I looked out into the dark, overburdened clouds, the little light that seeped through coating everything in a dull gray. Smiling, I turned on my music playlist and scrolled through my phone to find a novel to read. Minutes later, rain started pelting the roof in earnest, and a grin crept up my face. Tonight was quite a lovely night, and I’d thoroughly enjoy the rain as long as it was here.
System: Hello. I am the Multiverse Alliance System, no-
Bright text blazed to life in front of my eyes, a monotone voice stabbed into my ears, and a shock raced through me. I groaned in pain, shut my eyes, and covered my ears, my phone falling out of my hands and clattering to the ground, “Please shut up!”
System: … My recently collected data from you humans indicated that level of brightness and volume as helpful, apologies.
I blinked away the pain in my eyes, and tried to ignore the numbness in my limbs, avoiding responding to this… System for a moment. Slowly I stood up to walk over to the kitchen, pulled open a drawer, grabbed and took a painkiller, and drank some water. Once I had, I slowly breathed out and spoke softly, “What is this, and what do you want?”
System: I am The System, here to aid humans and the rest of this Universe against an invasion. This invasion is one of many, by a group we refer to as the Demons. By utilizing the mana I have given to you, you will be able to quicken your magical capabilities. My creators and I simply hope that you will fight and survive.
I laughed mirthlessly, “Fight and survive? Is giving humans magic and turning us loose all you’ve got? Do you know how bad things will get, before the Demons even get here? And that shock I felt, was that you giving me magic? Did you seriously do that without asking or saying anything first?”
System: There will not be any idle time between their arrival in this universe and their ability to affect you here on Earth. The Demons will complete a manacraft to pull you humans into Bubbles. In these Bubbles they will hunt you all down, to try and kill as many as possible. Only by surviving for at least a month will you escape, as the mana sustaining the bubble should deplete fully by then.
Crossing my arms and raising an eyebrow, ”Nice job ignoring some of my questions, what happens after the Bubbles?” I asked.
System: The Demons will try to take territory, I would explain in more detail, but we do not have the time at this moment. As a new participant in the System, you may learn one active skill, and one passive skill without having to meet the requirements. Please choose wisely.
‘Telling me things I didn’t ask about, instead of things that would’ve actually answered the questions I did ask, this is gonna go well… At least it’s giving some useful info.’ I mused, but the skills sounded too potentially interesting to ignore for long, of course I skipped over the melee and weapon stuff entirely, just looking at the magical skills.
Starting Active Skills: …Mana Bolt, Fireball, Lightning Strike, Ice Spike, Acid Glob, Bloody Slice, Sound Wave, Aura of Heat…
“System, is there anything Summoning or Minion related in here?”
System: Summoning skills are not dependable, I would advise selecting something else.
‘Is it seriously going to react to all my questions like this?! At least it kinda fucking answered me.’ Fuming internally, I responded, “I didn’t ask you for advice, I asked if there were summoning skills. If you really think summoning skills are bad, that’s your problem and I don’t wanna hear about it.” Scrolling through the list some more yielded nothing, I still couldn’t find the Summoning skills… which got on my nerves even more.
System: Please ma’am, you are overreacting, I am simply attempting to increase your odds of surviving, summoner skills are truly unreliable, you could select most other skills and be better off for it.
Immediately I shot up both middle fingers, “I’m ‘overreacting’? Are you fucking serious? If you ever say some shit like that again, I will fucking unplug you! It’s not my god damn problem you don’t like summoner skills for whatever garbage reason, and I don’t know or care why you’re trying to make it my problem! If you really think they’re unreliable, that’s a skill issue, and that’s your fucking problem. Shut. The. Fuck. Up!”
System: …
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Quickly, I scrolled through the skill list, and found the Summoning skill. At the very bottom. Despite the fact that most other skill types had at least two or three skills each in this list, there was only one skill for new summoners here.
Still boiling with anger, I frowned, and after selecting the skill, thought about that some more, ‘Considering this fucking system’s little outburst and the way it’s ordered this list, it’s seemingly trying to stop people from interacting with this skill type, but why? The excuse that summoning skills are unreliable or whatever, is obvious bullshit… but if someone doesn’t know much about these skills, they might just believe that the system is trying to help and knows what it’s talking about. What would be the goal of that, though?’
