Chapter 2

[Skills]

[Gamer's Mind (Passive) Lv Max]

[Gamer's Body (Passive) Lv Max]

[Tinker Shard: Complete Tech Tree Access (Passive) Lv Max (Warning: Crippled)]

Dominic stared, mouth gaping. He turned to Jeff then back again.

[(Warning: Crippled)]

It was still there, taunting him. He started to get angry as he pressed the warning to try to get a better understanding.

[(Warning: Crippled) - Entity Shards are purposely limited as a way to encourage shard hosts to use them creatively.]

"Shard hosts?" Dominic and Jeff paused looking at each other, then back again. Jeff ran a hand through his black hair and slumped down beside Dominic on the couch. After Dominic's party creation earlier, his stomach had interrupted them so loudly they'd agreed to resume exploring this real life gamer thing when breakfast was finished. Now this.

"What the hell is an Entity?"

"Got me," Jeff pulled up his own skills box. "I've got a crippled thinker shard."

"Okay, seriously, what the fuck is this?" Dominic groaned. "Do you think we can get rid of the limiters on our power shards?"

"I have no idea, but would that Entity thing do if we did?"

Dominic paled slightly, "I don't think I want to find out."

"So I guess we just work around them," Jeff offered. "With the stats offered under the Status screen and the added option of mana we could get some great new abilities to work with."

[An insightful deduction causes your INT to go up by 1.]

". . . I guess that works," Dominic huffs. Jeff laughs and playfully reaches over to poke at one of Dominic's thin arms.

"Come on, we can use this time to do a work out. You know, try to figure out which methods of exercise works best with which stats."

[An insightful deduction causes your INT to go up by 1.]

"What the hell that was freaking common sense!" Dominic waved a fist at the screen. "How was that an insightful deduction?!"

Jeff just shakes his head and taking Dom's arm starts to lead him towards the home gym. "Just ignore it, Dom. If the systems wants to toss around stat points then that just helps us reach our goals that much faster."

"Fine," Dominic grumbles.

[A compassionate demeanor causes your CHA to go up by 1.]

"Arrrggghhh!"