Part 2 - Sorting Things Out

Elizabeth’s dreams were haunted by the nightmares of the void.

She couldn’t fully grasp the odd, squirming masses that existed within the gaps between worlds, but to her chaotic mind, it seemed as if they were discarded failures at creation that propagated infinitely in a place eyes weren’t meant to see. Some god’s idle subjects of an infinite torture, or the limitless end of some other reality, never to bear civilization again.

And she’d been faced with them for an immortal moment.

The memories gnawed at her like twisted teeth on her psyche, grinding through her mind like an unceasing maw of teeth making mincemeat of her very sanity.

Seared into the back of her mind, she knew she could never forget them, yet never really know them either.

She inwardly vowed never to reveal the details of those things to others for as long as she lived.

That thought paused her dreamscape for a moment. As if she wasn’t dreaming, and was only wracked with these haunting memories.

That was when she realized she hadn’t fallen asleep at all, and it was only her mind that strained ceaselessly against her hardest efforts to push it all away.

Somewhere in the din of her fraying nerves were a frustrating cacophony of dinging sounds that just never seemed to end. She desperately wanted to turn them off.

As if a gift from her new, beloved goddess, they literally stopped with that thought.

If there’s a wish granting thing going around, I’d love some way to stop reliving the awful void terrors!

She sent off that thought with a silent prayer, and felt she heard a chuckle in the background of her mind as she felt a sensation in her thoughts like a thick wall split her mind into two, carefully separating away the horrid memories to a corner of her mindscape.

Peace and quiet finally settled over her, only for the damn pain to return to the forefront.

She dimly realized she’d been screaming in terror, without even realizing her mind had resumed functioning with her body now. That was bound to drive anyone nearby into placing more than a few noise complaints.

Now she just had to remember how to properly control her own body again. No biggie.

Thinking inward, around the pain assailing her missing body parts, she assessed the vocal areas of her throat, then forcibly stopped the instinctual need to expel her pain aloud. Her vocals finally came under her control as she fought through the pain in a silent agony.

She could still feel the sensations of losing herself to those injuries, and regardless of Seira’s efforts, she knew that stone replacements wouldn’t have the nerves to work as anything more than a basic prosthetic. A damn heavy prosthetic at that.

She would have to figure out how to live with stone prosthetics, but as she tried to partition the pain she was feeling alongside the nightmares occluding her mind in that remote corner, she found she couldn’t do so, meaning that trick wouldn’t work a second time.

She reached out again to that wish granting sensation, praying for a way to escape the pain, only to find little to no succor there.

She’d have to get used to it. But first, she needed to rest.

She finally invited the bone weary sensation that clung to her to overtake her pain-addled mind, then drifted into a fragile sleep.

~ ~ ~

When Elizabeth next awoke, the pain had reduced to a background throbbing that had her head pounding instead. Constant pain was very migraine inducing. One pain for another.

She glanced around, finally, her eyes squinting against the light streaming in from the wooden slats of the window shutters. Everything was built from sturdy stone except the building and the window, with no signs of glass being in frequent use. She got a middle ages vibe from everything, including the simplistic furniture.

An older gentleman was seated at a small table nearby, putting a bookmark in the volume he had been reading as he spoke to her in a… language she couldn’t quite fully process.

She felt she could grasp the meaning if her mind was working right, but it wasn’t, so she only caught a rough idea without thinking about it properly.

“Can I have some water, please?” Elizabeth hoarsely croaked out the words, her first time speaking proper words since she’d been on Earth. Goddess knew how long ago that had been.

“Of course,” the elderly man, who was wearing something akin to clerical vestments, took a cup and filled it from a pitcher from the nearby table and then handed her the small porcelain cup.

The cup looked basic, and she hoped it was clean despite her eagerness to take it in her right hand and drink the water with gusto.

She didn’t think she’d ever do something in her life “with gusto” just a day or… however long ago it was.

Somehow her whole life had gone up in inky voidness.

That wasn’t a line of thought she could entertain now, and so she shelved that introspection for later.

“Are you ready to talk now?” The older man seemed to be studying her, or rather something over her head, before flicking his gaze to her hand.

“I’m sorry about that. I’m still getting a handle on things.” She noticed something odd about how she and the man were each speaking. Namely, she understood his words that were decidedly not English or any other language she could’ve recognized. And when she spoke English back to him, he seemed to fully understand her spoken English. Something was off, but she’d investigate that later.

“Well, given that you showed up in our church in a shower of golden light, then went on to start screaming like you’d been through something terrifying, I am certainly finding patience in spades to allow you to recover. Pay it no mind.” The man seemed to have eyes that would twinkle with some hidden amusement behind that demeanor of concern.

