Ardika P.O.V.

‘Oh… Wow… This is the most comfortably I have woken up since my time at the hospital…’ I thought to myself, not even opening my eyes as I felt the warm freshness of my body. Everything was cozy. Until I tried to roll onto my side to escape the beam of light on my eyes.

“OW!” I yelled out in confusion as I felt my entire body peel from my bed, everything raw and on fire. Especially my jaw. What the hell!? ‘Why is it that the only times that I sleep good, is when I am injured?!’ I thought to myself, cursing the world in general as I opened my eyes and looked down at myself in horror. I was COVERED in blood. Absolutely covered. I couldn’t even tell where I was injured under all the blood! And I was still in my clothes from yesterday… My clothes are not going to recover from this. I am going to have to burn them…

“What the hell happened?!” I asked myself, looking down at the mess that was covering my body and caking my bed.

I looked around my room, alarmed at a sudden sound that alerted me. The room was still, and the light of morning was just barely sneaking through the window curtain. But on the other side of the room… Percy was sitting up on his bed, looking over at me in shocked frozen horror.

‘Oh shit.’ I thought to myself as I stared back at him, scrambling to think of a way out of this while I opened my mouth stupidly. “...Hey?” I said slowly after a moment. Percy’s eyes rolled a bit into the back of his head and he fell back on his bed with a thump, eyes closed and suddenly fast asleep. ‘Well… That was lucky.’ I thought to myself as I suddenly scrambled up out of my bed, wincing with how raw and pained my entire body was.

I ran to my dresser and whipped out a clean pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt before limping a bit to the bathroom as fast as possible. ‘I need to get clean and figure out what the hell happened this time…’ I thought, panicking a bit but with a dull sigh I calmed myself down a bit and went into autopilot as I stripped and sat down in the shower as water fell down on me and my newly red clothes.

“You know?” I sighed in exasperation after a moment of thinking, “I had really hoped this would stop.”

Things like this sometimes happened, though rarely, back home. Waking up with cuts and blood in some places, bruises and even on one rare occasion a sprained wrist. It didn’t go unnoticed of course, so I went to a doctor to figure out what the heck was happening. That was when I learned I had a severe case of sleepwalking and a problem with violent dreams. You can see how that was a problem. Apparently, at night I just get up when I was sleeping and just walk out into the street and get into fights with thugs. And somehow win.

It's a condition. A weirdass one, but it was mine… And I had really hoped it would go away. What with the new body and all.

I had been dealing with it fine, back home. Though restraints to prevent me from getting up without undoing a bunch of straps was annoying to sleep with. That did the trick. Well… most of the time. But for the most part it stopped.

Apparently, I now had to figure out how to deal with this in this world. And maybe find out who exactly I went on a mass murdering spree against, judging by the amount of blood all over me compared to the small amounts of cuts I had on myself. ‘Did I bathe in someone's blood or something?’ I thought in confusion as the shower water turned red the second it hit me, and barely seemed to be becoming clearer as I washed off with frequent winces of pain as I moved. The water of the shower felt refreshing though, so I stayed in it and let my body soak up the water while I tried to clean the blood.

‘Also, what the hell happened to my jaw?!’ I asked myself as I felt it up, feeling flashes of pain whenever I moved it or even touched it. This was less painful then when I had woken up in the body I had now in this world, but seriously this is bad. I turned and looked in a mirror for the first time since I had woken up, and I nearly fell down as I saw my body. The entire left side of my face was swollen and covered with black and purple bruises, nevermind the small patches of what looked like it was skinned by a seriously angry rug made from stone.

The rest of my body wasn’t all that bad comparatively, but the rugburns seemed frequent and small cuts alongside them and smaller bruises that looked like the ones you get from your entire body falling multiple times.

‘How am I supposed to explain this away..?’ I thought in shock, unable to put my thoughts to words as I felt the raw stab of pain from my jaw as I looked at it from inside the shower. ‘No, nevermind that. What on earth did I do to cause this?!’ I shoved all other thoughts aside as I thought back to last night as best as I could, closing my eyes as the water rushed over me and even triggering my Perfect Recollection passive with how hard I was trying to remember.

I went to the parlor, where me and Percy talked over ice cream in celebration for me getting on the basketball team… Wait, something happened before that. I talked to the woman at the counter… we talked… She told me she was a reincarnator, like I had suspected. Then, I got a quest? To kill some monsters that were stalking out the parlor. Right… Things were starting to make some sense. Not good sense, but sense.

I continued through my memory for a while, and I could see me and Percy in our dorm room… But I stayed awake, planning to continue on with the quest when Percy was asleep. And I stayed awake, until… No, I actually did stay awake? I got up and walked out, walking the streets in a fast paced and stealthy way under the guidance of Stealth. I reached the parlor… where I saw two Laistrygonians stalking out the place. Then I followed them to their base… and things started getting foggy in my memory.

‘What the… That is weird, I can barely remember even with Perfect Recollection?’ I thought confused as I could barely pick out parts of the events past that point, just running, darkness, some weird sensations and my daggers whirling through the air, monsters getting killed… then once I had reached the point where I was about to finish the rest of them off… I couldn't remember anything. Weird. I mean… clearly I won, so does it even really matter in the end?

I gave a sigh, my eyebrows furrowed together in lingering confusion. Well, good thing is that I wasn’t sleepwalking? That takes off a good amount of worry. The memory issue is strange, but I was probably just really tired and memory when you are tired gets a little wonky. That's just a fact that I learned years ago.

I let out a groan as I looked myself over again, pondering how I could fix this. It was right then that the system decided to pop into existence in front of my eyes once again.