I rubbed at my temples and sighed, hoping the incoming migraine would get its ass beat by the painkiller.
‘On top of that, the way it didn’t answer my questions head on makes me uncomfortable. It could seriously just be biases at work, but I can’t imagine that happening or being allowed in something big like a system, unless the people who created the system wanted this bias to be there. And the way it didn’t answer questions was about more than the Summoning skills, so the chance of bias being the cause doesn’t seem likely… So I’ll run with the assumption that something intentional is going on here. But that’ll mean, at the very least, that the system can’t really be trusted to give accurate or helpful information related to minions or summoning skills. And considering that I’m gonna snap up summoning skills like candy, that’s gonna be a big issue for me even if it gives good information otherwise.’
I sighed once more, rubbed my eyes, and thought about opening… whatever skill menu this system had, ‘Skills?’
Skills:
- Mana Wisp lvl1: Summon Wisps that fire ___ mana bolts. Mana Wisp bolts can travel 30m, and then will dissipate if they have not struck anything. Bolts can not pierce enemies or obstacles. Wisp intelligence is limited, requiring orders from the summoner to function. They can fly, but may only move 10m away from the summoner in any direction. They can be hurt and killed, but have an unlimited duration.
Cost: 20% Mana Reservation per Wisp (___ by Skill Level)
___ Damage per Shot: _% Health (Before Defenses)
Status Effect: ___ (Improved by Skill Level)
Rate of Fire: 1 bolt every 2 seconds (___ by Skill Level)
Wisp Stats: +1 (Equal to Skill Level)
Looking at each of the blank spaces opened up a drop down menu. I could lower or raise the reservation per level, which was pretty confusing because it seemed like an obvious choice to me. I quickly set the reservation to increase every level, and apparently, increasing the cost gave damage and experience gain buffs. Interesting.
But the real kicker was the damage menu… the skill let me pick from any of the damage types, and they each had a status effect.
…
I rolled my eyes at the lack of commentary from the system, actually picking the summoning skill must have really pissed it off, on the other hand I’m glad it actually shut the fuck up.
‘Who would’ve thought my relationship with the system could deteriorate this quickly?’ I chuckled and set the reservation on Mana Wisp to decrease each level.
The increased damage and experience gain was probably pretty good, but I can’t pass up on having more wisps.
Reading through the damage types, I noticed they all differed in hit damage, status effect damage, and status effect utility. I thought for a moment and picked Lightning, its hit damage was higher, which was my main concern, and I don’t particularly care about status effects now, but Shock would probably do fun things. Finally, I sat and stared at the rate of fire for a minute, until I decided to set it to get faster with every level.
Skills:
-
Cost: 20% Mana Reservation per Wisp (
Status Effect:
Rate of Fire: 1 bolt every 2 seconds (
Wisp Stats: +1 (Equal to Skill Level)
System: You will soon be pulled into a Bubble, it is necessary for your survival that you hide and wait the month until the mana sustaining it dissipates
Ignoring the damn thing, I walked over to my kitchen, grabbed some water, and drank a couple mouthfuls.
System: I must insist that you hide, the chance of your survival is far too low otherwise, the Demons should not be underestimated.
Ignoring it still, I stood in place, shifting back and forth on my feet, and flicking the water bottle to make some noise. Not so patiently waiting for whatever was going to happen.
…
…
…
‘Oh shit, I forgot about the passive skill!’ I rushed to open the selection menu and scrolled down to the bottom.
Starting Passive Skills: … Minion Damage, Minion Status Chance, Minion Status Severity, Minion Range, Minion Rate of Fire, Minion Physical Defense, Minion Elemental Defense, Minion Magical Defense, Minion Melee Defense, Minion Ranged Defense, Minion Attack Defense, Minion Spell Defense, Minion Count…
As soon as I saw the Minion Count passive, a massive grin glued onto my face. But as I was about to select it, I felt a disgusting force slither over me, working to encase me in a grip of ice. Shooting my gaze down in alarm showed me absolutely nothing, but I could feel it, and I was increasingly unable to move. I picked Minion Count before whatever was happening finished.
The water bottle was forced from my hand as I blinked out of existence.
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