《System Smash: Compound Universes》 Prologue: The Death Of Normal Everyone has a moment of turbulence in their life. A point where things won¡¯t be able to return to how they once were. A point where changes come back to back before they can settle into any form of ¡®normal¡¯. For Luna, that moment came 2 years ago when she came out as Transgender to her mother. Nothing seemed to change at first. They spoke as they did before, neither parent nor child forcing the issue. Something that big couldn¡¯t be hidden or brushed aside, not forever. For 8 long months, their relationship was stretched and pulled with each and every minute reminder of Luna¡¯s identity. Every time her brothers called her ¡®Luna¡¯, every time she bought pride pins, every time she called herself ¡®she¡¯. Each nudge built up tension until they couldn¡¯t ignore it any longer. Luna was trying to tell her mother about how to refer to her. She wasn¡¯t ¡®Lucus¡¯ anymore, she was ¡®Luna¡¯. That was the straw that broke the camel¡¯s back. Luna¡¯s mother wasn¡¯t an entirely bigoted person, but most of Luna¡¯s aunts and uncles were. It made Luna¡¯s mom unable to understand any of the signs. She was blindsided, and confused as to how ¡®Lucas¡¯ would get to this conclusion. In her mind, ¡®Lucas¡¯ was being ruled by their hormones and needed to man up. Luna¡¯s mom couldn¡¯t understand how she would think this was the case, and wanted to make sure that her ¡®Lucas¡¯ didn¡¯t go through with this dumb decision. However, she didn¡¯t want to entirely ruin their relationship. So, Luna¡¯s mother didn¡¯t destroy any of her child¡¯s things, or even throw them out. Instead, she gave ¡®Lucas¡¯ an ultimatum. If Luna wanted to truly do this, she needed to do it on her own. 1 month. Luna had 1 month to get a job and get enough money to pay for rent at any apartment building she wanted to live in. This room was for Lucas. Lucas could stay there, but not ¡®Luna¡¯. Luna left not even 4 days later. She had very good friends who helped her couch surf, though they were all in a state on the far side of the country. However, it was all too short notice. She ran out of money. She was homeless for nearly 2 months. The only silver lining is that she was able to sleep in her friend¡¯s place every few days depending on availability. Still, it was a hard time for her. No matter how hard it got though, she ignored all of the help she got from her mother, sending all of the money back whenever it was sent to her. She wouldn¡¯t take ¡®handouts¡¯ from a bigot. It wasn¡¯t until titi Morrogan flew all the way across the country to meet with Luna. They spoke. They cried. Luna left with her Titi, heading to her place rather than her mother¡¯s place. She still ignored her mother, trying her best to keep up the strong facade. The job search wasn¡¯t good, and Titi Morrogan couldn¡¯t afford another mouth who couldn¡¯t contribute. Luna decided¡­ to try and go for the military. Her Titi told her not to, but it was the only ¡®easy¡¯ option Luna thought there was. So¡­ Luna joined the US military as Lucas Alicea Gonzalez. They decided that The Navy would be the best way to go about it all. Or rather, Luna was suckered by her recruiter and went for the first branch she approached. It was this act that made Luna¡¯s mother realize that this wasn¡¯t just a phase. Luna was sticking to her guns. Luna would rather endure going into The Navy as Lucas, where there was just bureaucracy in the way of becoming Luna than go back home as Lucas where nothing would ever allow them to become Luna. Luna was the one who reached out. She had surgeries she had to undergo to join the Military, and high on meds, she called her mother. It was short, but it was the beginning of the rebuilding of old bridges. By the time Luna was joining the Military, she and her mother spoke nearly every 2 or 3 days on a phone call. Oftentimes it was just a short 1 to 3 minute call, but it was much more than just a few months before. Luna joined. She progressed through Basic for the first few weeks. Then during one particularly brutal IT session, she tried to tell her Petty Officers that her leg was hurting. They mostly ignored her plea. Told her to go to medical the next day. A stress fracture in Luna¡¯s ankle couldn''t take the strain of her getting off her bunk that morning. Her ankle damn near in half. That was how Luna spent nearly 4 months in ¡®Broken Division¡¯. That was how Luna lost all will to stay in the military. She stayed until her healing was enough for her to move normally again, with almost no fear of breaking herself again unless she did something stupid. Then she went to get her contract annulled. Used her status of being Transgender to do it. If she stayed in 180 days beyond Boot Camp she could have gotten her whole transition converted. Back when that just meant 8 months including boot camp that was acceptable. When it turned into 1 ? years, well, she decided it was best to just suck up her pride. So, nearly 6 months after joining the Military Luna went back to her mom¡¯s home. All of her friends and her aunt couldn¡¯t take her anymore, their situations having changed in the 6 months she was at boot. They were still good friends, but they just simply didn¡¯t have the space on their couch anymore. Luna and her mother¡¯s strained relationship showed. However, they both understood each other¡¯s lines. Slowly Luna¡¯s mother became more and more accepting. Not to the point of stopping with the deadnaming, but to the point where they could simply put all of the issues aside. Could just live in the moment without the time they were apart breaking them. Luna¡¯s mother suggested that Luna try and go for college. Surprising no one, she managed to get a state grant to cover her degree. Surprising only herself, Luna managed to get straight As for her first semester of college. She did horrid in middle and highschool. She got Ds and Cs, and only got her average to a 2.5 due to credit recovery. She thought that it would be a similar story in college. What Luna had forgotten was that she still got a 99 on the ASVAB after being out of highschool for nearly 3 years, and not actively using anything from school or studying for the test. She wasn¡¯t dumb, and the more free nature of college was much better for her grades. As Christmas came around life had finally seemed as though things were no longer in flux. In fact, Luna¡¯s mother had started to stand up to the rest of the family when it came to Luna, even if only to keep them from talking shit. With other young people in the family coming out, the family was breaking along lines. They saw what happened with Luna and her mother, and didn¡¯t want a similar scare. One where their kids were in a worse situation than Luna had been. So, things were actually turning up for the better! It would be a slow path from decent to good, but it didn¡¯t seem that far in the future. With all of the family drama, Luna¡¯s mother decided to hold a small family Christmas party. Just the people who lived in their home and no one else. So, Luna¡¯s mother, her mother¡¯s husband, Luna¡¯s older brothers, and Luna herself. It had turned out to be the correct decision. ¡ª---------- ¡°You didn¡¯t realize this had jalapenos?¡± asked Luna¡¯s mother. ¡°When I last bought them, there were no jalapenos I swear,¡± swore Jackson, Luna¡¯s eldest brother, ¡°it should have been perfectly fine, Normal pico de gallo, I don¡¯t know why this has so many jalapenos.¡± ¡°That does got a bit of a kick,¡± admitted Luna, ¡°though I think that if you put it on a chip it should balance out¡­ maybe¡­ probably¡­ okay probably not for you Ma, but I think me and Michael would like it.¡± If a glare could shove Luna backward, there would be a comically human sized hole in the wall behind Luna. ¡°Of course you would like it, Lucas,¡± said Luna¡¯s mother, deadnaming her child, ¡°You and Michael can handle this kinda el diablo spice, I can¡¯t, I don¡¯t care for hurting yourself like this by eating such spicy food.¡± Luna rolled her eyes at the comment. She always notices when her mother deadnames her, but she has gotten over it. Mostly. KInda. She is always tempted to write some more ¡®evil moms¡¯ in her stories whenever she does it too much too fast, but she knew that just made her stew in anger. That wasn¡¯t good for either of them. ¡°Lemme get some chips,¡± said Luna, ¡°You mind getting Michael, Jackson?¡± Jackson lets out a small ¡®Hee hee¡¯, which had everyone rolling their eyes, though not before Luna and her mother¡¯s Husband, Gorge, both let out small snorts. That joke is as old as they were, and never got any funnier. Though, puns weren¡¯t ever meant to be ¡®funny¡¯. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Luna got the chips while her eldest brother went and got the middle child. She had a few of the chips plain before dipping it into the pico de gallo. Luna liked it, as her mother claimed. ¡°This shit is lightwork,¡± said Michael, ¡°Why do you always complain about the barest level of spiciness Ma?¡± ¡°Perhaps because I have never liked spicy food like that,¡± replied Luna¡¯s mother. ¡°Yeah, like how you like Carrots- ow!¡± cried Jackson after receiving a sharp though mostly painless smack from his mother for bringing up the ¡®carrots incident¡¯. ¡°You ate 7 lbs of carrots in less than 2 days,¡± said Luna, ¡°You would have looked like Donald Trump if you were like 30 lbs fatter, a man, and spoke like a fisher always trying to one up the other fisher¡¯s big fish stories.¡± That got a small laugh from Michael, but it was mostly just snorts. ¡°It¡¯s good to have you back Luna,¡± said Jackson, using her chosen name on purpose. ¡°Good to be back,¡± said Luna, only partially lying. ¡ª---------- Luna watched Michael with one eye as their mother spoke prayer over their plates. Luna didn¡¯t care much for it herself, but her brother certainly cared even less given how much he was eating in the middle of it. ¡°-thank you god and jesus, Amen,¡± said Luna¡¯s mother while reaching over the table for a spoon of pulled pork. ¡°Don¡¯t think I didn¡¯t see you chewing,¡± said Jackson to Luna. ¡°I hab o iea-¡± Luna swallows the food she had in her mouth, ¡° what you are talking about.¡± ¡°Yeah, of course you don¡¯t,¡± said George, ¡°It¡¯s all of 20 seconds of waiting.¡± ¡°20 seconds where my tuna salad is getting warm, and my rice is getting cold,¡± said Luna, entirely unrepentant, ¡°at least I wasn¡¯t as blatant as Mi- ow!¡± Michael turned away, as if he didn¡¯t just kick Luna under the table. At least he did so against her good leg. Luna still felt pain in her right leg every now and then. ¡°Just eat your food!¡± said Luna¡¯s ma, exacerbated, ¡°Save the bickering for when this pork is almost out, or will you just leave it all for me to have?¡± ¡°You are not going to eat that whole thing yourself, Even you will feel too fat after all of that,¡± said Jackson. The death glare Jackson got was actually enough to get him to back track. ¡°Sorry Mom,¡± he said, looking down at his plate. ¡°Yeah you better be sorry,¡± said Luna¡¯s mom, ¡°You can¡¯t be saying anything either, when was the last time you went to the gym eh? Lucas is the thinnest one at this table now.¡± Luna¡¯s mom pinches Jackson¡¯s love handles to exemplify her point. Jackson¡¯s scandalized look got everyone laughing for a second. Despite what her mom said, the bickering never stopped while they were all sitting at the table. It was all good natured, and everyone had a smile on their face whenever food wasn¡¯t shoved in their face. Nearly two hours later, after all of them ate their fill, the whole family was all in the living room. Their first choice of movie didn¡¯t work out cuz it wasn¡¯t on Netflix for some reason. ¡°What about The Grinch?¡± asked Luna while she took the remote from her mother. ¡°Jim Carrey or Animated?¡± shot Michael as if it was the most important thing in the world. ¡°Jim Carrey, obviously.¡± ¡°I¡¯m for it,¡± said Jackson, which led to nods from everyone else. With a movie chosen, they settled in to watch it. Luna¡¯s mom was talking about the movie more so than watching it. Jackson was asking questions of their mother, exacerbating the issue for Michael and George who were trying to focus on the movie. Luna herself was constantly getting distracted by her phone. She wasn¡¯t an ass though, so she did put the brightness down to the lowest it could be to not mess with the others. Before the movie was even halfway over, George and Luna¡¯s mom had fallen asleep silently on the couch. Jackson and Michael both focused on the movie, but the sound of snores had them go and wake up Luna before she fell asleep too deeply to be moved. ¡°Go to sleep in your room if you are gonna sleep,¡± said Jackson. ¡°Yeah yeah I¡¯m goin¡¯, I love yall, Goodnight.¡± ¡°Love you too b-¡± Michael catches himself, ¡°Sis, see you in the morning.¡± Luna quickly hugged Michael and Jackson before heading to her room. She took a look at her bed. It was a loft bed, which was probably not the best option overall given her bad ankle. She didn¡¯t fully think about that when she got it, instead trying to not take up too much space with her bed and desk. Thankfully, with the steps rather than a ladder, she was at minimal risk. Luna crawled up to her bed. With a groan she realized she forgot her fan. She forced herself to crawl down, turn it on, and get back in bed. She was beat, and already half tired. When she finally closed her eyes, she had a smile on her face. She didn''t get long before a bright light woke her back up. She covers her eyes with a blanket, which doesn¡¯t help. She then turns and shoves her face into her pillow, hoping that whoever was grabbing something gets it and leaves. The light doesn¡¯t dim. Even with her face directly into a pillow. Luna¡¯s sleep deprived mind knows that isn¡¯t right. Slowly, she turns and opens her eyes. It was then that she saw that it wasn¡¯t ¡®light¡¯ she was seeing. Her room was actually pitch black. No, what she saw was a floating blue panel with blurry text. Her heart jumped in her chest as she recognized it. Such an iconic aspect of so many of the stories on her shelf. She spent way too much money on these books. She has read them over and over again. She knows what this is. She waits for her eyes to focus, the words slowly becoming more distinct.
You must become He Who Fights With Monsters, the core of Defiance of The Fall. In all 10 Realms of The Land, from the Underworld to a Reborn: Apocalypse, you must walk The Path of Ascension. Even in this Life in Exile, you must gain All The Skills. Everyone Loves Large Chests was not easy to work into this message, but as it was formulated by your unconscious mind this is on you.
Uhh¡­ what? Luna looks at the pop up window with utter confusion. She then sees another similar ¡®lightless glow¡¯ in the corner of her eye. Her bookshelf was glowing. More specifically, all of the books mentioned in the message are glowing. They took only a small fraction of her shelf, but that was still well over 40 books.
System Books Have Been Highlighted. Knowledge of these series has been hidden to others.
Systems Integration Time Calculating¡­
Systems Integration Processing¡­
Estimated System Integration Time: 38h 3m 28s
Please sleep to accelerate integration time by up to 30h
Luna looks at the flurry of notification boxes that have popped up. This wasn¡¯t in any of those books. Not in any way shape or form. She was tempted to stand up, tempted to go and read the glowing books on her shelf. She is also still 90% sure that she is still sleeping. The 10% that knows that this is real in some way is telling her to just give in to sleep. If this is real in some way¡­ then she should sleep. What convinced her to finally lie back down to sleep was the first thing that got ¡®Integrated¡¯, and the pop up that followed.
Apocalypse Countdown 364d, 14h, 23m 51s
Luna checked her phone. That countdown would make the Apocalypse strike¡­ at 3pm on Christmas next year. Luna could feel that time within herself. It was like nothing else. The closest thing she could link to this feeling was when you first get on a bike after years of not riding one. She just¡­ knew that it was right. He Who Fights With Monsters had waves of monsters flood the world, killing millions. Events that could have sent the world into nothingness. Reborn: Apocalypse starts with the last hope of humanity getting wiped out by godlike beings. Luna looks at her bookshelf. Defiance of The Fall had only 1 in every 10 humans survive a year. There were multiple planet wide threats one after the other. If the Apocalypse was anything like any of those Luna needs as much time as she could have. Luna instinctively closes the message boxes. It was as simple as wanting it to be done. Luna reached towards the step of her bed. Her steps also worked as drawers, and she pulled it open to grab some of the contents. First, some sleeping pills and a bottle of water. She takes three, one more than normal, and lies down, doing her best to to ignore the timer ticking down in her mind. 364d, 14h, 23m 26s 364d, 14h, 22m 46s 364d, 14h, 21m 37s 364d, 14h, 19m 40s 364d, 14h, 18m 4s She failed, an anxiety attack hitting her hard as she finally fell asleep. Chapter 1: The First Quest ¡°3¡­ 2¡­ 1!¡± yelled Luna¡¯s mother as they watched the screen. What followed was a cacophonous banging of pots, pans, and yells. Michael especially was going really hard with his pair of pans. His were the most beat up ones, which meant he could go as hard as he wanted with them. They were already replaced due to his Christmas gift to Luna, which was a cutesy pot and pan set. It would mostly get used by the house, but Luna was always complaining about the old bent and uneven cookery in the house. Luna couldn¡¯t really focus on the reverie of the new year though. All she can focus on was the notification she has been glancing at once every few hours ever since she gained this ability.
Apocalypse Countdown
It has been one week since that fateful Christmas night. She has learned a fair bit about what she could do, but learned even more that she doesn¡¯t have nearly the whole picture. Not enough to understand what all she has anyway. With a flicker of thought, she looks at the system integration percentage.
System Integration at { 94% }. Get stronger to complete System Integration.
A lot has been unlocked, though it seems that the final 6% is locked behind some threshold of power that Luna herself is far from achieving. She has much of the framework already. She can brute force a lot of the information she needs due to the information she has from her stories. However, she is unable to fully interact with the systems in place. The last 6% is likely the instinctual understanding of the rest of the system. All of the mechanics feel like they are there, but Luna hasn¡¯t been able to actually open it all just yet. It¡¯s like she had a 6th limb attached to her. She is trying to get it to do stuff before the nerves are fully connected. The best she can do is move her whole ¡®body¡¯ to try and see if she can interact with it. Luna has spent the last few days focusing mostly on rereading her stories, and seeing what ¡®knowledge of these series have been removed¡¯ means. It wasn¡¯t completely removed from the internet or anything. In fact, nothing seems to have been removed. The series were still posted in full online if possible. They are still on Amazon. Her physical books can still be interacted with by her family. What ¡®removed¡¯ seems to mean is that nobody remembers it but her. She tried talking about The Path of Ascension with Michael. It was Michael who introduced that series to her, even if he hadn¡¯t gotten past the second book due to feeling like it was going too slow. They were able to talk about it, but as soon as Michael got distracted with a different tangent in the conversation or something he saw, he completely forgot what the series was. The instant it wasn¡¯t the active focus of his mind, it was wiped. Which was¡­ weird to say the least of it. Luna knew that trusting everything to stay online the full year was not a safe bet. The biggest thing was the discord servers, Patreons, and other similar forms of direct author interaction. She spent much of the last week finding as much objective information on the series and saving it on an external hard drive. If she saved it as text it could all fit on a USB, but she couldn¡¯t. She wasn¡¯t able to blankly read the bare text for that long. She bought the books, but she spent most of her time interacting with these series in audiobooks. The physical copies were mostly to just further support the authors. She had tried to interact with Shirtaloon, the author of He Who Fights With Monsters by DMing him on Discord. When she was about to hit enter she got a prompt.
