“You don’t look much like a Clint,” the conductor said as passengers exited the train, flooding into the station around them.

Distracted and only halfway having heard what the old conductor had said, Clint Abner eyed the System message, incredulous that it wasn't just some wishful hallucination. He had no logical reason to doubt what he was seeing: the message perfectly aligned with the stories he had heard of other people unlocking their [Roles], at least in terms of wording, and the text displayed a degree of stability and clarity that he doubted a hallucination could induce. Yet still, some skeptical part of him that had been let down one too many times had trouble believing it.

He snapped out of his haze and returned his focus to the conductor, conjuring up a response without missing more than a beat.

"How's a person named Clint supposed to look?" he said, acting as if everything was completely normal and that his heart wasn't racing out of his chest in excitement.

“A bit more rugged and worldly.”

"If you saw me with a beard, you wouldn't be saying that." His eyes wrinkled as he smiled. "What's your name then? Let's see if you live up to yours."

“Howard.”

Clint Abner laughed good-naturedly. "No, you don't have the forehead for that. I don’t believe you.”

Clint glanced to the side, unable to contain his curiosity. Somewhat to his surprise, the System message was still there. It hung in the air before him–entirely real, yet not. Strangely, he could tell it was not actually there, as if it resided in some strange parallel dimension that only he could see.

The conductor put his hand to his forehead and patted it down carefully, measuring it with his fingers. “I think my forehead is plenty big enough to be a Howard.”

He shrugged. “If you say so. I’m not an expert on Howards. I’ve only met two my entire life.”

“How’d the other one compare?”

The smile fell from his eyes, a single off note in the jovial picture he painted.

“Well, his forehead was certainly more distinctive than yours. I’d recognize that thing from a mile away. As for the other aspects of his life. Well, last I heard of him, he had taken up the profession of serial murder.”

The conductor blinked. "That's some stiff competition you've put me up against. Luckily for me, I think men like that tend not to last long–if you go on living your life like that, eventually, you're bound to cross someone you shouldn't have. I'd give him a year at most."

“I’d give him a month at most,” he said dispassionately.

"Quite the specific timeline. Well, really, it doesn't matter. Point is, it's only a matter of time till I'm the only Howard left to compare to, making me the benchmark in terms of forehead height and diameter."

Clint was pretty sure diameter wasn’t the correct measurement–foreheads generally weren’t circles, and even if they were, they didn’t reach back to the halfway point of the skull–though Clint kept that observation to himself. “You know, you really don’t act your age.”

“You don’t know my age,” he said with an overly dramatic amount of mystery in his tone.

The conductor–Howard–had looked pretty much the same all the years he had known him, not visibly aging much. He had a crown of graying hair on his head and aging skin. If Clint had to guess, he'd put the man somewhere near 65.

In truth, it didn’t matter much to him. Not right now. “Thanks. Thanks for everything,” Clint said. It sounded like a final goodbye.

"Don't worry about it." Howard waved and began to head back to the train to resume his duties. He stopped and grinned. "If you find buried treasure out there or something like that and still are in an appreciative mood, bring back a souvenir for me."

Clint chuckled. “Will do.”

Now alone, with nothing to keep him from his curiosity, he picked a discarded newspaper up from the ground and swiftly walked over to the southernmost bench in the station–a location isolated enough from foot traffic that he wouldn't draw much attention.

So as to not look like a totally crazy person, on the off chance that he was under a state of active delusion, he unfolded the paper and aligned it with the message the System had sent to him.

Almost too excited to slow down, he reread the message one last time, making sure he hadn't missed anything.

Congratulations! Role Unlocked: [A Stranger In A Strange Land].

Accept Y/N?

Clint couldn't claim to be the foremost authority on the topic of [Roles]. Still, he had read a fair amount on the subject, so it was with some surprise that he had to admit that he had never heard of [A Stranger In A Strange Land] before. Most [Roles] were fairly self-explanatory–their uses in their names. A [Swordsmen] would be supernaturally good with a sword, and a [Pyromancer] would be able to cast fire magic. [A Stranger In A Strange Land] provided no such hint. Though he could make guesses, he refrained from doing so, knowing that they would be nothing more than idle speculation.

