An indeterminate time later, Isa returned to consciousness in the spare room she’d been sharing with her parents during their visit. Her body still ached, and memories of the excruciating pain she’d felt during the upgrade caused an unconscious shiver to run through her body.

That amount of pain would have meant nothing to her in previous lives. But now… she’d spent eons with little to no discomfort, and nothing in this life had prepared her for that kind of pain.

She’d grown soft.

Isa took several slow breaths as the aches faded to echoes, and her mind regained clarity. Her hearing had already been augmented, but with her racial upgrade, she found listening in on the conversations around her simple.

From the bedroom next to her, Isa could hear her grandmother talking to one of her friends on the phone. It was clear that the system’s initial calming effect had expired, and Grandma Marla was having difficulty handling the changes.

“I can’t help it, Deena. I was reading one of those books about mana… yes, I know they’re fiction, but it’s not like science can explain what’s happening.” There was a long pause as whoever was on the other line spoke. If she was in the same room, Isa could have made out both sides of the conversation, but as it was, she could only hear one side.

“Still. I can’t see anything good coming from this. Forcing everyone to register makes sense from a tyrannical standpoint, and we both know the Senate is prone to corruption.”

The world of Gentrius was ostensibly united under one government – the Senate. Each Senator had their own territory, but the rules and laws were consistent. What wasn’t consistent was how the laws were applied.

Isa’s grandparents lived in one of the two suburbs outside the city of Drendon. About seventy percent of the world's population lived in one of the major cities, with another twenty percent inhabiting the suburban tower communities surrounding them. The last ten percent lived elsewhere – like the space stations or the small colony on Sumar, the larger of the planet’s two moons.

Very few individuals or groups were allowed to live outside of established cities or suburbs. Those who did were usually caretakers for the wildlife and nature preserves that had been established during the realignment nearly a hundred years earlier.

Isa had studied her new world’s history with interest during her youth. As a goddess, she’d been able to access some information about the technologically advanced planet, but time moved much more quickly in the Mortal Realms, and her information was severely outdated by the time she’d been reborn into the world.

“Yes, even Isa!” Marla fumed, drawing Isa’s focus. “They expect anyone with a class to register, even if they aren’t adults…” There was a pause. “No, she’s still sleeping. I’m worried that maybe she was too young to handle whatever changes the system made. I haven’t heard of anyone else passing out for hours from getting a class!”

Isa wondered how long the race upgrade had taken. It must have been a while if the Senate had already called for a class census. She only expected the upgrade to take a few hours – some significant changes were made, after all – but that didn’t seem long enough for the Senate to have already demanded everyone register.

Those things were supposed to take time.

After checking with her AI – which was still working fine – and verifying it had only been roughly five hours, Isa sighed and reached out to the system to view her status for the first time in this new life.

Name: Isamie Stone

Race: Human – E Grade

Level: 1

Class: Spell Crafter

Attributes:

Mind: 23

Memory: 25

Cognition: 24

Perception: 20

Body: 17

Strength: 14

Flexibility: 21

Recovery: 17

Spirit: 28

Control: 28

Sensitivity: 29

Manifestation: 26

Class Abilities:

Spell Anchor

Class Spells:

*Options Available*

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Isa focused on the spell options, and a list containing her low and mid-level aspects appeared.

Choose an element:

Lightning

Ice

Water

Air

Not having the system support Storm or Arcane magic was annoying, but it was to be expected, given her racial grade.

Upon reaching the Immortal Realm, she had learned that manually casting divine spells functioned similarly to mana-based spells. The way she learned divine spellcasting was very similar to how she’d cast spells during her lone life on a systemless planet in the Mana Realm.

Since she’d recovered her previous life memories upon entering the Immortal Realm, adapting to Divine magic had been simple. Without that experience to draw from, she would have likely struggled to adapt to the new form of energy.

Qi was different. It was all emotion, intent, and understanding of universal truths (that mostly just applied to the Qi Realm, not the whole universe).

How she’d used Qi prior to ascending into the Immortal Realm hadn’t helped at all.

Eventually, she’d found that the methods she learned to cast magic as an Immortal directly related to how magic could be used in the Mana Realm. The similarity was one of the reasons the Mana Realm was the primary focus for Immortals taking on the role of deities.

The Mana Realm was essentially the only realm where deities could ‘gift’ their followers with magical understanding, spells, and abilities, giving their followers a tangible reason to worship.

The same could not be said for those who played at godhood within the Qi Realm. Their abilities were much more limited and less useful to those who worshipped them. Still, there were enough non-cultivators to make it somewhat worthwhile to engage with the realm, but it wasn’t nearly as lucrative as operating in the Mana Realm.

All this to say, Isa was very confident in her ability to use any of her aspects, including the ones that were too low to show up in the system. She’d spent eons learning, practicing, and ‘gifting’ magic during her time as a goddess, particularly magic related to Storm, which was her divine domain within her previous pantheon.

