Congratulations! You have qualified for The Early Adopter Initiative! The EAI is an early rollout of System features for individuals who have defeated five or more spawns at least five levels above their own level. Fortunately, as an Unawakened individual, your level is still zero, making the threshold quite easy to achieve. Your work with these level 7 Wargs definitely qualifies. Your creativity has also been noted.

“Am I dreaming? I could still be in bed.” Ginny said aloud in a strangely calm and collected tone.

“I definitely could have been anxious enough about meeting a dude for something like a date to dream this whole thing up.”

There was a screen in front of her eyes, although the words were also read into her mind in a chipper voice.

Fear not, EAI candidate. You are neither dreaming, nor hallucinating, nor in any way impaired. In fact, EAI protocol is to dampen any signs of traumatic stress caused by System arrival.

Your world has entered the Greater Dense Mana Ribbon, a zone of space. In fact your world did so eighteen months ago. In those eighteen months The System, of which I am simply a personal guide subroutine, has been siphoning off all mana that has impacted your world. The System has been organizing features and making the transition as low impact as possible for you, your world and your people.

Are you ready to begin your System Awakening?

“What exactly does that mean?”

Ah, of course. First you will be remade as a mana controlling creature. Do not be concerned. It will not hurt, at least you will not remember a thing. Then you will be able to choose a class, which is a concept which has been pre-staged through your media and gaming gestalt. As I mentioned earlier, extensive preparations have been underway since The System first came in contact with your world.

“Eighteen months ago?”

Oh, no. I apologize if I have been in any way misleading. Contact was first made over a hundred years ago, as soon as the Greater Dense Mana Ribbon was close enough for The System to begin remote access. A proper gestalt takes years to achieve.

Once you have a class you can choose any perks you have earned. You still have time to earn additional perks, by the way, so please continue to be outstanding.

When you have a class, any spawns you kill will feed you their Essence, which will allow you to level up, among other uses. Monsters which dissolve into Essence will drop coins, materials and items. I have taken the liberty of preventing your kills from dissolving into Essence until after you are prepared to accept the energy.

As a side note, you can also earn Essence by using System assisted crafting methods. Some people even say that crafting Essence is the superior path, although it is not a substantiated claim.

“I have to choose a class and perks.” Ginny repeated dully. Everything felt dull and dreary, even though the sun was shining brightly.

Yes. After you are remade to live in a mana based environment you will choose a class and perks. I’m afraid there is no going back. It will take your world 37.6 million years to exit the local Greater Dense Mana Ribbon.

If you are interested in such things, your world was in the much weaker, much narrower Falchion Mana Ribbon a few thousand of your years ago. You are very fortunate indeed to be alive now and not back then when The System could not reach you.

Are you ready to begin your System Awakening?

Ginny paused.

I will warn you that every Human is scheduled to simultaneously Awaken in 48 hours. You will not avoid Awakening, nor should you wish to avoid it. However, your Early Adopter perks will be considerably lessened if you choose to wait.

“Fine. Yes. Start the Awakening thing.”

Excellent! Stand By…

…

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NOTICE: Status Condition [Trauma Buffer] has been applied to you during the Awakening process. This optional beneficial buff shields the mind from the negative effects of past and current trauma.

WARNING! [Trauma Buffer] is a form of Mind Magic. In general, Mind Magic is considered illegal by all civilized people if it is not consensual. You are free to remove this buff at any time, but once removed it will be gone permanently.

Ginny woke slumped over the chains holding her to the swing. Her nose was filled with the smell of burnt marshmallows and her tongue tasted bitter, which contrasted oddly to the sweet smell.

In the distance it sounded as if someone was shooting a battle rifle. The distinctive staccato three round bursts reminded her of shooter games she’d played. Gunfire wasn’t uncommon in this neighborhood, but it wasn’t usual either. She was in no way surprised that one of her neighbors owned an assault rifle.

The status condition and its warning were not especially surprising either. The helpful System voice had warned her that her emotions and reactions to trauma were being artificially managed.

She considered removing the buff but kept it for now. It was useful and might help her make rational choices about her class and perks.

There were a few symbols across the bottom of her field of vision, two of which were blinking obnoxiously. She groaned and grabbed the upright chains, pulling herself up.

She was just in time to watch the five Wargs finish dissolving into the air. A streak of light came off each of them and impacted her chest right in the center. She experienced a pleasurable sensation of something inside her filling up and stretching. A third symbol started blinking.

