Chapter 6: Ding!

Finished with my perk selection, a second went by before the holographic system screen in front of me changed again. Now showing me a window with all my skills listed along with the ability to tag 3 of them as well as a bit of information pertaining to the benefits tagging provides.

[ Skills ]

Skill Tags Left: 3

Skill Points Left: 16

Barter: 31

Energy Weapons: 47

Explosives: 34

Guns: 40

Lockpick: 35

Medicine: 46

Melee Weapons: 25

Repair: 53

Science: 49

Sneak: 22

Speech: 25

Survival: 33

Unarmed: 35

Other Information: When you tag a skill, your talent in that skill will rise to genius levels and the skill itself will increase at double the rate of untagged skills.

Well, that's unusual. Normally you just get a flat +15 to whatever skill you tag and that's it... Actually, I do recall that being a thing back in the older games, though that is only for the double rate and not the talent.

Hmm, if tagging a skill is going to improve that skill at double the rate, then that changes things significantly from what I would've done normally. Yeah, I need to think about this for a moment because whatever 3 skills I decide to tag will affect my future significantly.

Several minutes or what felt like several minutes went by as I was contemplating over what would be the best 3 skills to tag. After that period had passed, I came up with a few ideas. The first idea was I could go and specialize in the intelligence and knowledge route, which would consist of medicine, repair, and science.

My reasoning behind why these 3 skills would be good to tag together is that I can see them providing many kinds of benefits. A few of which include providing an increase in the speed of knowledge acquisition, shortening the amount of time I need to spend researching, increasing my skill and efficiency in surgery and anything else medical-related and helping me synthesize new drugs.

There is also the crafting and repairing gear benefits from the repair skill. Those will be a big help when it comes to building new equipment and tools for the other two skills, thus boosting them even further. All that said, the main reason to go with this option would be the research and technological breakthroughs it could potentially provide me.

Although I probably won't see those benefits kicking in till, I get a place to call my own with zero restrictions where I can actually perform research and conduct different experiments. I could probably just convince the overseer at a later time to allocate or build a workshop once I'm older and shown off some of my potential...

Moving onto the next set of skills I thought of would be the pure combat set, which consists of one ranged weapon skill that will either be energy weapons or guns. After that, explosives and melee weapons will be taken to even it off, so that I'm more well rounded in other forms of combat to deal with all sorts of situations I'll come across in the wastes.

The benefits of this set of skills are obvious and don't really need to be stated, but the demerits for going with this set is that I wouldn't be able to properly utilize two of them until I left the vault years later. I doubt the overseer would be willing to give me firearm clearance, let alone give me one to use since I just turned 10 and all.

Mm, I have grown on him over the years by spending a ton of time with Amata, so maybe I could get clearance in a few years' time as long as things keep moving in the right direction between Amata and me. That aside, I'll probably go with a different set of skills because this one has too many potential problems and ifs, thus I'd rather not put all my eggs in this basket.

The third set I thought would be pretty decent would be a stealth set involving guns, melee weapons, and sneak. But this set of skills also has similar problems as the combat set in that it can't be properly utilized and taken advantage of till I'm out of the vault. I also don't really have a huge need for stealth right now, therefore it would sit mostly unused.

However, I could see myself sneaking around with a stealth boy through a raider hideout at night, slitting their throats one by one while they slept off whatever shitty drugs they managed to get their grubby mitts on. Or I could plant a bunch of explosives throughout the hideout and rig them all to a detonator for shits and giggles. Ahh, I can't wait till I can exit the vault and start my adventure, I'm sure I will have a hell of a time out there.

Now onto the last set of skills I was able to come up with. This last set of skills is made up of more peaceful and social skills centered around barter, speech, and one ranged weapons skill, which would again would either be guns or energy weapons. Though this skill set would more than likely be very helpful for dealing with the many vault residents that have power or things I wish to obtain.

I won't be staying here forever since there are many opportunities to be had out in the wasteland if you know where to look. And I know exactly where to look, hence I most likely won't be going with this set.

Thinking and running through a whole bunch of different scenarios in my head, I decided that going the intelligence/knowledge route would be the best choice amongst them. The reason for that was pretty simple: knowledge and technology are king, especially when I will have 6 years at the very least to abuse it.

Add on that I can also probably start my own small lab and workshop with the help of dad. However, to truly get that sort of project off the ground, I'll need to get help from the overseer as well.

That shouldn't be too hard as long as I butter him up a bit, along with asking Amata for some assistance. I know he dotes on her and has an incredibly hard time rejecting most of her requests, so I should be able to make this happen, hopefully soon.

As for the skill points, I don't really have anything that's of immediate concern other than having to convince others to let me do certain things. I guess I will forgo my original plan of evening out my skills and just dump the 16 points I have into speech.

Once I was done deciding on what I wanted to do, I finalized my skill tagging selection, those being medicine, repair, and science, while also dumping the skill points from the level up into speech. Locking in the distribution, the holographic screen swiftly changed back to the normal view of the Pip-Boy screen.

The instant it had, I tried to look at my improved stats, but before I could, I started getting bombarded with a shitload of notifications and an overload of information being crammed into my head.

