I blinked and licked one of my eyes, cleaning the membranous filament covering my eyeballs and freeing it of dirt and dust, now for the other one- wait why am I doing this? How am I doing this?

  Wait... I'm...

  Where am I?

  I looked around, I'm in some kind of dirt tunnel. And underground some how...

  This is unfamiliar. How did I get here?

  I never lived in dirt tunnels or knew a place like that but also... I did? What was going on? My head hurts like hell-

  My throat involuntarily released a squeak, something that I assumed is the lizard equivalent of a pained grunt. The headache that drilled into my skull reminded me of the time I got struck on the head by a baseball when I was young.

  The helmet thankfully saved my skull from fracturing but at the time, I wished that I might as well have fainted and gone to the ER because how much it hurt.

  Thinking back, that was a bit stupid wasn't it? This might have just been hindsight talking but I didn't think the pain was that bad. I was definitely overreacting.

  Especially when I look back at all the times this lizard? Gecko?

  In one memory that flashed, I saw my- its reflection on the surface of a passing slime and this animal is some kind skink. If those had sharp teeth and spines growing up their tails.

  I've caught a lot of skinks during childhood and none of them had teeth, it was all gums in there. This thing isn't from earth. Or is it? Okay, the slime exists so it most likely isn't.

  And the existence of slimes isn't even the weirdest thing happening to me right now.

  ... Okay, maybe a living gelatinous blob that wobbles around is pretty important but I'll get back to the slime at some point, there are other things to worry about!

  Like me becoming a lizard.

  Skink- whatever!

  What happened to me? How did this happen to me is actually a better question- so how did it happen? I don't... Really remember anything. Right. Guess that's going to be the first thing that I needed to do; figure out why I'm here.

  Before I get moving though I wanted to mentally address the slimes. Actual, honest to God slimes.

  I'm in some kind of fantasy world, I've only heard these in passing and most of my experience when it comes to fantasy came from TV but I recognize this particular theme: it's where some guy dies and gets transported to another world.

  Why me? Aren't there better people for this?

  I waited for an answer from some passing deity but nothing happened.

  Guess no one is going to answer...

  Ok, so how should I do this?

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  Usually there's some kind of cheat that the guy who gets transported is gifted with right? Like a uh, system?

  After I mentally called out the name, a box floated in front of me.

  Race: Venomous, Spine-tail Skink

  Title: [Otherworlder]

  *Posseses Alien Knowledge

  Level: 1

  XP: [0/300]

  Strength: 2

  Dexterity: 4

  Intelligence: 10

  Wisdom: 7

  Constitution: 3

  Magic: 1

  Skills:

  [Climbing]: LvL 3

  Abilities:

  [Venomous Bite]: [Passive]

  [Minor Regeneration]: [Passive]

  Ok, so I am a skink, good to know.

  The next thing I noticed is that I am pretty weak, which is kind of expected since I'm a small lizard. Uh, let's see... There's also my title, which is also normal? I guess? Also, I think this is the reason why I'm even remembering my past life.

  At the bottom are my skills and abilities, one has a level and the other doesn't, I'm guessing the levels are relevant for skills since I can grow them? Doesn't that mean that my current abilities are stuck the way they are?

  That's too bad... Hopefully I can get other abilities and more skills from the system, the stories usually had those if I remember correctly.

  Anyway, my abilities are self explanatory but my [Climbing] is level three, how does that work? Why does my only skill have levels while my abilities do not? What's the difference between them?

  I guess the fact that abilities can be activated? There's a [passive] at the side my two abilities, which I'm curious about. I wonder what will happen once I get an active ability?

  Wait- doesn't this mean that my skills are also passive? So what are they? An instinct? I never climbed as a skink before but maybe with my [Climbing] skill I don't need to learn how to? Is that how that works?

  I looked at the entrance of the burrow, where light seeped in. In the tiny gap between the roof and the floor I am able to spot tree bark.

  There's only one way to find out.

  I crawled out of the burrow, which was harder to do now that I'm using four legs to move, I gotta get used to that at some point. Or maybe I'll do that naturally since I'll be crawling like this from now on? Shouldn't I be more horrified at the thought of this?

  That's something to think about.

  I stopped next to a tree, a large one from my perspective and looking up made my eyes lose focus. It was like if tunnel vision was disturbing and somehow warped my line of sight to make things more intimidating.

  Is this what lizards saw whenever they looked at humans? I have so many questions right now.

  It took me a second to find my courage and press a clawed hand against the bark of the tree. I felt the hooks of my claw connect, it was crushing something with my molars. Or just chewing really.

  My instincts kicked in next, telling me that it wasn't safe. Or maybe that is just my human side telling me this is a bad idea?

  The internal logic on my end- the lizard's end I guess? - is that my weight would allow my claws to be able to dig themselves into the bark on their own as I climbed.

  It wasn't comforting because I didn't think I was heavy enough that my claws would be embedded into the bark from that alone but I guess I should trust my reptillian instincts more than my human fears.

  And it was sort of right, the feeling I was looking for- something about a few millimeters of my claws being surrounded by wood? - came after my feet left the ground and the only things keeping me on the tree are my claws.

  And speaking of feet, they aren't used for hooking onto the bark. Well, they are, but also not really. Mainly, they are used to boost me while I climb.

  Their other purpose is that they'll hold me in case my hands somehow let go of the tree while climbing- which happened the moment I thought of it.

  I fell back first against the tree and flinched. Looking back, I saw that the claws on my feet have dug themselves into the wood.

  I looked down at the ground, it wasn't very far. Hm. I'm a pretty bad climber.

  I just realized that it's s easier for me to practice crawling on all fours like this since it feels like I'm standing up.

  I don't know just how much I climbed up and down the tree but I can safely say that it was at least a few dozen times.

  When I stopped, I was kind of used to using four limbs to walk and also got the hang of climbing trees using them. It wasn't perfect, but walking didn't feel unfamiliar anymore so I'll take it.

  The quick progress, I think, must have been because of my [Climbing] skill being level 3.

  Now that I can crawl, I felt more confident in myself and actively went up the trunk to see what I can find out there. I am curious about the other aspects of the system, like the XP bar and my levels and in games, you need to kill enemies to level up.

  What can I do with them? Can I get new skills? What about my stats? All good questions that I thought about as I scaled up the tree. Which was taking kind of long...

  Listlessly, I thought about what kind of build I wanted.

  I wasn't a stranger to this type of thing and I actually encountered similar systems while playing games in the past.

  I am also familiar with the term "min maxing", a slang for when players exclusively build their characters to be a certain way. Like high DPS, or damage per second.

  I've played games that required stats and building items before, there were metas I knew about and remembered, and several other things.

  I'm not good at playing video games but I am familiar enough to know what to do with this.

  Real life is probably more complicated than that what I knew though and I can go beyond the typical constraints that developers put to balance the player base and make the game "fun" for everyone.

  Which means that I am free to turn my stat sheet into the most unfair thing I can think of. So what would that be?

  I think it's building tank.

  Why?

  No idea, I just thought that being extremely hard to kill sounds fun. It has its drawbacks like torture being something I don't want to experience but I'm pretty sure I won't get to that point.

  Overall, I think building tank is the best option.

  And besides, I already have [Minor Regeneration] so I might as well go through with this.

  I also deal sustained damage with my [Venomous Bite] that I can afford to invest in defenses without worrying about being unable to defend myself.

  With abilities like these, it would be stupid to not build tank.

  My nose caught a whiff of something delicious. I instinctively licked my lips using a forked tongue and followed the trail.