System Explanation

I studied the exclamation point in my vision. Nothing seemed to happen as I did, which at least gave me some time to think. I could... hazard a guess at what the exclamation point represented. A system.

I didn't know how I felt about having a system. System's where, in general, a pretty good thing. They typically gave you a means to power or an advantage that others wouldn't have. If just that was the case, then I would be more than happy to have one. However, having a system often implied more than just that. Other than the possibility of a direct downside, such as the whole thing being some sort of elaborate trap to drain my soul or gain control of me, there was possibly even more sinister connotations with carrying a system.

Was I just some entertainment for a ROB? I suppose in the end it really didn't matter. If there really was some omnipotent being who gave me a system and reincarnated me, there wasn't actually anything I could do about it. Instead, until I knew more, I should at least be grateful that I was reborn into a world like pokemon and not something like worm. I could just ignore what I was guessing to be a system, but if whatever ROB was relying on me for entertainment, it probably wasn't best to get on his bad side.

I guess I shouldn't think about it anymore and instead just get around to opening the system and seeing if an explanation is actually supplied inside. So without farther ado, I think the words 'system' inside my head... and nothing happens.

Maybe it only responds to verbal commands? I try whispering under my breath as quietly as possible, "system," but that doesn't result in anything either. I'm stuck for a second on what to do, but maybe it needs more direct commands so I go back to thinking in my head and say, 'System open", and that seems to do the trick!

Layered on top of my vision appears a slightly translucent screen appears with three options.

[Status]

[Gacha]

[Storage]

There doesn't seem to be any immediate explanation about the system, which is weird, but I then notice that the exclamation point is still in my vision. Deciding to try and open it, I think 'notifications' in my head, and nothing happens. Quickly realizing my mistake, I go think 'notifications open' in my head, and another screen pops up over the previous one.

[Congratulations! For reawakening your memories and unlocking the Pokemon Gacha System, you have been awarded 10 gacha tickets! Good luck!]

That was it for my notifications. After I finished reading the message, the screen simply closed, leaving me to look confusedly at the three options that were there when I originally opened the system. There was no explanation on what the system actually was, who it was from, what its purpose was, nor tutorial to tell me how to use it. Although it's purpose, I could guess, given the name of the system in that first notification.

So that just left me back at the original problem. I still had absolutely no idea about anything related to the system, but eventually, all I could decide to do was move on with my life. I was just a kid and had only reawakened my memories for less than 24 hours. There was no point in overly worrying about anything when I still had a long life ahead of me, and it would get me nowhere other than being stressed out. Soon, I decided to focus instead on the status window. When that does nothing, I have to mentally think to open the staus in my head.

[Status]

Name: Grant Rock

Age: 4 years, 11 months

Abilities: Pokemon Gacha System

Stats:

Strength: 2

Constitution: 2

Agility: 3

Dexterity: 3

Intelligence:7

Perception: 2

Skills:

None

The status seemed pretty bare bones overall, only really giving me two new pieces of information. The name of the system, which I had already guessed, and a direct viewing of my stats. It was pretty much exactly what it said on the tin. To me, the main benefit of the status page would probably be being able to gain visible feedback on any progress I've made, thus providing motivation.

My stats seemed normal, although I didn't actually have anything to compare it against. My low physical stats were very expected as I was just a four year old child, although I had a feeling my strength and constitution might actually be a little lower than normal for someone my age as during my time recovering my memories I wasn't the most active of kids, only helping with chores, but not actually running around and playing games with the other children. Whether that would actually make up the difference of a stat point though, I don't know. My high intelligence was probably a result of past life as a high achieving college student. It was probably the only stat I could actually be proud of.

The info I could get out of the system did seem to be pretty bare bones, but maybe that's just because I haven't been asking the right questions. I did have to be pretty direct with my intent in wanting to open the system so far, and to me, it seemed like it had been put together without any actual thought on the user not knowing anything about how to operate the system. Maybe if I wanted to get more info out of the system, I just had to be very direct.