“Ah, I’m sorry about that. The Goddess offered to help me and bring me to her world, but I guess what she did to stop the pain and everything else I was in ended after she dropped me off.” Elizabeth tried to sit upright, but her body felt bizarrely heavy from the stone areas Seira had patched over, so sitting upright was a struggle she barely overcame while waving off the old man’s assistance. She didn’t appreciate others touching her, though she felt the goddess was an intriguing exception in retrospect.

“You met with a Goddess? And she delivered you to us? Lady Seira did? I can think of no other who would bring you to her temple in particular.” The man seemed almost excited at that moment. There was a near fanaticism to his expression, and she felt slightly put off by it.

“Umm, yes, it was her. She was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, even if she wasn’t exactly human for the use of the word ‘person.’”

“Indeed, I have heard that descriptions of her do not even do her justice, nor can depictions compare to the experience. You are indeed a lucky soul!”

“Lucky, huh?” Elizabeth reached for another cup of water as she glanced at her left hand.

The fingers were stone, as was most of the palm, leaving only her thumb to properly move the way she intended. Lucky to be alive, maybe, but everything before? Not at all.

“Might I ask for the full extent of your story?” The elderly priest seemed to slip into the pensive atmosphere she’d taken on and pry gently at the circumstances.

“I’m not quite sure how to tackle some parts, but in essence, some crazy wizard showed up in my university park through a portal, and I got swallowed up in the process. I drifted through space for some time before Seira found me and filled in the holes in my body before sending me here, saying she’d give me a divine mission at some point.” She had some mixed thoughts about being cast away to some new place without much guidance, and therefore, social graces to the rescue. “I’d really appreciate some of the basics if you could bring me up to speed on where I am and what’s going on with my body now.”

“So it seems you are indeed God-touched, or Goddess-touched, as it were. I will happily tell you things you need to know. The Goddess Seira has entrusted you to our care, after all.”

The older man launched into a rough background of the world, then the country, then the “System” as the largest information heap to chew through. It took hours. Apparently all common knowledge she’d have gotten properly if she were actually born in this world. By the time they were done, she felt a little dizzy, and the priest left her to her thoughts as he went to prepare some food. That would hopefully buy her a good while.

To sum things up, she’d been sent to a theocracy called the Sovereign Justiciary, ruled and operated by the church which venerated Seira, the goddess who’d saved her life, if she could actually die in the void between worlds.

The city she was in was near the border of the nation. According to the elderly priest, the country had been handling some major crises recently as they mediated between legal infractions between various countries at one another’s throats. The priest felt she was lucky to end up in such a remote church, rather than one of the larger cities where priests would be too busy to care for her in her current state. She felt happy that the goddess had been so thoughtful, and wondered if the recent crisis had anything to do with her upcoming “divine mission.”

Next up was the head spinning information about the system.

According to the old man, this world functioned around “stats and skills” offered by what she saw as a game-like system. Overall, the whole thing struck her as far too complex to be a game, though. Poor kids would give up understanding the nuances and tabletop players would hate the number crunching. Every eight points of certain stats would penalize a point from another statistic? The whole thing seemed to be exactly the sort of thing she’d hate.

In the end, this was the world she’d been tossed into, and it was finally time to go over her own details, which she’d unwittingly turned off notifications for upon arrival. The excessive amount of notifications had been a huge distraction while she was busy suffering, after all.

Carefully, to avoid a deluge of dings flooding her rather frayed mind, she reached out for her current information page, which functioned like a character sheet in a video game.

[Name: Elizabeth Fereday]

[Race: Stone Golem/Human Hybrid]

[Age: 21]

[Mana: 40/40]

[Mana Regeneration: 23]

Stats:

[Free Stats: 32]

[Strength: 15]

[Dexterity: 17]

[Vitality: 28]

[Mana: 4]

[Mana Regeneration: 4]

[Magic Power: 4]

[Magic Control: 12]

So far, simple enough. Apparently, if a person misaligned their mana regeneration values from their overall values in other stats, it was possible to die of mana drain. With that in mind, she’d have to carefully select skills that wouldn’t drain her mana faster than it could recover.

She could regenerate twenty-three mana per hour with her starter stats.

The immediate problem came from that racial line. She had been avoiding thinking about it before, but it seemed she was, in fact, partially made from stone. She was sure she’d have to find ways to hide those aspects of her body, or else she knew from Earth history how others would view her as being ‘different’ now. On the other hand, every piece was a gift from that beautiful goddess. A life bestowed back upon her by a goddess who, at least, seemed amused by her fledgling feelings based purely on appearance.

