As I looked over my status again, particularly my stats, I was reminded of something. 'The system had said that I have a high int stat for a baby, but made no comment on everything else. Am I different than before? Or are Humans just that weak when compared to other species?' It didn't make sense. I did have a weird feeling that I was being a bit immature for my situation, but I chalked it up to being dropped into some weird isekai story. I'm not going to claim that it's not, because it definitely is.

  The system is strange, my stats and abilities more so, and I'm on an alien planet that has a remarkable similarity to Earth. I shake the thoughts away. Too confusing to think about and I don't really care. If my stats had been different back home, I'd just have to get them back up or surpass them. Doesn't seem all that hard to accomplish. Do some quests, level up, get more skills or make my current ones even stronger, and find a way home. Speaking of quests, I try to will the system to show me the menu.

  I was yet again staring at the screen in front of me. Like a caveman who just discovered fire, I was a little worried but also excited. Very excited.

  I was worried because the quests were obviously the system trying to get a read on my species, and excited because I could do some crazy shit with the rewards. The stated rewards must be the average if it varies, so what happens if I over achieve and do something insane? Do I get some kind of hidden reward for going above 30k feet?

  I hoped there was, and it was likely to be true as that was a common theme in all those shitty isekai stories I read in my free time. Quest 2 didn't have a limit stated but since the rewards changed it probably had one it wasn't telling me. Possibly comparing me to a record of all the species speeds on this planet and beyond. I have no idea how vast or small the information pool is for the system, but it might be too large to even comprehend. It did say it spanned over the universe, and growing.

  I'd have to be careful about starting the quests, as they might count my max speed at a stumbling walk instead of a run.

  "System, for the first 2 quests how do I make sure it actually captures my limits?" I ask the annoying and disturbing synthetic voice in my head.

  "Just like how you can will system menus to appear, you can will them to start recording." The voice answered, but it was less grating to me now. More tolerable.

  'So they'd record it when I had the intention of starting.' At least I didn't have to worry about it fucking me over. With that worry out of the way, that just left the growing excitement.

  I had abilities to test, limits to surpass, and quests to complete. First up was how my new energy pool interacted with my skills. I was going to start with a rock but decided it would be better to test it on a tree. Wrapping a large invisible mental hand around one the massive trees, I gave it an experimental tug. It didn't pop out of the ground or really do anything except move slightly. I wasn't pushing myself all that hard, and I was trying to keep it within my current regeneration. Which was still 17 per second, and without pushing myself it wouldn't grow. Since the environment wasn't 'harsh' enough.

  So I slowly cranked up the power until the tree popped out of the ground with a groan. It was an odd sound. Like when a tree usually falls over and the roots go with it, the ground rips and dirt rains down. The crack of wood never followed how my mind was expecting it to though. If anything it sounded like I had just ripped a small bush out of the ground, just larger and louder. I still hadn't dipped past the regen rate, and the tree had no weight. Like everything else I lifted, I had a vague sense of something there in my mind but that was it.

  There was something different about the use of the skill though. Something felt... right. It was hard to explain. It felt good now, as compared to before when it felt normal. Or more like nothing at all. Like moving your arm or flexing your fingers. You don't think anything about it because it's normal and expected. Now, though... It felt as though something wasn't limiting me anymore. Like a cast, or the limb just woke up.

  Feeling pretty good about not passing out and not even really feeling any strain, I put more power into the hand. I began to squeeze. Nothing. I put more power into it. Nothing noticeable was happening still. 'Fuck it. I got 120 total and I regen 17 per second'. With that thought in mind, I put what felt like 100 points into the mental link.

  In an instant, the loudest crack I had ever heard exploded from the tree. Louder than even throwing rocks at them. Where I had imagined the hand to be grasping the trunk, it had shrunk. Ridiculously so. The trunk was normal as it lead to the branches and the roots, but the middle had gone from more than a few feet wide to a tiny line a few inches in diameter. A sheer surface between the normal width and the squeezed part. Like a cliff. It should have broken, but it did not. Probably because I was still holding the entire tree and the skill was weird with how I held things with it.

  It was so strange that there was also no sap pouring out of the tree, but I realized that I must still be 'holding' it. Had it been squished too? How? The laws of physics say it should be everywhere as it was displaced. Water, and pretty much any liquid, cannot be compressed. You can pressurize it, but you cannot make it smaller by applying force. It must have displaced into the top and bottom halves of the tree. There's no other way. Or the tree doesn't have a lot of sap. This isn't earth after all.

  After staring at it for so long I regenerate my energy completely, I put more hands on the tree and compressed it again. Using 60 points, it took longer but it was still quick. The tree had turned into a ball of sap with a very dense core of wood, leaves, and dirt. The tree, did in fact have sap but it was a very small amount. It was also slightly pink. Mostly clear like water but it did have that slight tint.

