THRUM

"Huh? Where am I?"

A preliminary view of my surroundings made me believe I was back in the cave where we discovered the crystal. Or rather the tunnel leading to the crystal.

"A dream?"

THRUM

Turning to look in the direction the sound came from, a sliver of light could be seen. Turning to look behind me, I was met with a wall, and knocking on it told me it was solid all the way through.

Seeing no way to go other than forward, I started to make my way through the tunnel.

THRUM

As I walked forward, the droning noise became louder and more frequent, and the sliver of light became brighter and more prominent.

THRUM

I reached a bend in the tunnel and as I turned it, I could see that it was the crystal, the very same one that gave me my powers.

THRUM

Turning around to check on the path I came from, I came face to face with a wall, my only retreat having been cut off.

THRUM THRUM THRUM

"Ah!" I shouted as I fell to my knees clutching my head.

THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM

With each drone, the pain in my head increased. But it wasn't a headache, no I'd had headaches and migraines before. This felt like something else. Like something was trying to drill into my mind.

And that's when I realized the crystal was attacking me, more precisely my mind.

But the next second it felt like something had appeared around my mind, like a shield. And it worked, the pain lessened but it didn't stop. Now it felt like something was pounding on the door of my brain and they were getting close to breaking it down.

It seemed that my PK reacted to me being in danger and passively created a shield to stave off the attack on my mind. But the fascination at my PK reacting instinctively didn't last long when I felt the shield start creaking, and it turned into anger.

Angry at the notion of almost having my mind taken over by a crystal entity on my first day back alive, I decided that I would counterattack and give it a taste of its own medicine. But being a complete newbie at using PK, I didn't know how to do it other than doing the same thing I did when I picked up the shirt.

So, I pushed through the pain and pointed my hand in the direction of the crystal. Then I remembered the sensation I felt when the psionic energy left my brain and thought about doing the same thing.

Thankfully anger and frustration were fueling my abilities, making the whole process much smoother and faster than the first time. Then I just thought about what I wanted the energy to do and it followed directions.

The energy left my hand, formed a needle, and began to penetrate the crystal before reaching a shield similar to mine. But unlike the crystal who couldn't get through my shield, likely due to having used a massive amount of energy granting us powers, my psionic needle pierced the shield.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM

The pain I was feeling disappeared, the crystal changed color to red, the droning noise turned to loud blaring, and the cave began to shake. Clearly, the crystal felt it was in danger and decided to focus all its resources on stopping my attack.

But I didn't want to give it any time to mount a counterattack, so I made the needle go even deeper before it reached what I felt was the core of the crystal. Then I made the needle explode.

~

Shooting up from my sleeping position to a sitting position, while trying to catch my breath, I looked around and noticed I was back in my room. And drenched in sweat.

'What the fuck?' I thought, remembering what had just transpired.

'Andrew was right. It was extraterrestrial. I doubt he would've guessed, it was trying to take over our minds though. Looks like it lures people to it, gives them powers, and takes over their minds while they're still weak. Probably so they can do its bidding. It's like a multi-level marketing scheme.

But more importantly, why didn't that happen in the movie? Damn, does this mean all my knowledge about the movie might be wrong? Or am I in a world where the second movie happens? I remember reading a second movie was in the works and the premise was about another crystal or something like that? Don't remember all the exact details though.

It does make things more complicated, knowing there might be other crystals somewhere in the ground. Shit. Not to mention they're probably extraterrestrial which means there could be more of them out there somewhere.' I thought as I rubbed my temple, trying to stop the slight headache forming from thinking about the future.

'Only thing I can do right now is taking it in stride. Train my powers until I'm so strong, any threat that pops up won't be a threat. And that fight also made me aware of the fact that my powers can develop in a telepathic direction. Like Professor X and Jean Grey. I doubt I'd ever reach the heights of power they reach though. That would be cool.

Anyway, the first thing I need to do is train my powers before I go check on the crystal. Don't want to walk into a wolf's den unprepared. Even though it did seem like I beat it back in the dream, I doubt something like that could take care of it permanently. It's probably only temporarily out of the fight.

Training regimen for the near future, use water. One gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds so it'll be good to train the raw power of my PK. And for the precision training of my PK, water works as well. The malleability and free form of water should be a good way to train it. If not I can switch to doing more delicate things like building legos or threading a needle. Sounds like a plan.'

Finished thinking about what had transpired, the potential future problems, and my future training regimen, I picked up my phone to check the time.

'3 A.M. I'm going back to sleep.' I thought as I put my phone on my nightstand and laid back down.

DING

'Uhh, I'll check on that in the morning.'

DING

'Wait, I don't have my ringer on.' I realized after hearing the second ding.

Opening my eyes, I was met with a box of text.

Confused at what I was seeing, I rubbed my eyes to make sure I wasn't hallucinating only for the box to still be there.

'What the hell?' I thought before using my hand to try to touch the box only for it to pass through it.

'Wait, don't tell me this is one of those web novel tropes? What were those cheats called? Golden something? Golden finger! A reward/cheat received by reincarnators and transmigrators alike. Interesting.' I thought as I began to recall many of the cheats I remember reading in web novels. Ones that ranged from something simple to those which were outright bullshit.

'Only way to find out is to read what the box says.'

[Congratulations. You have been randomly chosen as the next soul to use The System.]

'Holy shit. It's actually a system.'

[The System's purpose is to assign missions, that can be accepted or denied.]

'So like an RPG mission system? Like help this person or defeat these people?'

[Missions assigned by The System send the User to a different reality wherein the User will have to complete the assigned tasks before being allowed to return home.]

'Holy shit. First, transmigration. Then, superpowers. Now, world hopping. What the fuck.'

[Missions assigned by The System are not without compensation. Rewards vary on the difficulty of the mission relevant to the User.]

'And there are rewards?! I need to lay down.' I thought, laying back down on my bed to process what was going on.

[The System also contains a Shop function that refreshes weekly and uses points given by The System upon mission completion, an Inventory function with unlimited space, as well as a World Travel function that is only able to be used with worlds where the User has successfully completed a mission.]

'O-okay.'

[As is customary, the User will be given a Starting Package. It has been placed in the Inventory.]

'Okay.'

[That is all.]

With that final message, the text box went away from my vision.

'I need to sleep this off.'