She really hoped she could speak with and get to know that goddess more in the future. She promised she would achieve godhood for herself to be with her savior, so she’d have to knuckle down and sort her new life out.

Next item on the list, her name. New world, which she felt she was taking surprisingly well, meant that such a long name was in the past. Ellie was a fair option, but struck her as a little juvenile, for no real reason at all. Liz seemed like the right choice. She mentally reflected on the name and thought of herself as “Liz.”

Disappointment.

[Name: Elizabeth Fereday]

She had learned from the priest earlier that a person could modify their system displays and notifications quite a bit. Seemed she was stuck without being able to change her name, however. Liz would be fine for social interaction anyway. It was probably a very peculiar name here either way.

Skills were the next major item to consider.

Apparently, people here in this new world loved the number eight a lot. Eight points in Strength would devour a point in Dexterity, as mentioned before. Not only that, but everyone had eight skill slots per “class” and eight “General Skills” as well. Eight base elements in the classes, too. Classes would have to wait, though. Her skill choices and their levels would affect her future class options, after all.

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General Skills:

[Skill Slot 1: Mental Partitioning 8]

[Skill Slot 2: Pain Management 6]

[Skill Slot 3: Open]

[Skill Slot 4: Open]

[Skill Slot 5: Open]

[Skill Slot 6: Open]

[Skill Slot 7: Open]

[Skill Slot 8: Open]

Along with a dizzying array of skill options that seemed related to her previous life experiences. It wasn’t a happy thought that the System was reading her mind. It felt like someone might be digging through her memories and the idea felt like such an invasion of her privacy, though she couldn’t actually do anything about it.

Liz would be the first to admit she wasn’t able to play games, but the options were a little exciting, though also slightly infuriating as well. Being an actress from her early years meant she’d never had much free time, of course. Her gamer senses were nonexistent, so she always resented those who had more time to laze about in life.

She belatedly decided to let the full list of General Skill choices fly.

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Identify]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Awareness]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Prayer]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Acting]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Performance]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Dancing]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Singing]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Meditate]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Archery]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Drawing]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Sketching]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Painting]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Engraving]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Vigilant]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Learning]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Teaching]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Patience]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Handsome]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Princely]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Clean-cut]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Dashing]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Suave]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Adonis]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Stunning]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Adaptable]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Active]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Calm]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Running]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Walking]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Fires]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Gardening]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Imaginative]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the Passive skill [Flexible]!]

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General skill [Riding]!]

She felt slightly attacked.

Sure, she had somewhat short hair, with a slightly tousled look that you might see on a stereotypical biker gal. And she was tall. Not quite six feet, but very close. And she had great posture from years of acting and sitting for promotional photos.

She was often called “handsome” back on Earth. But seriously?

She had not one, but six different largely male descriptive appearance skills.

If she was going to take one, it would be [Stunning] as the least offensive of the bunch to her own tastes.

Oddly enough, she’d shot a bow once in her life. Being offered the [Archery] skill from such a pitiful experience told her the System was potentially teasing her on purpose.

Did she really need one, though? She was already plenty attractive. Maybe they affected the perceptions of others? Even that older priest had looked like he had some sort of effect staving off the effects of aging on his appearance. Something to research.

Currently, she had two skills she didn’t think she could live without. That seemed like a rapidly approaching problem, given she only had eight slots for General Skills.

Most of the skills were self-explanatory, and ranged from the aforementioned appearance skills to skills for basic daily activities like [Walking].

Imagine needing a skill to walk? She was almost there, with the stone foot, but as it turns out, Skills could turn a basic activity into something that was both empowered by, and cost the expense of mana. [Running] to run faster and easier, until you ran out of mana and suddenly had to run on your own body’s ability until the resource recharged.

Game mechanics. This is part of why she felt apprehensive about them. She’d have to start making adjustments to her System interface sooner rather than later. The less game-y it all seemed, the better for her mental health.

Mental health is very important!

Glancing over the list, she saw a few standouts.

[Identify] apparently was a staple taken by nearly everyone. You could see the tags of people around you to see what level they were, And it would allow you to gauge the strength of monsters in the world.

She didn’t know much about games, and she couldn’t see much fun in only taking on challenges below your own level, but at the same time, this was about to be her own life, and challenging something with a massive level advantage over her could get her killed fast.

She’d be taking the skill.

Skills she was already adept at seemed like a poor choice for her limited skill slots, and she wasn’t sure how well her acting would help her survive in a new, and likely less advanced world.