  "Cool." I muttered as I observed the orb of sap before dropping it onto the ground. The liquid instantly losing it's spherical shape and turning into a large puddle with a ball in the middle.

  I spent the next hour "training" my new energy regeneration. I got it up to 30 before I made the decision to move away from my house. The ground around my base had become drenched in sap and orbs of condensed trees. So I found some other corner of the forest to rip apart.

  A couple of hours later and I hit the max of 120 points per second. Which is insane. It would have taken me longer but I had also started experimenting with my Dimensional Gate skill to increase the strain on the Energy pool. With DG at level 2, it only cost 3 mana, or Energy, to open the portals within 10 feet. So my max range is 50 feet. I thought it would be farther, but the cost doubles every 10 feet. It's quite costly.

  I used the Gate to try and travel instead of just flying but it was a bit of a pain in the ass. I couldn't spam it fast enough to make it faster than just flying. Well I could but it wore me out and I couldn't fly very fast to cast it very far. So for now it's back to being a back burner skill.

  Before I got home though, a thought struck me. My Eldritch Energy skill said I could exert the energy out of me like a spring... I had read and seen lots of isekai and fantasy stories to know what a 'Mana Spring' was. A natural place where the energy was high in purity and high in quantity. I had become something similar to one but for the... horror element? It had said it was horror instead of pure right?

  Stopping in yet another random clearing, I think about how I can will the energy to appear. Maybe I can just imagine the fabric of reality shattering, or the veil as I and the system had called it tearing open. And so I did. I stared at the space in front of me, and imagined the plane of 3d space separate from mine in a 4d space shattering or opening in some way. I had thought it would cost some energy to do so, but it was the opposite. The OPPOSITE.

  I felt my body feel more energized more and more every second. Like I was removing yet another limiter. Checking my status, my Energy was showing something odd.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  My Energy stat was increasing over it's max value. As I gawked at the menu, something moving caught my attention and I closed the window. Reality, the veil, or something else I can't comprehend at the moment was wavering. Morphing and shaking as the energy in me kept growing. The sound a strange warble of whispers and some other sounds. The trees visibly recoiled away from me and the spot I was staring at. I know they recoiled because there wasn't any wind.

  Then the light, or invisible glass, or whatever I was looking at, shattered. I was expecting dark eldritch things, not the mesmerizing kaleidoscope of every color. The whispers stopped, turning into a strange peaceful symphony of humming. Every sound but the humming stopped. The shards of reality spun slowly in the air, as if they didn't have gravity. I thought it would be a void. A hole of nothingness. Though, I guess it's still a place. Just in between two dimensions. Like a hallway, or the outside world when compared to the interiors of two separate buildings.

  I was so entranced by the sight that I completely forgot about the increasing energy inside my body and all around me. I did start to notice when things got uncomfortable. I started to feel hot and cold at the same time. Like a really bad fever. The kind that gave you the shakes.

  My teeth started to chatter as my body got all clammy. Disgruntled, worried, and brought out of my trance from looking deep into the beautiful hole I had made, I brought up my Energy stat again.

  I quickly tried to close the hole and shoving all the energy back into it. It was folly of me to try. The energy was coming out like I had turned on a sink faucet. You can't make the water travel back up once you turn it on. So I did what I knew might work. I shut it off. The hole closed quickly, the shards traveling in reverse like I had rewound time. The fabric of reality collecting it's pieces and solidifying again.

  Just because I had closed it didn't mean the energy was just gone though. It was collecting inside me still and gathering everywhere around me. I couldn't see it per se, but I could feel it. Like trying to wade through a marsh. The ground was quickly absorbing it and becoming... tainted in some way. It was different now. Everything around me was. It looked normal but once again it had that feeling of rightness. Like I was more aligned with it than I was before.

  'I really am some eldritch thing now, aren't I?' The hole and the energy should have felt wrong. Something outside of the natural state of things. But I wasn't natural to this place either. I too had come from outside.

  I didn't have time to mull over it though, as my Energy stat kept trying to collect the residue left in the clearing. So I got rid of it the one way I knew how. Telekinesis. The stat had grown to the 700's and was still growing, but it had slowed. My body hurt still but it was manageable. Something tells me that my mortal shell wouldn't have survived the surge if I didn't have my EA skill. My body was likely adapting to it in some way.

  'Fuck it. I might as well use it in a fun way.' I raised my body into the air, and began to slowly drag myself higher and higher into the sky. My stat finally stopped increasing at 1,376 points and I think I tasted blood in my mouth. Everything was blurry. Yet nothing hurt anymore. 'Had I fried my nerves with the energy? Is it doing more damage to me now?' I tried to swear but I just grunted. My Energy remained at 1,376 as my regeneration was fueling my ascent.

  I started to use more and more, forcing myself to get used to the G-forces I was putting my body through. Flying with 12 points was fast, sure. But it wasn't nearly fast enough to compare to what I was doing now. I had a hard time figuring out how much I was putting into the effort. I was losing my senses slowly, but I could still think. It was an odd feeling. My body was probably falling apart from the sheer volume of energy within me, yet my mind was clear.

