How about having the starting level (0 or 1) to the left of the bar, the max level to the right of the bar, and the current level inside the bar, if it's greater than the starting level but less than the max?
Regardless of how you do the text, I think you need to find a font that'll let you have text that has the same pixel size as your artwork. It looks bad as-is.
Yeah would be cool if text was the same pixel size, right now I have like 32 pixels per unit of measure on UI so I have to some how either work out the font size or just make my own, would be easier if game didn't need any font '-_-
But yeah gonna work on that, didn't notice it myself.
Regarding the way you suggest marking it, I did think of something similar today, gonna give it a go tomorrow and we will see how it looks
Also the progress bar doesn't suit the style too well, I tried making something like bar out of blocks (for example like minecraft health bar but only in full blocks), it needs coding because when it comes to pixel art, unity is very fussy with core features that would let me do that and stretches the pixels.. So either I work this out or just gonna code my own progress bar made of separate icons.
Finally the Xmas craze is over and I can continue on this project, happy holidays by the way!
And thanks for the input, much appreciated

did a lot of games through out the years and I am just not gonna give up on this one and fulfill my dream of publishing a game:)