Something told her that a life on stage wasn’t going to be guiding her to divinity before old age claimed her. Her most recent experiences had her moving towards a life of suffering and hardship, to speak nothing of the goddess’ plans to give her a divine quest.

With that in mind, she had to stay focused on what would help her in the future the most. That had things narrowed down to [Awareness], [Prayer], [Vigilant], [Learning], [Adaptable], [Imaginative] and [Flexible].

Between [Awareness] and [Vigilant], she felt that the two had a shocking amount of overlap. Thinking about why both would exist, she thought she might still be missing some pieces of the System puzzle, so to speak. Skills could be merged, so maybe there was something in that aspect to define a pathway from one skill to another.

Surely someone has compiled a book of skills and methods to obtain the best ones. It wouldn’t take long for people on Earth to comb through the possibilities and find the best efficiencies.

Sadly, she was on her own for this, so she decided to go for [Awareness] and research the subject at the earliest opportunity. Problem was, the old priest had said that people tended to keep their skills and information to themselves as much as possible, so rather than disseminating information, things tended to stagnate. She might have a shot at leveraging her advanced knowledge of Earth’s concepts in this world, within reason.

[Prayer] was not negotiable for her ties to Seira. She would take up piety and pray for any opportunity to speak with the goddess. This was what she had chosen for her goal, if only to keep from thinking about what her life had become. She was adept at picking a goal and sticking to it. It would be her driving force in life from now on, she decided.

The problem with the skill was that it wasn’t exactly a requirement in the truest sense. You could still pray to a deity and offer mana to them, but the skill allowed a passive flow of mana over time. The long term benefits were unparalleled, but she could see why many people might not take the Skill for their limited slots.

[Learning] was the best sort of passive she could think of. Passive experience boosts, based on the description. Given that her goals involved leveling quickly, she saw this as a great chance to jump start the process.

She bitterly realized she could’ve snagged a ton of levels from the old man’s lessons earlier if she’d slotted the skill sooner. No sense crying over spilled milk, though.

Liz started to think over her last two slots with a more open mind to the future possibilities. Merging skills was a great conceptual idea, and she could see several of her short list options merging quite easily. [Awareness], [Adaptable] and [Imaginative] could easily merge into some sort of combat, crafty, rapid-response skill.

Assuming she was going to be in combat. Which seemed like the only option for leveling quickly with a human lifespan. She couldn’t count on her stone golem aspect to give her some extra longevity.

[*ding* Congratulations! [Pain Management] has leveled up to level 7!]

That notification gave her food for thought. Skills didn’t level up all too fast, given that her passive pain skill was taking hours between levels even at such a low level. Then she read the description properly.

[Pain Management: You’ve endured a lot of painful injuries. This skill allows you to manage pain better, allowing you to set your pain levels with a thought. Increased efficiency per level for any kind of pain.]

Briefly setting aside her last two skill slots, she mentally fiddled with the skill. She took her migraine and mentally disabled it entirely. Immediate relief washed over her. She’d only mentally tried to push the pain to the back of her mind before, which seemed to be less burdensome than disabling it.

The old priest had said these were “meta skills,” or that was how her mind’s translation was processing the words. These abilities were the best!

She took the opportunity to disable her phantom pain, only to see her mana hit zero almost immediately.

[Pain Management] was complicated. Disabling her headaches wasn’t enough to cost mana at all. Disabling her full body phantom pain was apparently a separate cost, and much more expensive. She fiddled with it more as her mana trickled back, twenty-three points per hour, since she hadn’t slotted the new choices yet..

She reflected on her results after some trial and error.

The mana cost was based on the amount of her body she affected and how much she turned the pain down. Disabling it for the whole body was right out at the moment. It cost so much she couldn’t even calculate the approximate cost with her current pool. Instead she ended up reducing her missing right foot to a dull throb, leaving the rest to their normal pain levels, though migraines were now permanently a thing of the past.

At first she wasn’t really sure how it was much of a passive, but she decided that it was best she not have to focus on maintaining it constantly. It counts as a passive, for sure.

[*ding* Congratulations! [Pain Management] has capped at level 8!]

Perfect! Increasing the load on the skill made it much faster to level. And it wasn’t the kind of skill that had a breakpoint. She’d hate to break a bone and lose all her mana trying to mitigate a large amount of overall damage.

Turning her mind back from her brief distraction to the General Skills issue, she decided to forget the larger list and hope to merge her ideas from before.

[*ding* Congratulations! You’ve learned [Identify] — level 1!]

[*ding* Congratulations! You’ve learned [Awareness] — level 1!]

[*ding* Congratulations! You’ve learned [Prayer] — level 1!]