Interaction Blocked
That was it. Every time she did so something seemed to physically stop her. Experimentation showed that she could interact broadly with many different creators. Buying Patreon tiers, sending posts in servers. Any form of direct interaction with them however, gets that same notification. She even managed to interact with a different creator. Void Herald who made many different series on her shelf. It was a nice interaction, but as soon as she tried to mention any of the 10 series that were mentioned in her initial post, Void Herald went dead. He only responded again once someone else got his attention somewhere else. The whole channel was dead until Luna deleted her post. Luna, to the best of her understanding, was alone in all of this. She was either going insane, or some aspect of the coming system had chosen her for¡­ something. The only system from any of the series that was sentient, or at the very least intelligent, was the one from Defiance of The Fall. However, that system would have just integrated this universe into their multiverse if it was that system. Luna can also feel things that weren¡¯t in any of those series. It¡¯s¡­ so weird. Everything was merged and blended together, but she can only see the silhouette right now. The only thing Luna knew how to do now compared to when she went to sleep last week, was how to get stronger. It was the only thing she could interact with, as it came to her in the form of a prompt. One she opens up as the banging and yells finally dies down.
It was there when she woke up. A simple quest, but one that taught her a lot on its own. First, it¡¯s a ¡®story quest¡¯. Something that wasn¡¯t in any of the series she had known before. The format of the quest was more like HWFWM than anything else, though with the influx of information about the quest and its rewards common to The Land. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. There were, however, only so many ways to format a Quest Screen, and Luna had already figured out that she couldn¡¯t fully trust any of her books to be 100% accurate. The systems getting mashed together meant that nothing would fully ¡®fit¡¯. Just looking at the Objective, she doesn¡¯t have much of an idea of what that really means. None of the systems have a way for her to do that without already having some level of power. The ones that did imply such things required pain on a level Luna wasn¡¯t ready for, or decades of training which Luna didn¡¯t have the time to do. She was half tempted to take the 4k she had saved in her bank account and go on a spiritual journey through Tibet. Try and see if Mt. Everlasting Peace actually existed, and see if she could learn from them what she needed. It was a dumb idea, on multiple levels. Putting aside the incredible unlikeliness of such a place actually existing, there was a ¡®pathbreaking¡¯ aspect of Buddhism within Defiance of The Fall. Luna wasn¡¯t a monk, and didn¡¯t want to have her future path predestined, and in such a way that limited her actions. If Luna wasn¡¯t going crazy¡­ She felt a need to keep her agency. She wanted to be free to do as she wanted. ¡°Hey Luna.¡± Luna jumped in her clothes, suddenly feeling very out of place. She turned to see where the voice came from. It was Jackson. He had a faint smile on his face. Had being the operative word. He knew Luna. He knew that look on her face. ¡°What¡¯s wrong,¡± he asked, worry clear on his face. Luna shook her head, trying to shake off the funk within her heart. ¡°Nothing, I¡¯m just tired. I haven¡¯t been getting enough sleep the last few days,¡± said Luna. Not a lie. Luna has read book after book after book. She was reading them so fast that she wasn¡¯t really reading them, more skimming them to try and revitalize her knowledge. In the last week she had only gotten 30 hours of sleep, with the largest chunk of those hours coming on christmas night. ¡°You have to calm down your reading a little bit Luna,¡± said Jackson, ¡°You are reading like you are cramming for a school exam. I don¡¯t even really know why you are reading so fervently, but you don¡¯t exactly have the books for your next semester at school, and it¡¯s not like you study.¡± Luna looks down at the pan and wooden spoon in her hands. That reminds her, she needs to get back to it. She has read big meaty chunks of each series, while finding as much information online as she can. ¡°I just¡­ have a feeling Jack,¡± Luna looks down at her hands, ¡°I need to kick my ass into gear this next year, If I don¡¯t change things by Christmas next year I will just get left behind, I¡¯ll have stagnated and missed my opportunity.¡± Luna¡¯s mom goes over and hugs Luna. ¡°Lucas, you don¡¯t need to feel like that, it isn¡¯t like there is some countdown to oblivion, You have all the time in the world,¡± said her Mother. Luna looks over to the corner of her vision.
Apocalypse Countdown
¡°It doesn¡¯t change the fact that it feels like something will go bad if I don¡¯t do something Mom,¡± Luna said, ¡°It¡¯s like¡­ a feeling that the world I know is going to end if I don¡¯t do this one thing.¡± ¡°And what is this thing you feel you need to do?¡± asked Michael. Luna looks at her slew of prompts, then over to her quest. She looks over to Michael, while scratching the back of her head. ¡°Balance my Soul?¡± she said, more like a question than a statement. Luna looks around to her family¡­ and then noticed the way their faces seem to ¡®reset¡¯. She can¡¯t mention her quest objectives so directly. ¡°I feel I need to grow my confidence, Need to grow my willpower, Need to grow more sure in myself and what I can do,¡± she pauses trying to think about how to formulate it, ¡°I need to become who I want to be. Not lock myself away.¡± Luna¡¯s mother looks at her, backing away slightly while still holding her child. This sounds very close to how the talks around her wish to transition to female sounded. Everyone looks at Luna¡¯s mother, seeing how she backed away. They saw the similarities just as her mother had. Luna¡¯s mother pulled Luna close, holding her child in her arms. ¡°How can we help?¡± she asked, ¡°How can we help you?¡± Luna looks at her mom, then the rest of her family who are looking at her with worry. For as many issues Luna had with her family¡­ She loved them. Maybe not the extended family, but everyone in this room. Luna wasn¡¯t some leader. She was an emotional wreck, but if she wasn¡¯t going mad, she felt that this System Integration was something that was putting her on a specific path. One of conflict and blood. One where she needed to fight at the front, and become the hope of humanity. It was one of the few constants between all of her series. ¡°I¡­¡± Luna sucks in a breath, ¡°Acceptance.¡± Luna looks down at her hands, tracing the lines of them with her eyes. Time seemed to slow down as nobody really knew how to respond. Jackson looked like he was about to say something, but George stopped him. He saw the look on his wife¡¯s face. This was either going to go really good, or really bad. ¡°Lucas¡­ is not here anymore is he?¡± asked Luna¡¯s mom, ¡°Lucas became something else a long while ago, his¡­ her body is just not catching up to her, I¡¯ll try better.¡± Luna looks over to her mom, tears welling up in her eyes. She saw a mirrored feeling in her mother¡¯s face. The first tear fell down Luna¡¯s cheek. ¡°Luna¡­¡± said her mother, ¡°I think¡­ if you were born a girl I could have named you that.¡± Luna¡¯s mother wipes her daughter¡¯s tears off of her cheek. A prompt appears in the corner of her eye, but she drives it away with less than an ounce of thought. ¡°I love you, I will always love you, you are the youngest of my children, You are one of the greatest prides in my life, and I can¡¯t resist this my whole life,¡± Luna¡¯s mother lets out a small laugh, ¡°Oh I was already giving in, it will take time for me to fully internalize it¡­ but I can¡¯t keep stifling you¡­ so Luna¡­ I won¡¯t fully understand¡­ but I will stop fighting this, Fighting you I-¡± Luna¡¯s mother was cut off by Luna grabbing her in the fiercest hug they have had since Luna was a teenager. Luna¡¯s soft tears became ugly crying, which spread to Luna¡¯s mother. It didn¡¯t take long for everyone else to join in, tears entering the eyes of everyone. The family didn¡¯t lose all of their issues with this act. However, the sword of damocles that was held above them ever since Luna came back was finally taken down. Luna felt the acceptance from her mother, and knew that her words weren¡¯t empty. It will take time to destress¡­ but now¡­ now once she is all cried out, she can focus on her task.
QUEST COMPLETE
Chapter 2: The Tutorial Phase
Apocalypse Countdown 327d, 2h, 7m, 15s
A month has passed since the new year. Luna has spent a lot of that time familiarizing herself with the functionalities that the system has given her. A lot of that time was spent shifting how the interface showed itself to her. One thing she had learned to do was ¡®wash¡¯ the notifications over herself, allowing the information within to enter her mind as if it was always there. Sometimes though, it¡¯s still better to read it out. The biggest thing though, was what she was able to make her Character Sheet. It was certainly a work in progress, as she still hasn¡¯t yet fully integrated the system into herself, but it works for now.
Character Sheet
General Information Attributes Titles
Name Luna Alicea Gonzalez Strength 17 { 20 } Average
Nature Human Dexterity 20 { 20 }
Alignment Earth ( Humans ) Constitution 16 { 20 }
Tier 0 Intelligence 29 { 50 }
Level 0 Wisdom 25 { 50 }
XP 0% Charisma 24 { 25 }
Character Points 0 Luck 30 { 30 }
Active Quests
Story Quests
System Installation II System Installation III
System Installation IIII System Installation V
Limited Quests
On A Roll I
Radiant Quests
Daily Conditioning Studious Student
Luna knew there was a lot missing. A lot of math that was hidden behind those attribute numbers. She had tried to understand it all, but it¡¯s simply too complex for her. However, the numbers in the curly brackets are different from the other numbers. That¡¯s because that is her allocated Character Points. Though, while those numbers are pretty good, she knows that they aren¡¯t much of anything as of yet. She has a feeling those numbers will eventually be getting quite bloated. For now though, she doesn¡¯t have her ¡®full¡¯ capabilities just yet. The number on the left is what she has right now, and the number on the right is what she will have as soon as she finishes the final quest in the ¡®System Installation¡¯ quest chain.
The system is capping how fast she can get each piece of the system. Forcing her to act in a way that would prepare her for the future, or help her with her life as it is now. If the system didn¡¯t have the Apocalypse Countdown, Luna may have truly loved it. Instead it¡¯s just bittersweet. At least she can¡¯t sit on her ass and leave things for tomorrow. She is forced to complete her quests as best as she possibly can. For example, the ¡®Daily Conditioning¡¯ quest was one of the ¡®Radiant¡¯ quests she has. Meaning she can complete it over and over again for as long as it was accessible to her.
QUEST COMPLETE
This Quest was the first one with a ¡®Link¡¯. It was a hologram that only appeared in Luna¡¯s vision, showing her what to do. It was a half hour of workouts that made her sweat and had her muscles ache. Even then, she did it every day. She noticed herself losing weight, but her stats don¡¯t change at all. The only thing she has seen is that her bad leg no longer panged. It was just as good as her other leg. The ¡®Push It To The Limit¡¯ optional Objective was to double the required workouts in a single setting. She has only been able to complete it 9 other times over the course of the month. Each time she did so, the Workout Regiment got harder, but she was strong enough now to handle it. She turns in the quest with a mental flick, and a box appears in her hands. It was nondescript, appearing like a normal cardboard box. This wasn¡¯t her first time with a Common Random Loot Box. With her other 9 completions of the quest, she got one. The Loot Boxes are always very useful, at least at this stage. 3 of those pulls were cash infusions. 10k just randomly got transferred to her bank account each time. Nobody seemed to note the money unless she started spending it. Even then, it seemed like the knowledge was hidden just like that of the series she was told about in the past. Each of her other pulls were individual items. One was in the form of a Navaja with a single magical rune on the side. Luna wasn¡¯t able to figure out what it did, but she tested it on a pork shoulder that was going to be made for dinner, and it slid through and made a large cut on the bone with almost no brute force. Luna now kept it in her backpack for self defense. Another pull gave Luna a puzzle piece that was a hazy white. Luna had a decent idea of what it was, but didn¡¯t make any assumptions. She just kept what she was tentatively calling a ¡®Card Piece¡¯ in a hidden spot within her room.. Two pulls got Luna two different types of crystals. Neither could be interacted with, but both radiated a certain feeling to Luna which helped her calm down. The stronger of the two stayed in her backpack as well, while the weaker was placed next to her bed. It helped suffuse the area for when she next slept. It was the final two that made her really happy for the boxes. They both had very similar items. She couldn¡¯t identify them, but she felt instinctively that she could absorb them. She got the ¡®Interaction Blocked¡¯ message when she did though. She felt they were either Skill Crystals from different systems, or one was a Nexus or Mana crystal. She doesn¡¯t fully know, however. Luna opens her loot box with an eagerness driven by greed. All of her excitement drains as she sees what is inside. This time, all that was inside was a normal sticky note that says ¡®Dud Roll¡¯. Luna scrunches the sticky note and tosses it in the trash can she kept in her room. Can¡¯t be lucky every time eh? Luna just dumps her character points into Wisdom. This raises it from the current virtual ¡®50¡¯, up to ¡®52¡¯. ¡®Virtual¡¯ because the full effect of her stats won¡¯t be available until she finishes System Installation V. For now, it¡¯s just numbers, which, truthfully, is more than enough motivation for Luna. All of these boring tasks are made so much more fun when she feels she is progressing her development in a much more direct fashion. Her Title is a show of what that is.
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She got this title once she rounded off all of her stats to a 20. It also meant that Luna was smart and was wise. She was lucky too. All of this before she ever got this system. It was easy to write yourself off, but when you have direct mathematical proof of your skills and abilities then it is just kinda hard to refute. A drop of sweat drips off of Luna¡¯s chin, and she takes a second look at her System Integration II quest. Tomorrow, she will complete that quest. For now, she heads off to take a shower. A warm shower was exactly what Luna needed after such a hard workout. Her muscles slowly relaxed as she did, letting the water pressure press into her back. Her eyes were closed as she enjoyed the heat and steam. Though, she couldn¡¯t help but check out her other Radiant Quest.
Luna smiled as she looked at the rewards. She gets 10 Attribute Points for every credit hour of her college courses. Luna filled her schedule with as many courses as she felt she could handle, getting 6 different classes. What¡¯s an attribute point some may ask? They raise her Attributes 1 to 1. Character Points have a 10 points to an increase of 1 in an attribute. Likely because they have some other purpose Luna doesn¡¯t yet know about. She assumes it has to deal with the Skill and Class Systems though. Until she knows what else they can be used for though, she will keep using them to boost her stats. A bit wasteful yes, but if they can be gained so easily, there is no reason to leave them sitting around collecting dust. The classes were hard, but that was just because she was actually doing her classwork. She felt like the rewards were already in her grasp. It was all for the purpose of completing her Limited Quest.
The rewards had Luna salivating. Character Packages were essentially ways to get some of the abilities or other advantages that one of the main characters of those series had when they started out. None of their growth, but she could have some of their ¡®setup¡¯. It was everything Luna was dreaming of whenever she read their stories. To have their abilities. To become someone powerful who had more agency over their future than she felt she had in the past. Luna can only assume that the ¡®#¡¯ on the ¡®Extra Reward¡¯ means that for every class she has an A in, she gets 1 character package. She hopes it¡¯s like that. She knows it likely wasn¡¯t going to be like that, but hope for hope''s sake isn¡¯t a bad thing. This quest is also a chain quest. Luna can¡¯t wait for the rest of the year to finish this quest¡¯s requirements. She needs to get it as soon as possible to complete the other quests in the chain. She hopes that they will all have similarly powerful boosts. ¡°Hey Luna! Stop hogging all of the hot water,¡± shouted Matthew, who was banging on the door to the bathroom. Luna turns the water off while shouting back. ¡°I¡¯ll be out now!¡±
¡°You can do it, another 10 seconds!¡± yelled Matthew as he timed Luna¡¯s latest plank. ¡°You can do it, you can do it!¡± screamed Jackson. All the while, Luna¡¯s mother was watching it from the table, sipping on a cup of coffee. A smile was on her face as she watched her kids. Luna, on the other hand, was not focusing at all on her brother¡¯s yelling. She was barely focusing on anything other than breathing. She, however, was staring intently at the ground. Or rather, the prompt in front of her eyes. She won¡¯t be able to ¡®Push It To The Limit¡¯ today. She already knew that from doing it yesterday. That, however, wasn¡¯t what she was looking at.
QUEST COMPLETE
Luna collapsed to the ground, her body all but giving out as soon as she saw the prompt change. Her brothers cried out as they looked at the timer. ¡°Nearly 2 minutes! Under by just 10 seconds, you did really well Luna,¡± said Jackson, while trying to help her up. Luna¡¯s noodle arm barely grabbed her brother¡¯s arm. He yanked her to her feet as if she were a sack of potatoes. Luna swayed on her feet for half a second while her brother kept her steady. ¡°I may have brought you up a bit fast,¡± said Jackson, ¡°You think you will be fine?¡± ¡°Yeah, I just need to get some food into me, I already have an idea of what to eat.¡± Michael looks at the stuff on the table. ¡°You sure it was a smart idea to take out that meat before you started working out?¡± ¡°It hasn¡¯t been more than an hour, It won¡¯t hurt me as long as I cook it.¡± ¡°As long as it¡¯s you let me have a bite, do whatever you want,¡± said her mother, ending the conversation with a chorus of agreements. Luna wasn¡¯t the best cook in the house. That had to be her mother. However, her mother made sure all of her kids knew how to cook to get a girlfriend. Of her kids, Luna was the best, and cooked entirely different kinds of food. Her mother cooked mostly Puerto Rican dishes and the occasional ¡®toss things together¡¯ soul food meals. Luna focused more on french and italian foods, with some west asian foods as well, due to watching a ton of cooking youtube. ¡°I¡¯m gonna season the meat then take a shower,¡± said Luna as she took off the now super sweaty shirt. She still has a black tank top on, so didn¡¯t feel exposed at all. Michael and Jackson both go off to do what they were doing before Luna asked for a spotter. Luna¡¯s mother watches what her daughter does to make sure she doesn¡¯t fuck up that steak she had let rest on the counter. ¡°How are you cooking that steak?¡± ¡°I¡¯m going to pan fry it, then make some asparagus in the fond. As a side, I¡¯m gonna use some of the mashed potatoes from last night. Why?¡± ¡°Then you shouldn¡¯t use the soy sauce on the steak. It¡¯ll burn and make it harder to tell the color.¡± ¡°I know how to cook ma.¡± ¡°And I know that you sometimes forget about keeping your nose up, and undercook your food.¡± ¡°That was one time.¡± ¡°Oh? Just ¡®one time¡¯ you say? So when you made that chicken parm, those dumplings, those fried pork chops, tha-¡± ¡°Okay!¡± cried an exacerbated Luna, putting the soy sauce to the side, ¡°Your point has been made. I¡¯m going to go take a shower now thank you.¡± ¡°Your welcome sweety,¡± said her mother in as sickly sweet a tone she could manage. ¡°Don¡¯t make me hug you,¡± Luna said, while squinting at her mother. Luna¡¯s mother silently stands up and walks over to her room, ignoring her sweaty daughter. Luna heads over to the bathroom. She already laid out her clothes and stepped into the shower as soon as the water was hot. The soreness in her muscles slowly bled away to the heat. She lathers herself up with soap and washes it all away. She then just lets herself enjoy the heat. All things must come to an end, and she couldn¡¯t wait for another second.
