Ch 1
Jolting as I awoke, I immediately looked around as I tried to get to my feet quickly. I instantly realized something was wrong with my body, in addition to the fact I was in an unfamiliar place. After several seconds, I processed it was not an unknown place, just one that I hadn’t seen in almost 4 decades.
Then I thought back to the last thing that happened, and I searched my body, which I felt was supposed to have been sporting a gruesome injury. I remember being nearly bisected in two from my left shoulder to my ribs on my right side after my weapon broke, leaving me defenseless. Thinking about it caused me to feel phantom pain from the injury. Still trying to figure out what was going on, I thought of any possibilities. Had I been trapped in a prison in my own mind caused by someone’s ability? I’d never heard of that, but the abilities I’d seen on the layers seemed endless. Had the majority of my life been a dream? I’d been living in the layers for 38 years, but I’d only lived on Earth for a mere 24. Looking at the phone charging on my bedside table, I said that it was September 15th, 2027. That is a whole 4 months on the day before I’d been summed to humanities layer. Had I gone back in time to before I was even summoned? Could I change the outcome where humanity got washed away like they were facing an insurmountable tsunami?
Thinking about what to do next, I tried to pull up my status, thinking precisely that in my mind like I’d done thousands of times. It didn’t work; even saying it aloud wouldn’t summon my status. It was gone.
It did not seem like there was anything I could do about it. Trying to push all the will I could muster to dispel any possible traps I may have been placed under did not help either. In the end, I just had to hope that I’d really gone back to my past. However, I had no way of knowing if my life had been some sort of illusion or simulation that had no basis in the 24 years I had initially lived on Earth. I just had to say that everything in the beginning would happen in the same way it had originally.
I had to make some plans on what to do with my life from this point. Despite the risk that I had only lived a dream that had felt all too real, I had to do something about it. I’d quit my job and take out a loan or several so I could survive the next several months without working. All the while getting healthy, only eating healthy, getting exercise equipment in the house, and then training until my body fails me, then getting up and doing it again. I could push myself until my body broke because if someone survived the summoning, their ailments would be healed.
Remembering something, I grabbed the broom in the next room, and then I flowed through the movements I’d honed through decades of constant struggle and training while using a polearm as my primary weapon of choice. It felt too natural; there was no way that I had lived some sort of lucid dream spanning years. I’d either been put in some kind of simulation, or I’d gone back in time. In a couple of months, I would find out.
Months of constant training and honing my strength, speed, and endurance had passed, and my body had been transformed. I had pushed myself to the limit of what my mortal human body could achieve in such a short time frame. The shift would be coming soon. Half of humanity would be summoned to our plane at about the same time. Though it would all seem the same from our perspective going in, years would separate when the first and last person arrived there. Some sort of time dilation effect between Earth and the layers was in play.
I had made posts on blogs and forums outlining the basics of what was going to happen and what strategies would help increase the strength of humanity in the beginning. Obviously, too much ridicule and others imagining I’d been simply making my own outline for a novel yet to come. However, anyone I could help when they realized what was happening was real was worth the downtime involved.
Though I could not remember exactly when it happened, I knew we would be going soon. I had updated everything online earlier that day and proceeded with my usual schedule, trying to eak everything out that I could. It wouldn’t matter if I was sore; I’d be healed by the time I arrived anyway.
‘This is the chance humanity needed. The chance to change the future.’
‘It’s just up to me, no pressure.’
‘Either we push to change, or it is just the end for us as a species.’
Just a nudge here and there could butterfly into massive events that saved us. Hopefully, millions would be saved not making stupid choices that had doomed us the first time around.
Floating in what I’d only remembered once before, during his previous transit to humanity’s layer, the first thing I felt was relief. I was not crazy, and then I wish that I was because it meant that I and humanity as a whole had a massive trial ahead. One nine of them had survived before. I was trying to remember the status page I had started with back in my first life.
Status Screen:
Name: Adonis Newman
Points: 53,550
Race: Human
Age:24
Title: None
Attributes:
Strength: 9
Agility: 11
Constitution: 8
Wisdom: 8
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Intelligence: 15
Endurance: 8
Charisma: 13
Luck: 8
Abilities:0/9
Then, I was startled by something new. Something that did not happen the way it did before.
Text that he was unfamiliar with.
Ability: RESTART (gifted) has been rendered inert and cannot be used again.
That answered a question about what had happened I had been asking myself for a while now. Though now I had several more to ask. Who had gifted him this ability in the first place? Why had it never shown up on his status screen? How did I have access to it when it would have put him over the limit on abilities that someone could have? Questions continued to pop into his mind.
‘I can think about this later; I will not be able to get answers that I would like anyway, I’d imagine.’
Status Screen:
Name: Adonis Newman
Points: 157,125+(20,100) =177,225
Race: Human
Age:24
Title: None
Attributes:
Strength: 14
Agility: 16
Constitution: 12
Wisdom: 8+(8) from prior life experience
Intelligence: 15
Endurance: 14
Charisma: 13
Luck: 8
Abilities:1/9
Inert RESTART (gifted) = x.025% for inert + x.20% for gifted
‘Well, that isn’t even close to the status page I had last time. About the only thing that’s remained the same is my name. I’ve got like three times the points as I had the first go around, even before it counts that weird inert ability!’
