I am... a skeleton?

[Recalabrating consciousness...]

[Progress 50%]

[Host is waking up...]

[Finding a suitable body...]

[Recalabrating consciousness...]

[Progress: 75%]

....

James could hear constant notifications that were being spoken in a cold, mechanical voice. He couldn't see anything but tried to anyway, the problem was, he couldn't feel his eyes.

[Progress: 100%]

[Recalibration complete.]

Silence, well almost. Drops of water hitting the stone floor could be heard sporadically. Echoes, as if in a cave, sounded every so often. He could feel no cold, however, nor pain.

James tried to move his arms. He succeeded, but they were heavy, slow and surprisingly bony.

"Wait a second.", thought James, "I can see? Why are my hands so weird? I mean, I'm in a cave, am I not? Skin doesn't get that pale just like that in the dark. And they are tiny, like twigs."

"And that whole business about the recalibration or whatever, what's with that?"

Since his arms were working, albeit badly, James decided to try moving the rest of his body. It was slow work. His bones were moving at what felt like a snail's pace.

"No no no, that no good. Where are my muscles and skin and organs and all other stuff? How, what? Hmmm...."

James decided to take a pause and looked around. In a faraway end of the cave-ish tunnel, he could see a faint light. It was this very same light that had enabled him to see his reflective bones in the first place. Eager to see the rest of his body, James got up and walked towards the light.

Some hundred-ish unsteady footsteps later, James found himself in a huge open cavern. Giant fluorescent mushrooms and blue coloured moss were the sources of the faint lighting. In the middle of the cavern was a small puddle. A few more steps and James could finally see his new body.

"Spooky."

A skeleton looked back at him. Two grey will'o'wisps gleaned in its eyes. Unlike the usual fantasy white, his bones were filthy and had a sort of a brownish colour. Cracks were visible throughout his body, the largest of which was a huge scar through his ribcage.

"The previous owner probably died because of it. Jesus, this must be a fantasy world of some kind. Too bad my memories are all jumbled."

Indeed, James's memories were faulty. He could barely remember his name. The only other things he retained was the "common sense" of his previous life and the fact that he used to be a perfectly normal, non-magic human.

"All good things come to an end I guess. Well, now that my appearance has been sorted, I should find an answer to that recalibration thing."

Thinking of what the usual protagonists did, even though he himself felt it was stupid, he yelled in his mind.

"System!"

Nothing.

"Status!"

A giant blueish, slightly see-through screen sprung up before him.

____

Name: James

Level: 0 (0/100)

Race: Skeleton

Title: (none)

Health: 10/10

Mana: 1/1

Attributes: STR 1; END 1; AGI: 1; SPT 1

Talent: [Undead]

Skills: [Deduce lv 0]; [Regrow lv 0]; [Move lv 0]; [Night vision lv 0]

____

"Wow, it actually worked." James's voice was rather unamused. "Who would've thought. A few questions then... what is SPT and why am I so familiar with this? Was this in a game I used to play? Game of... what?"

James raised his bony finger and pressed the SPT part lightly. He couldn't really feel the window, it just gave him a frozen fog like sensation.

[SPT is short for Spirit.]

"Spirit, right, well, one mystery solved then. Now I just need to level up in this dungeon, I think."

The skeleton stood up slowly and started to walk towards one of the many side-caves branching out.

...

It had been some 10 minutes since the skeleton had started its hunt. The prey had finally appeared. It was a giant centipede. Its chitin carapace was black and shiny, and its many legs all had a yellow stripe along their length.

"Deduce!", shouted the skeleton in its mind.

[A monster centipede, it is your normal centipedes larger and more brutal cousin.]

"Well fuck."

A strategy was needed. James didn't know much about centipedes except that he didn't like the way they moved so his fighting tactic was going to be very simple. Smash it with a stick, hard.

The problem was there were no sticks around so a stone would have to do. The skeleton waddled to the side and tried picking up a boulder roughly the size of his head, unfortunately, he was too weak so a smaller stone the size of his fist was selected. After a bit of swinging around to get used to the weight that felt herculean to the current him, he finally started to sneak up upon the centipede.

The centipede in question continued flicking its antennae here and there on the mossy cave floor. Now, slowly, very slowly, James raised the stone above his head and threw it hard onto the head of the centipede.

"Crunch!"

"Kiaaaah!! Czzzz!"

The stone had half-squashed the head of the animal. The almost headless centipede made bloodcurdling noises and started thrashing around madly. The skeleton made its escape, not wanting to be hit by accident.

Five minutes later, and with a lot of damage to the surroundings, the centipede finally breathed its last.

[Congratulations, you killed a Monster centipede. 20 XP, [Bash lv 0] and the title [First blood] awarded.]

"Nice! 4 more to go and a title. Let's inspect that first."

[[First blood], a title awarded to those who have managed to kill a dungeon monster single-handedly. Effect: Familiar with killing.]

"Uhhhh... well that's dumb? Whatever, kill first, ask questions later."

The skeleton scooped up his rock, blood and brain(?) matter still dripping from it, and strode further into the darkness.

...

The dungeon, as he decided to call it, had its many corridors sporadically lit by the fluorescent mushrooms and had quite the biodiversity. More than once, he had to make a narrow escape from groups of either goblins or weird wolf-like creatures. There were even traps. Usually, they were simple ones, like pitfall ones with a badly made tarp over them, other times complex, with some kind of shooting mechanism hidden within the walls.

James had tried to pry open the mechanisms and steal the arrows, however, he was unsuccessful. The cave walls were much harder than anything else he had found. Slightly disappointed, he continued his hunt.

Finally, after at least 3 hours, James had managed to reach level two.