3 Options?
I had known from the second I had seen him within the endless void, wandering aimlessly, that the system inherent to all living beings was locked under many levels. But, until this moment I could not have imagined how complex this interwoven seal was. Usually, a locked system would be covered with three layers. A layer to seal the system, as a mechanism itself. Another for elemental affinities and the abilities they give. And lastly a seal on their physical bodies; to prevent an unlimited possibility for growth. Of the three, only the first would be fully unlocked while the rest are merely loosened.
But, this soul has thirty layers sealing him; with ten evenly spread out between the three. I know not the cause, it may have been a god or goddess from another dimension, but I gave my promise to unlock it for him. Though with the level of complexity, it will take more energy than I can safely use.
Coming to the decision of using a mana pool I prepare the necessary modem to transfer the energy directly to me. Though this will make unlocking his system a simple task, it will come at a price. That price will be a long period of seclusion to heal me from the damage of letting this pure form of energy to run rampant within me.
After unlocking his system, the goddess used the soul's previous language to translate from the Olden Language to something he can read and understand.
Hopefully, he does not do something to regret later. Then again, he would be able to read the descriptions, so nothing horrible should happen.
Coming to this conclusion, the goddess Isolated herself with a cocoon of energy to begin healing herself.
After what felt like ages to the goddess, her cocoon of energy finally cracks open. Coming out fully healed, she checks up on the soulfully expecting him to already have been transferred to the world she had promised him. You can imagine her surprise to find him merely floating they're doing nothing. To a goddess, time was a relative thing. It passed without her notice much of the time due to her immortal soul, but she can still feel it affect her. Though it must be an extremely long amount of time. Yet here he was just floating their aimlessly for ages!
Confused she moves closer to him,
"What are you still doing here? Why have you not completed using the energy I gave you and moved on to your new world and second chance at life?"
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
After I made that very foolish mistake, I chose to just wait until she came back. I certainly do not want to pick something else and cause myself a permanent issue. Hopefully, whatever I pressed before is not too much of a problem!
Feeling like I had stayed in the same spot for 'Days!', I suddenly felt her presence again. But before I can exclaim in happiness and joy at her return, she spoke with a considerable amount of confusion that baffled me to no end. Is she not happy to see me as I am her?
"What are you still doing here? Why have you not completed using the energy I gave you and moved on to your new world and second chance at life?"
"Ohh…" Answering with relief that she did not merely want him gone, he continues
"Well, umm … I… I kinda don't understand what anything on the blue screen says except a few words. But they don't really help decode anything. You really need to create a Rosetta Stone to help translate these words."
Looking at her, he sees her confusion as clearly as day but does not understand why. That is until she asked,
"What do you mean you don't understand what it says, those words are in a language from your memory… Oh, your memory."
'How did I miss this? Of course, he wouldn't be able to read a language from his memory if it is blurry to him. Good thing he waited.'
Sighing with relief at his forethought she exclaims,
"Good thing you waited for me, child! You could have caused yourself a great deal of suffering otherwise." Only to look back at him and notice him giving her a weird look or at least its equivalent.
'Wait, why is he looking at me like that?'
"What is wrong? You can confide in me, and I will help you to my greatest ability."
"Umm, I~ kinda got a bit restless, and ma~y have used some or a large portion of the energy on something, and I also don't know what it is. I was hoping you could help me out." Glowing like a child caught red-handed doing something his parents told him not to do would, he continued to beg the motherly being for help while she seemed to merely stare at him.
After what felt like hours, she finally heaved a great sigh, she thought to herself,
'How can he continuously speak! It gives me a headache just listening!'
"Let me see, little one. I might not be able to tell you what you chose since that is your personal system, but I may be able to even out your existence with my general knowledge of the categories."
Looking at his system screen, she noticed the only category not glowing.
'Ahh~! Why modification?! That is the worse choice to choose from blindly. Here I was hoping it would be as simple as him choosing a weird build or a crazy ability. No, it had to be a modification.'
"Well, this will be a lot of work to fix."
"Why is that? Did I do something horrible?"
"You choose a random modification. Usually, you are given five random choices and two compatible ones with you. The issue comes when you randomly choose one. You see, there are thousands of modifications to choose from, and of those choices, there are many curses and deformations. Some examples are like not being able to stand in the sun, you must drink blood to sustain your life force, you cannot leave the ocean, having a face that would make a troll cringe in disgust, or even semi-sentience. The worst are the combinations within some curses. On the other hand, there are also blessings like extreme beauty, extraordinary strength, and speed, or the ability to fly. Then there are those that one would consider neutral such as becoming a sentient beast or becoming one of the offspring of a higher race. All we can do now is to stay on the safe side and try to shore up your attributes. Hopefully, it will make any curse ineffective to you by increasing your charisma, intelligence, wisdom, strength, and dexterity."