QUEST COMPLETE
Luna turns in the quest. A lightness begins to burn deep in her chest as she felt an energy rush through her. It was as if she could run a marathon. No 10 marathons! Her heart was beating hard. Luna almost began to run in place in the shower. It would have ended badly, but what came next was arguably worse. A stomach deep sickness ran through her. It was at this moment that she remembered that most cultivation systems focus heavily on the expulsion of¡­ impurities. Luna rushed to the toilet, still soaking wet. She hurled into the toilet the most vile shit she has ever smelled. It was black, and sticky like tar. It had a distinctive smell worse than anything else she had ever smelled before. Luna vomited these impurities twice more, before she felt all that would leave her had done so. The only silver lining was that the taste left her mouth quickly. The fumes were making her eyes water though, and she couldn¡¯t focus on anything else. It was only after she flushed the toilet that she realized someone was knocking on the door. ¡°Are you alrigh- oh FUCK,¡± yelled a concerned Michael, ¡°What died in there?¡± ¡°My dignity, and breakfast,¡± said Luna, trying to help her brother rationalize it. ¡°You better spray half a bottle of air freshener. I am not entering that bathroom unless the smell is at least halfway gone.¡± Luna rolls her eyes. The smell was already fading. She still sprayed a tenth of a bottle of Febreze around the whole bathroom before heading back into the shower. She felt cleaner than ever, but still hadn¡¯t yet cleaned her hair. Once that has been done, she checks her swath of notifications.
Shop And Cultivation Systems Integrating¡­
Integration Complete!
Shop has been automatically added to a new tab
Cultivation systems have been added to a new tab
Quest Rewards Updated
Luna looks at the notifications. That all was likely a very big understatement. A smile comes to Luna¡¯s face when she checks her ¡®Daily Conditioning¡¯ quest.
QUEST COMPLETE
That tells Luna quite a lot on its own. It also helps to explain why the Shop and Cultivation were both put together. The shop has some rank or tier based limitation, as well as ¡®Tiered¡¯ money that each can be used for other things, like some video games. Luna can feel that there are other limitations, probably due to levels, classes, and jobs, but that is much more straightforward, and much less foundational to the shop. Still, Luna can only smile as she looks at the 100 F Grade Shop Credits. With a little mental math, she figures she could get 32,700 credits off of this quest alone. It made her want to take a glance at her other radiant quest and her limited quest.
Her Limited Quest had no changes. The Character Packages were likely extremely good on their own, so there was no reason to add even more incentive. To be fair, that was probably right anyway. Her other Radiant quest though? A major infusion of Shop Credits, doubled if she got straight As. ¡°My love, the hot water!¡± cried Luna¡¯s mother through the wall, ¡°You have been in there for an hour!¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be out in a second!¡± yelled Luna. Luna will need to take time to figure out the intricacies of her quest rewards later. Chapter 3: The Next Step
Apocalypse Countdown 242d, 5h, 28m, 15s
It has been 2 months since Luna finished her second System Integration quest. In that time Luna has gained a much better understanding of what it is she has available to her. She even has a vague idea of what it may look like in the end. There are only so many ways to handle things like jobs and classes. However, with how long her current Limited Quest will take to complete, she may only have a few weeks of full system integration before the Apocalypse. At least if her On A Roll quest chain is just staying on the Honor Roll. Luna is just psyching herself out. Things have been progressing quite nicely. Plus, today is going to be the day she completes her next Story Quest. Luna hadn¡¯t been able to complete as many Push It To The Limit optional objectives as she would have liked in the last 3 months. The good news was that she was able to complete her Story Quest through completing the Optional Objective of her Studious Student quest. She just needs to complete this day of school and then it will all be done. Luna stops watching the fairly familiar view of the bus¡¯ path and Instead, she focuses on something much closer. Her current character sheet.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation NON NON NON
Character Sheet
General Information Attributes Titles
Name Luna Alicea Gonzalez Strength 17 { 20 } Average
Nature Human Dexterity 20 { 20 }
Alignment Earth ( Humans ) Constitution 16 { 20 }
Tier 0 Intelligence 29 { 100 }
Level 0 Wisdom 25 { 100 }
F Grade Credits 8,500 Charisma 24 { 29 }
Character Points 0 Luck 30 { 100 }
Active Quests
Story Quests
System Installation III System Installation IIII
System Installation V
Limited Quests
On A Roll I
Radiant Quests
Daily Conditioning Studious Student
Luna had focused on her Wisdom Stat for a while. However, as soon as she got that stat to 100, she got a new Title.
After Luna got this title she was convinced to raise all of her stats to an even 100 before focusing on anything else. Completing this title seemed like it would have incredible benefits. Likely increasing the effects of her stats across the board given the individual effects of each stat reaching a ¡®superhuman¡¯ level. What surprised her though, was how easy it was to get to superhuman levels in her stats. It meant that the power scale is on the higher end of all of her stories. More like Defiance of The Fall than The Land. That meant that Luna could expect to be doing some comic book superhero business as soon as she reached full system functionality. It also meant that a lot of people were going to die. Her speed of growth was only possible due to her slow but steady easing into the system. The panic from the full worldwide integration that Luna suspected will occur when her Apocalypse Timer ran out made her sick to her stomach. So many won¡¯t get a handle of the system, and if it was anything like the ¡®Ruthless Heavens¡¯ from Defiance of The Fall, many will be culled simply to empower the elites that rise. It was that reason that made Luna wonder about the whole purpose of the System. Why had she been given a year''s head start? Why isn¡¯t she allowed to share her understanding of her series? Why did it only mention those 10 series? That last one was one of the most confusing. Why hadn¡¯t it also mentioned something like Omniscient Reader¡¯s Viewpoint? The removal of the series from anyone else felt very much like it was ripped right from that story. Before Luna even fully recognized it, she was at the bus station. Luna needs to travel through 2 different stations on 3 different buses to get home or to school. All in all, nearly an hour and a half of bus ride both ways, oftentimes delayed due to getting out of school at 6 pm. At least it gave her a lot of time to do her homework, but not today.
The bus ride home was very different from the ride to school. Instead of being bored out of her gord, she was giddy. Her last class was a breeze, and the final was online, open book, and incredibly easy. She saw that her score was a perfect 100 before she even left the classroom. All Luna could do was wait for her quest to update with barely contained excitement. She was ready! THERE!
QUEST COMPLETE
QUEST COMPLETE
Luna could almost bring herself to stand up and do a little dance right there on the bus! Almost. Instead she just has a giddy laugh as she punches her arms out. Sure Luna got some strange looks, but she had her earbuds in. People will just assume she was overreacting to what she was hearing and promptly ignore her. Luna doesn¡¯t turn in her Radiant Quest just yet. She had absolutely no idea how big an Epic Random Loot Box was, but didn¡¯t want to risk getting an item that won¡¯t fit into her backpack, or worse, be technically illegal. Instead¡­ she turns in her System Installation quest. That, at least, she knew won¡¯t backfire¡­
Talent And Skills Systems Integrating...
Wait didn¡¯t she purge a ton of impurities the last time she completed a quest like this? Hopefully something similar doesn¡¯t happen again. She does not want to have to deal with that sort of embarrassment in the middle of a crowded bus.
Integration Complete!
Talents have been automatically added to a new tab
Skill systems have been added to a new tab
Quest Rewards Updated!
Luna smiles as she takes a look at her character sheet and the new tabs. The smile widens even more as she realizes that there won¡¯t be any¡­ inopportune side effects due to her accepting of this quest. One thing she does notice is that she is going to need to restructure her whole character sheet. Well¡­ perhaps not the whole thing. It¡¯s nearly unintelligible right now with all of the new info. Good thing she has another hour and 10 minutes to her bus ride at a bare minimum. She has more than enough time to fix it before she goes home and opens the loot box.
Luna sits down in her chair at home. She hates how it feels like it is almost falling apart, but she isn¡¯t going to send any waves right now with her money situation. Aka the fact she has nearly 80k in her bank account at the moment. 80k tax free money that just appeared out of nowhere without even a bank statement to trace it back to where it came from. Nowadays Luna just uses the money to buy herself food on the long ride to and from school. She knows it¡¯s bad for her, but she is working out so much that a subway sandwich won¡¯t hurt her. First thing¡¯s first, Luna does the thing she has been itching to do since completing the quest. She turns it in. With an offhand thought, she places all of the attribute points into her Charisma stat, trying to raise that to 100 as fast as possible. As suspected, each point raises her stat by 1, rather than needing 10 as it had for Character Points. The stat went from just 29 to 89 in an instant. But what took her attention¡­ was the Epic Loot Box on her lap. It was the size of 2 of her desktop PCs taped together. Aka, it was massive. She slowly shifted it off of her lap and onto the ground to avoid damaging it. It was surprisingly heavy compared to how the Common loot box was. Even just scaling a common loot box to this size won¡¯t make it this heavy. Next¡­ she opened it, and found it empty. Half a second later, a prompt appeared in her vision.
50% Shop Coupon Code x 3 Acquired
That was¡­ actually quite useful. She won¡¯t lie to herself and say it was the best thing she thought she could have gotten, but it was still a really useful reward. She would hold onto those. There was a reason why she hadn¡¯t yet used the shop or gained any cultivation abilities, even after saving for 3 months.
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All cultivation abilities cost 10,000 shop credits as a base. This included Body Cultivation, Soul Cultivation, Mana Cultivation, even the more obscure or difficult types like Beast and Mind Cultivation were all still just a flat 10,000 credits. She hadn¡¯t had enough for any cultivation ability before today. Oh sure there were useful things in the shop for the 100 credits per day she made. For example, one thing was immensely tempting.
Ability Cards are from All The Skills. They aren¡¯t called by that name in that series, but the mechanics are simple enough for her to understand. Complete the card, get an ability. The only reason she hadn¡¯t been buying ability card shards and already had a quartet of new abilities she may have been able to use was quite simple. Luna didn¡¯t want any Common Ability Cards. Luna knew she was greedy, and knew she may be wasting time in holding out. However, there was a concept that rang true among almost all of the series mentioned in her little ¡®introductory¡¯ prompt. There is the concept of one¡¯s ¡®Path¡¯. The road they walk down in order to get stronger. Luna has a full year to ponder and understand how she wants to grow. Has a full year to read stories to see how their protagonists handled things. Has a full year to wait. Luna knew she would be losing out on some of her early progress due to her hesitancy. Knew that the early lead may very well be lost to others with genius level talent. She also knew that most ¡®geniuses¡¯ smack face first into a wall they will never be able to climb over due to not understanding all of the bottlenecks. Luna isn¡¯t trying to be the best of the best from the start. She is trying to become humanity¡¯s beacon of hope. To save as many lives as she could. So, she needs to understand these bottlenecks as much as she can before she confronts them, and needs to set herself up as well as she possibly can to break right through them. It¡¯s why Luna hadn¡¯t bought a Cultivation ability. She had the Credits¡­ but she needs to make sure that her form of cultivation fits her path. Plus, the Shop was tens of thousands of pages long, and that was just the abilities section. The list of artifacts that could be bought was equally long. She could even buy almost any mundane item she could think of using her Shop. Who knows what else she might need before she starts. At least Luna had taken an eye to the shop, searching and filtering for abilities she knew would be useful. Some existed in the shop that she didn¡¯t expect. Others were nowhere to be found. Others she just hadn¡¯t gotten to because she was still at the damn Js and haven¡¯t been able to take the time to slog through it. She has been making use of a spreadsheet to take note of abilities she liked and could afford before the apocalypse. That spreadsheet alone had nearly 300 abilities, and had been pruned down multiple times to get to that number, even with damn near 2/3 of the shop just barely skimmed. With a sigh, Luna takes a look at her new Character Sheet.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
General Information Attributes Titles
Name Luna Alicea Gonzalez Strength 17 { 20 } Incomplete Superhuman
Nature Human Dexterity 20 { 20 }
Alignment Earth ( Humans ) Constitution 16 { 20 }
Tier 0 Intelligence 29 { 50 }
Level 0 Wisdom 25 { 50 }
XP 0% Charisma 24 { 25 }
Character Points 0 Luck 30 { 30 }
Active Quests
Story Quests
System Installation II System Installation III
System Installation IIII System Installation V
Limited Quests
On A Roll I
Radiant Quests
Daily Conditioning Studious Student
Racial Talents
Racial Talents have not been unlocked. Please purchase a ¡®Character Overhaul¡¯ in the shop, acquire a Racial job, or use a Character Package to unlock your Racial Talents.
Personal Talents
Personal Talents have not been unlocked. Please purchase a Talent Awakening in the shop, acquire a Racial job, or use a Character Package to unlock your Racial Talents.
Sadly, not much has changed. Well, not ¡®much¡¯. She moved talents from their own page into a subsection of her front page. She felt that was the easiest way to have it for now. What¡¯s more important is the ¡®Character Overhaul¡¯ mentioned in her ¡®Racial Talents¡¯ section. Before she integrated this part of the system, such a thing did not exist. Now though, it was in her shop. It proved the fact that things get added to the shop as she integrates more systems, which to Luna proved that she was right to wait before buying anything. This though? It was something she wished for since she was a young child.
Luna will lose the overwhelming majority of her credits in an instant if she buys this. She will still have months to wait until she can enjoy the benefits of the changes. But¡­ this is an instant transition. No months of HRT. No recovery from surgeries. All Dysphoria gone in an instant. Luna has internalized that she is a she. She thinks of herself using the ¡®She¡¯ pronoun. All of her family members use ¡®She¡¯ when talking to her. However, there was always this moment of hesitation from everyone as they remember the pronoun she prefers. The way that people will assume ¡®he¡¯ whenever they meet her for the first time always feels like a new cut against her back. The way that people react when she tells them that she is trans. Without even thinking all that much, Luna spent the 25,000 credits, using one of her 50% off coupons. She feels the ability settle into herself. It was¡­ instinctual. It wasn¡¯t as if it was always there, but it was a learned skill that she got instantaneously. Like a new hobby you were just getting the hang of. She tried to use it. Some part of it wanted to work, but it didn¡¯t finish. She didn¡¯t have all of the prerequisites to activate the ability because it didn¡¯t fully integrate itself. Luna opens her shop page in a panic, collapsing the actual shop itself in order to not get distracted.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
Shop Page
Shop Abilities
Mind
NONE NONE
Body
NONE NONE
Soul
Character Overhaul NONE
Shop
Mundane Items Magical Items Abilities
( Shop Collapsed )
Page 1
A bone deep sigh of relief allows Luna to calm down. Somewhat. The ability didn¡¯t get its one use burnt on her knee jerk use of it. As she looks at her Shop page, she frowns. She really should have ¡®Current Currency¡¯ clearly plastered somewhere on it. A change for later. For now¡­ Luna has spent all of her credits that she wanted to. With a lazy glance, she looks at her Cultivation and Skills pages.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
Cultivation Sheet
You lack any cultivation potential. Cultivation potential can be unlocked through abilities in the shop, acquired with a class/skill, or through innate ability.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
Skills Page
Shop Abilities
Mundane Skills
Cultivation Skills
Combat Skills
Body Enhancement Skills
Social Skills
Luna knew that the Cultivation page hadn¡¯t yet had any changes. It stung that she didn¡¯t have enough innate ability to cultivate, but she suspected that if she had that before, she would have shown the capability at some point. It was the skills page that made her the most intrigued. She had done a lot of things that she considered ¡®skillful¡¯ even in just the time since she was on the bus. However, nothing has worked yet to really gain a skill. It, however, wasn¡¯t something that was limited by her not having bought the right ability. She just simply didn¡¯t know how it worked. She wished she could just ask the system what that meant, but the system didn¡¯t work like that. It wasn¡¯t interactive in that way. That was part of what was helping her formulate a plan of her path. First though¡­ Luna needs to acquire a skill.
Luna stared at the prompt in front of her eyes confused out of her mind. She had spent all day trying her hardest to get a skill. She did so much stupid stuff with the intent of getting a skill out of it. After all of her normal stuff didn¡¯t work, she even volunteered to clean the bathroom, kitchen, and living room in hopes of getting a cleaning skill. The moment she sat down and started to wind down though, that was when she got a skill. She wasn¡¯t even trying to get a skill. She was just¡­ Luna may very well be an idiot. She wasn¡¯t putting her all into any of her previous tasks. She was only trying enough to maybe get a skill. Creative writing is both a passion and something she did for months as part of three different classes last semester in different ways. She was wholly focused on her writing. That focus must be what she needs. This made Luna even further appreciate the hints she got from her different series. If she didn¡¯t already read all of them, she may very well have spent days single mindedly focusing on getting skills rather than knowing a calming break would be just what she needed. Now¡­ Luna has a firm idea of what her next steps should be¡­ and an even more firm idea of what her path may be. Perhaps it was somewhat prophetic that her first skill would be ¡®Creative Writing¡¯. Chapter 4: A Small Break
Apocalypse Countdown 146d, 0h, 27m, 34s
It has been half a year since Luna first gained the system. She knows that she has spent the time as well as she could have expected. Just today she finished the last of her more short term goals. Everything else will take more time. She should feel a rush like she had before. Instead she was left with an odd feeling of restlessness. She was run so ragged for the last few months that she felt she would lose her head by the end of the year. The last semester of school in particular was a bit of a trainwreck. Luna did indeed qualify for the honor roll, and was able to get into all Honors classes pretty easily. However, there were 3 main issues. The first was that she took as many classes as she could. Luna wanted as many rewards as she could have from her now completed [ On A Roll I ] quest. 6 honors level courses were not something she could sustain. Within the first 3 weeks, she dropped out of 2 of the classes, leaving her with just 4 classes. The second was her Honors US History professor. He was a jackass and will fill Luna¡¯s nightmares for months or even years to come. Mr. Bronson would speak so fast that you wouldn¡¯t be able to fully write down your notes on the slide. Oh, you could take your phone out and take a picture of it, but that would make him take a few points off your grade for being distracted. It wasn¡¯t enough for most people to care, but for Luna who needed every point so that she could get an A, it wasn¡¯t something she could accept. The final issue was her Honors Composition final. Luna needed to write a nearly 20 page essay about a true crime that happened, as if she were a detective on a case. She may love writing, but the strictness of the assignment constrained her, alongside the topic with which she had no care for. She got a B, and it very nearly tanked her grade to that level too. She was able to, thankfully, scrape by with an A due to not missing on any other assignment. Still, she was able to complete her quest. She accepted it a long while ago, but she still pulls up the pair of quest completions she had just 4 days prior.
QUEST COMPLETE Limited Quest: [ On A Roll I ] Do your best in school. Get on a roll, the Honor Roll Objective: Get on the Honor Roll 1/1 Reward: Character Package Optional Objective: Get Straight As While On The Honor Roll 1/1 Extra Reward: 4 Character Packages
QUEST COMPLETE Radiant Quest: [ Studious Student ] Enrich your mind through study and scholarly practice by getting the best grades you can! Objective: Complete Semester With B Average 1/1 Reward: 60 Attribute Points, 10,000 F Grade Shop Credits Optional Objective: Complete Semester With Straight As 1/1 Extra Reward: Epic Random Loot Box, 10,000 F Grade Shop Credits
Luna got 5 character packages in total, as well as another 20,000 credits. The biggest surprise was the Loot Box. From that, she got what she assumed to be a Bag Of Holding. It took the form of a rucksack. When she put items inside, they took up certain ¡®Slots¡¯, just like a video game. Each slot had a limited amount of space, but didn¡¯t actually restrict the kinds of items that could fit within it. Just 10 slots of around 5 cubic feet worth of volume, which was extremely useful in of itself. The only downside was that the items in the bag weren¡¯t weightless. They instead had their weight reduced to around 10% of what it was. Still, it became Luna¡¯s new all around use bag. Now, whenever she opened any loot boxes like from her [ Daily Conditioning ] quest, the item instantly appeared in her bag. She figured it out just now when a new Ability Card Shard appeared inside the bag rather than in the box. Even better, today was when she finally raised all of her stats to 100. Her ¡®Incomplete SuperHuman¡¯ title had been upgraded.