The real question was: What element should she start with?

Basing her decision on more than a hundred lives worth of memories coupled with how reliant this world was on electricity, Isa chose Lightning. It wasn’t the same thing as electricity, but it was close enough to substitute in many situations.

After making her selection, the screen shifted to show a handful of basic Lightning spells: Lightning Bolt, Flash, Stun, Disrupt, and Ground (an anti-Lightning spell).

Most casters wouldn’t have enough mana to do much with a mid-level aspect as a new level one. However, Isa wasn’t like most people.

Not only had she already upgraded her race – which enhanced the value of every attribute – but she also had an extraordinarily high Spirit attribute. It was almost certainly bleed over from splintering her soul and retaining her sense of self within the core, but without her divine senses, she couldn’t be sure.

Whatever the reason was, a higher Spirit attribute meant that, magically, she was much better off than pretty much any other mortal on Gentrius. At level one, Isa should be able to make good use of any basic or intermediate spells, even without the bonus she’d get from anchoring them to an item.

After assessing her options, Isa went with Stun. It was a non-lethal option that would allow her to disable opponents at little cost. She’d trained in martial arts while on the space station, so incorporating such an effect made sense.

She didn’t need the spell to kill her opponents. She could easily do that on her own without resorting to magic.

Once she finished with her selections, Isa considered leaving the room and letting everyone know she was awake. But before she did that, she wanted to see if there was anything else she could learn about the current situation.

While they recognized her brilliance, her parents still tended to treat her like a child sometimes. With everything going on, she worried they might try to protect her by withholding information they deemed too dangerous, even though she was already seventeen and nearly an adult by Gentrius’ standards. It was one of the more annoying things about her life, though she understood it came from a place of love.

“You know that you are all welcome to stay here for however long you need to,” Grandpa Roland said from the living room. Isa could hear the soft murmur of the television in the background, but it wasn’t loud enough to interfere with her ability to make out what was said. “You don’t have to go back if you don’t want to.”

There was a sigh. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do. The Station Captain seemed more interested in getting Isa on board than Jayne and me,” Bren said, sparking Isa’s interest. “Still, they’re offering better accommodations than what we had on the Kenti station, and with everything going on…”

Isa had wondered how those working and living in orbit around the planet reacted to the change. If her estimates were right, there should be a space station, at least three transport ships, and a small colony on Sumar – the larger of the two moons. Depending on how many people were planetside when the ascension happened, there could be anywhere between twelve and fifteen thousand people up there.

“That…seems a bit odd to me,” Roland said hesitantly.

“Really?” Bren asked with a touch of incredulity. “The kid’s a genius. I can’t tell you how many times someone has contacted me trying to get me to convince Isa to transfer to the Gentrius station during this alignment. Now that going back to Kenti isn’t an option…”

“They don’t want you to return to your space station?” Isa’s grandfather asked.

“I don’t think Kenti or the station made the transition with us.”

“Made the… transition?” Isa could hear the confusion in his voice. It was clear that the truth of what happened hadn’t sunk in for the general population yet.

Jayne cleared her throat before speaking. “I talked to a contact of mine on Gentrius Station a little bit ago. From what the scientists up there have been able to determine, Gentrius is no longer in the Amar system. It looks like we’re not even in the Great Spiral anymore.”

“That…” Roland started before trailing off.

“It’s crazy. We know,” Bren said.

After a moment of silence filled only by the murmurs coming from the television, Jayne said, “I think they want us on Sumar, not the station.”

“No, they want you on Sumar, especially now that they know you took a Nature Mage class,” Bren said. “They want Isa on the station because of her experience in network security. I think they’re counting on her taking a class that will reinforce her existing abilities… kinda like we did.”

As she listened, Isa slipped into a semi-meditative state to track the changes to her body. The nanites had already started absorbing mana, and they didn’t seem to be reacting poorly to the new energy.

That was good. It was one of the things she’d worried about when making plans for the ascension.

Taking control of the flow of mana in her body, Isa sent it to her eyes and gently saturated the area until her vision shifted, allowing her to see mana once again. A faint chime sounded, but she ignored it. The former goddess was well aware of the ‘achievement’ she’d just accomplished.

“So, are you going to leave, then?” her grandpa asked her father, pulling her attention. “Again, you don’t have to. Either way, the Senate will probably insist you register first.”

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do,” Jayne said, echoing Bren’s earlier statement. “We need to talk to Isa when she wakes up before making any decisions. She’s practically an adult now. I don’t think it’s fair for us to make a decision like that for her.”

Taking that as her cue, Isa pulled herself out of the semi-meditative state and climbed to her feet. She might as well get the conversation out of the way now instead of procrastinating any longer.