The average human had a stat average of 10 points across the board. Last time, I was just about exactly average. This time, I was probably among the top percentage of humanity. Though the points could technically go up to 20 in each individual stat for a human, no one in history I know of had averaged 20 across the board. At an average of 10 points, a human would have 50k points to work with, jumping by 25k for every moment averaged for the seven main attributes. Those were strength, agility, constitution, wisdom, intelligence, endurance, and charisma.
Luck was not well understood and very difficult to increase intentionally; it was discovered that it had no value when it came to increasing your initial starting points. At an average of 11, someone would have 75k, then 100k at 12, 125k at 13, 150k at an average of 14, and so on; that continued all the way to a theoretical 300k points someone could get just from stat point averages alone if someone averaged 20 attribute points across the board. Another way someone could gain points was through innate abilities; one of the most common innate abilities was the one that came from those born with a photographic memory. Those born with it would gain an innate ability called Perfect Recall. Those with innate abilities had an advantage in that they didn’t have to purchase the ability using points and being gifted points for having it, but that came with the disadvantage that they were stuck with an ability taking up one of their nine slots where they could have saved up and placed a better one.
Last time, the abilities I had picked turned out to be below average in usefulness. Despite that, I made them work the best I could, pushing them to the upper limits. My choices will be different this go round. My first choice is an odd one with a lot more utility than expected and is an excellent value for its price. It is a sigil called stationary surface, and its original purpose is to provide a solid surface to plant your feet for a hit or to use as a platform to jump through the air. I quickly pulled up the profile for the ability, looking it over.
(Sigil: stationary surface) 21k points (1/6) stationary surface summons a force shield to stand on. Establishes a firm surface to plant your feet on soft ground or in the air.
Stationary surface creates translucent octagons that are about 1 foot wide. These octagons, though not made to do so, were discovered to have a slight shielding or deflecting effect for attacks. The sigil will end up being hugely useful in the layer that humanity populates in the beginning because of its general lack of stable surfaces across the whole plain—causing many potentially powerful human opponents to be unable to establish a firm footing, lowering their power. Another use is that the sigil could theoretically surround the user in stationary force shields constructed out of octagons 1 foot wide to both slightly protect and escape from the elements while sleeping, which could be a massive help on several of the layers, especially the first.
The first layer is essentially the Earth in a future destroyed by humans. Mountains of garbage as large as Mount Everest, crumbled skyscrapers, violent and abrupt weather changes, dominated mainly by frequent and enormous smoggy sandstorms that sweep across large swaths of the layer. Charging metal surfaces with enough static electricity to potentially kill regular humans. There is no longer plant life to be found, and all oxygen comes from the massive seas filled with algae. People have to hide from the weather in caverns carved out of the trash mountains in the last timeline; several powerful factions had carved massive caverns, compacting the walls with enough force to keep them from collapsing in on themselves and reinforcing them with various powers purchased from the shop. The largest of them were able to fit several million people.
Ideally, with the sigil, I will be able to sleep in a box made of octagons, protecting myself from the weather and not having to get tied up in a faction just because I need somewhere safe from the elements to sleep.
Down twenty-one thousand points, I moved on to the ability that would give me most of my power. It is also an ability that has the potential to grow with me. It is one of the cultivation classed abilities. Cultivation abilities ended up being one of humanity’s most potent weapons because of their ability to grow with the user and all the different aspects they can be flavored with. Last time, it was not discovered until much later exactly how beneficial cultivation was, and I had not picked it up until several years into my journey. Now, I would be getting one as powerful as possible to start even though I could buy the starting realm, 0, the spirit seed realm for just 25k points, and then work my way up; that could take years. Plus, I was already behind those that to the first layer years before I will. I need to start out with as much power as I can. Mentally, I selected my choice.
(Cultivation: Lightning aspect) 2nd realm 131k points, lightning aspect primarily enhances speed and a secondary enhancement to the strength of your muscles while adding shocking power to physical attacks. Draw the layer’s nascent energy into your body to increase your own power.
My Weapon Mastery ability was next on my list of purchases; in my past life, I had spent decades in the heat of battle to hone my art with polearms. But unlike cultivation, I was confident I would be able to increase its proficiency relatively quickly. Simply due to the fast, it was based on strength of body, mind, and understanding. I went with the cheapest option for mastery, just purchasing basic mastery of a single weapon, and chose the weapon I was most familiar with to hopefully level mastery as fast as possible, the bec de corbin. In my past life, I was a sage of polearm mastery, a step above a grandmaster.
(Basic mortal polearm mastery) One weapon of choice) 2k points. Enhances the user’s understanding of one polearm weapon of choice. The bec de corbin is a polearm with a long, slightly curved spike perpendicular to the haft paired with a hammer head on the end of a shaft. It usually has a second spike on the tip, like most other polearm weapons.
With a large number of points still left, I went searching through the items selection to see what was still available. In the end, I went with a mask called the facial seal. It was an item that sealed and filtered the air you breathe while allowing you to choose any mask design of your choice to hide your features.
Item: (facial seal) 14k points (2/3) A mask that seals to the user’s face and neutralizes and filters pollutants, providing fresh air. It has the additional ability to shift the appearance of the mask to 2 appearances of the user’s choice.
Lastly, I decided some sturdy clothes and a backpack would be necessary for when mine inevitably got destroyed.
Item: (basic sturdy outfit x3) 200 points.
Item: (sleek, sturdy backpack) 100 points.