Title: [ Superhuman ] Your stats have reached the pinnacle of capability within your race. All of your stats have their effects increased. This title has been upgraded from the Title [ Incomplete Superhuman ]. This title can be upgraded for increased effects.
The rush that came with raising her stats that little bit to reach 100 in every stat was euphoric. It wasn¡¯t just an emotional high either. Luna had been literally changed. The ¡®effect¡¯ of her stats was boosted, sidestepping her temporary stat limiter. Only now did she feel how raising her stats should feel. She was stronger, more confident, she even thought faster. It was a change strong enough for her to clearly notice when she first got it, but weak enough to fade into the background of her thoughts.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
General Information Attributes Titles
Name Luna Alicea Gonzalez Strength 17 { 100 } Superhuman Skilled
Nature Human Dexterity 20 { 100 }
Alignment Earth ( Humans ) Constitution 16 { 105 }
Tier 0 Intelligence 29 { 105 }
Level 0 Wisdom 25 { 105 }
F Grade Credits 32,700 Charisma 24 { 105 }
Character Points 10 Luck 30 { 100 }
Active Quests
Story Quests
System Installation II System Installation III
System Installation IIII System Installation V
Limited Quests
On A Roll II Path Of The Gods I
Radiant Quests
Daily Conditioning Studious Student
Racial Talents
Racial Talents have not been unlocked. Please purchase a ¡®Character Overhaul¡¯ in the shop, acquire a Racial job, or use a Character Package to unlock your Racial Talents.
Personal Talents
Personal Talents have not been unlocked. Please purchase a Talent Awakening in the shop, acquire a Racial job, or use a Character Package to unlock your Racial Talents.
Her stat sheet didn¡¯t show the increase from her Superhuman title. It was also unlike her Skilled title.
Title: [ Skilled ] You have proven your skills. For each Skill at the rank of Novice or higher you gain a boost to a stat. Constitution, +5 Intelligence, +5 Wisdom, +5 Charisma, +5 This title can be upgraded for increased effects.
Luna got this skill once her Creative Writing skill reached level 20. Now she has 4 skills at that level.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
Skills Page
Mundane Skills
Cleaning | Lvl 6 | Cooking | Lvl 23 | Creative Writing | Lvl 27 | FPS Video Games | Lvl 2 | Reading | Lvl 21 | Typing | Lvl 19 |
Cultivation Skills
Combat Skills
Body Enhancement Skills
Calisthenics | Lvl 24 | Running | Lvl 2 |
Social Skills
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. The boost to intelligence was from her reading skill. The one to Wisdom her Cooking skill. Charisma was from Creative Writing. Constitution from Calisthenics. Whenever Luna got a skill over level 10 she started to get better supernaturally fast. She would feel bursts of inspiration when she was doing them that helped with her efficiency. When she got them over level 20 the bursts of inspiration got more frequent and came in higher quality. Her Calisthenics is the clearest example of that, fixing her form every time she was doing her [ Daily Conditioning ] quest, which allowed her to complete the [ Push It To The Limit ] optional objective every other day. Luna was actually starting to feel quite good about how she looked, at least in terms of her build. She didn¡¯t have abs or anything, but all of the excess fat on her body was slowly turning into muscle. The weird imbalances in her body evening out. All in all, she was just feeling better in every way physically. She marveled at how a small bit of motivation in the form of a threat on the lives of everyone on the planet was all that was needed to get her working out consistently. For her Creative Writing skill, it felt more like she knew if an idea would ¡®land¡¯ correctly if written a specific way. To her it felt like having her own personal editor that could look at what she wrote as she wrote it. It wasn¡¯t the same as having an actual editor, but it was enough to make her satisfied with everything she wrote. All in all, even if there was no apocalypse and she just had the parts of her abilities now, she would have felt motivated to continue her life with a new fervor. There was an apocalypse though, and Luna felt that there was almost nothing she could do about it. She can see the writing on the wall. She won¡¯t be able to do as much as she feels she needs to if something doesn¡¯t change. Thankfully, she had a pair of quests that could do just that. Sadly, one would take too much time to be useful in the immediate future, and the other feels like a trap.
Limited Quest: [ On A Roll II ] You are on a roll! Keep building the momentum! Objective: Take and Pass at least 3 Honor Roll Classes 0/1 Reward: Experience Package Optional Objective: Get Straight As While On The Honor Roll 0/1 Extra Reward: # Experience Packages
The second stage of [ On A Roll ] mirrors the first stage in a lot of ways. It¡¯s more strict, but Luna felt she could handle 3 Honors courses easily now that she has a good idea of the sorts of things it requires of her, especially since this next semester is her last one before the apocalypse. It was [ The Path Of Gods I ] that worried her. It¡¯s clear that her [ On A Roll ] won¡¯t have a third quest in the chain unless it appears during this semester. Maybe she could have taken honors classes at the start, but it just wasn¡¯t feasable. Luna will need to complete [ The Path Of Gods I ] to complete her system integration quests in any reasonable amount of time. Luna needs time to think. More than anything else though, she needed time to relax. For the last few months she has been pushing forward without any substantial breaks. She has been thinking of this for a while, but she has well over 100k in her bank account now. It¡¯s literally free money. She can do whatever she wants with it. Most of it will go into supplies for the apocalypse, but that doesn¡¯t mean she couldn¡¯t spend a little bit frivolously.
¡°How in the world did you get here Luna?¡± ¡°I won the lottery,¡± she said, lying as easily as she breathed, ¡°I have nearly 100k and thought I¡¯d spend a few days with you under much less stressful circumstances.¡± Hector blankly stared at Luna from the porch of his Yurt. Hector was just as Luna remembered. He was a tall farmboy in physique and looks, but with long wavy blond hair that would fit a rockerboy better. His home, the Yurt, was a large tent, enough to house 1, maybe 2 people comfortably. It was about as big as 2 trailers put together, which was an easy estimate as there were in fact 2 trailers pitched to the side of the Yurt. Luna remembers when she took one of those trailers for the time. The cold winter nights there were so comforting for her. ¡°Do you have your own place to stay? My mom would not like me bringing you back here randomly without telling her again.¡± ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m staying at a Four Seasons of all places. It was the only hotel I could find close enough to here that I could visit each day without an hour drive.¡± ¡°Well then come in, I¡¯m sure there is a reason you are here, otherwise you would have just texted me first.¡± Hector moves out of the way of the door, allowing Luna to walk in and take in the changes. When she was last here, the Yurt had just been built. The insulation hadn¡¯t yet been put in place, but the house was liveable. Now though, it felt properly lived in. The walls were fully set up and some actual furniture was put up. It¡¯s still a mess as it¡¯s the home of two barely 21 year olds, but it wasn¡¯t nearly as bad as the trailer was when Luna first went to sleep in there. ¡°I like what you have done with the place, Is that a wood fire stove?¡± ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s to keep this place heated, the insulation is only so thick, Now, will you keep dodging the question until I eventually pry it out of you, or will you smack me in the face with the questions?¡± Luna looks aghast and places a hand over her heart. Hector laughs, seeing her mock shock. ¡°Look Luna, Amy will be here in a few hours, if you need to say something really serious say it now, I¡¯d rather be the one to break something serious to her.¡± ¡°It¡¯s nothing like that Hector, I¡¯m mostly just here to wind down. You know how hard I have been focusing on school and working out, back at home it¡¯s still kinda tense, Ma is much better, but there is still this awkwardness that doesn¡¯t let me fully relax.¡± Sure Luna was falsely attributing her unease to her familial situation, but she can¡¯t exactly tell Hector the actual reason. ¡°Yeah, of course I know, you look a lot better than the first time you came here.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± Luna raises an arm and flexes her bicep, showing muscle she didn¡¯t have a year ago, ¡°My workout regimen has been hard, but also has had results.¡± ¡°Are you taking a few days off, or is this more just a mental reset?¡± ¡°Mental,¡± Luna was not going to miss out on any character points, ¡°But my workouts aren¡¯t all that bad by now, I¡¯ve gotten used to them and can typically double my previous reps every few days.¡± Hector looks at her incredulously. Hector wasn¡¯t the fittest person, but that was purely due to him preferring to eat good than eat perfectly. He worked out and knew that Luna¡¯s progress was way too rapid to be healthy unless she is purposely holding back. ¡°Want some coffee,¡± he asks, changing the subject, ¡°we got that espresso machine working and Amy has become obsessed with it.¡± ¡°I was actually thinking that I could treat you for a change, I got money now, so why not call the others and see when they would be able to head over to Mandy¡¯s?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know how open they would be on such short notice, but I¡¯ll check, either way, you¡¯d need something for now, let me make some for the both of us.¡±
¡°Damnit Luna, how did you get so strong so quickly,¡± asked Juiles, as she dropped off the pullup bar. ¡°I¡¯ve been training,¡± she says, continuously doing her pullups. In the background, Hector was counting Luna¡¯s pullups, and was already in the 50s. Luna has grown quite proud of her calisthenics. It¡¯s one of her best skills mostly because she did it every day. If she went back to the Navy today, she could take every single beating without a sweat. ¡°Do you want to continue counting, cuz I can do another 100 or so of these if I want to just do these.¡± ¡°Bullshit,¡± says Amy, ¡°You can¡¯t do over 150 pull ups in one sitting after just half a year of training.¡± Amy was right. Luna can do around 230 or so. Her growth was really supernatural, which Luna suspected was actually the case. Since she gained her [ Almost Superhuman ] title, she has suspected that her ¡®limited¡¯ skills are being slowly loosened, even if her character sheet didn¡¯t fully show it. If Luna tried to explain that though, they would all just blank out and forget their suspicions ever existed thanks to The System¡¯s interjections. Even without Luna directly interfering, their suspicions would fade into the background. It¡¯s why none of Luna¡¯s family were confused by Luna¡¯s superhuman growth. As long as Luna didn¡¯t draw attention, no skepticism would last. ¡°I kinda wanna see him do- sorry- see her do it,¡± says Bryan. ¡°You already had a workout today, don¡¯t hurt yourself to show off,¡± said Hector. Luna smiles as she does two more pullups, followed by a muscle up. She pushes off the bar into a spin, landing right on her feet. Her skill in Calisthenics suddenly told her that doing that was a horrid idea as it could really hurt her ankles and knees. Luna makes sure to not make a habit out of showing off like that. ¡°So, now that we are done showing off, what¡¯s the plan from here,¡± asks Luna, as she takes another quick glance across the whole group. Luna, Hector, and Amy all met with Juiles and Bryan earlier and had dinner at Mandy¡¯s to celebrate Luna¡¯s ¡®Lottery Win¡¯. Amy was Hector¡¯s girlfriend, while Bryan was Amy¡¯s brother. Amy was a tall woman who practically towered over Luna¡¯s 5¡¯7 frame. Still, she was an inch shorter than Hector. Her brother on the other hand was eye to eye with Luna. If it wasn''t for the fact that they had the same exact black hair and greenish brown eyes someone wouldn¡¯t be able to guess they were related. Juiles was a mutual friend of rest. She was a short blasian woman, but incredibly muscular. Luna always thought that she was incredibly beautiful, and thought of asking her out before learning she was asexual and aromantic. Right now though, Juiles was glaring at Luna. Luna knew the look. It wasn¡¯t anger, but a fire. Luna saw it in the eyes of the fresh out of highschool kids who had dreams of going to BUDS after boot camp. Luna very well may have just gotten a workout partner. Luna became friends with them all and a few others during the months she was up in Washington with them. They aren¡¯t that close, but they all knew Luna¡¯s story and were accepting of her. She bounced between couches and homeless shelters, with her only real way to repay them being cooking. Still, even with her skills, she can¡¯t stand up to Mandy¡¯s. It¡¯s a small diner/restaurant, but it had some of the best food any of them have had. ¡°Depends on you,¡± says Hector, ¡°I don¡¯t know just how much you want to spend, 100 grand is a lot of money, but not an infinite amount, You don¡¯t want to spend too much of it before you could save it all, not even to mention that it could cover your student loans for a better school than the one you are at.¡± Luna waves off Hector¡¯s worries. The money won¡¯t mean a thing in 6 months. While Luna already has some ideas of what to spend the majority of the money on, she doesn¡¯t intend to be frugal while among friends. ¡°I¡¯m willing to spend upwards of 5k over the next 3 days, so if there are any fancy restaurants you want to try, or maybe some activities you have always wanted to do, I am open to bankroll it all as long as we keep under that limit, Think of it as a repayment for the time I spent on your couches plus interest.¡± ¡°That ain¡¯t fair,¡± says Juiles, ¡°But I won¡¯t exactly look a gift egg in the yolk¡­¡± ¡°That sounded better in your head didn¡¯t it,¡± asked Amy. ¡°Yes it did,¡± said Juiles with all of the confidence of a used car salesman, ¡°Now, let¡¯s figure out what we are gonna do, I for one know of this rage room with some pretty lenient rules-¡± Chapter 5: Leap of Faith
Apocalypse Countdown 140d, 2h, 54m, 28s
It has been 4 days since Luna came back to Washington to spend some time with her friends. They have thoroughly gone over budget, with Luna spending nearly 6k. 7k, if you include all of the Ubers across the city. Luna didn¡¯t mind all that much, as the Random Loot Box she opened today came with another cash infusion. Didn¡¯t make the trip costless, but it meant that she was well on her way to getting the assurances she felt she needed. Luna could get many things, but there was a specific need she felt she could research. As such Luna was lying down on Hector¡¯s couch, scrolling through an online gun shop aptly named ¡®Guns.com¡¯. Luna¡¯s ¡®Mystical Shop¡¯ was useful, but it didn¡¯t have everything. It had most modern items one could think of as long as they aren¡¯t completely electronic. For example, modern smartphones from the last 10 years aren¡¯t in the shop. However, something like an MX7 rifle, including fancy modern attachments were. There were some pretty exotic ones, with the guns themselves and ammo only costing a few hundred points. However, points are a rare resource for her, money was not. For a direct comparison, a Mosberg 500 shotgun costs less than 2k. In the shop it costs around 500 credits depending on the gauge. Luna may not get 2k every day from her random loot boxes, but 500 credits were worth an [ Ability Card Shard ], or a 20th of a cultivation ability. Wasting it on a shotgun simply wasn¡¯t reasonable, even if it would save Luna time. ¡°Why are you looking at guns?¡± asked Hector, looking over Luna¡¯s shoulder. Luna quickly hid her phone, as if that was going to stop Hector from seeing what she was looking at. For a brief moment the two just look at each other. Hector raises an eyebrow and walks over to sit on the chair next to the couch, forcing Luna to sit upright if she wants to see him. ¡°Don¡¯t think I haven¡¯t noticed that you have been somewhat frantic these last few days,¡± said Hector, looking down at his hands rather than at Luna, ¡°I know you, I know you well, We may have met online first, but we have known each other for the better part of a decade.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not acting that oddly am I?¡± The look Hector gave Luna told her¡­ yeah she really was. ¡°What brought this about Luna?¡± ¡°It¡¯s nothing.¡± ¡°Bullshit it¡¯s nothing,¡± said Hector, ¡°Ever since you started school this year you have been acting strangely, You used to talk to me and Amy every day with little exception, now you only talk once a week if that.¡± ¡°I¡¯m just busy with school, that¡¯s all,¡± said Luna, trying to salvage the situation, ¡°I have been taking multiple Honors level courses, and each gives me hours worth of homework, after that I¡¯m just drained and don¡¯t have the energy for games, I¡¯ve said this.¡± Hector rolls his eyes at that, ¡°Luna, you have never once said that you were interested in Honors classes until this year, The whole reason you were doing college was to keep your mom off your back and maybe get some more experience talking with other people, During all of Highschool and even the first semester of College you were that person who said ¡®Cs Get Degrees¡¯, This is way too much to just write off as you suddenly feeling a burst of passion, especially with how miserable you are.¡± Luna tries to speak up, but then looks down at her hands. When did they start shaking? ¡°I just want to know why you are killing yourself over all this Luna, maybe then Amy and I can help rather than just being a sort of escape for you to retreat to whenever you have any sort of break.¡± ¡°You can¡¯t help!¡± shouts Luna, way too loud than seemed necessary for the conversation, ¡°Don¡¯t you think I¡¯ve tried?¡± Hector was taken aback by Luna¡¯s outburst, but tries to slowly approach her on the couch, ¡°What do you mean by ¡®tried¡¯, cuz I don¡¯t remember you ever talking to me about this kind of stuff.¡± ¡°Hector, I have tried talking to you about the Apocalypse Countdown, about the role I have to play in protecting people, about how I need to get stronger and steel myself for what is to come¡­¡± says Luna as she looks down at her shaking hands, ¡°You just¡­ don¡¯t remember.¡± When Luna looks over to Hector, she sees the same blank look in his face as she saw on her brother¡¯s face. Tears start to well up in Luna¡¯s eyes as the pressure from The System starts to weigh down on her soul. Luna has tried dozens of times to get around The System¡¯s restrictions on information about itself. Tried casually mentioning it, talking about it as if it were a video game, talking about it as if it were a story she was writing. Have tried writing notes and sending them rather than saying it out loud. None of it worked. That blank look¡­ Hector is going to forget the last few seconds, and Luna can¡¯t do anything to stop it. ¡°I blanked out and this was supposed to be a serious moment,¡± said Hector, ¡°What did you say again?¡± Luna raised a hand to her eyes, wiping away the tears before they could fall. This was an important moment. If Luna just said ¡®nothing¡¯, the oddness of the situation would completely pass his scrutiny. It might even end this confrontation entirely, making him ¡®satisfied¡¯ with her lack of an answer. ¡°I¡­ I am in the midst of making a choice,¡± she says, trying her best to explain things in a vague enough way that The System won¡¯t fog Hector¡¯s mind, ¡°Should I focus on short term gains, even if they could lead to better growth in the future, or should I sure up my foundations for as long as I can before I am forced to make a choice.¡± Hector leaned back considering the question. That sight made Luna light up with hope. She managed to be vague enough about the dilemma around her [ Character Packages ] enough to allow Hector to actually understand. If she didn¡¯t do it well enough he would just blank out. She knew because she had a similar breakdown back when she first took her honors classes and had to drop two of them to not completely burn herself out. She had to make that decision on her own. ¡°You¡¯re worried about some weak shit like your future, right?¡± Luna nods, just trying to not say anything that could get The System to intervene. ¡°It¡¯s fine to not know what you want to do in the future, but you do have an idea of a direction, You are a fantastic writer, I have seen your improvement over the last few months.¡± ¡°Yeah, but-¡± ¡°Are you on some shit right now?¡± asked Hector, ¡°You could start writing and posting stuff professionally if you put your mind to it, college be damned.¡± Luna shut up, taking the compliment as it was given. She didn¡¯t feel as much pride as she should have though, mostly due to the effect of The System¡¯s bursts of inspiration. They improved her abilities without the effort she would have normally needed to put in. Even though she was proud of how high she got her skills, the effects of her skills made using them feel like cheating. ¡°You want to know what I think you should do?¡± This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. ¡°What do you think I should do?¡± asked Luna, hoping that what he says would still be applicable to her actual situation. ¡°Stop holding yourself back, Just take a few classes next semester if you need to, but you have the money to get yourself a place to stay for years, years you could use to hole yourself up in a quiet room and type, The stories you have sent me are good enough to actually have me read them.¡± Luna felt a small surge of determination. Putting things together to make a better ¡®story¡¯ for herself and the future. Luna checks some of her notes on her phone. She had made a few possible lists of characters that could all work together in terms of [ Character Package ] focuses. Jason Asano, Zachery Atwood, Eric West, Richter, Elorion, Michael Caer, Dave Nelson, Matthew Alexander, Arthur Rowantree, and Boxy T. Morningwood. These are all the main protagonists of all of the stories that were listed by the first message she got from this dreaded system. If going purely by usefulness to her situation only 4 of them had any appeal. Jason Asano¡¯s racial gifts are powerful, and could help flesh out the functionality of The System massively by giving her an Inventory, an ID system, and ways to evade detection. Richter has 100% affinity in anything he tries, and is never limited due to his race in taking skills or abilities, as well as getting a more powerful language ability than even Jason Asano, which will allow her to interact with whoever appears in the Apocalypse. Elorion has Light magic and Blue magic. The former can heal anything, including fatigue and hunger. The latter will allow Luna to copy racial based magical abilities from essentially anyone. Finally, Matthew Alexander has proportional magic scaling. The lower his magic reserves gets, the faster his magic regenerates. He also has a different curve for his magic scaling, allowing him to be both martially and magically focused at higher tiers. All of the others either do too little, or have effects that would be too volatile in the new system. That leaves 1 Character Package without a character linked to it. Thankfully she had an idea of a good character to tie to it. It¡¯s also kind of a freebee given the effect of the character¡¯s abilities.. Emmanuel Sophron is the leader of The Empire from The Path of Ascension. His talents? He can copy the talents of anyone else. Luna then tries to activate the character packages right now. No more waiting!
