act out a role, in a way that can fool viewers. At this level, you are an extraordinary actress, being able to assume roles based on the situation with a high degree of perfection. In most situations, people will believe in your acting without question.
And since you had already gained the cloth work skill before the beginning of the week, you also trained with it for a bit, which was enough to level since the skill was still low-level.
Cloth Work Level 6
- The skill to work with thread able fibers such as wool and silk, altering and manipulating designs to suit your purposes. At this level, you are capable of some medium modifications, more if you're following another design, and your general ability is starting to show some promise.
And finally, the last thing you did was to keep going with your investigation of the city. This time you went more in depth, trying to get a mental picture of how all paths connected together, and explore the most hidden nooks and crannies, as well as making mental notes of all interesting places of note.
The commercial/residential area of the city was where you lived, and it was actually the most interesting part of the exploration, since you found out so much that you never knew despite living in the place for a while. There were a lot of small, family stores that sold all sorts of things, a lot of service places like hairdressers, a lot of small hidden areas that were created because the city had been built haphazardly and without a plan...
And of course, you memorized the location of all places that could have valuable things to steal, either for simple value, like jewelry, or because they could be useful for yourself, like electronics.
You couldn't get into the gated community, and the administrative region was interesting, but not something that would be immediately useful for you, but the poor area of the city was another place you could see potential in.
There was very little police presence, and the people there seemed to be withdrawn and closed off, and you saw a few suspicious signs of possible criminal activity. It was a place full of secrets and difficult for the law to penetrate. You would have to check it more thoroughly later.
After that, the transport zone seemed almost boring, though you made note of the fact that it was very easy to lose someone there. And after all that exploration, you actually got something else interesting:
Survey Level 3
- The skill to observe places and determine information from them. At this level, you are capable of seeing a few things the amateur eye wouldn't catch, but there is still a lot of information that could be gained.
A new skill. That was nice.
You were already thinking of how to make your debut, but there was still time to prepare some more, so what were you going to do for the following week? (Choose three)
[] Focus on raising the level of the skills you already developed.
[] Learn another martial art.
-[] Taekwondo
-[] Jeet Kune Do
-[] Karate
-[] Write-in
[] Now that you have weapons, it would be good to gain skill with them.
-[] Learn baton combat
-[] Learn knife combat
[] Learn a useful miscellaneous skill.
-[] Lock picking
-[] Urban tracking
-[] Self-Hypnosis
-[] Acrobatics/Parkour
-[] Write-in
[] Finish the research of your city, learning about points of interest of all sorts. (This action will also raise the level of survey to 6)
[] Write-in.
