I woke up hearing something strange, a sound similar to machinery. No longer did I feel the comfort of my bed, but a mechanical cold that seeped into my bones. I smelled a faint scent of oil and blood in place of the chocolate cookies I was baking and the lavender flowers I took care of. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't taste anything, not even air.
Then I felt something.
I felt pain and itchiness.
It felt like someone was stabbing me with a pin and needle on the nape of my neck. I struggled, trying to shake, move, do something.
Something moved. A leg. Two arms. I swung them again in protest of the pain that continued. I kept shaking and flailing until, it disappeared.
The pain and discomfort vanished as if it was never there...
A mechanical voice sounded. It was sudden, cold and calculating but had some distinct tone to it. I didn't realize it at the beginning but later realized it was curiosity.
[How Interesting...]
'Who's there!'
I tried to shout but something else came out. Some kind of... wind blowing?
It sounded like... a whistle?
'AM I AN ORCA!?'
My thoughts immediately went to my location following what I was.
'Where the hell am I? I doubt I'm dead, I was just baking cookies at home...'
I began to panic more.
[Calm down little one, worrying will get you nowhere.]
I froze.
I had forgot about the voice.
'Where am I?'
I tried to ask but whistles and clicks came out again. Nonetheless, the voice seemed to have understood.
[You're on what we call 'The Dormant Crossroads'. It's a dormant volcano with a desert, an ocean and a forest in it, in the past, the volcano erupted and destroyed so much, people called it the end of the area. When it was healed it was named because of the multiple biomes. As for the planet we're on, it's called Stor. We call it that because we haven't even explored 20% of it and that's just the landmasses, don't even try to count the oceans.]
I didn't know why but my multiple languages auto-linked me to the Danish word Stor for 'Large'. I wondered why they named it that but I quickly understood that I wasn't on earth.
So I began having what most would.
A panic attack.
I felt light-headed as I somehow hyperventilated.
I lost consciousness half way through my next breath before waking up an unknown amount of time later.
[You're finally awake. Good. I can finally explain things to you, let's put you down while we wait for the others to wake up.]
'The Others?'
I whistled questioningly.
I suddenly felt like I was falling, or rather, I was going downwards. It felt like when you go down a rollercoaster but not that fast, the feeling continued for some time.
A light snapped on like a mom turning on your room light to wake you up. I was blinded temporarily.
I felt myself being submerged and started throwing myself around, slightly panicked as the notion of drowning so soon was scary. Soon, however, I realized what I was in was water, it didn't help me at the start since the possibility of drowning was higher. I myself didn't know how I knew so I chalked it up to the instincts of my new form.
I tried to open my eyes repeatedly, in which I succeeded after the fourteenth or something time doing so.
It was completely different to my previous life. I had two different 'eyes' of more or less 540° vision. I also found it weird that while I was 'breathing' under water, I had felt like there would be a limit, as if I, rather than water breathing, could hold my breath for extremely long periods of time like an Orca.
The next was that it was stiff, my neck was SO STIFF! It was so annoying!
'ARGH! This feels, just wrong!'
I looked around before realizing something.
I could see my tail fin.
My first thought was 'Huh?' as I pondered, simply floating and staring at it. I could only barely see it and had to move quite a few times to get a good view of it.
The tail fin wasn't mainly white nor did it have any trace of black at all so I couldn't be an orca. It was a light oceanic blue that covered most of it with small white specks covering a few small metallic blue sections, it was almost weirdly metallic to me. Not more so than my dorsal fin which was literally a black metal with grey spots and visible metal spread at the base.
I then thought of something else.
'What creature is the voice I heard?'
I, with absolutely no clue how I did so, swam up to the surface and looked up with my stiff neck. In doing so, I saw something breath-taking.
In the sky was an orb that I'd like to think was the size of the moon.
Grey, Silver, Gold, White, Black. It looked like all of these colors were thrown onto it in a mishmash of presentation but it just looked... right. It was so strange, normally I'd find it an eyesore because of the fact the colors were obviously haphazardly thrown into places... but it was just, nice to look at. Appealing even.
Still, the fact that something the moon's size can fit really speaks volumes about the world I'm on... maybe they aren't the size of Earth's moon though? I don't know enough yet.
