The last thing our protagonist remembers is dying due to cancer. So why does he find himself in a bag of skittles he wonders. He’s surrounded by multicolored balls of light. Some blue, others green, many are red, a couple yellows, a few purple, all the colors of the rainbow and then some.
Well this is certainly different. He was expecting less Technicolor and more, well nothing. He was an atheist after all and didn’t expect any sort of afterlife. He certainly didn’t expect to find himself in an enormous stone amphitheater surrounded by balls of light.
This must be some sort of dying dream he thinks. May as well go with it as it seems more interesting than anything else. Step one check his own body. Looking down he sees the floor. Try as he might he can’t seem to view his own body. But as he has no feet, seems to be floating at the same height as the other balls of light, and can just barely make out what seems to be a golden colored aura he figures he must also be one of the balls of light.
So he must be surrounded by other souls he guesses. Looking up he sees a red angry looking sky. It’s streaked with yellows and a few black clouds. No sun or moon can be seen but the sky still seems to provide a decent amount of light on the area.
He tries to talk to the other souls but no sound comes out. Trying to move doesn’t work either. Other than spinning in place this dream is getting dull fast. Just as he’s thinking this a triumphant song starts playing.
Followed by a pretty woman appearing on the main stage in the middle of the amphitheater. She has well styled long wavy brown hair. A white gorgeous flowing dress which shows off her ample cleavage nicely. Wearing too much makeup and enough gold jewelry to sink a ship she does the classic politician stage wave. He already dislikes her.
“Welcome fellow feminists I am your goddess, your sole reason for being, the one true Goddess of feminists, Ninity.” Yep definitely despises her.
“You have had the good fortune of being chosen by me to end the patriarchy. I shall send you forth to battle the forces of the males and bring about a wonderful world of woman without men via superior firepower. Yes this is the dawn of a new chapter on this world, a world of peace and prosperity after we kill all men and drown all the boys.”
A lake of fire he could’ve been happy in but listening to this illogical cult like rant is pure hell. As a political activist he had the misfortune of meeting people like her all too often. Not feminists, women’s right activist or the general egalitarians all of whom he would gladly stand next too and applaud their speeches. No con artists, profession victims, villains who prey upon the goodwill of others for personal gain.
Many get the two confused but once you realize their true motivation they are easy to tell apart. A real activist will work tirelessly, ask for donations to their cause, be a role model of change via their own actions, and support other equal rights groups. While professional victims will ask for money for only themselves, do little if any work, blame others for all their problems, and decry other equal rights groups as unworthy or hate groups.
No if a person wants to change the world they must first change themselves and accept responsibility for their actions. Blaming others and trying to get others to change will never work. Only through one’s own actions and work will anything be done. Activists understand this and live this every day. While con artists just want to make an easy buck.
“Yes by following my greatness you shall have abilities that are the envy of others. Your leveling shall know no bounds. You shall be rewarded in life and the afterlife. All this at the low cost of donating a portion of your loot drops and experience to me, the great Goddess Ninity.”
That is an odd way to phrase the donation for nothing pitch. Almost sounds like a game. Although uneducated and poor most of his life he has played the occasional online game. Mostly free phone games toward the end of his life. More often he used his smart phone to read history, guides to public speaking and free online stories.
To be well spoken requires practice and a large vocabulary that comes easily through reading. Also the frequent traveling with little to do allowed one a great deal of time to read. A phone is one of the more effective ways to do this. Cheaper than a laptop and easier to carry with almost the same capabilities.
Still he wonders at the game terminology. As it’s more interesting than the long winded and boring sales pitch he decides to see if he can bring up a status screen. [Status][Character screen][Abilities] he thinks.
Three very similar but slightly different screens pop up. Well that was easy. Looking at the screens they display almost the same information but each has a slightly different focus and layout. Playing around with opening and closing them he quickly understands that what the screens display is based on his own thoughts.
So my own ideas on what should be displayed is what gets displayed. He focuses his thoughts and wants a screen that displays everything organized in tabs. [Status]
Yikes that is a lot of information to take in. Over thirty base stats, thousands of skills, hundreds of jobs, plus traits, affinities, almost a hundred customizable body parts and types. Most however are currently greyed out and can’t be changed.
At least there is help buttons with it. Reading the help he gets an idea of what all this means. Base stats are what one is born with and determine how much you grow on level up. While modified stats are your base stats + level up bonuses + equipment + training. So how strong one gets is based on basic ability plus how much training they put into it. Those with high base ability can gain faster in the stat.
The help says the average is 10 for all base stats but looking at his screen he sees that social and mental stats are capped at 10 with appearance capped at 5. But physical stats have a minimum of 15. So the goddess has forced everyone to be her dumb thugs. Which of course can never be more beautiful than her he snorts in disgust.
Even better there are supposed to be 10 bonus points to spend but there are only 5 and the total points is less than half of normal. The help makes reference to a god can spend extra power to give souls more points. Maybe the reverse is true as well a god can take power from souls allowing for less base stat points.
Well since this is my dream and a game to boot let’s see if I can hack my way around this limitation. Looking at various tabs he happens upon the skill screen. He checks cooking and cloth crafting. Yep disabled. In fact almost everything but combat is greyed out. In weapon skills the sub skill in swords is greyed out as well. Too masculine or phallic he guesses. If the sub skills are separate than the base skills I wonder if the reverse is true.