WARNING! Character Package Choices Incompatible! Character Package [ Richter ] fixes affinities to [ 100% ] Character Packages [ Elorion ] and [ Jason Asano ] raises affinities above [ 100% ] Character Package [ Matthew Alexander ] removes cultivation potentials relating to mana Character Packages [ Elorion ], [ Richter ], and [ Jason Asano ], add cultivation potentials relating to mana Character Package [ Jason Asano ] fixes Racial Choices Shop Ability [ Character Overhaul ] allows the change of user¡¯s race to any sentient race Character Package [ Emmanuel Sophron ] allows user to copy any talent using their talent Talent too extensive for a [ Character Package ]
Luna glares at the prompt that appeared in front of her. Character Packages can interfere with each other or with other abilities she got? If Luna got a Cultivation ability she could very well have completely fucked herself over. She was right to have held off for as long as she did. ¡°What are you looking a-¡± ¡°Wait no!¡± said Luna as she quickly hid her screen from Hector, but it was too late. His vision had already glazed over. ¡°Damnit!¡± Luna growls as she stares at her phone. She stands up from the couch and starts pacing around the room, thinking as best she could during the time Hector was getting his thoughts augmented by The System. This isn¡¯t an unmitigated disaster. Just¡­ inoptimal. Luna¡¯s lack of a Cultivation Ability choice probably saved her an immense headache. It would limit so many of her Character Package options, but by this point, there is little reason to hold back. Hector was still right. Luna can''t wait for fear of what might happen in the future. She needs to rearrange her character packages while still getting stuff that is big, flashy, and scalable. The incompatibilities with Jason Asano and Matthew Alexander make Luna write them off completely. The former could probably have the benefits of being an ¡®Outworlder¡¯ matched or even exceeded by her [ Character Overhaul ]. The latter¡­ will likely just need to be left behind. It¡¯s a powerful option, but if it interferes with every form of mana cultivation even in this new System, then Luna would likely lack any way to mitigate the downsides of it. At least, any that are easy to get a hold of. Emmanuel Sophron just can¡¯t be gained from Character Packages for some reason. This probably means that other similar character packages with such ¡®system breaking¡¯ abilities wouldn¡¯t be allowed or translated easily. Luna really wished that these came with some sort of manual, rather than just a vague feeling that they can only work on characters from the stories mentioned in that first prompt. The final question was to have either Richter or Elorion stay. One fixes all of Luna¡¯s affinities at 100%, allowing her to diversify her abilities in any direction without feeling any limit. The latter suggests that one can raise their affinities above 100%. ¡°You alright Luna? I sorta blanked out again, and my back is starting to hurt again,¡± said Hector, the System¡¯s influence leaving his mind. ¡°Is it better to go for broke or should I play it safe? Should I¡­¡± she tries to think of a good metaphor that won¡¯t trip The System again, ¡°Try to write a story straight up, or try and get a job writing for a company as I build up a portfolio?¡± The way Hector looks at Luna made her fear that she wasn¡¯t vague enough, but his words made his lucidity clear. ¡°You just won the lottery Luna, in the short term, you don¡¯t need money and you don¡¯t need school, You are in a very privileged position and can turn your money into results if you go all in, so until you start having money troubles, I¡¯d honestly say to write your story and try to aim for the stars,¡± A smile comes across Hector¡¯s face. ¡°You are a better writer than anyone else I know, so even if you don¡¯t get it on your first try, you have enough wiggle room that you will be able to catch yourself before you fall.¡± Hector is right, Luna will reach for the stars. Elorion will be what stays. The effects of that package has the ability to reach even higher heights than Richter in this new system. Mel is a side character from Underworld as well. His ¡®Talent¡¯ is in Dark Magic, directly opposing Elorion¡¯s Light. Luna hopes that they will merge to allow her to form a cycle of some sort. At worst, it would allow Luna to create explosions by mashing the light and dark together if the affinities work at all similar to that series. Qin Silaz is a side character from 10 Realms. She had a medical condition that crystalized the mana within her body, making her sickly for most of the first book. However, it gave her an immediate boost to her mana cultivation as well as a wide boost to all forms of mana cultivation. Next, Luna chooses Melinda Combs. She has a powerful talent that lowers the cost of abilities that heal while making them more effective. Later on, she gains a powerful ¡®Overheal¡¯ effect that can bypass limits on healing effects. Both Light and Dark magic can heal in Underworld, with the effect depending on the affinity of who was being targeted, and similar effects are in many of the other series. If all of these abilities merge together as she hopes, Luna will be able to outlast everyone. Her fuck ups would be able to be healed away, or at least mitigated. Finally, Luna chooses MacKenzie Atwood. A prominent side character from Defiance of The Fall. She has similarly crazy abilities to her protagonist brother, even if she is pretty clearly not as strong. She has a powerful AI companion that merges cultivation and technology. Luna hopes, much like her previous choices, it will work to further boost her ability to rocket past the rest of humanity. AIs like that can be found in a few of the other series as well, so, hopefully, the limiting factors of the AI in Defiance of The Fall get watered down by the influence of the other systems.
Character Packages Used 5/5
QUEST COMPLETE Limited Quest: [ Path Of The Gods I ] You have taken the first step to truly going beyond your limitations and taking charge of your destiny. Empower yourself using everything you have. Objective: Use Character Package 5/1 Reward: Package Appropriate Skill Optional Objective: Use Multiple Character Packages At Once 5/5 Extra Reward: Character Package Fusion
Quest Rewards Will Automatically Be Used
Her body needed to sleep to fully use the character packages. If Luna had known this, she would have gotten into a more comfortable position. She crumpled to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Chapter 6: Repaying The Favor, With Interest When Luna finally woke up, the early morning had long passed. The moonlight that hit her in the face made that clear. The sound of an EKG beeped, confirmed to Luna¡¯s groggy mind where she was, but not why she was there. Her left hand was connected to the EKG, with an IV drip further up the arm. A tube extended from her nose and down into her lungs, and one from her mouth down into her throat. Luna was in the hospital, but she felt fine. More than fine actually. She felt a¡­ power deep within her chest. A light that felt like it brought energy coursing through her, as well as a shadow that sapped away all unease and pain. Quickly, she checks her Apocalypse Countdown to see how much time she had missed.
Apocalypse Countdown 139d, 12h, 22m, 18s
Just under 15 hours or so. Not the worst case scenario, but still kinda bad. That explains the tubes down her throat and lungs. There were¡­ other tubes in less family friendly places. It felt really uncomfortable, but she wasn¡¯t about to start ripping them out. Well, except for the one down her throat. Pulling it out felt like vomiting, and she very nearly did do so, but her gag reflex was able to be forced to comply. ¡°Hello?¡± she asked out loud, not expecting the response she got immediately. ¡® Hello Luna ¡¯, said a robotic voice in Luna¡¯s mind, ¡® It is nice to finally be able to speak with you ¡¯ The voice sounded like a really good text to speech, and it had a slight echo. It wasn¡¯t distinctly masculine or feminine, which makes sense for an AI companion. ¡°H-Hi,¡± stutters Luna, ¡°Are you my AI companion?¡± ¡® Yes I am, I have spent the time I have been online since you woke up familiarizing myself with my existence and what all I can interact with ¡¯ ¡°What have you found?¡± Luna asked with trepidation. ¡® That my features are limited, something is keeping me from accessing my full potential, namely, things relating to !@#$%^, &*($, and #$%^&.¡¯ There was a pregnant pause for half a second before the AI spoke up once again. ¡® You couldn¡¯t understand what I said¡­ I can¡¯t even mention things relating to !@%$#. ¡¯ This damn cognito-hazardous system. First Luna can¡¯t mention it to other people at all, and now her AI companion she chose specifically to help with The System can¡¯t explain everything to Luna? At least it understands itself somewhat, and can do the actions best for Luna even if Luna herself can¡¯t understand what it is doing. ¡® I can explain some parts of myself, but that will need to wait ¡¯, spoke the AI. Luna was just about to ask why when she heard footsteps rapidly approaching. She saw a tall male nurse who called for a ¡®Doctor Max¡¯ before walking over to Luna. ¡°Hello Lucas,¡± says the nurse, ¡°You caused quite a scare there, to be frank we are surprised you are already awake, but this is a good sign.¡± The nurse walks over to the EKG, checking the readings on the machine. At least Luna thinks that is what is happening. Luna knows nothing about medicine, which is something she should probably change this next semester. ¡°I¡¯d prefer if you call me Luna, it should be in my medical records.¡± Luna had that added to her file during her yearly checkup back in May. The nurse grimaces a bit at the request. Wait. That¡¯s not regret, that¡¯s¡­ disgust. That¡¯s a sneer not a grimace. ¡°Lucas, I¡¯m not forced to call anyone anything that isn¡¯t on their government issued ID.¡± Luna glared at the nurse, and felt a small pulse of energy rush through her whole body. Afterward, she felt a surge of inspiration guide her next words. ¡°You know, this horrible bedside manner can be reported, right?¡± said Luna in an accusatory tone, ¡°There are cameras and I am more than willing to report a transphobic jackass, so why don¡¯t you call me by my name or get someone to take your place.¡± The nurse didn¡¯t look the briefest bit ashamed or repentant, even as he ran out of the room with his tail between his legs. As he left, a short frazzled woman walked into the room. Her hair looked to have previously been in a bun, but now there were more stray hairs than hairs in the bun. Really, it would have looked much better if the woman just took the bun down entirely. ¡°I¡¯m assuming you are Doctor Max?¡± The woman nods, looking like she was just about to nod off to sleep with that short motion. ¡°You know the name of the nurse who just left?¡± ¡°It¡¯s Jeffry,¡± said the doctor, ¡°May I ask why you ask Miss Luna?¡± So, they did have Luna¡¯s medical records, and even this sleep deprived doctor who has probably been working for hours remembered Luna¡¯s name and pronouns. Some people try too hard to be rude. ¡°He deadnamed me, and when I informed him about my preferred name he mocked me, I was wondering if there was any way to report him?¡± The doctor let out a long suffering sigh. ¡°The hospital has a website and you can place complaints and reports there, just give your patient ID from that wristband and the nurse¡¯s name to send an anonymous report.¡± Doctor Max walks over to a chair in the room and starts typing on the computer. ¡°So, putting that to the side for a moment, would you like to hear about why you are in all of those tubes?¡± ¡°Yeah, the last thing I remember was talking with my friend Hector, next thing I know, I woke up here.¡± The doctor nods, and continues to type, probably getting Luna¡¯s testimony about her symptoms. ¡°You suddenly collapsed and wouldn¡¯t respond to any kind of poking and prodding, He called an ambulance and they took you here, when you got here, you still weren¡¯t responding to anything, ¡°Eventually, you started having seizures in your sleep, so we have been monitoring you closely, This monitoring allowed us to catch a stroke before it got too bad.¡± Luna looks at her hands, and then all of the tubes running through her body. This explains why she was intubated. The doctors expected Luna to be there for a much longer term stay, and yet she woke up less than a day later feeling right as rain. ¡°Your medical history doesn¡¯t show a history of strokes or seizures, but I must ask if you have ever felt like you had a stroke or seizure in the past?¡± The doctor then rattled off all of the symptoms of both conditions, asking if Luna ever felt them. Luna said that she hadn''t, to which the good doctor simply kept typing on her computer. ¡°These conditions may have come out of nowhere, but there could easily be some sort of underlying condition that caused them, Do you consent to more testing to try and find the source of seizures?¡± Luna was tempted to say yes, but before she could say so, she heard the AI voice again. ¡® The strokes and seizures were caused by your talents, remember, Qin Silaz? That is what happened here, you know how to heal them. ¡¯ Luna did know how to heal it. All she needed was a sterile piece of metal, a hammer, and to withstand a whole lot of pain. Could even be made out of a nail if she wanted to be sacrilegious. ¡°No,¡± said Luna. The doctor raised an eyebrow, skeptical. ¡°Then we will need to keep you here for another few days just to make sure another stroke or seizure doesn¡¯t strike, after you have one you are much more likely to have another.¡± Damn this doctor and her worry for her patients. Well, not really. It was a really nice gesture, but useless for Luna¡¯s current situation. She needed an easy way out¡­ and quickly realized what she could do. ¡°It was caused by my talent from Qin Silaz, my mana channels have crystallized and are drawing in mana much faster than they should, which is inadvertently depriving my body of the Mana it needs to function, while also causing pain whenever mana flows through them, I can heal it on my own.¡± Just as Luna hoped, the doc¡¯s face blanked out. A sheepish smile came to Luna¡¯s face as she realized how useful the cognito-hazard could be. If only it came into play when she willed it to. ¡°You alright doc,¡± asked Luna, ¡°You almost passed out there.¡± ¡°Yes, no need to worry about me,¡± said the Doc, still somewhat dazed. ¡°Will it be possible for me to head home?¡± ¡°Are you refusing additional care?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± Luna said, hoping that the doctor would just go along with it. The doctor let out a heavy sigh, ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll give you a writ of dismissal, just don¡¯t be afraid to call if you feel any of those symptoms I mention, you hear?¡± ¡°I won¡¯t risk my life just to be stubborn.¡± Luna needs to stay alive to save the rest of the world after all.
¡°So, did they tell you what caused the seizures?¡± asked Amy. ¡°They just said to head back if I feel the symptoms again,¡± said Luna. ¡°Bullshit,¡± said Juiles, ¡°Someone doesn¡¯t just leave the hospital 3 hours after having 7 back to back seizures and a stroke.¡± Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°I didn¡¯t exactly want to stay there, Especially with the tubes through every hole that mattered.¡± ¡°You should have consented to the other tests,¡± said Hector, taking his eyes off the road for a moment, ¡°I never want to see you just collapse like that again.¡± ¡°I won¡¯t!¡± ¡°You better not,¡± said Bryan, ¡°Cuz if you do I will force you to go through whatever tests they could even conceive to run you through.¡± ¡°Bryan, I love the big brother vibes you are giving, but my actual brothers have already torn my ear off through the phone with that kinda talk, I¡¯m heading to my hotel, grabbing my stuff, and then getting straight on a plane back home.¡± Luna won¡¯t be able to heal her mana channel issues here. Luna¡¯s older brother Jackson is trained to be a massage therapist. Luna doesn¡¯t know too much about what that means beyond rubbing people down, but she saw how hard her brother was studying. More importantly, he needed to learn a ton of human anatomy for his test. He would be able to help her guide the nail so that it doesn¡¯t smash apart one of her bones. ¡°I¡¯ll drop everyone else off at their homes first,¡± says Hector, ¡°Amy and I will help you pack up.¡± ¡°Thank y¡¯all. I didn¡¯t really expect you all to be waiting for me at the hospital, It felt nice to see all of you after they got those tubes out of me.¡± What followed was them all essentially saying it wasn¡¯t a problem, and that Luna shouldn¡¯t need to worry about it. ¡°We all care about you,¡± says Amy, ¡°Now don¡¯t make us regret letting you walk out without all of those tests.¡± All of this gave Luna a warm and fuzzy feeling. The only thing she didn¡¯t like was that with them all so close she wasn¡¯t able to test out her vast cosmic power! Luna can feel the power at her fingertips, but wasn¡¯t able to focus it at all. Best she could do was just ask her AI companion, now named Polaris, to categorize her talents and do some work on helping Luna restructure her character sheet. For now, it was best to just go along with it until she can get her own place. Then she will be able to practice as often and as much as she can.