[*ding* Congratulations! You’ve learned [Learning] — level 1!]

[*ding* Congratulations! You’ve learned [Adaptable] — level 1!]

[*ding* Congratulations! You’ve learned [Imaginative] — level 1!]

So, now for the descriptions! She felt a little excited about the future possibilities, despite the overwhelming turmoil her life should’ve been in. She did feel like she should be more upset over things, but she just didn’t feel it, and couldn’t really decide why.

[Identify: You’ve looked around the world, and you want to know more. This skill will help you grasp basic information and identities from people and creatures around you. Increased range per level. Current Range .5 Meters]

Meters? She figured it would’ve been in feet if it was going to convert to measurement she was familiar with.

[Awareness: You’re cautious and aware of what’s around you. Don’t be caught unawares. Increased perception and vigilance per level. -3 Mana Regeneration]

Hold on…

[Vigilant: You’re constantly on guard for trouble, aware of your surroundings at all times. Increased perception and awareness per level. -3 Mana Regeneration]

Stupid system is trolling me! The flavor text was different but their effects mirror each other. That’s what I get for not comparing them sooner.

[*ding* [Learning] leveled up! Level 2]

She somehow felt like these were going to be a pain. General Skills! Keep going, save notifications for later, System Voice thing!

[Prayer: You’re a devout believer in the gods. This skill will passively send mana to the target of your worship. Mana cost varies by user’s choice.]

[Learning: You have a passion, a drive for knowing more. You constantly seek out new knowledge, and have acquired considerable amounts of it. Easier to learn new ideas. Easier to learn new skills. Each level comes with a 1% increase in exp for all other skills and classes. -5 Mana Regeneration]

[Adaptable: You’re adapting to changing circumstances and need a bit of a boost to help you acquaint yourself faster. React to sudden events more quickly and overcome surprising situations faster. -2 Mana Regeneration]

[Imaginative: You’re creatively minded and come up with new ideas constantly. This skill will help you come up with new ideas faster and find solutions to problems that others might not come up with. -3 Mana Regeneration]

Liz blanched at the new problem. The mana costs were too high.

[Mental Partitioning] only cost mana while active, and as things stood, it was a mandatory drain of around five mana from her regeneration rate. And her current level of Pain Management was running at ten mana from her regeneration.

All her costs had her in the negatives and bleeding mana.

She desperately looked over her stats for a solution and landed on one line of her system display.

[Free Stats: 32]

She began allocating points to her Regeneration to balance the scales for now.

Stats:

[Free Stats: 30]

[Strength: 15]

[Dexterity: 17]

[Vitality: 27]

[Speed: 13]

[Mana: 4]

[Mana Regeneration: 6]

[Magic Power: 4]

[Magic Control: 12]

Every point of Mana Regeneration gave her ten points of mana per hour. Two points had her healthily into the positives.

[Name: Elizabeth Fereday]

[Race: Stone Golem/Human Hybrid]

[Age: 21]

[Mana: 40/40]

[Mana Regeneration: 12]

Stats

[Free Stats: 30]

[Strength: 15]

[Dexterity: 17]

[Vitality: 27]

[Speed: 13]

[Mana: 4]

[Mana Regeneration: 6]

[Magic Power: 4]

[Magic Control: 12]

General Skills

[:Mental Partitioning 8]

[:Pain Management 8]

[:Identify 1]

[:Awareness 1]

[:Prayer 1]

[:Learning 2]

[:Adaptable 1]

[:Imaginative 1]

Liz nodded in satisfaction at her stat sheet before letting out a brief sigh. Her next subject was the icing on the cake.

Her class read [Child of Earth] and seemed to be the source of her wealth of Free Stats. She wondered how it compared to the base classes of other people in this world. She hoped it wasn’t worse. Then again, the basic classes end at level eight, while the level max was at the lofty four thousand ninety-six. Class advancements at intervals of eight, thirty-two, one hundred twenty-eight, and so on meant that she would have frequent opportunities to improve on the stat values she could benefit from.

There was just one problem. She couldn’t get out of bed on her own, since the stone prosthetics were too heavy, and she couldn’t move around much. Classes were improved and more varied at each advancement when you had your skills leveled up. That’s why she hadn’t considered any of the more active movement-based options in her general skills.

Everything she chose would allow her to increase her levels before her class advancement, and with any luck she’d find some way around the limitations of the current state of her body.

[*ding* Congratulations! [Imaginative] leveled up! Level 2]

She was just thinking it ought to ding for her. She was fast coming up with ideas to raise the skill levels efficiently while being largely bedridden. It only made sense.

It was time… to see if she could have a chat with a certain perfect goddess.