Expanding the disabled skill engineering shows that the computer skill is enabled. Ninity likely doesn’t know about computers so never saw the option to disable. He takes all his points from stats, except intelligence and perception, leaving them at the minimum and puts them into the computer skill.
“I know computer fu.” He chuckles.
As he puts points into the skill he does indeed start to understand computer theory. The knowledge just appears in his head to use. He also opens up a further sub skill, hacking, at 4 computer skill. He puts the rest of his points into hacking. As it’s a sub skill one point is equal to 4 lvs of skill while the computer skill was 1 to 2 lvs and stats are 1 to 1.
With his new knowledge he bets there is a factory mode. [Factory admin mode] and a screen opens with various settings. Reset all settings to default. He loses his computer knowledge. [Status] Now the screen shows the normal default stats of 10 like the help said.
Adding back the skills to computer and hacking, which he now has more of, he goes back into the [Factory admin mode] He quickly gets around the admin password and sets the bonus points to max and enables all options. While he’s in there he can apparently remove the other limiters on the rest of the souls and does so. He can’t set their bonus points at max but at least he can give them normal settings.
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He resets his points again and looks at his [Status]. 99 bonus points and a new tab Overpower. Nice he thinks. Before doing his final selection he puts his points into intelligence, history, religion, common sense and game theory.
The world he is going to be born in was a game world that the gaming goddess Ris created. It’s mostly a fantasy like world with medieval technology and magic. However gods, martial arts, divine powers, espers, steam punk technology and fast evolution in nature are also possible.
Apparently Overpower is the world rule system Ris devised for this world. It allows one to overcome basic human limitations and become very powerful indeed. In fact the whole system is designed to have no limitations as such there is no max to skills or level. Although the higher a skill gets the harder it gets to level and certain milestones must be achieved to break the current soft skill limits.
His game theory tells him pure min maxing is a bad idea as he could be left in a bad situation and higher level skills are slower to level. So he should focus on a few excellent skills while spreading his points around a bit to maximize his advantage.
The new tab Overpower is the obvious first place to look at to spend points in. His options are Divine, Apostle, Genius, Evolution, Psychic, Cannibal, Talented, Magic, Heroic, Legendary Craftsman, Undead, and Summon. Looking into each they seem to be talent trees. It costs a lot of points to get the first node but then additional nodes are available for less cost. The help says overpower can be gained by performing great actions in life as well.
Talented gives unique abilities that can’t be gained any other way, Genius doubles skill gains and gives even more skill bonuses, Cannibal allows one to gain others abilities though eating them and so on. But ultimately Magic and the Divine look most interesting to him. Magic is only 10 points for the base pick and allows one to cast magic. Divine however is 45 points and gives a base stat bonus of 50% but gives him something more important. Immunity to disease for 1 additional point.
Divine almost seems broken with the massive gain to base stats but with the normal 10 bonus points would normally require a large decrease in starting stats to even pick leaving a person with only 9 average in stats. With 99 bonus points though it’ll give a large advantage. Since 15 is the equivalent to perhaps the top 1-2% of the population. While 20 in a stat is once a generation type of stat.
Let’s up 6 stats to 14 for 24 points. Then 2 points in life magic, healing magic, barrier magic, sword, fitness, forage, survival, danger sense. Another 2 points spent on magic specialization: holy under magic overpower tree. With the last point spent in tongues which was another talent in the divine overpower tree.
It may seem like a waste to put points into skills but they don’t just give simple skill points. Start points give a full understanding of the skill and an additional 50% gain bonus per point. So the sword skill has 100% gain, doubling skills points gained per swing. Also with full understanding all sub skills are open up to the fourth level and later sub skills are easier to open.
With all the points spent he spends some time customizing his appearance. May as well be in a body he likes. First the gender. Male of course… which is disabled. Checking over the screens only the gender and race selection is disabled. He wonders at his sub conscious reason for this but shrugs. It’s all a dream before the end anyway. Okay female it is.
The race selection is also disabled. But the help gives a reason for this one. Certain conditions must be met to unlock other races, things like start location, where beginning skills are spent, god resurrected under. In his case the divine overpower seems to have locked this to human demigod.
Height 5’9”, long blond hair, blue eyes, athletic build. He quickly sets the settings to a girl that looks average with small hips and breasts. He’s not sure how he feels about being in a body of an attractive woman. So mostly just does the average for most things. He does spend some time making her voice though. He makes it a commanding contralto. For a name he chooses Valoria.
Finally done with customizing his new body he hits accept and waits for the propaganda speech to end.
Status Window
Name:ValoriaAlignment:AtheistLevel:01Class:New bornRace:Human DemigodGender:FemaleTitlesNoneFame:0Luck:15-Health:250 / 250Health Regen:0.0 / SecMana:210 / 210Mana Regen:0.0 / SecStamina:500 / 500Stamina Regen:14 / Sec-Strength:21Grace:21Endurance:21Leadership:15Appearance:21Charisma:15Intelligence:21Perception:15Will:21-Special Modifiers
Divine overpower - 50% increase to stats (included above in stats)
Holy specialization – light, healing, recovery, barrier magic are increased by 50% in power.
Tongues – able to speak and understand any language.
Disease immunity – immune to all normal diseases and extra 100% resistance to supernatural diseases.