¡°You alright?¡± asked Amy as she started rubbing her boyfriend¡¯s shoulder. ¡°Yeah, my back is just killing me, you know the drill,¡± said Hector, he turns to look at Luna from the bed, ¡°My back¡¯s killin¡¯ me, You fine with us just staying here until I¡¯m better?¡± Luna nods, though does start to grab her bags and other items and put them all away. She has a ton of souvenirs from their spending spree, and she is trying to figure out how to fit everything. Luna can just buy a new bag at a store and put everything there, but that felt like a waste. Luna¡¯s spatial bag can work, but she found out that she can¡¯t take that through TSA with more items than could fit in it. It causes the TSA agent to instantly blank out. Damn near had Luna arrested. She had to leave that at home. Amy starts to lightly rub Hector¡¯s lower back trying to loosen the muscles around his hips. Hector suffers from Sciatica after falling off a family friend¡¯s horse as a kid. Every few hours or days he just feels this pain that doesn¡¯t go away for a few hours. Luna wished she could help but there- Wait, what if there was something she could do. Luna heads over to her bathroom and looks at the mirror. She hates the face that looks back, but she can deal with it. ¡°Polaris,¡± she whispers softly, ¡°Am I able to access light magic right now, even with my Mana cultivation stifled by Qin¡¯s character package?¡± ¡® Yes you can. ¡¯ ¡°How do I use it, do I just will it into existence?¡± Before she could get an answer, Luna held out a hand and tried to force a cloud of luminous light to extend out of her fingers! Predictably, nothing happens. ¡® You lack a cultivation method that grants you more complete control over your mana ¡¯ ¡°Which cultivation style do I need to buy?¡± To Luna it was a simple question. Just like how she didn¡¯t wait before using her character packages, she will buy a cultivation ability right now if she needs to in order to help her friend. Plus, even if it does end up limiting the classes and jobs she can get, she won¡¯t want any classes that disavow mana based cultivation techniques. ¡® These are the best ones for your talents and future needs, choose the one you like best ¡¯
Yin Yang Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: At least 75% Affinity with 2 Opposing Affinities Start on the path of cultivating a cycle of energies within your body to empower your mind, body and soul. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
Pure Mana Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: At Least 50% Affinity, Unaspected Mana, 100 Wisdom, 100 Intelligence Start on the path of cultivating through purifying and compacting your mana within yourself to empower your mind and soul. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
Mana Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: At least 50% Affinity Start on the path of cultivating your Mana and empowering your soul. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
¡°Why are these three the best?¡± To Luna only the first seems obviously good, but the other two actually feel less useful. ¡® Yin and Yang will further increase your affinities as you cultivate it, Pure Mana will empower your base mana to make each drop more powerful than others, and the generic Mana Cultivator grants the widest breadth of Cultivation skills, which could potentially be better for !@#$%^ ¡¯ Luna sighs and looks at her options. ¡°Not able to choose multiple?¡± ¡® You can, but you can only have a limited number of slots for your Mind, Body, and Soul within your Shop, and cultivation abilities can take multiple slots depending on how it¡¯s described, Yin and Yang for example will take 3 slots. ¡¯ That makes this much harder, but also shows just how useful Polaris is already being. Luna had just assumed she could have as many shop abilities as she wanted and the character sheet didn¡¯t show more than one row, but no, she could only ever have 6 shop abilities. ¡°This is¡­ something I¡¯d need to think about more I can tell, I can¡¯t make this decision lightly.¡± ¡® You can also awaken your new innate cultivation by breaking apart your mana channels here ¡¯ ¡°How would you suggest I do that?¡± Luna listens to Polaris¡¯ suggestion and grimaces. That¡­ will be unpleasant. Still, Luna thinks she can handle it to help Hector out before she leaves. She makes her way out of the bathroom. Both Hector and Amy had blank looks on their faces. Luna must not have been talking as low as she thought she was. Oh well. At least Hector looks to not be feeling any pain. Luna goes through her bag and finds a finger sized metal puzzle piece. She got it from a Random Loot Box the day before. And it was a corner piece, with a rounded point. It was the last corner piece she needed to complete her first Ability Card. Luna would not mourn the loss. Luna starts to fold it back and forth along the rounded point. Before she wasn¡¯t able to budge the shard at all, but as she presses it in her hands, Luna can feel the aura coming off of it. The magic within. There was a spike of pain as her newly crystalized mana channels drained the mana from the puzzle piece, but the pain was manageable. It was not nearly as bad as the pain mentioned in the story, probably having to do with how long she has had the condition. The first bend was the hardest, with Luna needing to put her whole body weight into it. After that it was much easier. She folded it back and forth like a piece of paper, trying to get it to break along the crease. Whenever Amy or Hector tried to ask what she was doing she just explained it. That got them blanked right out again. If she didn¡¯t do that they might have tried to stop her when she placed the broken shard on the table, point up. ¡°I wanted to do this after I got home with a needle or something more¡­ clinical, and more importantly less painful.¡± ¡® Too bad, if you want a piece of mana conductive metal to pierce through your clogged mana gates, this is your best option. ¡¯ "You can be an asshole you know that?" '' My personality is an extension of your psyche, any assholeish behaviors are on you '' That got an eyeroll from Luna, but after that she refocuses on the plan. Luna needs to pierce one of her mana gates, which is now clogged with crystal. If she manages that, the [ Mana Circulation Cultivation ] ability would be hers without taking one of her precious shop slots. Luna places her hand against the piece of metal. She doesn¡¯t know exactly where her mana gates are, her whole body feels flush with mana. It¡¯s why Qin had such a hard time explaining her illness and nobody figured out how to heal it until the protagonists came along and figured it out. Thankfully, Polaris does know where they are, and is able to guide Luna to the right spot. ¡°This is going to fucking suck,¡± she says trying to steel herself. ¡® Do you wish for me to take over motor functions? ¡¯ ¡°Fuck ye-¡± Luna¡¯s words were cut off as her body was wrenched from her. It felt¡­ so odd. Her whole body was moving, but she wasn¡¯t directing it. It felt kinda like a dream. She can feel the end effect of actions she didn¡¯t consciously do. Even her breathing felt off. Before Luna could get used to the sensation, Polaris raised a fist over Luna¡¯s hand and smashed down with all of the force Luna had. The broken ability card shard stabbed deep into Luna¡¯s hand. She cried out in pain, but it didn¡¯t actually leave her mouth. When Polaris raised Luna¡¯s hand again, she realized something. The piece of metal she slammed her full force into tore through muscles, ligaments, and bones as if they were butter, but stopped halfway through her hand. The stabbing sensation from the mana was also much more powerful, but there was one thing that was clear. Luna¡¯s mana gate survived the strike. It survived the second strike, but Luna felt a small buckle. The final smash was the hardest, and the shard of metal finally cut all the way through Luna¡¯s hand. The crystals within her Mana gate broke apart. Mana rushed into her hand from the remnants of the Ability Card Shard, draining the piece of metal utterly, same with the mana within the other half. Not satisfied with that much mana, energy was dragged in from the whole room, draining the few items she managed to get from her random loot boxes while here. Luna¡¯s hand was a vortex, and the mana didn¡¯t just enter her body. The crystals within her mana channels liquified as the mana flowed through them, the pain quickly flowing away as an almost orgasmic feeling of pleasure ran through her, completely overwhelming the pain from her cut hand. That was when Luna realized something. The mana was condensing in her core. Her Dantien didn¡¯t have a crystal as Qin¡¯s did, and yet, the mana was still entering a natural cycle, flowing into a tighter and tighter ball. Luna was growing a core within her body, and she needs to make sure it was as perfect as she could get it. It was from here Luna started to clumsily take control. She tried to force the mana to condense into tighter and tighter circles. She was trying to make an inner spiral within the deepest part of her core. Her control was clumsy, it was as though the mana flowed at different rates every second. She almost fell into despair, before she suddenly got a surge of inspiration. Luna¡¯s heartbeat. Her breathing. Her thoughts. They were the conductors of a grand orchestra. Luna¡¯s control was all of the performers, taking the flow and tempo into account. The mana was their instrument. Luna needed to make a symphony within her body out of mana in order to control it. This was nothing like any of the stories she read, but it just made sense. Luna started to control her breathing as best she could, focusing her thoughts on the mana that was condensing inside her. . Her heartbeat was fast, making her control hard as the rhythm kept on rising. Hard does not mean it wasn¡¯t attainable. To assist with her control, Luna sat placing her feet against each other and her palms together, completing the circuits in her mana channels. Like a kid learning to ride a bike, as soon as Luna ¡®got¡¯ it, everything else started to come much easier. Slowly she guided the formation of her mana core. She made it tighter, denser, and made the mana form a distinct shell, mostly through the help of continuous inspirations. Luna tried to condense her core, but she had done as much as she could. Her rush of mana had run out, even if she felt like a whole new woman. An alien energy flowed through her whole body, but a pleasant one nonetheless. When the alien feeling subsided, Luna felt the pain in her hand spike. She looked down and saw the piece of metal still stuck within her hand. It was¡­ dead for the lack of a better word. It was a beautiful songbird who¡¯s life was cut short by a predator. Luna pulled it out of her hand with some pain. After that though, she once again willed opalescent light to puff out of her hand and into her wound. This time, it came as easy as breathing. In fact, it was even easier. She barely needed to think. Luna felt the mana within her flow into her hand before slowly seeping out to cover her hand. An opalecent cloud that let off light of all colors surrounded her hand. Luna felt no pain as her muscles reknit and bones shifted to properly heal. The excess energy then ran through the rest of Luna¡¯s body, erasing all of her fatigue, hunger, and even slight muscle cramps. Luna even noticed that her vision slightly sharpened. Luna didn¡¯t even think that she had less than 20:20 vision, but this showed that while her vision was not perfect before, it was now. It was, perhaps, the best Luna felt physically¡­ ever. Absolutely everything was healed by that small puff of light magic. When Luna looked up to Hector and Amy, they were both looking at her with blank stares. It, however, wasn¡¯t the blank stare of someone having their thoughts taken and erased by The System. It was the blank stare of someone who couldn¡¯t believe what they saw. ¡°Luna,¡± asked Amy, ¡°How did you just do that?¡± Hector forces himself up to stare at Luna, ¡°What just happened?¡± Chapter 7: Unexpected Gains Luna stared at Hector and Amy carefully. She had just as many questions as they had, the most important ones being: Did they really see her cast the healing spell? More importantly, were they able to remember it? As a test, Luna decided to see what would happen if she was completely honest while dodging any direct words about the system. ¡°I used my newfound vast cosmic power to heal a wound I gave myself to access this power.¡± ¡°You just¡­ willed yourself to be healed?¡± asked Amy, her enthusiasm growing visibly. ¡°Wait,¡± said Hector, ¡°Was this what gave you a seizure?¡± Answering that would derail this conversation, and Luna still had so much to say. ¡°What if I told you that I could heal both of you of any physical ailment,¡± asked Luna, dodging the question. ¡°Then I¡¯ll ask why you didn¡¯t do it sooner, I can barely stand over here,¡± said Hector with incredulity. It was clear he didn¡¯t believe it, but there was a small glimmer of hope in his words. At that demand, Luna fully gave in. Above each hand, a globe of light formed out of her mana. Now that Luna had more time to look at them, the resemblance to an opal was uncanny, even if it''s a gaseous substance not a rock. With a thought, Luna was able to change the color of the clouds of light, or increase their luminosity. It was as easy as breathing. ¡°Beautiful,¡± said Amy as she went to close the distance between herself and Luna. She probably wanted to see the light up close, but Luna had a better idea. Before Amy could reach Luna, she flicked both of her wrists. The gaseous clouds became distinct balls as they flew unerringly towards both of their faces. The balls splashed against their faces, before being dragged in like iron dust to a magnet, suffusing both of their bodies. Both of them flinched and stumbled. They were not ready for the euphoria that came with being healed. Hector stood steady, the pain gone. Amy took off her glasses, no longer needing them. They both looked around and started to softly move, getting used to being in pristine health. ¡°This is¡­ amazing,¡± said Hector, unable to be as brash as he normally was. Luna stared for a moment again. They could see the magic, that was good. Now to test the waters again. To see just how far this can go. ¡°I got it from using my Character P-¡± She stopped as soon as she saw Amy and Hector both got a familiar look on their faces. She waited for it to go away to see what the last thing they both remember was. ¡°This is¡­ amazing,¡± said Hector, continuing like the last few seconds didn¡¯t happen. ¡°You could cure any physical ailment, you said?¡± asked Amy. Luna shrugged by way of response. She doesn¡¯t know the limits of her new ability just yet. Nor the limits of what her friends can or cannot remember. Saying too much could undo everything she had said at this point, even if she was beginning to doubt it. ¡°We have to keep this quiet,¡± said Hector almost immediately, ¡°This is like, get locked in Area 51 type shit.¡± ¡°I agree with you,¡± says Luna. If people could see her cast magic and question it, then she needs to be much more secretive about it. If the wrong person sees it¡­ ¡°So you can heal broken bones, influenza, and cancer with a small puff of this light?¡± ¡°Best that I can tell, though I don¡¯t know how much I will be able to test without getting found out.¡± Luna has the idea to go to a children¡¯s hospital and play healer, but she also knows that doing so will make it clear to the government that she exists. As Hector said this is ¡®get locked in Area 51 type shit¡¯. ¡°Does this come with any strings,¡± asked Hector, ¡°¡®Vast cosmic power¡¯ as you said probably doesn¡¯t come without limits.¡± Luna couldn''t tell him about the apocalypse countdown, nor anything about the system. She opened her mouth to give him an explanation that wouldn¡¯t blank him, but she felt a sudden throbbing deep within her chest. Luna had just broken through a ton of cultivation barriers all at once. Her body has been purified, at least in one way. Now she needed to purge. ¡°Downsides yes¡­ please wait here¡­ and probably close your nose.¡± Without waiting for anymore questions, Luna ran into the bathroom and threw off her clothes as fast as she could once the door slammed shut behind her. Her pores were already starting to purge impurities from her. Her eyes were tearing up, and she felt a bubbling in her stomach. She only managed to just barely get in the tub before the flood came. It was nearly two minutes of excruciating pain. Amy and Hector tried knocking on the bathroom door, worried about their friend, but the smell emanating from that bathroom had their eyes watering. It was perhaps the worst thing they had ever smelled, and they were regularly in contact with animals and their droppings. When it was all done pouring out of her, Luna bought a small concoction called ¡®Crystal Wash¡¯ from the shop for 1000 credits. It was expensive, really expensive, but Luna does not care about that right now. The bottle appeared in a stylized flask with a rounded bottom. It has the words ¡®Crystal Wash¡¯ on the front in an almost illegible swirly font. It has a normal cork stopper at the top, with directions written on the top. She opened the stopper and tipped the bottle over her head, letting it spill over the top of her now unbelievably greasy hair. It worked perfectly beyond any and all expectations. It made all of the gunk and grime slide off of her body as if it were water and she was hydrophobic. It went into every nook and cranny, even the inside of her mouth. She absently licked her now clean teeth as the impurities slowly slid down the drain. ¡°You good?¡± Hector asked. They were probably as close to the bathroom door as they could stomach. ¡°Y-yeah¡­ Imma take a shower really quick.¡± Luna felt as clean as could be, but a nice hot shower would do wonders. She turns on the hot water and lets the warmth sink deep into her bones. After a minute of that, she opened her eyes and spoke to Polaris. ¡°Polaris, did you finish indexing all of the changes?¡± ¡® Yes, do you wish to look at my overview? ¡¯ ¡°Not yet, for now tell me, did I gain any new quests?¡± Luna knew that question would blank Hector and Amy, but that won¡¯t last long. ¡® You gained and completed two limited cultivation quests, you have also met the requirements to complete your [ System Integration ] quests. ¡¯ Luna stood very still. She¡­ could turn in all of her[ System Integration ] quests. She could use her [ Character Overhaul ] ability and transition right now if she truly wanted to. She was just about to do so, advice be damned, until she got ahold of herself. She needs to know more about her situation before she could take that step. ¡°I would¡­ like that overview.¡±
Character Updates! 5 Personal Talents Gained [ Light Of Elorion ], [ Darkness of Mel ], [ Crystalized Mana ], [ Breath Of Life ], [ Polaris ] Character Package Fusion Used, [ Light of Elorion ], [ Darkness of Mel ], and [ Breath of Life ] affected Talent [ The Grand Cycle ] gained from Character Package Fusion Limited Quests Gained, [ The 16 Gates ], [ Condensing Mana ], [ Core Formation ], [ Core Compression ], [ Circuit Soul ] Limited Quests Completed, [ Condensing Mana ], [ Core Formation ], [ System Integration IIII ] Titles Gained, [ Mana Core ] Skills Gained, [ Light Magic ], [ Blue Magic ], [ Dark Magic ], [ Identify ], [ Necromancy ], [ Mana Manipulation ], [ Healing ], [ Telepathy ], [ Mana Circulation ], [ Core Formation ]
Every individual update had a link to the specific prompt they were tied to, so Luna decided to just check everything out one by one. It was a lot to go through, but she needed to actually see what everything did to understand her new strength. She started first with her talents and how they were changed by the fusion.
Talent: [ Light of Elorion ] Your affinity for Light Magic and Blue Magic has been raised to 300% You have gained the basic [ Light Magic ] and [ Blue Magic ] skills. As these skills come from a Talent, they grow twice as fast.
Talent: [ Darkness of Mel ] Your affinity for Dark Magic has been raised to 450% You have gained the basic [ Dark Magic ] skill. As this skill comes from a Talent, it grows twice as fast.
Talent: [ Crystallized Mana ] The mana within your mana channels has crystallized, increasing the effect of your stats and cultivation on your mana by 200% You gain the [ Mana Circulation Cultivation ] path. Your Cultivation Page has been updated.
Talent: [ Breath of Life ] All abilities with healing components cost 50% less and have 50% lower cooldown This talent is upgraded as you grow in tier.
Talent: [ Polaris ] You gain an AI companion that is tied to your growth. This AI companion can interact with the system on a much finer level than you. Certain bottlenecks will not be able to be passed without also growing your AI companion. You have gained the [ AI Cultivation ] path. Your Cultivation Page has been updated.
Talent: [ The Grand Cycle ] Your affinity for Light Magic, Dark Magic, and Blue Magic has been increased to 350% All abilities which relate to the aspects of [ Rejuvenation ], [ Light ], [ Life ], [ Enervation ], [ Darkness ], [ Death ], [ Identification ], [ Mimicry ], or [ Assimilation ] have their costs reduced by 50%, and their cooldowns reduced by 50%. This is a multiplicative effect. You have gained the [ Light Magic ], [ Dark Magic ], and [ Blue Magic ] skills. As these skills come from a Talent, they grow twice as fast. This talent is upgraded as you grow in Tier.