Ding! New Perk

Ding! New Quests

Ding! New …

Pip-Boy

Name: Harold Todd Woods

Age: 10

Height: 5,5 (in feet and inches)

Race: Human

Level: 2

Experience Points: 130/350

Total Experience Points Earned: 330

Experience Rate: 165%

Health: 440 | Formula: Base of 90 + (Endurance x 30) + (Level# x 10) |

Carry Weight: 146.5/200 | Formula: (150 + Strength x 10 and will go up to 500 at full maturity) |

Resistances:

Armor: Body Damage Threshold 11

Poison Resistance: 50% | (Endurance - 1) x 5 |

Radiation Resistance: 22% | Formula: (Endurance x 2) |

| S.P.E.C.I.A.L. |

Strength: 5

Perception: 10

Endurance: 11

Charisma: 5

Intelligence: 13

Agility: 4

Luck: 7

| Skills |

Barter: 31

Energy Weapons: 47

Explosives: 34

Guns: 40

Lockpick: 35

(T)Medicine: 51

Melee Weapons: 25

(T)Repair: 53

(T)Science: 54

Sneak: 22

Speech: 41

Survival: 33

Unarmed: 35

Mutations:

Loot: 200 Microfusion Cells, 200 Scrap Metal, 100 Scrap Electronics, 50 Duct Tape, 20 Wonderglue, 109 Other Misc. Junk.

Quests: 0 Ready to turn in, Many in progress, 1 Completed

Dealing with the sudden headache that appeared, I eventually powered through the overwhelming amount of new information and experience that got directly implanted into my brain. After getting through that phase, I spent the next good while going and sifting through all it.

Alright, I think I have things back under control. I really thought my head was going to blow for a moment there. Thankfully, it did not. Let me go over the remaining information and when I have that done, I can proceed to the Pip-Boy screen to see what has changed.

Once I went over the remaining information, I directed my focus to the holographic system screen in front of me. And as I'm going through it, I discovered I obtained 2 new perks called Monstrous Physique and Human Supercomputer. Curious as to what they did, I selected them and man was I surprised about the benefits they provided. Although I was already aware of a few of them.

| Monstrous Physique | Requirements 11 Endurance: You've surpassed human limitations for endurance, gaining increased toughness and resilience. +1 DT for every point of Endurance and you now gain 30 health instead of 20 for every point of Endurance you have. On top of that, your stamina and stamina regeneration are doubled and the amount of sleep you require each night has been reduced from 8 down to 4.

| Human Supercomputer | Requirements 11 Intelligence: You've surpassed human limitations for intelligence, you've now developed photographic memory, as well as an increase in experience gain from 3% to 5% for every point in intelligence. You've also gained an increase in processing power and any negative xp gains are now negated.

What an absolutely huge upgrade to my capabilities, especially the DT and the decrease in the amount of sleep my body will need in the future. I can already see myself using that extra time on all sorts of things, like crafting the gear I'll need for my mole rat hunting trip. And the gear I have in mind will make killing mole rats relatively safe.

Human Supercomputer ain't too shabby either. That 2% increase for every point of intelligence from Human Supercomputer will be a huge help when I start earning decent experience. Additionally, I now have that skilled trait of mine fully negated with this perk which will bump up my xp gain by 10%.

Okay, next on the agenda is the new quest notifications.

Ready to see why I was being spam pinged into oblivion, I selected the many in progress quest tab.

Quests In Progress:

| Surpass Your Human Physical Limits | Objectives: Reach a value of 11 in every S.P.E.C.I.A.L..

Rewards: New Perk?, 10,000 exp, and 10 SPECIAL points.

| Save dad | Objectives: Prevent the death of your father, James Watson Woods.

Rewards: New Perk? and 5,000 exp.

| Seeker Of Knowledge | Objectives: Continue to hoover up all knowledge in the vault library till there is nothing left. Rewards: 3 Intelligence Points and 2,500 exp.

| It's Hunten Season | Objectives: Convince your dad to let you enter the vault mines. Rewards: 3 Speech points and 500 exp.

| Take Over The RobCo Facility | Objectives: Clear out all hostile forces and set up shop. Rewards: Perk RobCo Certified, 5 Science Points, 2,000 exp.

| Take Over Raven Rock | Objectives: …

| Orbital …

Well, shit, there are a ton of quests to do. Looks like I'll be able to level a decent amount while I'm here in the vault for the next several years. Hmm, out of the new quests I received, it appears |It's Hunten Season| will be my priority when my birthday party is over.

Though I'll have to get some gear made prior to that, so I don't end up getting fucked up by the mole rats lurking in the old mining tunnels. However, before I can get that taken care of, I need to finish this birthday of mine and stop that damn Andy from destroying my cake and ruining the party.

Happy as can be with my first level up, I gave everything a once over to see if I had missed anything. I didn't, so I closed out the holographic Pip-Boy screen, displaying my stats, and resumed time once again after a few short moments.

Damn, it felt like I was in there for hours.

______

If you want something else to read, that's similar to this, check out my other webnovel Wasteland Conqueror. It has a lot more chapters released.

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