Deciding to test my theory, the first thing I direct my intent toward is getting the system to open up a tutorial, but sadly, that does not work. Guess not everything in life can be easy. The next thing I try to do is examine my stats further, and that actually gets me some results! Thinking directly for info on stats opens up a new window.

[Stats: Stats are a baseline measure for your body. An average adult has the stats of 5 while a normal peak human in a certain stat will have 10 points.]

That was definitely helpful info and also confirmed my theory that I had to be more direct with the system. It's explanation meant that my stats were probably perfectly fine for someone my age and wasn't exactly something I had to worry about for now. For now, I move down to the row after my stats, listed as skills.

I wasn't exactly sure why I had no skills. Although I was just a child, I should still have some skills from my past life, but I could make a few gueses. One, it was possible that it was talking about more direct skills like combat or energy manipulation. Another was that I would have to perform the skills now that I've unlocked the system, or it was possible that I wouldn't gain any skills without direct interference from the system like as a reward or something. I soon realize it would probably be best to stop theorizing about it and instead just use my newfound trick to pull up a description.

[Skills: Skills are a measure of your abilities in regards to tasks that are able to be carried out by an average person. In the case of earning a skill that you have no previous experience with, it will be given at the lowest rank. Any previous experience will be judged and then boosted by one rank once skill is obtained. Skills must be obtained via system.]

That was a fairly more in-depth explanation than stats, but it made sense because it seemed less intuitive than them. So it seems to get any skills I would have to earn them from the system, and only then would it show up on my status screen.

The system didn't actually tell me how to get skills or how the ranking system actually works and trying to get farther information out of the system just has me coming up with nothing, either because it's not there or I don't actually know the commands for it, I'm not sure.

That seems to be it for the status page, at least for now. I back out of it and go to check the gacha tab. Being literally in the name of the system gives me high hopes for it, but I've always had mediocore to crap gacha luck, so I'll have to see how that turns out in this life. Opening up the gacha tab just brings up four more tabs, each with a price next to them and a small bar in the top right corner showing I currently have 10 tickets.

[Pokemonx1=1 Ticket, Pokemonx11=10 Tickets]

[Itemsx10=1 Ticket, Itemsx110=10 Tickets]

[Skillsx1=2 Tickets, Skillsx11=20 Tickets]

[Abilitiesx1=5 Tickets, Abillitiesx10=50 Tickets]

The first thing I notice is that the first tab, [Pokemon], and the last tab [Abilities] is grayed out. The second thing I notice is the prices. It seems the system is really encouraging me to pull pokemon instead of improving myself, as while one would think it would be harder to create a life, than download some skills into my brain, skills cost twice as many tickets as pokemon, not to mention abilities which were five times as much! I didn't even get a bulk buy bonus when buying 10 abilities at once!

Deciding to move on from these depressing facts, I try to open the pokemon tab even though it is grayed out. Surprisingly, it still opens.

Opening it results in three wheels appearing, each going down in size and also greyed out.

The biggest is simply labeled 'Pokemon' and has a list of every first stage pokemon that I can think of and many that I wouldn't have remembered if I hadn't seen their names in the first place. The second wheel in regards to size is labeled 'Variations' and is simply made up of a no and many yesses. The no takes up over half the wheel, but the yesses start off as one yes then two yes and so on, each time the odds getting smaller and smaller to the point I can't even see the end of it on the wheel.

The third and smallest wheel is labeled 'Yes Variations' and has a total of six items on it, Shiny, Size +, Size -, Attribute, Ability Mod, and Type Change. It appeared that this was the crux of my system. I could roll this gacha wheel to potentially get variations on my pokemon which, while I don't know how common they were or if they even exsisted in this world, were probably better or stronger than other pokemon and no matter how common they were it probably didn't happen almost 50% of the time.

The first three variations seemed pretty self-explanatory, and so did the last two, at least somewhat, but it was the middle one that confused me the most. I didn't exactly know what it meant by attributes, maybe base stats? Thinking for an answer from the system doesn't provide me anything, so I just have to move on.

