Julian Barth was a fairly standard upper-middle-class American man. Skin only slightly more tan than printing paper, a trimmed brown beard, and plentiful hair held back from his face by a ponytail displayed a very cliche appearance for his occupation. He worked from an office as a programmer, drove a junk car he didn’t care about to get to work, and spent his downtime reading and daydreaming.

He was taking the highway home from work one day, when time seemed to stop. The world turned gray, and a voice spoke directly within his mind. It overwhelmed his thoughts while it spoke, becoming the entirety of Julian’s reality.

World E-110384 Ascension Failed. Breached. Transferring souls to System World.

Instantaneously and without fanfare, Julian found himself standing in an infinite black void. In front of him living white fire spelled words out in the air before him, conforming itself to an imaginary screen. The text scrawled out before him, and Julian read.

Welcome Julian, denizen of World E-110384, to World S-4. The Final Extinction of your universe is inevitable. Its souls are being transferred to a System-enabled world for a chance at survival. Beware, for the System is cruel, but it is necessary to guarantee Ascension. As a fresh arrival, you will create yourself as one of the sapient Races of your world, and choose a single Skill to cling to for survival. From there, you will progress and unlock your Skills, gaining power until you attain the right of Ascension. Or you will die.

Please Select a Race (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wit, Willpower):

Human (10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10)

~~All other races locked by extreme lack of diversity in origin World~~

Two thoughts raced through Julian’s mind, one immediately after the other. First, he was offended at being offered only a single choice for his Race. Second, and likely more important, he realized this resembled an RPG, meaning he was being “Isekaied” into a game-style world. He was good at games, they gave clear goals and obvious routes to power. While the risk of death was certainly a concern, and he was more than a little worried he was hallucinating, the prospects of such a world opening up to him were too great for him to remain bogged down in other thoughts for long. With a hint of annoyance overshadowed by eagerness, he thought “I choose Human”, before the text before him transformed and spelled out a new message.

Selected Race: Human. Please select a starting Skill. Keep in mind that many advanced Skills require support Skills to provide adequate benefits, though the System will not prevent you from choosing them.

Skills:

….

The Skills list was massive, in fact it was far too massive for him to read through the entire thing; even if he had unlimited time in this space, he didn’t think he could remember all the ones he was interested in, and he didn’t seem to have any way of writing things down so he could go back over them later. Curious, he tried thinking, “Weapon Skills,” at the interface.

Weapon Skills:

….

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Again, there were many Skills, but he breathed (as much as he could breathe in this space, anyway) a sigh of relief, because they could be filtered at least. Among the weapon Skills were several weapons he knew of, including axes, swords, and bows. However, there were many dozens he was unfamiliar with, as well as thousands of Skills that seemed more like a specific ability or move with a weapon than a general weapon Skill, such as one called Flaming Thrust. Julian had always liked minion builds in games, so he thought at the interface, “Minion Skills”.

Again, there were far too many Skills to be properly narrowed down. Everything from hundreds of different types of Summons, to construct manufacturing, to undead creation. Julian immediately latched on to the necromantic Skills, as necromancers tended to be his favorite builds in video games, filtering the list further with a thought. With the list narrowed to necromantic minions, it was finally manageable. He found two main types of Skills in this final list: summoning and creation. Focusing on a Skill revealed a little information about it, and he was able to confirm that summoning Skills brought temporary creatures into reality to obey their summoner, while creation Skills created long-term minions, though were more finicky. Finally, he narrowed the list down to the necromantic minion creation Skills. There were three, and with so few Skills in the list he was able to get it to display each Skill’s description in-line.

Necromantic Minion Creation Skills:

Create Zombie (Int): In an hours-long ritual, raise a corpse as a Zombie (Mindless Undead), keeping the physical stats of the corpse, limited by Skill Effect.

Create Skeleton (Int): In an hours-long ritual, raise a corpse as a Skeleton (Undead), keeping half the physical and mental stats of the corpse, limited by Skill Effect.

Create Spirit (Int): In an hours-long ritual, manifest the soul of a corpse as a Spirit (Incorporeal Undead), keeping the mental stats of the corpse, limited by Skill Effect.

Julian looked over the Skills presented, and he was ecstatic – he’d be able to begin in this new world as a proper necromancer. Though, based on what the interface said earlier, he’d have to be careful with his first uses of whichever Skill he picked. If minion creation Skills were more advanced Skills, which he’d guess them to be based on past gaming experience, they might not function quite as he would expect without support Skills. Regardless, he began thinking about which Skill to pick.

The obvious choice would be Create Skeleton, as at a glance they seem much less limited than either their muscle-bound or incorporeal kin, having both physical and mental stats. However, if this was a competitive world, which he imagined it would be given the little description he’d been given so far, their lack of specialization could lead to skeletons being useless for either mental or physical tasks compared to the min-maxers of the world. With a sign, he declined the generalist route for now.

Between zombies and spirits, Julian had little difficulty choosing zombies. The Skills said nothing about any special abilities of the created minions, and he imagined an incorporeal undead might be relatively useless until other support Skills were present to allow them to affect the physical world. Even if spirits began with a useful ability, the zombies’ presence in the physical world would make them an effective meat shield for his meaty human body. “I choose Create Zombie”, Julian thought at the interface.

Confirming Create Zombie as starting Skill.

Status:

Name: Julian Barth

Race: Human

Stats: 10 10 10 10 10 10

Skills: Create Zombie (1)

Would you like to enter the World? [Y/N]

With a thought, the Void around Julian vanished, and he found himself standing naked in a marble courtyard, surrounded by dozens of other humans, all looking at each other with varying degrees of concern, fear, anger, and suspicion. A voice spoke from a platform at the edge of the courtyard, drawing his attention to what he guessed was an elven woman in red robes, arms raised to gather the crowd’s attention.

“Welcome, denizens of a failed Universe, to the Town of Beginnings.”