Now that the setup is finished, I'm going to have to wait a little for them to figure stuff out. I'll probably visit them occasionally if things get too slow. So I guess I should start thinking about the finer details myself, namely, how much stats do I give the winner?

See, while I could just dump a bunch of experience on them and call it a day, that would probably end very badly, and while I'm certainly not above bittersweet and tragic endings, I think it would be kind of bad to give them a cursed reward for a challenge I essentially forced on them.

I'm not going to go into the specifics of how stats work, but I will mention that there is such a thing as too much of it. For example, charisma!

Charisma is quite simple, it's how your soul is perceived by other souls. Now let's say one normal person has a charisma of 1, they would interact with other souls rather normally and mostly be judged on normal stuff like personality, maybe appearance, very simple.

Let's raise up that charisma to 10, right now that person has the charisma of 10 people bundled up into one soul. This means that just talking to that soul feels like their opinion is 10 times more likely to be perceived as correct.

Of course there's a lot more boring calculations in there, stats tend to actually be calculated exponentially rather than incrementally but-

POINT IS

if a person has 10 charisma it will make every single one of your interactions with people a little weird, but it's fine, they overall still have some form of control in how they interact with you.

Now put that charisma to a 100, that's when people will almost be brainwashed by your mere presence, even the most asocial, distrustful and clever person you meet will start just falling for you, they will start doing things they would never even consider just to please you.

At 1000 charisma, people's personality starts to disappear, their very soul starts being incorporated into yours if they get too close. At that point charisma begins to affect you as a person, you'll get megalomaniac tendencies, anything you say will sound like a good idea, and you'll be surrounded by a bunch of yes men that will only make things worse, it's too late for you and everyone else that's in a ten-mile radius.

A million charisma is when the very universe starts to bend itself to serve you, rocks will get out of your path, a bed will just materialize when you feel sleepy, anything that tries to hurt you will be pulverized by everything that surrounds it.

And ho boy, don't let me get into intelligence, I HATE that one. All of that means I'll need to think of a big enough amount of stats that feels like a proper reward without potentially overriding their personality entirely.

I'll probably make their stats be at superhuman level or something, maybe make their endurance and strength high enough to not get assassinated easily. Of course. Stats are very finicky, so there's always the chance it goes horribly wrong.

I'll just call it a plot twist if it does.

Speaking of, are my stats set up correctly?

Name : N/A Nickname : Leave Sex : Female Sanity : Acceptable

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Soul Bloat : DANGEROUS

[STAT MENU] [INVENTORY] [CURRENT UNIVERSE DATA] [SKILL MENU]

[SOUL STATUS]

Note : Forget

Note : gather rock

Note : you're doing great <3 Note : please forget

Note : take out extra experience URGENT!!!

I press the big yellow "STAT MENU" button and another screen appears

CURRENT MODE : BYSTANDER STAT MEASUREMENT : ORIGINAL BODY STR : ABOVE AVERAGE

END : SUPERHUMAN

INT : NORMAL

CHA : BELOW AVERAGE

PER : BELOW SUPERHUMAN

SPEED : ABOVE AVERAGE

Yup, looks fine to me! Also, I'm a girl apparently. Turns out I'm just really, really flat. At least it makes moving around easier.

Mhh? My menu is also bloated, you say? The color scheme is also confusing? So I have no right to complain about how other designs their menus?

See, the difference is I've made this menu with me specifically in mind, so it gives exactly the information I need at a glance! And it even works in a systemless universe! Mostly.

Okay, it doesn't work THAT well in a systemless universe, but listen, it's a work in progress. This thing is basically haphazardly made of random menus I came across, trying to only keep the parts I really liked while discarding the parts I didn't. So of course it will have a few quirks, but personally I think I did a wonderful job.

Ho that reminds me, I wonder how my actors are doing? I'll just go back the way I cam-

....

I did jump from this pipe right? Or was it this one?

I have enhanced perception so I shouldn't be wrong about this right?

I jump from pipes to pipes, upward this time, trying to find some kind of landmark, something I've seen before but...

I'm lost, everything looks the same, the smoke makes it hard to see very far too, which certainly doesn't help. It's like an open labyrinth that goes in all directions. Everyone has gone home too, I can't see a single person outside, the "night" has begun.

Yup, definitely lost.