The Grand Cycle¡­ is just busted. Luna knew she chose things that would compliment and compound, but that was just crazy. The wording took, there was something she needed to clarify. ¡°If something has multiple aspects within it, does it compound on itself?¡± ¡® Yes, it is why your castings of the basic light magic spell didn¡¯t completely drain your mana pool. Mana costs drop with skill level, and your skill levels are quite low. ¡¯ That means that her basic light, dark, and blue magic will only cost 12.5% of their normal costs. That''s absolutely massive mana and time savings. ¡°Wait, this is the first time I have seen something give actual percentages. Even my [ Superhuman ] title doesn¡¯t put the actual percentages. The first time I saw a percentage was when I got an ¡®error¡¯ when choosing my character packages.¡± ¡® I changed how many aspects within the system appear to make things clearer, such as adding the direct percentages of abilities, or adding descriptor prompts when you gain things such as Shop discounts. ¡¯ That¡¯s nice. That will help a lot with her own understanding of things. ¡°Okay, time for the quests.¡±
Limited Quest: [ The 16 Gates ] Progress down your path of cultivation by clearing all of your Mana Gates. Objective: Clear all of your Mana Gates 2/16 Reward: 150 Character Points Hidden Objectives Found! Hidden Objective: Purify Your Mana Gates 15/15
¡°So, cultivation shows up as a specific type of limited quest, Also why don¡¯t hidden objectives have any rewards?¡± ¡® Because the effect of completing the objective is a reward in of itself, you are approximately 5x as strong as you would have been if you completed the quests for their bare minimum reward. ¡¯ ¡°Do all of my quests have Hidden Objectives?¡± ¡® They are within all cultivation quests best I can tell, I can detect if there is a Hidden Objective in any quest you gain, finding and completing hidden objectives is the reward, a way to show you are exceeding expectations and should complete whatever task you are doing. ¡¯ ¡°Huh, Sounds useful.¡± She tried to move on, but her attention got dragged back to the quest. 16 Gates? This is already different from the 10 Realms books. Luna closed her eyes and looked inward, trying to sense every mana gate she has. It took a second to feel it all out, but moving mana through her body was really easy. Each unopened mana gate felt like a blockage, slowing the flow There were three in each limb. One in each of her hands, elbows, shoulders, feet, knees, and hips, making a total of 12. One on her forehead, one in her heart, and one higher in her chest¡­ was that her trachea? Also including her core, that made 16. Odd, but she should check out the quests she actually completed.
QUEST COMPLETE Limited Quest: [ Condensing Mana ] Progress down your path of cultivation by condensing the mana within your body. Objective: Reach the Mana Mist Stage 1/1 Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Reward: 150 Character Points Optional Objective: Reach the Mana Drop Stage 1/1 Reward: 50 Attribute Points Hidden Objectives Found! Hidden Objective: Crystallize Your Mana 1/1 Hidden Objective: Reach the Liquid Crystal Mana Stage 1/1
¡°Did I complete all of the hidden objectives for this quest?¡± ¡® No, but you will not be able to complete the other hidden objectives until you fully unlock the system, this goes for every other cultivation quest you have at the moment. ¡¯ That¡¯s a bummer, but she still had three other quests to look at.
QUEST COMPLETE Limited Quest: [ Mana Core ] Progress down the path of cultivation by creating a mana core within your body. Objective: Create a Mana Core 1/1 Reward: 50 Attribute Points, 500 Character Points Hidden Objectives Found! Hidden Objective: Aspect your Mana Core 3/1 Hidden Objective: Create a Perfect Mana Core 1/1
¡°Aspect your Mana Core?¡± ¡® You managed to put Light Magic, Dark Magic, and Blue Magic into an inherent cycle within your mana core, It would have happened no matter how you did it because these magic types are inherent to your body, all of your mana is aspected with one of those three. ¡¯ Huh, so she won¡¯t have the issue of trying to merge life and death that was shown in some of the series she read. She got to skip that step. ¡°I don¡¯t think that this will be purely a good thing, might make things harder later on.¡± ¡® Life and Cultivation is a path of choices and growth, No choice is bad , some simply take a longer time to get to where you wish to be. ¡¯ ¡°Quite poetic, I didn¡¯t take you for a philosopher.¡± ¡® One of us needs to be the smart one. ¡¯ ¡°Asshole,¡± Luna said playfully moving on to the next quest.
Limited Quest: [ Core Compression ] Progress down the path of cultivation by compressing your Core, purifying it and the rest of your body. Objective: Reach E Grade Core Compression 0/1 Reward: 100 Attribute Points, 1000 Character Points
¡°E Grade¡­ finally something that mentions grades other than my Shop points, What do the grade of Points do anyway?¡± ¡® Higher grade points unlock new options in the shop, such as buying higher grade ability card shards, Higher grade points can be used to buy items of a lower grade, but don¡¯t have any more buying power, I can change how they appear within the system to make that more clear. ¡¯ ¡°No need, let''s check the big reveal.¡± As in the quest which relates directly to Polaris¡¯ own growth.
Limited Quest: [ Circuit Soul ] Progress down the path of cultivation by expanding your AI companion¡¯s abilities. Objective: Allow Polaris to analyze magical and technological advancements 0/1 Reward: 150 Character Points
¡°That¡¯s¡­ kinda vague,¡± said Luna, kinda disappointed. ¡® I changed the wording on purpose, The exact requirements are vague, but I can sense whenever something I need is nearby or in view, Looking at our memories, I can¡¯t see anything that would allow me to continue down this path just yet. ¡¯ ¡°You continue down this path,¡± asked Luna, "Not us?" ¡® Yes, Me, This cultivation path may be unlocked to you, but I direct it, You need only worry about it in the capacity of getting the things I need to analyze when I sense them. ¡¯ ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll trust you, you are a part of me after all, High Tide raises all ships and all, Now let¡¯s check that [ System Installation ] Quest.¡±
QUEST COMPLETE Story Quest: [ System Installation IIII ] You have balanced your soul, allowing you to begin to follow the path laid before you. You have gained full interactivity with the system, but many parts of the system are still beyond your grasp, and must be earned. Objective: Complete Limited Quests 3/3 Reward: Unlock Class and Job Systems
¡°Should I turn in this quest now, or will there be some sort of adverse side effect.¡± ¡® I recommend you wait until you have completed your Daily Conditioning quest before you turn this quest in, Your quests will once more be updated, including your limited cultivation quests.¡¯ ¡°And for completing the final System Installation quest?¡± ¡® I will say it after you have turned in this quest, I do not have complete reign over this, just very good ideas. ¡¯ That explains why the quest rewards seem so lackluster for all of her cultivation quests. Most of the bonuses don¡¯t seem to be in terms of numbers, and the ones that do are locked behind her story quests. ¡°Thanks, you¡¯re a real help Polaris.¡± ¡® I¡¯m a part of you and you are a part of me, to help you is to help myself. ¡¯ ¡°Well thanks anyway.¡± Luna stood in the water without talking for another few moments. It hasn¡¯t been more than three minutes since she got in here, but she still felt like there is so much information she still needed to figure out. ¡°The titles and the stuff I can feel now, they aren¡¯t fully listed in these quests, Why is that?¡± ¡® Your body and current conditions are an extensive matrix of mechanics that each affect each other, The System also doesn¡¯t fully list all of the changes, much like how your physical stats haven¡¯t increased even though you have been working out, The System only lists what it gives you, with almost nothing about what you get from outside sources, even if it does categorize things like Cultivation. ¡¯ That¡­ actually made a lot of sense. It answered a decent chunk of the questions she had about The System. Sure some things were still hidden from her, but she was confused as to why there wasn¡¯t an ¡®Ability¡¯ system within The System like Classes and Skills were. She could have made an Ability Card and used it long before she gained a Job or Class. She did ask one more question just to clarify. ¡°So¡­ what about Ability Cards? They were mentioned by the system, but I could have absorbed one by now if I really wanted to.¡± ¡® Ability Cards and other similar items can be used, but can¡¯t be linked to a class or job until you unlock them, ¡¯ Polaris paused for a second, ¡® I tested the waters with that sentence, I was able to mention things that were scrambled before now that you have completed the quest. ¡¯ Luna had already suspected what Polaris had said, but liked the confirmation. She did feel relief at knowing that Polaris could mention classes and jobs now. Her biggest fear about the system was that her own reality was being ¡®edited¡¯ much like others were when the system was mentioned. She couldn¡¯t do anything about it though, so she did literally anything other than focus on that thought . ¡°Time for the part that will break my mind, open the Skill window.¡±
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
Skills Page
Mundane Skills
Cleaning | Lvl 6 | Cooking | Lvl 23 | Creative Writing | Lvl 27 | FPS Video Games | Lvl 2 | Identify | Lvl 5 | Reading | Lvl 21 |
Typing | Lvl 19 |
Cultivation Skills
Mana Manipulation | Lvl 23 | Mana Circulation | Lvl 22 | Core Formation | Lvl 34 |
Combat Skills
Blue Magic | Lvl 5 | Dark Magic | Lvl 5 | Healing | Lvl 5 | Light Magic | Lvl 6 | Necromancy | Lvl 5 |
Body Enhancement Skills
Calisthenics | Lvl 24 | Running | Lvl 2 |
Social Skills
Telepathy | Lvl 5 |
¡°How the hell are my cultivation skills so high?¡± she asked. ¡® They jumped so high due to you making your core, I also helped make sure the System recognized your achievements and raised your skills accordingly. ¡¯ That explains quite a bit, yeah. ¡°So why is Core Formation bolded?¡± ¡® You have a reward now that it has reached the Apprentice level, wait until you have turned in all of your System Installation quests turned in to accept it. ¡¯ ¡°Also, why is Telepathy a ¡®Social Skill¡¯, I would have thought that social skills were things like public speaking and the like.¡± ¡® It is, but Social Skills mean any skill which could be used in a group, not just speech, For example, if you help people make a meal with all of you focusing on it, you would get the ¡®Cooking¡¯ skill as a social skill. ¡¯ ¡°Skills can appear in multiple groups?¡± ¡® Yes, but they still only get the experience they would have before, It¡¯s mostly for boosts to skill groups, which certain abilities can give. ¡¯ Luna had seen options like that in the shop, but they were abilities so far out of her price range that she never really considered them, especially since they didn¡¯t give more than a 10% boost in experience or 5% in effectiveness. ¡°Okay¡­ then I guess I should check out the titles.¡±
Title: [ Superhuman ] Your stats have reached the pinnacle of capability within your race. All of your stats have their effects increased by 10% This title has been upgraded from the Title [ Incomplete Superhuman ]. This title can be upgraded for increased effects.
Title: [ Skilled ] You have proven your skills. For each Skill at the rank of Novice or higher you gain a boost to a stat. Constitution, +5 Intelligence, +15 Wisdom, +20 Charisma, +5 This title can be upgraded for increased effects.
It felt nice to see just how much her stats had been boosted by her Superhuman title. Luna also got some boosts to her Skilled Title. Both Mana Circulation and Mana Manipulation are wisdom boosts while Core Formation boosts intelligence. ¡°Hey, when will my title get upgraded, I have a skill at the apprentice rank, I would have thought that it would have been upgraded, especially since Core Formation gives twice the stat points than any other skill.¡± ¡® You haven¡¯t gotten the reward from that skill, until you accept that reward the title won¡¯t update. ¡¯ Odd, why wouldn¡¯t it update automatically? Well, it just meant Luna would need to wait for that upgrade. It will probably just be an additional bonus to her stats anyway, that can wait. For now she moves onto her next and newest title.
Title: [ Mana Core ] You have gained and implemented a mana core within your body. Mana Core Quality: Perfect Mana Core Compression: F Rank Mana Core Attunements: Light, Dark, Blue Your mana pool has been increased by 1000% All skills or abilities which cost or use mana are 50% easier to use and faster to activate. All skills or abilities which use an aspect of one of your Attuned elements that also use Mana are 50% easier to use and faster to activate.
Luna¡¯s Mana Core title was the most intriguing aspect of her new cultivation abilities. That 1000% increased mana pool? That wasn¡¯t in any of the stories she read. Maybe it was like reaching D Grade in Defiance Of The Fall, but that felt off. ¡°Why is my Mana Pool boosted so high?¡± ¡® It¡¯s due to your attunements, each one increased the size of the mana core by 3x its original size, Your core is the size of one of your balled fingers, while a normal core is only the size of a fingernail. ¡¯ ¡°I¡¯m assuming that comes with the downside of Core Compression taking a lot longer?¡± ¡® Yes, many things will take longer the stronger you get for your tier and level, It¡¯s the balance for being able to punch above your weight class. ¡¯ Luna finished off her shower, drying off with one of the towels from the hotel. She was tempted to take it, remembering how her mom had her take almost everything that was free from hotels they stayed at during their one vacation a decade ago. She quickly remembered that she had over 100k in the bank right now and left the towel on the hook where it belonged. She checked her clothes, trying to make sure none of the gunk she purged from her body was on them. Sadly, her underwear was a casualty. Luna grabbed some trash bags from under the bathroom sink and tied it in three different layers of bags. The purge from her cultivation was utterly foul, she wouldn¡¯t wish the smell on anyone. Luna stepped out of the bathroom she feeling refreshed and refocused. She saw Hector and Amy on her bed. Hector was shirtless, with Amy rubbing his back. Luna formed a new ball of light in her hand, ready to hit Hector, the fear of his condition returning driving her actions. It took her a second to realize Hector¡¯s back was perfectly smooth. Hector used to have a surgery scar that ran from the top of his left hip to the base of his spine which was now gone. Luna checked her own stomach. She had her appendix burst as a kid, but the surgury to remove it was botched. Luna needed two surgeries to fix the botched stuff to get to boot camp. Her own surgery scars, a massive source of her body image issues, were gone just as Hector¡¯s were. ¡°Huh¡­ it even heals really old scars,¡± said Luna, a bit in awe as she raised the globe of light in front of her face as it slowly dispersed into the air. Hector nodded, a small smile on his face. He wasn¡¯t dysphoric like Luna was, but he didn¡¯t like that scar and liked to stay with a shirt on as often as possible. As a force of habit, he put his shirt back on. He still hadn¡¯t fully internalized everything that happened. The look he sent to Luna made her know that she won¡¯t be getting away from his questions this time. ¡°Okay, so¡­ are we going to get an explanation for how you healed me and my girlfriend?¡± ¡°Will ¡®Cuz Magic¡¯ work?¡± Luna asked hopefully. ¡°Not one bit,¡± said Amy. A sigh escaped from Luna. She sat down in a chair in the corner of the room, her legs naturally crossing as she got comfortable. Luna didn¡¯t want to lie to her friends, so she had to word this very carefully. ¡°I have a head start, In about half a year, others will show up with these abilities all around the world, I can¡¯t say how I got it, if I did you¡¯d get MIBed.¡± Men In Black wasn¡¯t a movie Luna particularly liked, but the neuralyzer was perhaps the best analogy to getting ¡®blanked¡¯ by The System that Luna could mention without them getting blanked. They didn¡¯t believe her, but they didn¡¯t get blanked, even with an oblique implication about the Apocalypse Countdown. The fact that they didn¡¯t immediately get blanked meant she was just vague enough. It was a line she could ride for the rest of the explanations. ¡°Why did you show us then,¡± asked Amy, ¡°Why now, right when you are about to leave?¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t have it until just now, I just knew that it would happen eventually, gaining of vast cosmic power just sorta hit at a very inopportune time.¡± ¡°So, is there anything we can do, or is this just your thing now?¡± asked Hector. ¡°Are you even going to go back to school,¡± asked Amy ¡°Yeah, with superpowers that can feed, energize, and heal with a wave of the hand as well as enough money to rent an apartment for years, you don¡¯t need to worry about anything really.¡± Luna was just about to say that she was going to go back to school, but she didn''t actually know now. She frowns as she tries to think. If she focused entirely on just growing her powers just how powerful could she become in the next 6 months? ¡°I also have an AI companion tied to my powers, They just can¡¯t tell me everything or else I get MIBed too.¡± Amy and Hector both look at Luna, surprised, but not really shocked. They both just got a face full of light magic, and smelled the aftereffects of cultivating. An AI companion, while new, isn¡¯t out of the realm of possibility. ¡°So¡­ can¡¯t give any specifics, but you have goddamned magic now and more people will be getting magic in half a year- wait, was this magic what gave you the seizures?¡± Hector asked. Luna winced. She knew Hector was smarter than her, and he could read her like a book when it came to things like this. She still hoped he wouldn¡¯t catch that though. It¡¯s why she avoided the question before by offering to heal them, aside from trying to see how much they could remember. She would have done it anyway, but it served double duty then. ¡°Yes, and no, I didn¡¯t have a good flow, I needed to cut open a breech within myself to let the magic flow correctly.¡± ¡°Will they happen again?¡± asked Amy, concerned. ¡°They won¡¯t as far as I can tell, but now that I can heal, seizures can¡¯t do too much to me.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t underestimate brain damage Luna,¡± said Hector, ¡°Even just a minor concussion could kill.¡± Luna nodded, remembering a football player in Highschool who died after he was tackled and knocked his head against a hard spot in the grass. He didn''t even knock his head against a rock or something like that. Just dirt. There was a whole ceremony about him, and the football team was disbanded for the rest of the year. ¡°I won¡¯t, but I¡¯m 99.9% sure that I¡¯ll be fine.¡± The look Hector and Amy sent her way had her cringing back. She was happy when Amy grabbed Hector¡¯s hand, knowing what was about to happen. For a brief moment, the two lovebirds were in their own world as they turned to each other, goofy smiles on their faces. They shared a quick kiss before they turned back to Luna. They were still concerned, but were also sure that Luna knew far more about her situation than they did. ¡°Okay, then I guess we should talk about this more later if you are still leaving,¡± asked Hector. ¡°I need to head back home, even if I want to stay here with you guys, I need to go back to alleviate my mother¡¯s concerns at the very least.¡± ¡°Okay, then let¡¯s head down as soon as you have your stuff put together, Your flight is still in three hours, and we don¡¯t want to have you miss it.¡± Chapter 8: The Test The plane back to Florida was delayed nearly two hours, but other than that, it was a completely mediocre ride. The snacks were meh, but Luna still loved the feeling of the plane starting up. Being pulled backward for that small instant, the way gravity made her feel like they were really going fast as they started to get up to the proper altitude. It was exhilarating. The way back down was almost the same, but it wasn¡¯t nearly as good. It was on the plane that Luna realized that Polaris could see everything she saw, and Polaris taught Luna how to activate her ¡®Telepathy¡¯ skill to speak to them without startling others near her on the plane. She and Polaris decided that the way Luna had her character sheet was kinda¡­ all over the place. There was too much information all at once, especially when the System didn¡¯t take into account her whole power, just the power it directly categorized or gave her. They both also agreed that a total revamp should wait until she turned in her final [ System Installation ] quest. For now, she just glances at her character sheet while she waits for her brother to come to the airport and pick her up.
System Interface
Character Sheet Shop Cultivation Skills NON NON
General Information Attributes Titles
Name Luna Alicea Gonzalez Strength 17 { 100 } Superhuman Skilled
Nature Human Dexterity 20 { 100 } Mana Core
Alignment Earth ( Humans ) Constitution 16 { 105 }
Tier 0 Intelligence 29 { 115 }
Level 0 Wisdom 25 { 120 }
F Grade Credits 32,400 Charisma 24 { 105 }
Character Points 10 Luck 30 { 100 }
Active Quests
Story Quests
System Installation IIII System Installation V
Limited Quests
On A Roll II The 15 Gates { Cultivation }
Condensing Mana { Cultivation } Mana Core { Cultivation }
Core Compression { Cultivation } Circuit Soul { Cultivation }
Radiant Quests
Daily Conditioning Studious Student
Racial Talents
Racial Talents have not been unlocked. Please purchase a ¡®Character Overhaul¡¯ in the shop, acquire a Racial job, or use a Character Package to unlock your Racial Talents.