A dilemma presented itself: to accept or to decline. It wasn't an entirely clear choice. He could decline and hope that the System would offer him another [Role] in the future–he had survived 22 years without one–or he could risk locking himself into a [Role] that would be entirely useless for his purposes. It was an unfair fact that not all [Roles] were made equal; some were simply stronger than others, and some only lived up to their full potential under very specific circumstances. While an Awakened–someone with a [Role]–would undoubtedly outperform most Unawakened in most metrics, making it better to have [Role], even a "weak one," than to not, there was still a large gap that he could avoid falling into by exercising a bit of patience.

In fact, with the trajectory he was on, he doubted he'd have to wait long for another [Role] to present itself. One of the main reasons people immigrated to the Frontier was the increased odds of unlocking a [Role] it provided by mere virtue of being there. Back where he was from, there weren't any official numbers, but if he had to estimate, he'd say less than 1% of the population was Awakened. Here at the eastern edge of the Frontier, which in no way could be considered a representation of what it was like further into it, at least 5% of the population was Awakened. Though, most were stuck at the Bronze bottleneck.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Scholars bickered about the reason, tossing out endless theories and justifications, but nothing resembling a unified consensus had been reached yet. Some said it was a byproduct of the increased quantity of magic in the air that mutated the land itself and the animals and humans that dwelled upon it. A smaller few believed that the eyes of the world itself pointed toward the Frontier, casting it in a greater light for the System to see. Others said it had to do with the proximity to the edge of the world–a loosening of the rules of reality as mankind neared the domain of the gods.

No one could say for certain, for no one had ever reached the end of the Frontier to see what was on the other side.

The one thing that scientists and speakers on the subject seemed to agree on was that whatever mystical effect was in play became more pronounced the further one traveled into the Frontier, the potential gain increasing, as did the risk.

Clint, personally, wouldn't have been surprised if all the theories turned out to be lies or if some combination of them turned out to be true. It didn't matter much to him in any immediate sense. He didn't have any stake in the matter other than idle curiosity.

Of course, he was, unfortunately, self-aware enough to realize that all the idle facts that so captured his attention were nothing more than mental walls he put up to block him from the anxious dilemma that lay ahead of him, to justify hesitating for a few moments longer under the guise of intellectualism.

He chuckled softly to himself. The question was a moot point. He wasn't the type arrogant enough to honestly think that he'd get a second chance if he turned down this one. He guessed he just liked to overthink things–to run through every possible scenario on the off chance that one would pay dividends, though they rarely did.

It was an odd quirk of his being that even with all his doubts and overthinking, some small misplaced part of him was confident that however, the dice may fall, he'd be able to make it work–that even with the most useless or ill-fitting [Role] he could fake his way to competence.

He was a con man after all, faking things was his job.

He took a breath, not the composed man he looked like from the outside, and accepted the System’s offer.

Words shifted over the page, flashing by as fast as he could read them.

Calculating Backstory. Generating Starting Traits and Stats. Crystalizing Legend…

Congratulations! You are now [A Stranger In A Strange Land]. A long time ago, the first Stranger rode through the desert on the back of a strange animal no one had ever seen before, carrying strange items with him that no one recognized, in search of a truth no one had ever heard of. No one knew his true identity, and thus, no one truly knew where he came from or what he could do. That was the root of his power: in being no one, he could be everything. One day, he rode into town, carrying with him an ordinary oaken staff that he claimed could call down lightning from the heavens. Of course, it couldn't, but the people of the town didn't know that. By the time he skipped town, through a mixture of trickery and tall tales, he had convinced most every one of the staff's abilities, and thus, the Stranger's abilities activated, turning his lies into a reality–turning the staff into a genuine magical artifact.