All of this brings me back to the original problem that these wheels were all greyed out and didn't actually seem accesible. Luckily, thinking for an answer about this did prompt a response from the system.

[You may not roll the [Pokemon Gacha Wheel] yet as you do not have the legal rights to own a pokemon.]

That... seemed to be a very arbitrary and weird limitation. I can't imagine any system being beholden to any rules from this world's government. Also, in the games, I'm almost certain I've seen kindergarteners have pokemon. Did they have to receive special training for that? How much special training can a kindergartener even receive?

Maybe instead, everybody in this world has a system? But that doesn't seem right either. Although his earliest memories from before his awakening are a little blurry, he is sure someone in kindergarten or in the orphanage would have mentioned if they had system, plus the adults would probably talk about it too.

'I guess this is just another one of those things I have to move on from', I sigh, thinking to myself. 'I'll definitely have to find out when I'm allowed to own a pokemon, though, so I know when I can actually use the main part of my cheat.'

Backing out of the pokemon wheel and going to the items section next, this wheel is much simpler, as it's simply a massive list of every item I could think of from the pokemon games plus a few more. Moving on from that, I open up the skill wheel, and it's more of the same, just a massive list of skills with many seeing to be relatively useless, like household chores or mining.

I'll probably hold off on rolling on either of these wheels for now, at least until I get a better understanding of the system. Plus, it would probably be best to hold off on the skill list until I acquire any skill I want personally, as the system provides a direct upgrade to what I have. Additionally, I don't actually know how rare the gacha tickets I have are, so it would definitely be best to save them, especially considering the relatively high price of the skill gacha.

Going to open the ability gacha next, it also opens despite being grayed out. This wheel is also very simple like the last two, separated into around 50 different sections. I would split the majority of it into two categories. The first is the affinity category and seemed to be a list of every type simply followed by the word affinity. Such as fire affinity, rock affinity, etc. If I had to guess, these would probably be abilities that increased how well you get along with a pokemon of that type. It seemed pretty basic, but that's all I could gather given the name.

The second major category would be the body category. This was a huge list of major body parts, organs, and also more abstract things like flexibility. This category seemed more straightforward and would most likely strengthen the associated body part if I landed on it. There was also a couple more estoric abilities that didn't fit into either category like Poke Speak or Aura. Focusing on why this category was greyed out brought up yet another screen.

[You may not roll the [Ability Gacha Wheel] as it is dangerous to train with any affinity before the age of 10.]

At least the reason for this wheel being greyed out made a little more sense than the pokemon one, but it was still pretty annoying that it was, considering affinities made up less than half of the wheel, yet it stopped me from spinning the whole thing. It seemed that if I wanted to get anything good from the system, I would have to wait for years, and even after that it was still a gacha so who knows if what I did get would actually be any good.

Finally, I back out from the gacha section entirely and decide to move on to the final main tab, storage. Instead of opening it and then going on a thinking tangent while I guess what it could possibly be, I decide to just get onto the part where I ask the system for an explanation.

[Storage: Where physical rewards from the gacha are kept until they are claimed.]

Makes sense, so it's not a traditional inventory, but I would be a little surprised if it was considering an inventory was actually one of the options on the abilities wheel. Instead, it seemed to simply give me a spot for any pokemon or items I got to appear so they don't all appear at once as soon as I pull them. Seemed pretty nice for quality of life but not anything game-changing.

So... that was it for my system. I have to say I was a little disappointed, I'm sure it would be great in the future but for now it seemed a little lackluster until I actually unlocked any of the fun parts of the system. I supposed for now I would just have to wait and live life like any normal kid. All of this system talk really was just a big distraction when I really needed to think about what to do in the future, the whole point of me running off to my room in the first place.

I suppose first things first would be to get some information. I had too many questions about the world I found myself in and practically no answers. I would have to find a library or some way to access the internet before I could establish any further goals. Thinking back on it, though, I realized something horrible. I was only four going on five... I had absolutely no idea how to read.