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Overpower
Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Waking up feeling refreshed is such a great way to start the day.  To the sounds of birds chirping and a small brook babbling and the smell of early morning dew.  Feels almost like he is a whole new person.  This confuses him for a bit as he remembers a great deal of pain in his previous life.

Wait maybe he IS a whole new person if his odd dream is continuing.  He remembers dozing off in that otherworldly amphitheater as the goddess Ninity droned on about her greatness. Now he is here, where ever here is.  Does that mean he is a new born girl now?

Opening his, well perhaps her eyes, he looks around.  The day is just beginning as a morning light from the clear blue sky can be seen through a lightly wooded area.  He wonders what he looks like now.  He holds up his hands and instead of seeing pudgy baby arms sees adult arms and hands.  Looking down he notices large ample mounds on his chest.  

After checking down below and missing a certain male only organ he states, “I’m certainly a woman now, guess I should start referring to myself as she.” He, damn it she, never understood that cis stuff. So she is just going to refer to herself as the body gender.  After all no one can really know what is going on in others heads and how they refer to oneself.  Just seems easier to go by body gender and act however they want to act.  

He, sigh, already notices her body is a bit different than the one she selected in the character creation screen.  The breasts are way larger for one; D-cup at least. Looking at her hair its long thick silky soft golden hair that looks more like cascading gold.  Although he did select blond this is on a whole different level of the color yellow.  

Even without a mirror she can tell her hips are wide and her butt has a nice firmness and shape.  She does seem to be about 5’9” and looking in the stream can see her blue eyes.  It’s difficult to tell but they are not just blue but a deep blue of mountain lakes.

Her face is not the plain one she selected but a strikingly beautiful one that still conveys a strength of character about it as well. Her body type is athletic but in a perfect fitness model way. The character creation seemed to take his, sigh stupid gender pronouns, base idea and run with it in a way she did not intend.

As she was checking herself out it finally registered that she was completely naked. At least the system got one aspect of being a new born right she thinks.  Great naked, in a random forest somewhere and alone.  Although the alone part might be a good thing right now this is not an ideal situation.

May as well check her status screen and see if it has any clues to what has happened to him... This whole switching how one thinks of their own gender is harder to do than she first thought it was going to be.  Twenty-six years of experience is going to be hard to unlearn.  

The base status screen is as she remembers it.  However she forgot to switch the points in appearance to another stat.  When she was male she figured being handsome would make life easier. Now as a woman she is no longer sure of that.  Certainly having a pretty face will provide her lots of opportunities, but she is not sure they are the kind she wants.

Looking into overpower and skills section they are different then what she selected.

Skills Summary

life magic (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) – Able to cast every day helpful spells that bring modern life conveniences to the magically giftedhealing magic (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain])  – Allows casting of spells that focus on mending injuriesbarrier magic (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) – School of magic that creates mental and physical barriers. Especially effective against beings of spirit and energy. sword (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) – Skill to use swords in combat and maintain them fitness (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) –  Level of physical fitness, this is one of the few skills that decay over time if unused.  Increases stamina and to a lesser amount hp.  Also improves feats of athletics such as running, jumping, and so on. forage (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) – Allows the gathering of edible plants and herbs survival (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) – Knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness danger sense (Journeyman 0% [+100% gain]) – Gives forewarning of danger.history(other world) (Journeyman 53% [+100% gain]) – History of another world.literacy(other world) (Master 1% [+150% gain]) – Able to read languages of another worldinspiration(other world) (Apprentice 0% [+50% gain]) –Able to use ideas from another world.  This does not give detailed knowledge but only what was possible in another world.public speaking (Senior Journeyman 12% [+125% gain]) – How to give effective speeches and influence people.pain tolerance (Master 3% [+150% gain]) – Years of pain and knowing your own mortality have increased your resistance to most negative effects.

Overpower

Remembrance: For unknown reasons you remember your previous life and keep skill bonuses and knowledge from it.Divine: Graced by a goddess you have started along the path of the divine. Base grants 50% bonus to stats. (extra picks: Tongues, Immunity to Disease)Magic: By will alone you change the world around you. Base allows access to magic spells. (extra picks: holy specialization)Chosen of Oriana The proto-goddess Oriana has chosen you as her champion.  If she had any powers she would grant you bonuses. Perhaps if you help her gain strength she will bless you with new abilities. Currently no effect.Cursed by Ninity You have angered the goddess of feminists and she will get her revenge upon you if she ever figures out who you are. Best to never be seen by her and avoid her least she recognize you. Currently no effect.