“System?” She croaked. Her throat was extremely dry. The chipper, chatty system voice did not respond.

She sighed. Of course the system would stop talking now that she’d done what it wanted her to do: consent to being changed early.

Why would it possibly continue to help her?

She touched the first flashing symbol on the left, the one which was a little brighter than the other two.

Class (Choose One)

Cleric (random sponsor)

Paladin (random sponsor)

Monk (random sponsor)

Druid (random sponsor)

Healer

Fighter

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Rogue

Ranger

Barbarian

Bard

Sorcerer

Wizard (random element)

As much as she poked and prodded, no additional information was available to help her narrow down the choice.

The possibility of some random deity ‘sponsoring’ her seemed incredibly dangerous. She might get the god of insanity or something. So, without further information, she eliminated all the sponsored classes. That left eight and none of them seemed like a crafting class.

Healer was tempting, but she didn’t want to be tied down to a role if she could make herself powerful. Bard was completely out of the question. The other six felt like different sides of three coins. Warrior, dexterity focus or magic wielder.

Narrowing it down to her preference, she didn’t feel like a front line fighter, she didn’t want to be as helpless as a mage, so the choice was really Rouge or Ranger.

Since she was definitely a city girl, Rogue seemed to fit a lot better.

She tapped Rogue before she had a moment to second guess her own thought process.

Congratulations on choosing the class [Rogue]

You are now level 1.

The notifications felt soulless and dry somehow and the voice that read them aloud to her was different.

Please choose one Class Skill:

Wall Walk

Lock Pick

Slight of Hand

Trap Sense

Minor Stealth

Dodge

Sneak Attack

Again, there was absolutely no help in choosing- no descriptions or cost disclosures. Ginny pouted slightly that there was no kind of self healing skill, but maybe she could find that under perks.

She picked Dodge almost at random to make herself harder to hit.

Class set up complete. Perk menu unavailable for 26 hours.

The class set up process felt a little incomplete to be honest, and being teased with perks but having the menu inaccessible for over a day was slightly maddening. The 26 hours felt suspicious too. Why not 24? Or 23 and a half?

However, she let that slide because the slightly uncomfortable feeling of the monster Essence in her chest was becoming more and more insistent. She touched that blinking icon, the one that hadn’t lit up until she had absorbed the Essence.

You have 350/300 unused Essence. Please use 50 Essence immediately or it will be lost in [05:23] minutes.

The seconds were ticking by quickly.

Essence may be used for:

Self Healing [0/500]

Leveling up [200]

Raising a stat [100]

This time she got a clear unspoken sense as if from knowledge inserted during Awakening that if she’d been injured the 0 on the self healing line would be a number. That left leveling and raising stats.

She tapped Leveling up.

You have 150/400 unused Essence.

You are now level 2.

She gasped. She could breathe easier. In fact the first deep breath seemed to expand her lungs more than usual. Somehow the Essence space in her chest actually felt bigger. She didn’t think her level up had done anything to her stats.

Apparently she would have to spend Essence for that.

She tapped the last blinking icon and frowned. It was her status. She definitely should have looked before she leveled. Looking before she chose her class might have made sense too. It looked like she could have been an excellent magic user.

Virginia Greer

Human Rogue Lvl2

HP 500/500

MP 1000/1000

EP 150/400

Strength 2

Dexterity 6

Vitality 5

Intelligence 10

Wisdom 9

Charisma 12

Skills

Acrobatics 4.2

Athletics 3.7

Balancing 3.4

Dancing 5.3

Deceit 4.4

Disguise 3.7

First Aid 2.1

Flirting 4.4

Literacy 4.7

Metallurgy 2.2

Metal Shaping 4.9

Mundane Welding 8.7

Pickpocketing 4.3

Read lips 3.8

Running 3.5

Scribing 2.8

Seduction 6.5

Sewing 1.9

Swimming 3.5

Weapon Mastery: Chain 1.5

Class skills

Dodge 1.0

The list of natural skills seemed too generous but not necessarily comprehensive. She wondered if more would show up as she exhibited proficiency or if certain things just didn’t get named as skills.

She would have expected to see paper flower making or something similar as many times as she’d made paper flower arrangements for weddings and parties as a kid.

There were also a few more notifications, which popped up over the status screen one by one as she tried to read it.

You have 22 unused Stat points from the Early Adopter Initiative program.

