Adam stood a distance away as Rachel ran to a man who looked like he was a professional athlete.
He'd get along with dad.
But Adam noticed that the man focused on him.
"Rae, who's this?"
"This is Adam! My new bestest friend! He beat me at tag!!"
"Oh? Then he's a fast one, huh?"
"Nope! He says he's smarter!"
Rachel's dad looked over at Adam again. "Smarter. That makes sense, no one could outrun my big strong girl~"
Her dad picked her up. "You can call me, Mister Morgan, kid."
"Of course, Mr. Morgan. I hope you two get home safe." Adam waved goodbye as he saw his dad pull up in the family car.
As Adam climbed in, his dad extended a fist, Adam met it with a fist of his own.
"Yo kiddo, who was the girlie~"
"New friend, she's a handful."
"Handful? Makes sense, she's Mark's kid after all."
"You know him?"
"Course I do, he goes to the same gym and is the mechanic we go to."
Gym bros… or more like Gym acquaintances?
"Oh, okay. Are we going straight home?"
"Nah, Gotta pick up some stuff for your birthday dinner."
"Wow Dad, way to ruin the surprise."
***
The store was your standard small-town, big company type, much like the ones that populated Earth in Adam's previous life.
"Everything, Everywhere" – EE for short. I'd say poor marketing if it didn't seem popular with my dad.
"Say bud, I think it's time to see if you want to do sports, any in mind?"
"Can I get a raincheck on that?"
"Tch, if you weren't so cute, I'd think you weren't my kid."
*Not like I don't want to do sports, just too many choices.*
Adam walked along with the cart lost in thought.
[WARNING!!!!!!!]
[HIGH CLASS SIREN MATRIARCH DETECTED!!!!]
[HOST IS RECOMMENDED TO RETREAT!!!!]
Adam rolled his eyes. Hard.
He followed the system pings to an old woman having trouble reading the labels on soup.
She looked up at Adam.
Something made him shiver and walk faster, catching up to his dad.
That was weird.. am I scared of old people?
***
The rest of the shopping trip was boring, regular shopping that was intermittent with dad's questions about his day.
He seemed to smile softly when Adam told him about playing with Rachel.
"Should we invite her over for your party?"
"Not tonight, tonight is family, we can do a friend's party on the weekend."
"Aye, that's my boy." Dad ruffled his hair as he loaded bags into the trunk.
As they loaded into the car themselves, Adam spoke up.
"Wouldn't that be weird? Actually? Not like I have other friends to invite over."
"Nothing weird hanging out with friends, no matter how many, Kiddo."
Adam nodded. That seemed like sound logic.
"Besides, it gives us parents an excuse to hang out too~" Dad laughed.
Adam rolled his eyes and focused on the view outside.
System… Gotta check it out more tonight after dinner.
The rest of the ride had dad hum to bad songs, bad to anyone else, perfection to him it seemed.
***
Adam collapsed onto his bed.
*Finally over…*
Dad had spilled the beans at dinner about hanging out with Rachel.
Mom had turned from cool and composed to gossip-hungry mother in a blur.
She seemed disappointed… What kind of gossip did she expect between two 5 year olds?!?
Adam casually pulled up the system.
[Loading System Window…
Title: The Last Human
Host: Adam Cross
Strength: 1 / 10
Agility: 1 / 10 - progress to next level 0.22%
Vitality: 1 / 10
Intelligence: 2 / 10 - progress to next level 0.05%
Perception: 2 / 10
Charisma: 1 / 10 - progress to the next level 0.09%
Recommended Action: Host should focus on stat acquisition and skill management.]
*Skills?... How do I get skills?*
[Host performs the same series of exercises or training to form a basic understanding for a skill to be formed.]
That's frustratingly informative without telling me anything.
Adam closed his eyes in thought.
The immediate skill that came to mind was cooking.
But as a 5 year old, his access to the kitchen was limited.
I wonder how long something needs to be repeated for a skill to form.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll try a whole bunch of things to see if it sticks.
***
And like that, weeks passed.
Adam hadn't learned a single skill by the system's standards.
He tried helping his parents with cooking.
Reading books on medicine that he could find.
Even asking his dad about how his job as a fitness blogger worked.
But nothing came of it.
What HAD changed with the system was Adam's gains with his stats.
Eating healthy gave him slight vitality progression, like VERY slight.
In the last few weeks his Vitality had only increased by 0.02%.
Meanwhile his Strength and Agility had hit 0.37% and 0.75% respectively.
Playing with Rachel seemed effective since the system treated it as a life or death scenario.
But today? Today was different.
Adam was passively listening to the teacher while counting down the seconds to leave.
[Host has gained the skill - Academics!]
[Academics - Level 0 - 0.00%
Basic academics is essential for skill acquisition! The higher the level, the more complex skills can be learned.]
Adam felt his eye twitch.
Oi, System! I was a college student in my past life! Why the low level!
[Recalibrating… Host's skill level meets requirements. Initializing accelerated growth to match.]
[Skill growth for Academics will be increased until the issue is resolved]
So the system CAN learn. Great.
Past that point, Adam got notifications at the end of every lesson.
The increase depended on how much knowledge was in the lesson.
And well… he was still in kindergarten, not quite the treasure of knowledge.
By the time he was picked up, his level 0 skill had reached 25%.
And by the end of the week, it had reached level 1.
Of course, not just by attending Kindergarten. He had bugged his dad to take him to the library daily to see if he could grow the skill on his own.
And with level 1, came the skills Adam was already working towards.
[Host has gained the skill - Cooking level 0.]
[Host has gained the skill - Fitness level 0]
[Host has gained the skill - First Aid level 0]
Neat, I wasn't doing something for nothing.
Adam clocked the skills but at level 0, nothing was really there.
Rachel on the other hand seemed disappointed that Adam was focusing on his 'boring books'.
"Hey! My dad said that boys who read books aren't all that!"
"Mr. Morgan probably said 'Of course he reads books, he can't beat my little girl elsewhere.' Didn't he?"
"H-how'd you know?"
"The same way it figured out reading is better than playing."
"Y-you take that back!"
"Never~" Adam took off after setting his book aside.
"You cheater!" Rachel took off after Adam.