She wonders who Oriana is. As for Ninity she had no intention of ever seeing her again.  Her high appearance stat might explain her gorgeous body but still doesn’t explain the naked in a forest thing. Considering this a bit she thinks [Event log]

On the screen that pops up she sees the last event was: Spawning Valoria in goddess Ninity start area.  Well that part makes sense. But the previous events are a bit more enlightening to what happened.  

* Birthing Valoria

* Exception encountered

* Enter debug mode

* Unable to find parents that match criteria one human and one god for demigod birth in start area

* Attempting Recovery

* Analyzing character data: Valoria

* Found 3 templates when expecting only one: Male otherworld, proto-goddess Oriana, Valoria demigod

* Attempting merge templates

* Two female bodies, one male, discarding male body data

* Demigod body at appearance 9. Appearance stat at 21.  Using base body and applying Oriana’s divine grace and characters current vision on beauty to body data.

* Merging skills

* Error detected: second mind. Insanity not picked in character creation.

* Error unable to delete second mind due to insufficient permissions

* Discarding second mind ‘Oriana’ to nearby location

* Recovery complete, still unable to find suitable parents.  Using backup spawning mechanic

* Spawning Valoria in goddess Ninity start area.  

She is not entirely sure what it all means but apparently some kind of problem was encountered finding her suitable parents.  The three templates and discarding a second mind part seems a bit disturbing though.  Since Oriana is the same name as one of her overpowers and being discarded like so much trash seems wrong she decides to go look for the proto-goddess and see if she is alright.  

After an hour of searching she hears a dim cry off in the distance.  As she gets closer she can start to hear the words better.

“WHY! What did I do wrong?” a woman cries

“The plan was perfect.  Why did it turn out like this?  What should I do now?” the crying continues

Entering a small clearing in the woods she sees a glowing golden ball about three inches across moving about erratically.  The woman’s voice seems to be emanating from the glowing ball.  

“Umm hello.  Would you happen to be Oriana?” Valoria asks the glowing ball

“YOU!” The ball shrieks before flying at Valoria’s face.  

*Puff* *Puff* *Puff* the ball repeated strikes Valoria in the face as she’s too stunned by the oddity of it all to react.

“Give it back!”

*Puff* Puff* *Puff* Like the gentle pats of a playful kitten

“You did something! What did you do?”

*Puff* Puff* *Puff* Perhaps like the soft applying of makeup.

“How dare you take advantage of the naivety of a not even one year old goddess!  You child abuser.”

*Puff* *Puff* *Puff* Maybe like a light breeze of flower petals.

The last words break Valoria out of her daze. “Now hold on there. I have done nothing to you. I’m certainly not a child abuser.”

“You deny it! YOU DENY IT!”

*PuffPuffPuffPuffPuffPuff* The glowing ball goes into a frenzy of ineffectual attacks.

Holding up her hands Valoria grabs the ball to stop its somewhat annoying attacks.  “I don’t recall doing you any harm.  Can we discuss this calmly and you can tell me how I’ve wronged you?”

Sputtering a bit the ball finally seems to calm down a bit. “Fine.”

Valoria releases her hold on the ball and asks, “Are you Oriana? My name is Valoria.”

“I’m what’s left of Oriana.  Valoria? That’s kind of a pompous name.”

Sighing Valoria replies, “I like the sound of it and my old name didn’t seem appropriate.”

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“I’ll say with boobs like those.  I know you were male in your former life but really now that body you picked is just silly.”

Sighing again Valoria thinks [Event log] “Perhaps this event log will help explain what happened to us.”

“You… you shouldn’t be able to do that. How are you able to open that screen.”

“I just think [Event log] and it opens up.” Valoria demonstrates by opening the event log again.

“I didn’t mean how you do it. I met how you have access to it.  That screen should only be available to those with admin access.  Only I and someone else should have access.”

“Maybe because I hacked into the admin mode to get around Ninity’s character limitations?”

