Pain buzzed through every single fibre of my being. I felt myself being irreversibly bound to the pitiful asteroid.

I begged for the system to stop.

The pain grew in intensity as I screamed for it to cease.

The agony was overwhelming and eventually, I could take no more punishment.

...

...

...

...

...

...

[System: user has successfully merged with DB2-334-5BH-235-KA3]

I woke up to the strangest sensation that I had ever felt. Well, maybe not the strangest sensation. The time when Leo gave me that cocktail and I thought I was an accordion for an hour takes the cake.  But I was now a floating piece of rock in the vast darkness of space.

It felt like I was the rock. Not Dwayne Johnson though, he doesn’t have shit on me right now. This may be extremely terrifying, but I can firmly consider this to be the coolest thing to happen to me.

I could feel every part of the asteroid, every crevice, every hill. Every dip and curve. Even the tiniest speck of dust could not escape my attention. I could see and feel every part of the asteroid as if I was omnipresent. At least within the boundaries of my new body.

Being overwhelmed by the amount of information streaming into my head, I snapped out of my expression of wonder and started to freak out. I had no respiratory system, so I pretended to breathe in and out to calm myself instead. I couldn't help but cry out to the system yet again...

'System please help me.'

'Please, make this stop.'

'I just want to go back home.'

...

My thoughts fell on deaf ears. My problems were of no concern to it, and if you had the problems I had right now I doubt you would be eager to help me either.

'It's ok, I can do this.'

'I just need to slow down, there's no rush.'

...

'What rotten luck I have.'

...

'Gaaaah!'

There's no point just sitting here, twiddling my non-existential thumbs. I have a body now, let's take a look at it. Besides moping in silence for any time longer will help no one.

I slowly scanned myself for anything out of the ordinary, but I came to the conclusion that just composed of solid unremarkable stone. Just an ordinary boulder flung through space at incredible speeds. Not even a small vein of metal to spice it up. Fairly boring if I have to say so myself.

I looked again and again, trying to tell myself that I probably missed something. There's probably an overpowered item I need to discover within myself to get out of this mess. Whenever someone is reincarnated into another world, they always have some kind of advantage that trumps everything else.

My searches resulted in nothing.

'Nada.'

I knew I was deliberately avoiding my problems again, so I grudgingly shifted my attention to the main focus of why I am here. I needed to become a level 3 planet for stage 2. Whatever a level 3 planet was, I had no clue. Luckily, I knew what a normal planet was.

'A planet is a celestial body that orbits a star and is big enough to become rounded by its own gravity. It shouldn't be a moon of something else and there should be no debris around my area of orbit.'

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

How do you know that so specifically? you ask.

Perhaps it was some morbid joke the system is pulling over me but the test I was revising for the last 3 weeks was physics. Knowing some of these facts and principles won't get me through the test, but could potentially save my life here.

Thinking about it, what actually happened in my old life? I remember sleeping in my bed and then waking up in this shitstorm. Either I died and got reincarnated here, or got abducted by aliens and plugged into some sort of matrix system. I mentally rolled my eyes and sighed. Dwelling on what happened doesn't matter anymore.

...

So, step 1 requires me to be orbiting a star. Check. The system did not screw me over thankfully in that respect.

Step 2 requires me to be large enough to round myself under my own gravity.

This step may be a bit trickier. The other steps do not even matter unless I can solve this problem.

I need to think about this, how would I increase my mass?

'I am a rock.'

'I am a very unremarkable rock.'

It’s not like I can get some super glue and stick some other rocks onto me. That would probably end up making me look like the thing from the fantastic four movies and no one deserves to look like that.

If this is some sort of game universe, there must be things such as skills and menus to help me, right? Otherwise, what else can I achieve apart from perhaps flirting to nearby asteroids and crying?

I decided to take a stab in the dark and mentally thought, "Skills".

Instantly a blue screen appeared with the precise information I required.

Skills

Consume Lvl 1 Terraform Lvl 1

My stone heart instantly started to beat with excitement. The first try at finding a menu was a success. I must be getting some of my luck back. Or it may have been the most obvious thing to think of. I prefer the former.

I quickly highlighted each skill in my mind to find some more details.

Consume      Allows the user to ingest and incorporate matter.

Terraform Allows the user to manipulate their body.

I internally grinned, I wasn't so useless after all. I could be a full-on powerhouse if these skills do exactly what they say.

Consume should allow me to become larger... By eating other forms of matter? Don't get me wrong, I was extremely happy that the problem I was thinking about was solved so quickly. But does that mean, me as an asteroid can just take a large bite out of another asteroid and gain their mass? It does make sense that I could eat stone however, the overall idea still sounds absurd.

Terraforming sounded slightly vaguer. Terraforming in a normal situation would usually refer to changing the surface of something to make it more habitable for humans. Though it makes no sense in this context. It says I can manipulate my body...

'Hmm... What could that mean?'

Maybe the skill means changing my body into different forms. I could change from an overall shape of a potato into a cube potentially, or making smaller changes such as creating hills and trenches on my surface. Let's hope the skills capability matches my optimism.

This terraform skill may be a good starting point for figuring out my capabilities. There is nothing floating remotely near me and unless I can eat the vacuum of space, consume is entirely useless.

To put terraform to the test, I found a small rough patch on my surface and prepared to use the skill.

'But wait... How do I activate it?'

I mentally thought "Terraform", focusing intensely on the empty patch. I imagined a colossal mountain to appear and I would be in awe of my vast power.

Nothing happened.

...

'Terraform activate!'

'Go terraform.'

I don't think shouting superhero commands like Spiderman would work either.

My terraform skill level is at 1, so perhaps I am trying to create something too big for my skill? It made sense as I had absolutely no sense of scale. I imagined myself as a tiny asteroid, but I could be as big as the moon for all I knew. If I had a banana to compare me too it would do the trick, but sadly I do not see any floating past me anytime soon.

I focused on a smaller part of the surface and attempted everything I tried before to no avail. Frustration grew within me as I tried to shift ever increasingly smaller parts of the surface until I was trying to cast my powers on a speck of dust.

The speck did not move an inch.

'Aaaaagh!'

'Why won't this work?'

'This stupid garbage game universe.'

'It's literally just a game skill, they should be easy to use.'

'I bet if I still had a human body, I could create a pillar of stone with a wave of a hand.'

Upon thinking this I snapped out of my mini-rant. Perhaps that's where I have been going wrong. I am still acting like I had a human body, but this rock is my body now. Terraforming could literally mean manipulating my body like how I would wave my hand as a human.

I focused my mind and tried to move my body slightly up at that spot. I needed to push up the stone below the surface to create the hill. I fiercely concentrated on achieving that, straining my body's capabilities until eventually, a protrusion started to emerge from the surface. I fixated my attention on the protrusion, willing it to become larger and smoother.

My brain started to burn from the effort, but I refused to give in. The spike of stone slowly melted into a dome shape and as the last sharp edge disappeared I stopped the action and collapsed into my mind.

'Phew!'

[Terraform has increased to level 2]

The notification made me smile.

My handiwork was a pathetic little mound of stone. It was more like a mole-hill then an actual hill, but I was proud of myself. I made progress.

'Hah universe, you better watch out! My earth-bending prowess will soon be a sight to behold.'