I was shaken from my stupor when the orb suddenly descended, opening a small section and dropping four bodies onto the land near us. Now that I had payed attention to the land, I was inwardly shocked.
The land was split into four, as the voice had said, consisting of an ocean segment, I was in there, a forest segment and a desert segment. The confusing part was that the voice didn't mention the grassland segment at the center of the three biomes.
'If I recall correctly, they said it was a volcano. Why is it like this?'
Before I got lost in my musings, the voice spoke once more and this time, to all five of us.
[First of all, I'll say welcome to you, even though I don't know how you came to be, I'll still take care of you like I would any other of my children.]
It was at this point that my confusion intensified.
The Jackal was different to me in that they voiced their confusion.
"Children? We are?"
It was a growl, yet I understood it somehow. It was like we were all speaking different languages but they were so similar that we understood the gist of what each other was saying.
[Indeed. Just check your status.]
We all froze.
'Status? The stuff in games and LitRPGs?' The thought was unanimous.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Two screens popped up, one of a metallic grey colour border with black words lining it and a white background behind them, it hurt my eyes for a while.
The second screen had a bronze border with dark red words and a pearl-white background filling the borders.
The content itself was simple.
Please Select a Profession Mage Spirit Mage Esper Tech Practitioner Cultivator
The first screen, surprisingly, was the same with two differences. The wording. It said, 'Please choose your way to evolve'. The other was that there was no 'Spirit Mage' option.
[...this is unprecedented. Is it because... no, it has to be.]
The Jackal from before spoke once more after it.
"What are you talking about?"
[You all moved your soul into your current bodies before I put a fragment of mine in your vessel to bring the body to life as I usually would, this means that you are technically of the Anima race... and your previous race.]
I smirked and stared at the screen while the doe/deer, (wasn't sure what gender they were, still not sure) spoke excitedly.
"Does that mean we get two professions!?"
[Simply put... Yes.]
'Oh hell yes!'
Was my first thought. It was definitely worth it in the end but definitely annoying. So after the giant Orb spoke, we all went silent to decide our profession and way of evolution.
『Would you like to choose: [Spirit Mage], as your profession?』
『Would you like to choose: [ESP User], as your evolution path?』
『 [Yes] / [No] 』
'To both, YES!'
My choices were simple. If I got something like Cryokinesis and an Ice Spirit the synergy between our abilities would be better. It'd be the same with Pyrokinesis and a Fire Spirit and so on.
『Paths Chosen, Systems Launching.』
『Hephaestus' System Displaying in []:』
[Profession: Spirit Mage,
Name: Sciath
Race: Anima (Infant Whale)
Tier - 0 (0%)
Level - 1 (0%)
Spirit - None
Elemental - None
Demon - None
Angel - None
Sky Beast Soul - None
Land Beast Soul - None
Ocean Beast Soul - None
Space Beast Soul - None]
『Anima System Displaying in {}:』
{Evolutionary Path - ESP User
Name - Sciath
Anima Variant: (Infant Whale)
Affinities:
D Rank - Gravity
B Rank - Ice, Astral, Star
A Rank - Water
STR / AGI / DEX / END / MED / MER / CS / A
-3- / -10- / -5- / -10- / -6- / -8- / -4- / -10-
Constitution - None
Unique Ability - None}
'EW. What is that format? Please... just change it...'
『...』
『Anima System Displaying in {}:』
{Evolutionary Path - ESP User
Name - Sciath
Race: Infant Whale (Anima Variant)
Tier - 0 (0%)
Level - 1 (0%)
ME-P: 100/100
Affinities:
D Rank - Gravity
B Rank - Ice, Astral, Star
A Rank - Water
STR = 3
AGI = 10
DEX = 5
END = 10
MED = 6
MER = 8
CS = 4
A = 10
Constitution - None
Unique Ability - None
ESP Ability - Not Yet Awakened}
'Thank you... though...'
『What now?』
'Isn't this what readers call an 'Info Dump'?'
『You're imagining it.』
'O-oh...'
『[Entity: Hephaestus] Has noticed you and your brethren, they smile at the uniqueness of the [Entity: Origin Anima]'s invention. [Entity: Hephaestus] has decided to merge your systems for improved convenience.』
'That's... nice... of them?'