“You WHAT! Do you even know what you’ve done?  Of course you don’t.  You wouldn’t be nonchalantly saying ‘I hacked the admin mode’ of the world rules system like that if you did.  One wrong move and you could’ve destroyed this world or unleashed energy your mortal mind could not comprehend.” Oriana exclaims before floating to the ground in apparent shock at what Valoria just said. “It shouldn’t even be possible to hack unless you had the right energy signature to begin with.”

“Would that be like your divine grace?” Valoria asks

“Yes that would be exactly like the grace you stole from me…” It dawns on Oriana why Valoria was able to get access to the admin mode. “Give my grace back before you break the world!”

*Puff* *Puff* *Puff* Not this again Valoria thinks.

“I did not intentionally take your divine grace.  The birthing process failed and gave it to me.  Also why was both your template and my two templates part of the processes?”

“Err what?” Oriana pauses.

“Here look at the error log. After it couldn’t find the right parents for a demigoddess it says something about merging templates.”

Oriana floats over to read the event log.  Then descends to the ground again. “We’re doomed.”

“Your rather a pessimist aren’t you? Why is it so bad? Can’t we just use admin mode or something to fix it all?” Valoria asks.

“It’s not possible to just ‘fix this’ and how can you remain so calm? You died, got reborn, changed gender, found out there are gods and an afterlife.  Shouldn’t you be all what’s the meaning of it all? Or why me? I mean I’ve never done the whole afterlife guidance thing but really now my instincts tell me you should be freaking out.”

“Well this is all just a dream. A bit of an odd one I guess but the whole dying thing is doing weird stuff to my brain.” Says Valoria

“You think this is all a dream?” Oriana says in a state of shock.

“Of course, being naked, talking to a fictional glowing being and pain free. What else could it be? The whole VR game angle is neat too. It would’ve been nice if I could’ve lived a bit longer.  There were some nice startups coming out with first gen VR in a few years.”

“You can’t feel pain in dreams right? Pinch yourself.” Oriana commands.

Valoria shrugs and pinches her own cheek. “And I don’t feel pain. In fact I’ve never felt better. It’s nice to be pain free.  I haven’t experienced that in years.”

“Arrrg. Stupid Demigoddess body. Forgot its natural pain resistance. Well this is all not just a dream. Its real life and we are completely doomed thanks to you. You exhibitionist, painless, ‘let’s mess with things we don’t understand’ bimbo!” Oriana shouts.

“Sigh, I know this is just a dream but I can’t just give up on my weird adventure before it’s even begun.  Besides I’m loving how easy it is to move without pain.” Valoria does a few stretches to demonstrate.

“Doomed.” Oriana wails floating to the ground.

“We can’t know that unless we try.”

“You can only say that because you have no idea what we’re up against and you’ve completely destroyed the perfect plan!”

“Well how about you tell me what the original plan was and who we are up against?” Valoria suggests

“The original plan was to have you born a farm boy. Grow up with the right training and morals.  Then some evil god killing your family and setting you upon a quest of justice which would eventually lead to the over throwing of all the evil gods. Of course I had a lot more details to that but they are all useless now.”

“That sounds cliché and boring. Also it has a ton of obvious holes in it.”

“It only sounds ‘cliché and boring’ because it works so well so everyone uses it.  And what holes?  It’s the perfect plan!”

“Well for one the whole Ninity character limitation thing and two how was a farm boy supposed to take on all the evil gods?” Valoria point out.

“Well that was why I was merged with your soul.  I was going to override Ninity’s character creation process.  Well till you messed it all up.  And evil gods always underestimate mortals so they would’ve never seen the farm boy coming. One day they are all arrogantly lording it over others then next thing they know farm boy holy sword to the gut. But a sexy demigoddess?  They are going to be all over you.  Sure you might take out the gods while they are trying to woo you but all the goddesses are going to be trying to kill you from the start.”

“So if you were merged with my soul why did you allow me to change anything? And why not just cause me to be born to begin with?”

“I don’t have enough power to cause you to be born. Needed to borrow that from another goddess. And the other thing umm well you see…” Oriana hesitates.

“You fell asleep didn’t you?”

“NO! Well maybe.   Ninity’s rant was just going on and on… It’s a lot of hard work to cross the dimensional void.  And I’m only a one year old. I need my sleep. Shut up it’s your fault!”  Oriana says trying to shift the blame.