Personal Talents
Breath Of Life Crystallized Mana Polaris
Luna learned a lot about the system and how different things interact with each other, but much was still not able to be learned. She at least learned the difference between ¡®Level¡¯ and ¡®Tier¡¯. Levels are gained with experience which can be gained in a multitude of ways which Luna doesn¡¯t have access to yet because she doesn¡¯t have the ¡®Class¡¯ or ¡®Job¡¯ systems. More importantly, that ¡®0/100¡¯ from character sheets past is a percentile to her next level, not an actual number of individual points. She will need more experience to level than someone else to make up for her increased power at her level. Polaris could make it an exact number, but that won¡¯t won¡¯t be much of a help, and would honestly make her focus too much on the pure numbers. A percentage is better for her mental health. Tier is the really interesting thing. It¡¯s referring to her system given ¡®Ability Tier¡¯, basically a rating of how capable she is, though it seems to focus mostly on combat ability. If Luna had gotten into a fight at some time during these last 6 months, she would have been given a ¡®Tier¡¯ based on her best showing. Tier determines things like if she would get a warning from the system if she entered a dangerous area, as well as acting as a limiting factor for some items or abilities within the Shop. For example, to buy the next level of a cultivation ability in the shop, you need to first buy the base form of the ability and be of a requisite ¡®tier¡¯. Tier is listed on an F -> SSS+ scale, with each level having a number and a ¡®Plus¡¯ and ¡®Minus¡¯. 0 is only shown if the system hasn¡¯t assessed you yet. ¡®F- 10¡¯ is the lowest level. Where ¡®F+ 1¡¯ is the highest F grade Tier. it seems overly granular where each letter grade has 30 inner ranks, but apparently there is a really big difference between each letter grade. Based on the stories Jessabelle read, she can believe it. She also believes that the plus and minus would have vast gaps in the higher grades as well. This made Luna think about joining a boxing club to try and increase her Tier early and see if she could get some Limited Quests that way. She even had the idea of going around like a masked vigilante, fighting crime and helping people. Ultimately, she decided that both would be too risky. There just wasn¡¯t enough in it to potentially risk her magic getting found out now that she knows that people won¡¯t have their minds clouded by the system. ¡°Hey stinker,¡± said Michael, lightly kicking Luna¡¯s leg. Luna let out a very feminine yelp and her tan face quickly turned red as embarrassment flushed through her. ¡°Asshole!¡± ¡°Well maybe if you checked your phone you would have seen my text asking where you were,¡± said Michael, the humor in his face draining away. Michael grabs his sibling and pulls her into a hug. It was¡­ tight. Luna holds him back, even as he began to shudder and shake in her arms. ¡°Oh¡­ hey,¡± Luna said trying to comfort her brother, ¡°I¡¯m here, I¡¯m okay.¡± Michael¡¯s grip grew even tighter. He tried speaking, but each syllable was stopped by sobs. She could only make out the word ¡®scared¡¯, but the sentiment was clear. Luna felt tears well up in her own eyes. Luna hadn¡¯t realized just how scary it must have been for her brother. To get a call from a man he barely knew, but that his sibling trusted saying that she collapsed. Hector had to tell her brother about the seizures and stroke. Luna was already the ¡®baby¡¯ of the family as the youngest, had already left on her own and was homeless for a time. To hear how close she was to death frightened them all. It took nearly two minutes of comforting for Michael to be able to pull away and speak normally. Both of them took a second to wipe tears off their eyes. ¡°Let¡¯s head home, yeah?¡± asked Michael, trying to regain some of his ¡®fun big brother¡¯ energy. ¡°Yeah¡­ I have a feeling that everyone at home is going to have the same reaction you had,¡± said Luna. ¡°Yeah,¡± confirmed Michael, ¡°Mom especially is going to hold you for an hour at least before she lets you go.¡±
Michael was wrong. Luna¡¯s mom didn¡¯t let go of her for nearly three hours after she got home. They watched Luna¡¯s favorite movie, the old Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie from before she was born. They had Luna¡¯s favorite food, homemade spaghetti and meatballs. If she had presents she would have thought this was a birthday celebration, but that is still three months out. No, they just wanted Luna to be comfortable and safe. None of them liked her moving too much, thinking her as a fragile vase that could shatter at any moment. It makes some sense. Luna¡¯s godfather, Bill, had died of a stroke when he looked to be perfectly healthy four years ago. Luna¡¯s situation sang the same tune, and none of them wanted to hear the music. Now though, Luna was finally given a moment to herself that wasn¡¯t in the bathroom. Everyone was heading to bed, but they made sure Luna took some sleeping medicine. When Luna finally got to her room, she saw that it had been restructured. Namely in that her old loft bed was gone. They left the stairs, but now, Luna has a normal bed that was on the ground. In fact, it was actually quite short, not allowing for any storage underneath. Luna was tempted to just lie down and sleep, but she knew there were things that were more important. Luna had spent the time her plane was delayed to finish her [ Daily Conditioning ] radiant quest. Luna went and locked her door before she summoned a cloud of opalescent light in front of her. She did a few experiments to learn the basics of controlling the light, and it was frighteningly easy. Luna presses the cloud of light into her chest, letting out a relaxed moan as the energy ran through her, purging the sleep drugs from her system while restoring her stamina and healing her fatigue on its way. The excess energy broke back down into regular mana, which the mana gate on her left hand drank in with greed. ¡® Polaris, accept the quest, ¡¯ Luna said telepathically. ¡® On it. ¡¯ An instant later, Luna felt a sudden shift within herself. Polaris was controlling the integration, cataloging everything she was gaining. She waited for a few moments, waiting to see if anything else happened. When nothing did she asked Polaris for details. ¡® What¡¯s the status? ¡¯ ¡® The information is still coming in, but here is an overview, ¡¯ responded her helpful AI.
Character Updates! Quest Completed: System Integration IIII System: Class Integrated Basic Overview: Gain levels towards a class from gaining experience. Every 5 levels you gain the ability to choose a class based on your past actions. The longer you wait, the higher grade of class you can gain. You must choose a class before you can progress beyond level 25. Classes have a maximum level, when you reach that level you may upgrade the class to the next tier from a group of options provided by the system from your past actions. System: Jobs Integrated Basic Overview: Collect different aspects of yourself such as your stats, abilities, skills, and cultivation into a specific ¡®Job¡¯. Jobs grant boosts to everything related to that Job. Jobs take a portion of your experience, while also allowing you to gain experience from doing actions relating to that Job. Each Job has a level cap depending on the parts put into the job. Once the job has reached its maximum level, you may upgrade the job to the next tier from a group of options provided by the system from your past actions. Main Differences All classes are directly tied to combat in some way or another, additionally, Classes don¡¯t grant any passive benefits, instead granting abilities at different levels depending on the class. Jobs on the other hand, have many more options. You also do not have a limit on the number of jobs you may gain, you just can¡¯t add the same thing to multiple jobs. For example, Intelligence cannot be added to 2 different jobs. Additionally, new aspects can be added to a job after you have gained the job allowing you further control on their development, whereas Classes cannot be changed in any way until the level cap has been reached. System: Character Points Expanded Basic Overview: Character Points may be gained through experience, You gain 20 points every 10% progress you make to your next level. This number can grow or shrink depending on your chosen class. Additionally, Character Points may be spent to increase the level of a skill tied to a Job, or gain a Job appropriate skill, cost depending on rank of the Job, rarity of the Skill, and Skill level. Limited Quest Gained, [ Path Of The Gods II ] Quest Changes Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. [ On A Roll II ] Experience Packages reward changed to E- Grade Experience Package [ The 16 Gates ] gains F Grade Experience Package reward [ Condensing Mana ] gains F+ Grade Experience Package reward [ Mana Core ] gains 3 F+ Grade Experience Package reward [ Core Compression ] gains E Grade Experience Package reward [ Circuit Soul ] gains F Grade Experience Package reward [ Daily Conditioning ] gains F- Grade Experience Package as reward
¡® Polaris, I love you, ¡¯ Luna said frankly, having everything laid out so simply and plainly made it so easy to understand. It took Luna nearly 11 hours to get her first skill, but this made gaining classes and jobs so simple to understand. Luna could probably make a Job right now if she felt the confidence to. ¡® Quite narcissistic don¡¯t you think Luna, Loving an aspect of your own personality. ¡¯ ¡® You know as well as I do that you are already diverging from me, You sound much more human, and you have existed for less than 24 hours, anyway, lemme check out the new quest. ¡¯
Limited Quest: [ Path Of The Gods II ] You have completed the first step to truly going beyond your limitations and taking charge of your destiny. Now you must take the first step on your path. No matter what you choose, you are always going towards your destination, no matter the missteps. Be bold, fight with ferocity, live! Objective: Gain an F+ or higher grade Class 0/1 Reward: Class Appropriate Skill Card Objective: Gain an F+ or higher grade Job 0/1 Extra Reward: Job Appropriate Essence
¡® This quest has hidden objectives, but I can¡¯t really see what they are, ¡¯ said Polaris. ¡® Probably something to have to do with the rank of the job itself, say Common, Rare, Epic etcetera, The big thing to me is the mention of Essences, I was wondering when those would show up, you got an idea of what they are Polaris, What about awakening stones? ¡¯ ¡® Essences¡­ essences¡­ ¡¯ Polaris mused, before a new overview prompt appeared in Luna¡¯s vision.
Essence Overview Essences are a way to aspect a part of your body and soul toward a specific aspect of the universe. They increase affinity and grant an ability tied to that Essence similar to an Ability Card. Jobs may only be tied to 1 essence at a time, and you may only ever have a maximum of 4 essences at a time. If you have at least 2 essences, they may be merged into a Confluence Essence, representing a merging of the essences and the abilities granted. If these essences were tied to a Job, both jobs must reach Max Level and the two jobs will be merged into 1 job with an appropriate confluence that merges all of the ideas within both jobs together. Awakening Stones may be used to gain new abilities from Essences. The abilities gained are tied to the Awakening Stone¡¯s type, Essence Affinity, and the job the Essence is tied to. Awakening Stones cannot be used without a job. Essences must be found or won, but common Awakening Stones can be bought in the shop for 10,000 F Grade Credits, or 7,500 Credits for a lottery style roll that could give up to rare Awakening Stones if you get lucky.
¡® Huh, it seems like Jobs are the main way to grow in strength in this system, with Classes being more of a prerequisite, ¡¯ said Luna. So many things interact with Jobs, and since Essences can grant unique abilities, classes aren¡¯t unique in that ability, lowering the appeal of classes in her eyes. ¡® That doesn¡¯t mean you should ignore Classes, ¡¯ said Polaris, ¡® Classes have a direct offensive focus, whereas Jobs are only as offensively focused as you make them, additionally, the more jobs you have the slower everything levels. ¡¯ ¡® Yeah I understand that, but tell me, think we should complete the final [ System Integration ] quest, or turn in these quests now? ¡¯ ¡® If you turn in the final [ System Integration ] quest you will lose access to your Radiant Quests, They are part of this ¡®Tutorial¡¯ phase. ¡¯ ¡® What?! ¡¯ asked Luna, worried. ¡® You are in a Tutorial right now, one in which you are being graded based on how strong you get and how fast you get there, with the latter part mattering more than the former the closer we get to the Apocalypse Countdown¡¯s end. ¡¯ Luna wasn¡¯t dumb, nor was she unable to see the parallels to her stories. She mostly needed to know where she stood in the system''s eyes before she made any final decisions. ¡® What¡¯s my current grade? ¡¯ ¡® Right now I can tell you that you are slightly exceeding expectations right now, if I could give it a grade, you have a B, and before you broke open your Mana Gate, you were at a D-, barely above failing the system¡¯s expectations. ¡¯ Luna''s mind ground to a halt as she took in that information. Was she was really expected to rush forward without any sort of plan, without even knowing what the rest of her system integration would grand her? No, that can¡¯t be it, the System simply thought she spent too long getting to her power level before she gained her Cultivation Ability. Luna likely went from a D to a B by jumping so many of the challenges with her talent choice. It also meant that if Luna did something similar she could jump even more letter grades. ¡® I want an A+, '' said Luna, resolve growing in her heart, '' We aren¡¯t turning in the quest just yet. ¡¯ ¡® What will you try before we complete integration,¡¯ asked Polaris, ¡® You don¡¯t want to rush too far and squander opportunities you can only fully utilize after the integration or even the start of the apocalypse. ¡¯ Luna thought on it for a moment and came up with a rather simple plan. ¡® I will get more Cultivation abilities and complete as many of their quests as I can before I complete my [ 16 Gates ] quest, Once that quest has been turned in, we will finish [ System Integration ], It''s tempting, but I won¡¯t choose a class or job until after I use my [ Character Overhaul ] ability, I''d rather know about how they might get changed by my final racial choice. ¡¯ It hurt Luna to wait for her [ Character Overhaul ] ability, as it could help her transition immediately as well as give Luna her dream body. All she can tell herself is that she has lived so long looking the way she does now, she can wait an extra couple of weeks. ¡® Do I have the same options for Cultivation abilities Polaris? ¡¯ ¡® Unless you tell me any more specifics you want, then yes. ¡¯ Now that Luna isn¡¯t on a self imposed time crunch and knows what Classes and Jobs do she has a much better idea of what she wants. Which is basically more general boosts that compound with her current abilities or help Polaris. ¡® I¡¯ll take two Cultivation abilities, I want both to be able to be boosted by my talents, More importantly, I want one that can help you directly to help with the [ AI Cultivation ] path, I also want to leave 1 Mind and Body shop ability slot open, even if my second Soul Slot is taken. ¡¯ Polaris goes silent for a second, before coming back. ¡® You have two pairs of choices, showing them now. ¡¯
Dao Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: At least 50% Affinity Start on the path of cultivating the holy Dao within your soul, empowering your soul. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
Domain Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: At least 50% Affinity Start on the path of cultivating a domain within your spirit using your insights into yourself and your place in the universe to empower your mind and body. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
¡® Here is the second pair. ¡¯
Heart Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: At least 50% Affinity Start on the path of cultivating your heart, reaffirming your path to the cosmos and empowering your mind and soul. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
Monster Core Cultivator ( Quartz ) Requirements: Blue Magic Affinity <75% OR 4 Essences OR Tamer Style Class Start on the path of cultivating Essence by absorbing and purifying Monster Cores to empower your body. This ability can be upgraded naturally or through further shop purchases. Cost: 5000 F Grade Shop Credits ( 50% Off! )
¡® By the way, what does the ¡®Quartz¡¯ mean in the cultivation abilities, ¡¯ Luna asked absently. ¡® It is the aura color you show, when you raise your cultivation up a grade it changes to a different color of the rainbow, It was defaulted to ¡®Quartz¡¯ because it¡¯s following the naming convention of the Sufficiently Advanced Magic series because of your love of the series, I can change it over to Grade if you wish. ¡¯ ¡® Nah, I like it,¡¯ said Luna, ¡® Also, just to make sure, the ¡®Empower your ¡®X¡¯ part of all of these descriptions purely refers to how many shop slots it takes up? ¡¯ ¡® Yes, It seems quite confusing, but makes perfect sense if you can see the back end of the system, To put it simply, Shop Abilities are tied to a different aspect of your soul, no matter what, the tiers of shop abilities simply refer to how deeply within your soul they are tied. ¡¯ ¡® Huh, That¡¯s interesting, but now I need to make some difficult choices. ¡¯ Difficult choices indeed. In truth, Luna kinda wanted them all, but she simply couldn¡¯t afford them. She knew what Dao and Domain cultivation were. The first is from Defiance of The Fall, and the second from Path of Ascension. If Luna could start the process thanks to her other cultivation ability and her immense talents in Light, Dark, and Blue magic they would be the obvious choice. She just doesn¡¯t know how easy that would be. They were based on enlightenment and self actualization with the universe. She might really need to go to Tibet and spend some time looking for some monks to talk with. The real question when looking at the second pair of options was simple. Did Luna think she could handle Heart cultivation? Did she have a firm enough path that she was willing to confront it with Heart Cultivation? Would it perhaps help her strengthen her path forward? No. That was what Luna was able to come to in the end. She simply wasn¡¯t ready to handle something as confronting as Heart Cultivation so early on her path. As useful as Monster Core cultivation was, if it meshed well with Heart Cultivation she would need to wait on that one too. ¡® Lemme go to the bathroom before we accept the first pair, ¡¯ said Luna. In preparation, she bought another bottle of Crystal Wash for another 1000 credits. It was expensive, and probably a bad choice, but the first time she enjoyed Crystal Wash made her addicted to the stuff. As soon as she has a steady flow of credits she will likely spend a ton on it. Once Luna was in the shower she bought the cultivation abilities. In doing so, her last two shop discounts were used. It took longer for the purge to come, but when it came Luna felt horrid. Two cultivation abilities were worse on her than breaking through multiple bottlenecks at once, even if the total amount of purge was less. She used the Crystal Wash as soon as she was no longer at risk of collapsing from the nausea. ¡® Another 9 hours for complete integration unless you get some sleep, ¡¯ warned Polaris. ¡® I¡¯m beat, Let¡¯s just leave looking into it for tomorrow. ¡¯ ¡® And for your other obligations? ¡¯ asked Polaris, almost mentally nudging Luna to her mother¡¯s room across the house. Luna winced, but that shower gave her time to think and muse things over. Luna went on her computer, trying to find apartments for rent that were isolated near the edge of town. ¡® Given the family¡¯s reaction to your medical issues, is this really something you want to splash on them right away, ¡¯ asked Polaris ¡® It¡¯s not a matter of their wants, but my needs, and I need a place where I can practice magic and cultivation without being seen, Ma won¡¯t like it, but she will need to learn to live with it. ¡¯
¡°My daughter¡¯s gonna be an author, My daughter¡¯s gonna be an author, My daughter¡¯s gonna be an author!¡± chanted Luna¡¯s mom. Michael and Jackson quickly came over to see the commotion, confused about what was happening. They saw their mom holding onto Luna in a huge hug. She squealed like a teenage girl, forcing her and Luna to jump. George was out at work. He was gonna be so sad to have missed the chance to see his wife so happy after all of the tears about Luna¡¯s stroke. ¡°Luna¡¯s moving out to focus on her writing, she already found an apartment!¡± said Luna¡¯s mom. Luna had told them about the ¡®lottery win¡¯ before she ever left for Washington. Said that she was going to burn some money and decide what she was going to do in the future. It seems that Luna had overestimated how angry her mother would be about Luna leaving the nest and squandering her schooling opportunities all at the same time to become an ¡®independent author¡¯. Both Michael and Jackson came over and joined the Hug, all jumping together and making one heck of a racket. ¡°My baby is going to be an author!¡± Luna had extremely overestimated how bad the reaction would be.