Perks

Even after somehow receiving the same kind of system as in the game my life was surprisingly normal, I had no way to level up since there was nothing in the Vault to kill and even if there was I am only a child and wouldn't have any way to kill anything.

With nothing else to do I decided to just live my life for now. I finally mastered walking at six months and held off on trying talking until I was one, since I didn't want to be too eye catching.

Having lost all of my immediate goals and left with nothing else to do I decided to sneak into Dante's room at night while he was away at his lab, and start reading all of his physics books and research notes. After all I was living with a former department head of the Institute. It would be a waste if I didn't try and learn from him especially considering my ten intelligence and photographic memory.

I secretly tried to learn anything I could from his notes without much luck. Everything was just too complicated no matter how much of a genius I was, it's impossible to learn something if I couldn't even understand what I was reading.

This continued until Dante started to notice someone was sneaking into his room while he was gone. He ended setting up a camera to catch them in the act and report them.

Imagine the look on his face when he found out the person he thought was stealing his research ended up being his own grandson.

When he and my mom confronted me about it I broke and told them how I don't like playing with toys or the other neighborhood children my mother set up on play dates with. Then I told them that I was really interested in learning and being a scientist like they were.

Needless to say they were shocked when they found out. Dante ended up quizzing me about what I had read in his notes and became even more shock about the amount of information I could remember even if I didn't understand all of it.

The very next day he took me to his lab and promised to teach me everything that he knew starting from scratch. I spent the rest of the day being lectured and atoms and the 4 universal forces.

That wasn't the end of it though, after I returned how and Dante told my mom how I was the most gifted student he had ever seen she decided that she had to start teaching me Biology to. Apparently that was her area of expertise when she was working at the Institute.

From then on I spent every day learning about Physics from Dante in his lab and Biology all evening. I was starting to regret my choice to start learning from my family.

That is until something completely unexpected happened. One day Dante had just finished lecturing me on the history of Fusion Core and who they work. We had been talking about this for several weeks already as it was extremely complicated and I finally though I was starting to understand them and how they worked.

When once again a panel suddenly appeared in front of me, I was so shock that I fell out of my chair scaring Dante. It was the standard bright green transparent color with a smiling Vault Boy giving me a thumbs up.

Congratulations

For your hard work and hours of commitment Vault Tec has decided to award you a perk.

You have received the perk (Nuclear Physicist: Rank 1)

Nuclear Physicist

You've learned to split the atom... and command it. Radiation weapons do 50% more damage and Fusion Cores last an extra 25% longer.

Looking at that message I smacked myself in the head for being so stupid. I had been here all this time and never bothered to check to see what perks I could get. I guess having max Intelligence only helped with learning and does nothing to stop me from being stupid.

I thought "Perks" to myself while imagining what I wanted to happen and just like I hoped another panel popped up.

Looking at It, It was the exact same perk chart from Fallout 4 with all of the dancing Icon's and everything. Up near the top of the chart I could see one of the icons was brighter that the rest and had a single star below it. It was the perk I just unlock Nuclear Physicist.

I was excited at what this meant. I meant that I didn't have to wait until I leveled up to get perks I could get stronger all on my own.

Looking at the Perk chart more carefully I noticed that unlike the one in the game this one had a small Exp gauge in the corner. Strangely it was showing that I was already half way to level one with 100 Exp.

From what I guessed maybe unlocking a perk on my own was considered a special action like from the game. Similar to picking a lock or hacking a computer so It gave me experience even though I didn't kill anything.

For the rest of the day I was on cloud-nine now I could level up without ever leaving the vault and unlock tons of perks at the same time. Knowing that I threw myself even more into my learning which my mom and Dante were more than happy to ablige and increased my work load even more.