“So my adventure is to defeat all the evil gods?  So first need to gain some experience and good loot. I don’t suppose your original plan had allies I can gather did it?  Sounds like I need to stay hidden too.”

“It had allies. All those other souls, not just Ninity’s, but all the gods’ souls are potentially your allies. And you have no way to stay hidden. Your divinity glows like a beacon. Not to mention being naked and having a body men will go to war over.”

“Yes those are good points. Hmm.” Valoria ponders.

“Good points? You mean completely unsurmountable odds.”

“My divinity use to be your divinity.  Can I give it back? Also how did you plan on remaining hidden?” Valoria questions.

“I don’t think so. The admin mode could be used to give my divine grace back but I don’t trust your mortal mind to be able to handle the process. As for remaining hidden I was planning on staying out of the way and just show up occasionally to give hints to you.  As the hero you need to be active and in front of people.  Someone with magical sight is bound to see the glow sooner or later.”

“Why do I have to be the hero?”

“WHAT? After all that you said you’re just going to give up!  Haha well the evil gods will still hunt you down anyway they don’t like sharing power.”

“Not what I meant.  I plan on defeating those evil gods.  If they are all like Ninity this world doesn’t need them.  But why as a hero? Why not as an assassin or well demons are always fighting gods right? What’s the difference between demons and evil gods?” Valoria questions.

Oriana looks at Valoria suspiciously. “That doesn’t sound very heroic… But to answer your question the difference is where demons and gods get their powers. Gods get power from people worshiping them and demons take their power from killing people.” Oriana explains

“So if I’m not worshiped and I kill evil people while fighting gods wouldn’t that make me a demon?  Would I be less likely to be attacked by gods then?”

“Well maybe.  Gods tend to avoid demons since powerful demons could also take their powers as well.  The aura color is still wrong but maybe we can change it. Can’t hide it but if they think it’s a demonic aura that might work…  No, it still won’t work.   You can’t take powers from others since you’re not a demon.”

“I don’t have to be a demon.  I just have to make others think that I am to remain hidden. Well maybe hidden is the wrong word but still not being hunted by all the evil gods I mean.”

“True but just remaining hidden won’t get you the power you need to defeat the evil gods.” Oriana points out.

“Gods, demons, it sounds like even farm boys can accumulate power.  How was the farm boy me supposed to grow to be able to take on gods? What other ways are there to increase ones power?” Valoria asks.

“Well Overpower are the different power systems but how you grow them is based on your race type.  So the system goes from gods, human, demi-human, beastman, demon, monster, abomination.” Oriana sees Valoria looking confused. “Here let me write it into a list.”

* 100%+ Gods – gain power from being worshiped

* 100% Human – gain power from job levels

* 75-99% Demihuman – gain power from skills

* 50-74% Beastman – gain power from combat

* 25-49% Demon – gain power from killing

* 1-24% Monster – gain power from eating things

* 0% Abomination – gain power from changing into other things

Valoria wonders how Oriana can write in the dirt as a glowing ball but asks, “What’s with the percentages?”

“Supposedly that’s how close to being human each race type is.  It’s totally made up but humans seem to understand it better that way.  Also its how humans on this world rationalize why they worship gods, enslave demihumans and beastmen and kill the others.  Since gods are more than human, other are less than human and thus should be enslaved.  Finally the last 3 are too far from human to be tolerated so must be killed.”

“That is a shitty irrational system. What if the humans job is soldier or a beastman blacksmith?”

“Well all the races have mixed so much that it tends to be a more of that’s where they gain the most power from but can still do other things to grow sort of thing.  Also as you surmised soldiers gain power from combat, by job leveling, and beastmen crafters tend to hold daily competitions which count as combat.” Oriana explains

“So as a demigoddess that means I get my power from where?” Valoria asks

“Well half goddess and half human so worship or job leveling. But if anyone worships you then the evil gods will find out in no time and smite us.”

“So I just need to get a demon like job, find the right cloths, or any cloths for that matter and advance up the demonic corporate ladder while everyone is trying to backstab me?  It’s just like working for a large corporation from my old world really.”  Valoria quips.

“Ya nothing that one naked bimbo and one powerless goddess extraordinaire who are lost in the woods can’t do. We are so doomed.”

“Cheer up. We have nowhere to go but up!” Valoria consoles the doom saying proto-goddess.