Alexia

As the silence stretches on, I can practically feel all of the other nine members of the top ten turning their gazes to me despite not a single one of them saying even a word. And of the nine, the Lord of Vampires especially seems extra aggressive. Probably because he was the leader of the League of Ascendants that captured and imprisoned the System’s Creator in an attempt to get an affinity for the quantum element.

Then the ring beneath my raised dais suddenly starts lowering while my platform starts rising at the same time, leaving me to sit on a throne above everyone else as the next introduction is played through the void of darkness.

And the Reigning Champion of the Tutorial, the First Ranked user, Alexia Knight, otherwise known as The Reaper, with 3698 points to her name.

I blink at that Title. Is that the Title the System gave me for my ‘The Reaping’ Legendary Feat?

Guess it’s pretty accurate, considering my species.

On that note, any possible chance I had of keeping my species from becoming known to the other Ascendants was just shot out the nonexistent window. Or rather, it went out that window the moment I was brought here.

My platform begins to lower while the other one that the remaining nine are on begins to rise until they’re connected again.

Then another notification appears, distracting everyone from staring at me.

Make way for the New Reality.

Burn all that used to be and start anew from the ashes.

For in this New Reality, anyone can climb to these seats.

For in this new Dimension, anyone can fall down from these seats.

Complacency can mean death.

Grow.

Grow until you are strong enough to challenge the stars.

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Until nothing stands in your way.

That’s rather cryptic. And poetic.

I wonder if it was the asshole who made the System say this or if it was the System itself?

Either way, only a couple seconds pass after the notification before a bright purple light envelops everything and I find myself in a white room. Again. Just like at the start of the Reset.

They should get better rooms for this sort of thing.

As if reacting to my thoughts, the white room suddenly turns into a lounge with very comfortable furniture similar to what we had back before the Reset. And in that lounge, I find a certain System Creator sitting casually on a sofa with a smug smirk on his face.

One that only makes me kinda wanna punch him more, if I’m being honest.

“I love you too, child,” he says in a way that also makes me want to punch him. “Enough of that. Ask me your questions. We don’t have time this go around.”

Oh. Right.

“Okay, to start off-” I begin only for him to cut me off, “Ask in your head. It’s faster that way.”

I blink, surprised that he’s actually trying to help me this time. But I do as he says.

What is this ‘Energy Manipulation’ skill? And how do I get it?

He raises his hand and snaps his fingers, making the energy around him suddenly begin to move as if controlled by something as he says, “It’s just what it says. You manipulate any sort of energy around you to your own will, with no dependency on anything as fickle as an affinity. But the only people who can do this are quantum beings. Since we are fundamentally only partially in the normal realm.”

I open my mouth to speak, only for him to continue, “To answer your second question, all you must do is reach inside yourself and find your soul. It won’t be very hard if you know what to look for, so look for a purple flame somewhere inside of yourself with your Quantum Attunement skill. But do it after we leave unless you want to waste time.”

My mouth closes and I nod my head.

How many of the former Ascendants survived?

“Only sixty percent of the former Ascendants survived their dungeons,” he answers without missing a beat. “Which leaves a total of nearly a hundred thousand former Ascendants in the new dimension. And almost ten in each Block out of the ten thousand Blocks.”

And how many people died to the monsters?

“Out of the 58 trillion users in the System that were in the Reset at the beginning, nearly five trillion died to monsters, another twenty trillion died to other users, and a quarter of a trillion died due to other means, like falling off a floating island in the sky for example,” he answers, making me blink at that oddly specific answer at the end.

Guess there weren’t as many monster deaths since the monsters grow stronger the closer they get to the center of the island. At least, that’s how it was for our Block. It was probably similar somehow in other Blocks though.

Will the ones who didn’t get killed by a monster but some other means outside of another user come back?

“No, they will not,” the System’s Creator answers as I finally get up from the floor and take a seat across from him.

Well that’s unfortunate for them. I don’t know anyone like that though.

What’s the entire difference between soul and health and mana?

He blinks before grinning and answering, “About time you asked that. While soul is technically a combination of the two, it’s also much more than that. Soul is your reality. It’s what makes up who you are. It grows at speeds much faster than health or mana and recovers faster as well. But at the same time, you will be left far more crippled than a regular user who ran out of health if you were to completely run out of soul. It would paralyze you until you recovered from that state instead of just leaving you as defenseless as a level 1. Which it would also do.”

Oh shit. Good thing I never let my soul drop to zero.

“Soul is also what lets you manipulate energy, as it is energy itself, unlike mana, which is just a plaything using energy,” he says, making me tilt my head slightly at his mention of mana being a plaything.

Probably because it’s a much more dumbed down version of energy for people to use?

“You’re right,” he says, reading my thoughts. “Continue with your questions. You have five minutes left.”

Right, okay, I can ask for some recommendations for the Reset… but first…

I frown for a second before meeting his glowing purple and glitching eyes with my own as I ask out loud this time, “What is the System? And how are dungeons different in this Reset than before it?”