Attempting to distract himself even further from the possible dread of no longer being human and now being a weird colored orb of possible crystal nature, he continued to explore his being as much as possible. He called forth his status page once more.
Ronald began to try to think and recall all of those strange isekai and reincarnation shows and novels that he had consumed back on Earth. Personally, he had enjoyed a few of them, but many felt a bit stupid to him. Why would all powerful gods need some stupid high school age kids to save the world? He knew the answer for the shows and stories, those had sold well with the sought after demographic. Maybe that was why he was brought here, because he wasn’t a teenager, but a grown adult. He would need time to adjust, but not time to mature or determine right from wrong. Plus he also wasn’t summoned as a hero meant to combat some demon king, but a wagon meant to save people. How was he expected to do that? Were some village somewhere going to get wiped out by monsters and he needed to get them all to safety, that seemed highly unlikely. At best he was a companion to some hero that would show up to save the day. Yet circled back to his status page, which listed him as a hero. A hero transport core. That left him with so many questions, and no way to answer them aside from finding some weird and probably lecherous sage in this new world.
He could try to find a way to ask the gods themselves. Why would they summon him and direct him to save the world but at the same time make him a wagon. As that last thought crossed his mind, a small whisper appeared at the back of his mind. Not the world, save the people. And again for what he felt was the thousandth time his thoughts stalled, he was meant to save people. The gods didn’t call him here to save the world, but the people. Either the world was doomed to perish and he would have to find some way to get the people to another world, or by saving the people from whatever was happening, he might just save the world.
His thoughts tried to stall again at that last revelation, but his wagon shook slightly as he attempted to shake his head clear of thoughts that threatened to just spiral into a never stopping loop of hopelessly out of context scenarios. He would need to focus on the current issues and not the ever increasing impossibility of his new task. He would also need to understand his new body, abilities, and even his new status screen. He decided to start by looking at his status in deeper detail now.
He noticed that on his status that he did not have a level, but that his abilities did seem to have them. Was it one of those systems where abilities got stronger as you used them? Did the abilities have their own experience counters like in some of the stories he could recall? He focused on first ability and tried to find out if he could call forth more knowledge or tell how far away he was from leveling it. He focused on it so intently, that he was sure that had he still been human, his face would be red and a vein would be threatening to pop open on his forehead. He gave up with what he quickly realized was hopeless, the system wouldn’t just give him that it seems. He would have to experiment and find out more on his own.
Deciding to just keep his status screen open for the time being, as his vision no longer relied on a single direction, but had a more 360 view, but he also had just a general understanding of everything within what he came to realize must be his aura. As described in his sanctuary aura ability.
Again his wagon frame shook, as Ronald attempted to clear his mind. Wherever those thoughts and feelings were coming from were outside of his core, but connected somehow. He wouldn’t dig deeper for now, maybe he could find others to fill in the gaps. He focused his attention again as he drew his attention back to the status page.
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He let out a mental sigh as he realized he needed to take time to figure out how each of his abilities worked before he got into some situation that he wouldn’t be able to handle. He focused on the next ability on his list. Transport expansion.
As with his Assimilate ability, information rushed into his consciousness about how to utilize this ability. He understood that he would be able to expand the wagon’s dimensions itself, but also create different components that could expand the list of abilities that he had at his disposal. Sadly, no list appeared to give him hints at what he could build with the resources at his disposal at the moment.
Reaching out with his transport expansion ability, he attempted to extend the height of the wagon by one inch. He had wanted to add 10 inches, for a better understanding using a base of 10. But he was still very concerned that it would cost a lot more than he currently had stored. He remembered many stories of dungeon cores overtaxing their own reserves and going into hibernation and he didn’t want to be vulnerable in case any sort of weird monster showed up and started hacking away at his new life.
Pushing his mana into his ability and imagining an inch of material appearing at the top of the walls of the wagon's sides, Ronald felt a tremendous amount of energy rush forth from inside his core and flow toward the upper portion of the wagon walls. To his own astonishment, he could see the mana gathering along the top sections of his wagon walls, and slowly new material filled in the area that he had imagined. The whole process couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but Ronald was stunned at seeing the process with the clarity that he had. He was able to witness the energy turn into actual matter. As an avid gamer, he had witnessed the same kind of thing in a video game, but seeing it actually happen in front of his eyes was another experience entirely.
Once the material was added on top of the wagon walls, a wave of dizziness passed over Ronald. Instinctually, he understood that just adding that inch of wooden material had drained his core tremendously. He focused inward attempting to get an understanding of how much mana he had left in his core, and to his horror he barely felt anything left. He had emptied out every he had for that small amount of growth. Concerned that something bad would happen if he ran on fumes for too long, he began to assimilate all of the available debris nearby himself, this time not focusing on a particular item, but as much as possible in the hopes that he would fill his reserves faster.
He could not tell for certain, but he believed that the mass assimilation was indeed pulling in more overall, but he could also tell it was not as efficient for each object. He was almost positive that for the best return on assimilation he needed to focus on a single object at a time, but that would take far more time than he was currently comfortable with. He turned his focus inward towards his core, and was pleasantly surprised to see that he had managed to pull in even more than he had before. It might be slightly inefficient, but so far it was turning out okay anyway.
Suddenly, a noise drew his attention, just a few feet outside of his aura. Ronald was suddenly discovering that if he focused on a direction and narrowed his vision down, he could see outside of his aura, it was not with the detail he remembered as a human, but he could see past his aura. And in this instance, if he had blood still, it would have run cold. Because even in this new world, there was something he did seem to recognize. Just outside of his aura and approaching at a decently quick pace was the first monster every hero in every story always happened across. It was short, walking slightly bow legged, wearing a filthy loin cloth, some hides were hanging from its shoulders, and it carried a rusted but still deadly looking dagger. It was the bane of all fantasy settings, it was a goblin, and by the sounds coming from just slightly further away it was not alone.