  So I willed myself faster and higher. Setting the intention to begin the 2 quests at the same time.

  "Recording flight height and speed. Current altitude: 689 feet. Current speed: 78 miles per hour."

  As I lost feeling in everything, I could push my body however I wanted. Consequences be damned. I could probably rely on my current regeneration and my EA skill to survive this... maybe...

  So I pushed it harder and harder. Just hoping I was going in a vague upwards direction.

  "Current altitude: 1,408 feet. Current speed: 356 miles per hour."

  I didn't even have the energy to hate on the voice. Which is odd considering the predicament I was in. There was only one thought I had. 'That's pretty fast...'

  It was almost a shame I couldn't see it. But I pushed it even harder. Putting more Energy into the mental effort out of fear of blowing up or something else.

  "Current altitude: 20,478 feet. Current speed: 1,476 miles per hour."

  'Holy shit I broke the sound barrier. I'm a little below passenger jet height but more than double their speed!' I was internally gawking at that, and I wanted to slow down but I couldn't stop it now. I needed to burn the Energy reserves ASAP.

  "Altitude: 48,107 feet. Speed: 3,855 mph."

  'I'm building speed way faster than I thought. That's already mach 5! I really hope I haven't lost any limbs...' A feeling of dread grows inside me as the numbers keep increasing at an insane level. To get it over with, I put one final push with everything I had.

  "Altitude: 150,865 feet. Speed: 6,175 mph."

  'OH... FUCK!' All I can do is mentally scream as I have no idea how horrible the damage is that I had just done to my body was. I was starting to fade mentally now. Either passing out or dying. Probably dying. I don't have any mental bandwidth left to even think about it as I continue to slip. I can hardly even hear the system telling me my next record.

  "Altitude: 240,065 feet. Speed: 5,465 mph. Capping record at 6,200 mph."

  ...

  I woke up, surprisingly, in fucking orbit. So the first thing I saw was space and the planet I had launched myself out of.

  "Oh my God." I said. Well, tried to say. Came out more like "Ouuhgg mmm kghoawd". A rather unpleasant liquid in my mouth. A mixture of vomit and blood by the taste of it. Which I swallowed with a shudder. It's not like I could have spit it out into my helmet. It already had blood floating around in it, and some splotches on the glass. Which was also still cracked.

  'What was my score...?' I pondered as I tried moving my body. It didn't listen. I was back in the same situation that I started with. Like a week ago.

  As I floated there, struggling to breathe and probably slowly dying, I checked my status.

  Scratch that part about probably dying. Turns out, I was, in fact, dead.

  'WHAT THE FUCK?!' My eyes bulged, at least slightly as I stared at the window. If I was alive, my regen should have regenerated right?! So... I'm dead then... but I'm not?

  As I stared at the screen in confusion but mostly fear, the numbers changed. The 0 had gone up to 1 then back down again.

  'Oh... I think I get it. My regen is the only thing keeping me alive. My health is probably 0 point something.' That was a massive relief. It meant that I would survive. With some luck anyway.

  I willed my completed quests screen since I needed to level up and put some more stats into health.

  A grin tries to spread across my face at the rewards but it turns into a grimace. I feel like throwing up again but I keep it down. Who would have thought that being literally seconds from death would suck so much? I put 20 points into health and immediately felt better. My body rapidly healing with disturbing bone snaps to go with it.

  'I really fucked my self up huh... damn, I am never using that Eldritch Energy skill like that again.' Now that it was easier to breathe and I wasn't dying anymore, I started thinking about how I could have possibly survived in the first place.

  'My Telekinesis skill has a weird feeling of having 2 points of control, one outer and one inner. Like an invisible intangible orb surrounding the object for general manipulation and the inner control is for finer movements. Could it have protected me from the air resistance? I was moving at about half the speed of something re-entering the atmosphere.' That had to be it. That or my EA skill was making me adapt to the G-forces faster than the damage could accumulate.

  Speaking of skills, I had 20 skill points. 20. I think I'll bother with them later. Right now I need to check my level.

  I had leveled up 3 times. Which is incredible but leaves me with even less time to abuse my Baby Mode title. That was fine though, Maybe the next one will have it's own benefits that I can exploit.

  I still had 60 stat points, so I did the only logical thing I could. I put 50 of them into luck. I had no doubts that the main reason I was alive was because I got lucky. So I obviously needed more. I then put the last 10 into agility. For some poor excuse of balance.

  That was everything. Well, except for my 20 skill points but I'll save them for now. My luck was well into the triple digits with the Baby Mode multiplier, so maybe I'll stop having close encounters with death so often.

  Now that I was looking around calmly, I realized that I wasn't in orbit. I was close, but not quite. I was starting to fall since I didn't have my Telekinesis active right now. It was time to find my way back home... somehow.