It isn't every day that a huge beam of pure energy lights a person up like a high-powered flashlight. Though that is exactly what happened to Sylvie when her necklace decided to overload and become some kind of life ending, world devastating, science-fiction inspired supernova of absurdity. The worst part? Sylvie was at her after school job at a super market and right after she got there Craig, the most annoying guy ever, had just made a joke about how it was… hump day. Her last thought as she looked down… realizing somehow that it was too late and that she was totally screwed?
‘Lame’
She felt her body as it was torn apart. The final moment lasted much longer than she would have thought it reasonably should have. You die, and boom everything is over. Well it didn’t work out like that for Sylvie, there was this charge that stayed with her and even though her body was gone she could still feel that charge as she floated in a void. As a reasonable person, she decided, she was dead and waited. There was probably an afterlife and that should start anytime now, especially since she was here, thinking about it. If she wasn’t thinking about anything that would have meant that there wasn’t an afterlife, right? If there was’t an afterlife what this might some kind of supernova inspired time warping moment or something like that.
Nothing happened.
Like, NOTHING HAPPENED.
She didn’t move on, there wasn’t some sort of god or goddess telling her about her life trying to take her to heaven or hell. There wasn’t a feeling of wonder or awe, or a being offering her a chance to reincarnate in a fantasy world. Which might have been cool, Sylvie could totally do that one if it happened. She did really like reading and playing roleplaying games on her Station Box. Nope this was empty void time, a whole lot of void.
It occured to her that maybe she was part of a long line of people that were at the store during her… exploding? No, that was too, bits and pieces, she had been more like melting? No…no not right either. The closest thing she could come up with was a scene from a fight anime except she did her ‘thing’ and then nothing, void time. Was she forgotten? Death seemed very inefficient if void time was this long. She found herself thinking about a random video and started laughing. Well maybe not laughing, it was more like she thought about laughing and then she ‘laughed’ without a body. Remembering a laugh and her brain… no that wasn’t here… her mind… and her mind played that back like a recording. She decided being dead was just way too boring.
‘OK! Tired of this show me something!’ She screamed with her mind into the void. It felt good to vent. There might have been something to getting angry and wanting to see more than just a void because she could swear there were parts of the void that seemed to change. It was less black as she focused on different parts of the darkness. Inspired, she focused on the space around her and willed something to happen and it started to change.
The blackness became shades of gray and the void became fuzzy shapes of muddy grays. The shapes didn’t look like anything in particular but it wasn’t a void anymore. Sylvie the lover of role playing games and books giggled, mentally, and imaged her ability to ’See the Void’ leveling up. She got determined, if this was a game it would be a quest and something measurable, something measurable could tracked. If something could be tracked she could figure this out. She fully committed to the idea.
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‘If this is like a game I can level up and figure this out’
Would you like to load the system?
The letters were pure white and appeared in the space in front of her. Very convenient, did this happen because she made it appear somehow? She wished for a way to interface with her experience like it was a game and something appeared, This was unexpected and weird though if it worked she wouldn’t be stuck in a void or whatever anymore.
‘Yes’
Loading system... System Loaded. Loading character sheet. Character sheet loaded.
Nothing appeared and just when it was getting good. She thought about how it would work in a game.
‘View status’
—
Name: Sylvie Rodriguez (Previously)
Free Points: 0
Location: Personal Domain (The Void)
—
Class 1: Spirit
Class 2: None
Class 3: None
—
Status:
Intelligence: 1
Wisdom: 1
Strength: 1
Dexterity: 1
Endurance: 1
Grit: 1
—
Health: 1/1
Stamina 1/1
Mana 1/1
—
Skills:
Role Playing Game (Passive)
‘Haha oh ok, Role Playing Game as a skill, cute’ She thought some more and decided that her ‘Stats’ didn’t make sense. She was definitely smarter than a one and how did she even have a life total as a spirit class and wait mana?
Wisdom has been reassessed
Wisdom +3
Intelligence has been reassessed
Intelligence +10
Existential Crisis can not reduce health to zero, increasing relative health to compensate for damage
Health +9
Intelligence has been reassessed
Intelligence -5
Would you like to identify term: Mana?
She groaned, as annoying as it was, existential crisis was probably right. Mana would just be her magic potential or something like that right? Whatever…
‘Yes, Identify Mana’
Skill Identify added
Identify [Mana]
[Mana] An entities magic potential or whatever…
This answer… She had an idea so she changed the description of mana to something that might be a little more reasonable and tried it out.
Identify [Mana]
[Mana] The total magical power of an entity. Its size is determined by an entities Intelligence, Wisdom, Classes, and Skills.
Woah.
‘System am I the system?’
Yes
How does that make sense? She figured it did, obviously the system had answered her and part of her knew it was the truth. She thought about renaming the some of the different parts of her character sheet as it floated there in her void. Is wisdom the best name for her own stat in her own system? Well it accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish.
Wisdom has been reassessed
Wisdom +3
It felt like cheating. ‘System why is this place called the void?’
System is unable to answer your question
Hmm she thought about it some more, asking the system why might have been a bridge too far. She decided to ask a different question. ‘How is this place called the void’
You named it that, Your personal domain can be named what ever you want
Oh right! On her character sheet, it did say it was her domain. If the system knew, she knew, something about that nagged at her. Her domain, the system was part of her, part of her understanding and she called it a “personal domain”. She had to ask because if the system was her way of dealing with things as a role playing game and a domain could mean a few different things in a game. Time for the big one, somehow she knew, but she had to use the system to do it for her.
‘System, reassess my class please’
Class has been reassessed
Spirit class removed
Goddess class now active
What the hell was that. If she had a pulse it would be racing right now. How the in the calamity of cats did she reassess as a goddess, but it was right somehow. Maybe thats why no one came to claim her when she died, oh cats.