The Lonely Hunter

Chapter 2: Floating Window Panel

"Huaaaahhpp! Hooo. ..W - where am I?" Kal gasped for breath. He was soaking wet with sweat and as he look around, he was laying on a hospital bed in a room.

"Mr.Kal, you're awake!" A nurse arrived and gleamed in happiness seeing the patient awake.

"What happened? How am I alive? Urgh!" Kal groaned as an excruciating pain ached his head. Seeing that the patient was in pain, the nurse immediately check Kal's body to see if he was fine or not and sighed in relief.

"Phew, fortunately, aside from your mild headache, all in all, your body is perfectly healthy." Hearing this from the nurse, Kal was glad to hear the news but he was still confused about how he was still alive and even manage to enter the hospital.

"How am I still alive? And how did I end up here?" Kal asked the nurse.

"First of all, you should take a rest for your body to completely heal. To answer your questions, even I was shocked to find you still alive from that horrible state you were in. 3 days ago, you were carried by a hunter here in the emergency room. Your body accumulated a lot of broken bones and damaged organs. Even your brain was heavily damaged, the doctors had thought you were already a dead man but fortunately, they found a pulse in you so they immediately gave you a treatment. Still, they believed that even if you manage to survive, you'd become a vegetable all your life but surprisingly after days of observations, your body had a rapid regeneration that immediately fix the damaged parts of your body which caused even the doctors in utter shock and just two days, you had completely recovered and it was only a matter of time that you'd wake up. Tell me, did you drink some high-grade potion or a holy elixir from the Damian Church?" The nurse explained in disbelief. Hearing her explanation, Kal couldn't help but be dumbfounded. 

"I don't think so..." He responds in confusion.

"Well, knowing your background, it would be sketchy to find you owning such high-grade potions that even I doubt it even if you did own one." She said scoffing. Though she may sound kinda mean, she was just telling the truth even if it hurts. 

"Since you know my background, you should know that I cannot afford to pay my medical fees, can you just put it as a credit?" Kal sincerely asked. Knowing that he had been unconscious in the hospital for 3 days and the medical treatments, his medical fees would pile up to a few years' worth of savings so he knew he couldn't pay up.

"About that, the hunter that carried you here paid all of the medical expenses so don't worry about your medical fees, just take a rest for now, and in a few days prior, you'll be back on your feet." She said as she pats his back gently. As the nurse left, Kal was confused about the events that had happened.

'Who was the guy that saved me, seeing that he paid for my medical fees, he must probably hail in a rich family bloodline.' He thought to himself. He returned laying to his bed and as he lay down, a soft tone of a bell echoed in his ear.

Ting~

When the tone went silent, a holographic window panel popped up in front of Kal's eyes. It was a blue transparent panel that had words and numbers written on it. 

[WELCOME! HUNTER NO.107!]

NAME: KAL NIETES

RACE: HUMAN

JOB: <NONE>

TITLE: <NONE>

LEVEL: 2 (15%)

HEALTH: 100/100

MANA: 80/80

STRENGTH: 14

AGILITY: 11

INTELLIGENCE: 8

STAMINA: 10

STATUS POINTS: 10

"What the hell is this?" Kal said in shock. He rubbed his eyes thinking that it might just be a hallucination but no matter how many times he rubbed them, the blue panel didn't disappear from his vision. Even if he tilted his head at a 180 angle, the blue panel would follow the center of his sight. 

"Is this some sort of game? Am I dreaming right now or is this the side effects of my medication?" Kal said to himself. He went to get the medicine he was taking and check the ingredients of the medicine. 

The nurse entered his room and when she saw Kal checking the medicines, she spoke "Those medicines are for your weekly intake, you should drink this one first." The nurse then hand out tablets and water for him and gave him his schedule for his daily intake but before Kal accepted the medicine, he asked the nurse in a very serious manner.

"Ma'am, was there any hallucinogenic substance in my medicines because I'm starting to see things?" 

"There shouldn't be, even if your head had been damaged, the doctors said that your body had been completely healed including your eyes, brain, and all the nerves so you shouldn't be hallucinating." She said in response.

"But I'm things! Look there's this blue transparent screen floating in my vision. It even has words and numbers in it like those things you'd see in RPG games." He said in disdain. Hearing his words, the nurse couldn't help but laugh.

"Pffffftt!  Haha haha!" The nurse couldn't help but laugh in amusement. She patted Kal's shoulder and chuckled as she's going to organize the medicine. When she walked through Kal, Kal noticed that the magical panel had had just gone through the nurse giving him a good reason to believe that the nurse couldn't see it.

'If she can't see this holographic panel and she's confident that I'm not hallucinating then what is this all about?' He thought to himself. He had a lot of questions in his head and he couldn't bring to say it since he'd be a laughing stock and be called a crazy man in the end so he kept his mouth shut. 

When the nurse left, Kal was sitting on his bed examining the magical panel. The words in the panel were in the universal language so he could understand it clearly and the contents of the panel were similar to RPG games you'd play.

"If I'm not hallucinating and all of these is real, does that mean, I can become strong like any other RPG character?" He said to himself. There was no reason for him to not assume that plausible theory since the holographic panel was straight be found in games alike. He began checking if this was true or not and in just 10 minutes of examining the panel, he finally got an answer.

"It's true, it's just like a leveling system!" Kal gleamed in excitement. He learned that although the panel was mostly intangible, the panel would work by using my thoughts. If Kal focus on my mind and imagined closing the window panel, the panel would just simply vanish in thin air and if he wanted to open it again, the panel would pop up and appear back in front of him. He also learned that some of the words can be touched which were the numbers from the word STATUS POINTS and when pressed, would show the plus signs (+) in the status attributes.

"For the sake of experimenting, let me try adding 5 points in the strength attribute, and if I become strong instantly, I'd shave my balls," Kal said with certainty. He then added 5 points to strength tallying it up to 19, and in an instant, he felt a noticeable increase in his power.

"Goddamn! I suddenly feel a burst of power!" Kal exclaimed excitedly. He then proceed to check if he had increased power so he went towards the concrete wall of his room. As an awakened hunter who had a slight increase in power to his whole body, normal concrete would turn to debris when dealt with an attack from a hunter but hospitals for hunters had the walls reinforced with mana that not even F-class hunters could leave a dent on the walls.

"If this turned out to be true then I'd shave my balls." Kal then put all of his strength into his right fist and hit it towards the reinforced wall. Since Kal was a G-ranked hunter, he wouldn't be able to leave even the slightest mark on the wall, what he would just be broken bones and bleeding on his fist but when struck the wall and it collided with the fist, the wall had a small but noticeable crack in the middle of the impact.

"No f*cking way! It works!" Kal exclaimed. He was so overjoyed that even though his hands were bleeding, he couldn't feel the pain due to the ecstatic feeling he had right now. 

"I gotta shave my balls now..." Immediately, he went to the bathroom and shave his balls clean that they became as soft as a baby's butt. After a few more hours of learning about the window panel, he discovered that there were 4 window panels. He discovered this after swiping his index finger on the window panel horizontally which would switch up to 4 different panels: The first is the inventory panel that has 60 squares which he believes to be the item slots. The second is the skill panel where he could tell us where the skills he could acquire be stored but obtaining a skill, for now, is still a mystery yet to be solved. And the third one is a shop panel which unfortunately was covered in a grey blur and the words "REACH LEVEL 20 TO UNLOCK THE STORE" were written on it. 

Of course, the other one was the main window; the status panel.