As mandatory perk from the Early Adopter Initiative using 10 Essence per tier, you may dismantle any unwanted skill and recovering half of the skill points represented by the dismantled skill to any other skill. A skill may be leveled by 10 levels at a time in this way. Then it is required to level naturally for 20 levels or more before it can absorb transferred levels. This perk is perpetual.

You have three minor perks, one major perk and one grand perk. You have 24 hours after the scheduled simultaneous Awakening of Earth to choose these and any additional perks.

As an Early Adopter your Essence Absorption Efficiency is 10% better than Earth average.

That was all useful information. At the moment there were only a few skills she’d be willing to sacrifice. Flirting and seduction were at the top of the list. How much was a tier anyway?

She tapped Flirting.

For 40 Essence you may dismantle Flirting. You will recover 58 skill points. At each tier, levels of a skill cost more. A tier 1 skill costs 1 point per level. A tier 2 skill costs 2 points per level and so forth.

Would you like to dismantle Flirting? Yes/No

So the number before the decimal was the tier, which made sense as far as that went.

She tapped yes and felt the 40 Essence fade from her core. She used the points to tier up Dodge to 2.0, which took 10 points, and Weapon Mastery: Chains to 2.5, which took 15 points. She brought First Aid up to 3.0 with 18 points,

which meant she had 15 points remaining. She was afraid they would disappear if she left them, so she raised Athletics to 4.0 for 9 points and Balancing to 3.6 for her last 6 points.

She considered continuing, but the draw of 22 stat points was too high. She put 10 in her class stat, Dexterity and split the rest between Strength and Vitality.

The agony that followed made her strongly question if those 22 points had been a gift or a curse. Every muscle, bone, tendon, indeed every fiber of her body screamed in agony and then she passed out again.

When she came to she was slumped over the chains again and her status screen was still open.

Virginia Greer

Human Rogue Lvl2

HP 1100/1100

MP 1000/1000

EP 110/400

Strength 2-> 8

Dexterity 6-> 16

Vitality 5-> 11

Intelligence 10

Wisdom 9

Charisma 12

If nothing else, the pain was worth it to double her health points, whatever health points really meant in real life. The fatigue ache in her arms also felt considerably lessened.

The down side to passing out again was there were two more Wargs under her perch, snapping and growling at her feet.

Ginny reached for her chain, extremely glad that she had hooked the end to the one looped around her waist and hips to keep her from falling.

She almost lost her balance as she yanked. Manipulating the chain was just so much easier. The chain wasn’t lighter, but 8 strength was a huge difference from 2 strength.

The chain whirled faster and easier than before, which brought Ginny an almost euphoric pleasure as she moved.

Each hit with the knotted end seemed more useful. She hit the first warg in the head and it burst like a melon. That was great, except that the brains got everywhere, including on her boots.

The second beast got a damaging blow to the midsection which actually wrapped around its whole body. She tugged and her chain ripped through the body, everything except the spine.

She let it dash against the ground and before she even fully considered how to clear it, the warg was dissolving into Essence which entered her core.

She checked her Essence pool.

You have 250/400 unused Essence.

Each warg was worth 70 Essence, which seemed to imply 10 Essence per beast level. She’d have to watch to see if that continued to be true for other monsters.

She nodded and looked curiously at the coins littering the ground. She’d missed that detail while she was dealing with insistently blinking icons.

“Too bad perception isn’t a stat.” She muttered as she carefully looked around.

All she could hear was a few faint screams of people out of her line of sight. The gunfire had slowed to an occasional single bark, which actually sounded more like handgun shots than rifle ones. Not that Ginny was any kind of expert.

She didn’t smell any wargs. Even the blood on her boots had dissolved, taking the musky smell of the wargs and the fresh tang of blood with them.

She started dismantling her perch. There was a good chance she could kill any wargs she encountered before they reached her now that she had a weapon.

“And too bad there’s no inventory skill or whatever.” She unhooked the chain holding her on the swing, coiling it into her bag. She quickly pulled down the swing too, which made an alarming amount of sound. Luckily nothing came to investigate.

Only then did she pick up all of the coins, which were denominated in one and ten gold pieces.

She slung the bag over her head and headed to her motorcycle shed. The keys were already in her jacket pocket.

She opened the locks and tried to start her bike. Her motorcycle, her pride and joy, did not start.

She hung her head, she’d had a feeling it wouldn’t work.

Physics was out, magic was in.