Sya didn’t know what he was talking about, and his confusion must have been evident since the guy decided to explain.
“In the bus, did you hear any voices in your head?” Sya nodded, he had mostly forgotten about those after everything but others knowing about them was worrying. Did everyone hear them or was it just him and someone found out somehow.
“Heard them but didn’t hear what they were saying.”
“They were on about starting the Armageddon…”
“Bullshit.” His mouth was faster than his brain, expressing his opinion in the most simple and thoughtless term. One of the guys offered him a fist pump for that, the others were just shaking their heads.
A black man - there were three black men beside Sya, so let’s call this one ‘really-short-shorts’ - beside whistled to catch his attention, once he got it, his chin pointed to the main group. The main group was mostly elderly, women and children, most of the adult men helping at the bus or standing apart from the group. One of the kids, a boy of ten or so years had a greenish-white light radiating from his hands. The light fell onto an old woman’s arm and the scrapes and bruises started to fade. They didn’t disappear completely before the boy’s light weren’t out.
His head tilted in confusion as he tried to make sense of what he had just seen. He couldn’t so he asked, “Someone, help me out.”
“We had to cobble the entire story together since everyone, yes including me, was too busy screaming to hear the entire thing. Still doesn’t say much aside from Armageddon starting and it’s gonna last a decade, and they are giving us some guide system to help us through it.” Let’s dub him ‘orange hoodie’.
“Just think really hard about anything along the lines of yourself, help or system and it should pop up.” ‘Why-a-mohawk’ for him.
‘Let’s try ‘Status’’
----------------------------------------
Name: Siyanda Mathe
Stage: 0
Spirit Reserves(Total): 5.34
Spirit Reserves(Refined):0.01
Mana: 3
Store
Evolution Requirements: Ten Skills unlocked
Cultivated system bought Physique by a minimum of 15%
15 Units
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
----------------------------------------
“He didn’t flinch.”
“My loss.”
Money was exchanged as the coloured guy spoke again, seeming to have taking the position of de facto leader among the guys, “The store is interesting but before you do anything let’s call the boss lady over. She’ll complain otherwise.”
One of the guys literally yelled ‘boss lady’ and the matronly woman looked over for a moment. She finished whatever she was doing and walked over with a placid face.
Looking at Sya, she spoke, “They have explained what is happening I believe.”
“We told him about the Armageddon, showed him how to open the thing and told not to buy anything.” Sya didn’t even have to say anything.
“Good, now please open your store.”
----------------------------------------
{STORE}
{Skill Shop}
{Physique Shop}
----------------------------------------
“If everything is the same, you’ll find skill shop and physique shop. Is it so?” Sya nodded.
“Good. Now, some of us have been awake for more than two hours already and this is what we’ve figured out. The currency used by the shop is total spirit reserves. If you’ve looked at the evolution requirements, you probably guessed that you could have ten skills but please note, you can only have ten skills. For physique, you can only buy one. This probably means that physiques are more important. Do you understand everything I’ve said thus far?”
“More or less. But how did you figure all of this out?”
“The kids. The system tends to their wishes if they do it hard enough. Hasn’t happened to any of the adults yet. First, the little doctor,” she pointed at the little boy who was now resting beside a teenage girl who was probably his older sister. “One of the first to come to, wakes up to find his mother struggling to breathe, a cracked rib had punctured a lung. Panics and wishes to do something, the skill store opens showing two skills [Regenerative light(I)-2] and [Regenerative light(II)-5] from what we can gather. Takes the second one and starts using it on his mother, takes a few uses but eventually the bleeding stops, the rib is pushed out and the lung seemed to be better, the rib wasn’t fixed though.
“From this you can understand that skills have tiers. A tier two skill is a better version of tier one. A tier two can do the same for less mana, which is what we’ve found powers skills, compared to a tier one. It can also do it to a greater degree than a tier one and even do something a tier one can’t. The skill that helped us figure this bit out is [Flight], a kid heard an adult talking about superpowers and she said she wanted one, the store offered [Flight] among other things…”
“Such a burning eye.” Orange hoodie added.
“Do not disturb me. Now, all the tier one version does is lift you half-a-metre off the ground, a tier two version – bought by another kid who thought the first looked cool - lifts you a full metre and can also propel you forward. As for how to use skills, all you must do is think about the skill and it would activate. Any questions?”
“Yeah, if skills are split between tiers and you bought the tier one, is it possible to upgrade to the second tier?”
“Yes, it is possible, but for some reason upgrading to tier two costs fifty percent more than just buying tier two, but you can actually bring down the price it seems. We are not totally sure how, but it seems to have something to do with how much you understand the skill. A tier one [Flight] costs 1.5 units while a tier two is 4 units, an upgrade from tier one to tier two will thus be 6 units. All four kids who took the skill reported the same thing. We allowed the kids to play a bit, they mostly stopped trying to fly since the skill would guzzle their mana in a second if they tried. At that point they mostly used the skill to jump really far. As they continued playing the distance each jump could cover continued to increase. At some point one of the kids with a tier one [Flight] checked the store and found the upgrade costing only a bit more than 2 units. The teenagers watching over them found out and told me, after checking in with all the kids I found out that all of them had a price discount.”