[Hephaestus is one of the 'Gods' in this universe, he particularly likes this world as he can simply dump his inventions here for different races to try to use, including ours of course. This is probably one of many 'ideas' he thought of and made in the moment, as for how I've learned this, well you'll learn later.]
『System Updated - Anima-Soulborn System Displaying:』
Name: Sciath Race: Anima (Infant Colossal Whale) (Common) Path(s): Spirits / ESP Class: None (Overall) Tier: 0 (0%) (Overall) Level: 0 (0%) Affinities (Level/Rank): Gravity (1/D+), Astral (2/B+), Star (3/B+), Ice (4/B), Water (5/A+) Stats:
Strength 3 Agility 10 Dexterity 5 Endurance 10 Energy Density 6 Energy Reservoir 8 Cognitive Speed 4 Aura 10
Bonded Beings (Elementals/Demons/Angels/Spirits) None
Bonded Souls (Skyborn/Terrestrial/Oceanic/Spatial)
None ESP Ability [None]
Constitution None Unique Ability None
"Well, that's certainly convenient." I said.
"What's next then? How do we level up and what do the stats do?"
The Jackal spoke again.
[Ideally you'd be able to kill some of the other intelligent races right away but that's not possible right now. So for now, you'll train your abilities, which also gives you exp. Although... it'll be a really small amount of exp...]
"..."
Needless to say, we were all shell-shocked that the 'ideal' would be killing the races that we were once a part of.
We stayed like that with our brains attempting to load and process the words spoken to us. It took a while. Maybe four to five hours, I never tracked how long passed. Eventually though, the Falcon asked.
"Do we have to kill them?"
Even though the Falcon said that, I could feel an almost tangible excitement in their unintelligible squawks.
[Yes.]
A silence developed as we thought but we all came to terms with it surprisingly quickly. I later learned that it was because of an instinctual anger. An anger towards the races that used the creations of our 'mother', our own siblings, as food... as livestock.
After feeling we calmed down enough, our 'mother' spoke once more.
[For now, you simply need to level up by practicing with your abilities. Although negligible at higher Tiers and Levels, it should be sufficient for you all, who've just started your journey.]
"How do we do that?" - Deer.
[It depends on your profession and evolution paths. They differ from mine but I should still be able to give you a little advice... I've uploaded the information into your systems.]
『Information Received, Displaying Data in {}:』
{In order to level up the following is required for the different professions:
Mages - Increased Mastery of a Spell or Magic Type.
Tech Practitioner - Advancements in Technology you've made.
ESP User - Increased Mastery of your Ability.
Cultivators - Increasing your level of proficiency with skills or just cultivating.}
'That doesn't really work with my profession now does it?'
『[Entity: Hephaestus] Has sent a message, displaying in ():』
(You and the others are the first of all the beings in this world to have the necessary aptitude to become Spirit Mages, which is a profession in other worlds. You, of all of them, have the second highest aptitude ever recorded, while the Jackal has the highest aptitude ever recorded.)
'I see... maybe? Then-'
(Now then, you might be wondering, 'How do I train it?' or something along those lines. Well, the immediate answer is that you don't. You'll learn why later but for now you just need to go with the flow and you'll realize questions like how and why later. It took quite a lot to talk to you and the others so I'll be off now. I'll talk to you lot another time.)
I was puzzled why Hephaestus was talking to us in the first place but I simply glazed over it as I usually do for things I don't understand. I then went on to look back at my status puzzlingly before I mull over things.
'I... don't have an ability. Or any of the beings or souls listed by my Spirit Mage profession.'
...
'THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO!'
I inwardly screamed, unsure of what was next. Then I looked over at the others to ask but see them staring at me weirdly.
"Why are you staring?"
I asked. Straightforwardness was the fastest way to my answer. Surprisingly, the Original Anima, our 'mother', answered.
[You shouted... quite loudly at that too.]
"Oh... wait. I, I said that out loud?"
They all nodded, with the exception of 'mother', and I felt unbelievably embarrassed. I wish I had a hole to hide in back then, the best I could do is go underwater and stay there for a few hours... maybe days, I don't remember.