A Skillful System
Have you ever wanted to be reborn in a world of your imagination? Better yet a world you thought up and had made the lore for? If you had sat down and put in all the effort and time to fully flesh out your world then that might be a great world to live in. Me however? I had just barely started to write down the bare bones for a litrpg system and some basic lore when I found myself in a brand new world, born from my imagination.
How did I know that I was reborn and more specifically in a world of my own creation? Simple, I am a newly swaddled baby who just got access to the system I had started working on. The problem with that is that my system was basically untested and still had lots of kinks I was working out before I was suddenly reborn. I feel that those bits of math and system logic I felt I could come back to and fix later when the rest of the lore and world were set up are going to come back to haunt me in this life. For example I had just started running the math on the leveling part of the system and had done some rough calculations on how to balance it. If it was going by my last calculations it would take about 7 decades to get a skill to get a skill to the max of just the 4th or expert tier. 70 years is a lot on paper and even more if I was actually going to be living in this world.
The only really good thing about the whole situation is that I had tried to follow the idea of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) when I planned it out. While the hidden math and stuff was pretty complex and required several spreadsheets to keep track of I had settled for a very simple base to work with. 12 stats, 1 overall level, and 9 skill slots to work with. That's the heart of the system. Better yet, for all of these I decided to try and keep the number simple and low. Too many of the novels I had read had these scrolling pages of stats and skills to keep track of but for me having just these few simple things would unfold into a vast system. Also on the bright side I had written down the system's user activation condition too, an average of 5 in the main 3 stats of Body, Mind, and Soul. This normally should happen when they reach about 13 to 15 and have the appropriate life experiences to understand the system and their choices.
Name: Alex Jameson Race: Human Level: 0 (EXP) Age: 1 hour Stats: Stamina: 87% Mana: 99% Aura: 100% Body: 1 Strength: 1 Endurance: 1 Finesse:1 Mind: 6 Will: 4 Resilience: 5 Sensitivity: 3 Soul: 8 Karma: 4 Luck: 8 Empathy: 4 Skills: 0/9 Slots used (Skill Log) (Achievements) (Seeds) (Traits) (Perks)
My new status screen shows that I barely made the cutoff for activation with the 1 Body, 6 Mind, and a surprising 8 for the soul stat. The body stats are no surprise as I was literally as weak as a newborn right now and my stats reflected that. The mind stats were slightly disappointing but realistic as well considering I have an adult's knowledge crammed into a baby brain some problems may have occurred along the way. The soul stat both makes sense and surprises me, it takes a strong soul to withstand reincarnation (theoretically) and an 8 in luck would help explain why I was lucky enough to be reborn in a world I dreamed up. On the bright side if I concentrate on a specific word I can see a tooltip explaining its meaning and the words in parentheses open up new menus for me to explore. My first stop and the arguably most important submenu is the achievements, maybe something there will help me out.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
Achievements: Tier 1: (Silent Baby)(First Breaths)(Startling Cry) Tier 2: Tier 3: Tier 4: Tier 5: Tier 6: Tier 7: Tier 8: (A New Start) Tier 9:
The Achievements menu quite simply lists everything the system considers an achievement worthy of merit in my life. Me being born, starting to breathe, and crying? All of these are fundamental and instrumental for my existence but they are also super common for everyone living and as such a tier 1 achievement. Each tier signifies a greater achievement, for example a tier 2 may be to practice swordsmanship for 100 hours. That shows some commitment and dedication to the way of the blade and the system recognizes that. Similarly the tier 3 achievement would need 10 times the effort at 1000 hours to be recognized. I designed the system to be increasingly stringent in what it accepts with tiers 1-3 being relatively easy, 4-6 being for experts and great masters, and 7-9 for more legendary and world changing achievements. Me being able to be reborn in a world designed by my imagination is certainly mythical enough for a tier 8, maybe 9 if I had done it intentionally. The tier 8 achievement is more than enough for me to rejoice as it does 2 things, give me a meager 8 EXP for my main level and more importantly unlock a tier 8 seed.
Seeds: Tier 1: (Silence)(Breathing)(Crying) Tier 2: Tier 3: Tier 4: Tier 5: Tier 6: Tier 7: Tier 8: (Rebirth) Tier 9:
Similarly to everything else in the system the higher the tier the better the seed to put it simply. Each seed represents a possible skill I could learn, however everyone only had 9 skill slots and once you choose a skill you can't unlearn it. That was the main reason I made the activation requirements, to make sure babies went loading up all of their lifelong skills with things like crying or crawling. My Rebirth seed is tier 8 however and such skills are meant to be mythical or legendary in their nature so I am excited to select it and find out exactly what I got.
Seed Name: Rebirth Rarity: Mythical Tier 1: +1% EXP gain per level Become a new person and try new things by resetting all your other skills and current level to gain a new and better start. Gains EXP from skill and level resetting only. Passively boosts EXP gain from all sources.
Apparently the gods of luck and fortune have been smiling down upon me. The ability to test, refine, and explore the many skills of the system with both an undo button and an EXP boost. Such a skill is indeed worthy of being called mythical if utilized correctly. Quickly accepting the skill into my first skill slot I hear a few quiet dings in the background as new achievements are unlocked. However all this stress from the system is tiring for a newborn body so I just close my eyes and bask in my happiness as dreamland beckons.