Your powers are weaker, just a spark from what was once an inferno, but they follow the same general concept–as long as enough people believe the stories you spin, you may gain temporary access to a portion of the power contained in other [Roles], and with them, fragile access to a vast array of abilities, remnants of which may remain permanent if the lies you tell spread far enough, or if the events sparked by them are sufficiently impactful.

Follow in the first Stranger's footsteps or carve your own path; the choice is yours–your Legend is your own to carve. With strong mental intent, think the words “Status Page” to bring forth your [Status].

He had expected a wave of power to flow through him or some other dramatic event to spark forward, marking the arrival of his [Role], but no such thing occurred. He felt exactly the same as before.

Having gathered the general gist of the powers bestowed upon him after by his [Role], he opened his [Status]. A new page appeared. It looked exactly like a wanted poster–a picture drawn from black ink at the top; it wasn't one of him. Rather, he assumed it was of the first Stranger the System had told of as he traveled through the desert on the back of what looked like a mix between an elephant and a wolf. He chuckled as he read through his [Status], the words upon it extremely funny to him for no obvious reason.

[A Stranger In A Strange Land - Lvl 1]

Identity: Clint Abner (2)

Traits: [Man Of Many Names]

Strength: 5

Constitution: 6

Agility: 4

Perception: 7

Endurance: 3

Dexterity: 6

Skills: Semblance Lvl 0/25

Through some trial and error, he found that if he focused on a Trait or a Skill, he could open an expanded description of it.

The Man Of Many Names (Rare)

Awarded for a lifetime of changing names, the holder of this Trait can freely change the name upon their [Status] and hold a maximum of 3 different Identities which they can freely switch between.

Semblance Lvl 0/25 (Uncommon)

Grants the ability to view and minorly manipulate the appearance of unguarded pages of the System.

It was a rare stroke of luck to have started off with an Uncommon Skill and a Rare Trait. Not everyone was fortunate enough to start off with a Trait, and most were stuck with a Common Rarity Skill as their first. Though, he did note that the Trait and Skill he had been given were both less conventionally powerful than the others he had heard of at their Tier.

Not to mention the potential overlap between the two. It was safe to assume that their effects would be additive, especially because of [A Man Of Many Names]'s Rarity, but nonetheless, the concern lodged itself to the back of his mind.

He loitered for a few moments longer, thinking of possible ways to test out his new abilities until a bell began to ring loudly from the center of the town. That in itself wasn't a cause for concern, but paired with the faint rumbling he felt shaking the ground and the tremendous crashing of stone he heard in the distance. Well, he at least thought it qualified as one.

Clint glanced around the station. Those who had just left the train and still lingered in the station began to panic, pacing about like headless chickens, searching for some measure of safety from a threat they could not see. The locals didn't seem overly concerned, still going about their business as if whatever commotion was happening outside the town's walls was an everyday occurrence.

He calmly stood and, with a boyish grin, began to head toward the source of the commotion. While walking, he folded back up the newspaper. He glanced at its front page, which contained a picture and a subsequent article about the owner of the Golden Gate Trading Company, the fastest-growing corporation in the Frontier. He stared at it for a moment too long, his expression unchanged.

He thoroughly crumpled the paper into a ball and then tossed it into a trashcan as he exited the train station, entering the busy streets of Greenway, soon stumbling upon an open-air market as he continued to head in the general direction of the commotion and the still ringing bell.

A man with a massive Warhammer on his back argued with a portly meat merchant, bickering over the price of a large slab of pork. The man glanced toward the tall wall that surrounded the town, then shook his head. With a few choice words, he abruptly ran off toward it.

Clint followed after the man, turning down one strange street after another where not a soul recognized him as anything more than a stranger till he reached a staircase that led up the wall. From its top, he could see clearly for miles. Not so far away, a trade caravan of wagons raced toward the safety of the walls, chased by three earthen monsters that were each easily two times larger than the largest of the wagons.