'Dexterity? Charisma? Is this system like some sort of RPG game?'
Noticing this he asked the goddess,
"Wait, if there are attributes for those, then shouldn't there be some for things like Constitution? Or agility?"
"Yes, there are those, but they do not affect curses. The curse would usually increase one of those five attributes at the cost of another. So, I am going to even out your points to 6500, so that we can increase all your attributes enough. Select the second category to the left so we can begin."
System -
The Goddess's Gift - 6500
Attributes -
Strength - 16 + Per Point 30
Constitution - 14 + Per Point 30
Endurance - 15 + Per Point 30
Intelligence - 9 + Per Point 50
Wisdom - 9 + Per Point 50
Agility - 11 + Per Point 50
Dexterity - 10 + Per Point 50
Perception - 10 + Per Point 50
Charisma - 8 + Per Point 70
Once he mentally pressed on the category, a screen filled with those offensive squiggly lines and circles appeared.
'Thankfully, that double circle thing did not show up! What a mess that would have been.'
As he contemplated the meaning of the squiggly lines, the goddess caught his attention,
"Now, allow me to see your attributes page so I can help."
"Okay," he called out joyfully.
But after a while passed and he still did not do anything, the goddess became impatient.
"What is wrong, child?"
Turning a bright pink color; as if he was blushing he starts to mumble an incoherent sentence,
"Stop! Stop and speak clearly!"
"Umm … I … I don't know how to share my screen with you."
The goddess started to chuckle merrily.
"You don't have to worry about that, just think strongly about letting me see your attributes screen and it will allow me."
Focusing on the task with a significant amount of determination, he vowed to accomplish this task lest he disappoints this motherly being. After a while of total focus and effort, he exclaimed in triumph when he heard a ding sound.
"YES! I did it!"
After his short outburst, he looks towards the goddess exuding an enormous amount of hope,
"Did I do it?" he asked
Laughing at his antics, she says
"Yes, you did well. Now let see, you were quite strong in your previous life, but not quite the most intelligent or charismatic man."
After listing the names of the attributes to him and what the numbers next to them say, he was finally able to understand some of those squiggly lines and circles. Yet, he still could not fathom any use for those damnable double circles.
"Ask any questions you have now. Once I help you raise your attributes to safeguard against any curse, the changes will be permanent. Let me know if you have any preferences as well."
"Umm … all of them are self-explanatory I guess. Well, except perception, how does that help me?"
"Perception directly affects your awareness and ability to react to changing conditions. It helps you notice any ambushes and traps that are laid out against you. In my opinion, it is the most useful attribute among them all. It is universal in that all types of people have high perception. From warriors to rogues, and even mages. Any more questions or clarifications?"
"Nope, that should be it."
"Great! We need to make sure that your strength and dexterity are both 35 and endurance at 30; making you quite strong and durable. While Intelligence will be good at 23 and Wisdom at 27 with that base, you would start out as a rank 4 wizard with massive mana regeneration. Lastly is your charisma, we will pull it up to 20 which is much above average. That would cost you 4710 energy. With only 1890 points left, what do you want to do?"
"I would like to bring my agility, constitution, and perception all 20. And Uhh… what about the other categories?"
"Hmm, you do not have to worry about build since it will automatically give you one similar to your previous life. In life benefits will be a waste; monetary gains are so~ limited. Traits, you will get those when you gain outstanding achievements in life. Hmm … maybe I can get you a weapons skill? What type of weapon would you like to use."
"It seems to me like I am quite strong so a great sword would be wonderful!" As he began to imagine himself as a fantasy character wielding a might great sword killing tens of enemies with each strike, the goddess forced him out of his reverie,
"Well though you will spend energy to get the skill, it doesn't give you any inherent knowledge to wield one. Instead, it just makes it much easier to learn how to use it compared to other weapons. Are you sure you want it?"
"Yes!"
Opening the skills category, she finds the great sword skill mastery was worth 500. Taking it, he only had 390 points left. Searching for anything that would be close enough to the remaining amount, she noticed that the soul had a major affinity towards earth magic. Unlike the other affinities that were all 1000 each, this one was worth 400.
"Okay, you have 390 points left. With that, I can get you a great affinity with only earth magic. Do you …" Noticing the souls glazed appearance, or the pulsing equivalent, she tries to pull him out of his trance with little success. Not knowing what happened she decided to give him the necessary points and took the skill for him.
Unbeknownst to her, his sheer excitement at the mere mention of magic was the cause of his strange actions.
'Magic! I am going to use MAGIC!!!'