“You have several unread notifications, would you like to read them now?” The system screen that appeared asked, and I blinked. ‘Oh, I think I vaguely remember getting a notification or two that I might have ignored…’ I recall before shrugging it off, then wincing at the action and letting the system notifications to appear, causing the screen to shift.

“That's… a lot.” I exclaimed as the screen suddenly expanded and more started popping up around me. “Could you order them by the order they were received?” I asked the system screens in front of me and, responding to my question, all but one of the notifications vanished. I started to read it.

Quest parameters changed due to user’s actions and intentions!

Name: Cannibal Extermination

Difficulty: Hard

Requirements to succeed: Rescue the majority of the humans that have been captured, make all the monsters responsible flee or kill them all and survive

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Rewards if succeeded: 100 Ring Gold along with 2 free levels to a passive ability of your choice and a new skill

“...What?” I said out loud, before wincing again at the feeling of my sore jaw moving again.

‘The quest changed… due to my actions and intentions? What does that even mean? Because I focused hard enough on killing them, the system changed the quest? And the difficulty! I have never done a quest of this difficulty! And the rewards! TWO free levels to a Passive I choose, a huge amount of RG and a SKILL. I only have two Skills, the Soul Forge and my Appraisal. Both of which are incredibly useful and more powerful by an order of magnitude, despite the daily usefulness of my Passives. If I didn't have my Skills, I would be way less powerful. Hell, I might not even have any enchanted rings at all! Another one? Yes please!’ I thought in excitement as I finished reading the notification, and before I could do any more the notification vanished and was replaced by another one.

This one was much less information dense. “You have started forming your first Passive Ability, Spirit Sense. This Passive Ability is currently at Lv 0.1 due to its incomplete status. This Passive Ability has the UNIQUE title. The UNIQUE title means that the ability that it is attached to is new to the system, and rewards will be given for completing any UNIQUE abilities.” The system screen told me, and I blinked.

“What?” I said out loud again, this time not even caring about the pain in my jaw that came from it. ‘I CREATED an ability? Or started to. When the hell did I do this? And “Spirit Sense?” What does it do? How did I do that!?’ I wondered in absolute confusion as I looked over the notification with half a mind to ignore all other notifications to look closer at the ability.

Then I looked over the rest of the notification and something clicked in my mind that I had been wondering for some time now. ‘I always wondered why the system does what it does… is this the reason? The creation of UNIQUE things? Is this system… collecting Abilities and Skills as it gets different users? It gives rewards for the creation of them… and its entire system is based around progress and growth of abilities and skills. This… Makes sense. Whatever made the system, if it was something that was made technically speaking, was creating a database of skills and abilities through the system and letting it expand and grow across the omniverse… Though I can't know for sure.’ I thought to myself in wonder.

Then another screen popped up, replacing the other notification.

Multiple skills leveled up… Dagger Skills to level 12, Deflection to level 5, Evasion to level 5, Tracking to level 4, Stealth to level 3 and finally Throwing Skills to level 3… ‘That is the most levels I have ever gotten!’ I thought to myself in surprise as I looked over the levels.

Before I could dwell on the levels and what the amount of progress I had made could mean however, another notification appeared and I had to stop thinking to read it for a moment distracting me.

“Quest completion requirements met for quest: Cannibal Extermination. Rewards available: 100 Ring Gold along with 2 free levels to a passive ability of your choice and a new skill. You may accept the rewards at any time.” The new screen read out, and I looked at it with a satisfied look.

‘Looks like I did it after all…’ I thought to myself, though still with a bit of confusion. ‘I wonder… How?’ I asked myself again, the confusion of last night still pressing against my mind. I shrugged it off though. The simple answer right now is I don't know, and I don't know how I could.

‘Should I accept the rewards now?’ I wondered, looking at the rewards. I shrugged, and accepted it quickly before the next notification popped up for me to read.

“100 Ring Gold gained.” The first read, then it was wiped aside as the next notification arose.

“What Passive Ability(s) do you want to assign your 2 free levels?” The system asked next and I paused to think about it, opening my status screen and taking a look at the levels of my Passives.

‘You know… I didnt think about this before, but it seems that I have a lot of random low level skills.’ I admitted to myself, looking over my list and removing them from a list to potentially level up in my head as I did. ‘I mean, I have Speed Reading. It's useful, but also why do I even have it?’ I wondered as I looked it over, internally shaking my head. ‘The system really does not hold back handing out its Passives. But what is the most important to me… What should I choose to level up?’

Eventually I settled on a Passive that I have a feeling has been pulling their weight recently and will continue to do it a lot more in the future.

‘I wish to assign both level ups to Stealth.’ I assigned the two free level ups, bringing the ability to level 5 now with a satisfied nod. I had considered adding it to Dagger Skills or even Evasion or another similar ability, but I trusted my instinct and went with Stealth. You could never be too sneaky, especially when you are definitely going to be actively hunted in the near future. And doing the hunting, as proven by last night.

It blinked an acceptance notice, and I saw the level of Stealth turn to level 5 with the instruction.

Then the final notification for the quest rewards appeared.

“As a reward for the completion of a Hard quest, you have unlocked a new Skill. Skill selected due to quest conditions and user activity during quest! You have unlocked the Skill: Hunters Sense Level 1. To see more information on this Skill, open your Status Menu and look under Skills.” The system read out, and my eyes locked onto the name of the skill with curiosity.

I instantly opened the status menu, and looked at the description.

“Hunters Sense Lv1: Harnessing the Sixth Sense of humanity, you get an instinctual understanding of when you or others are being hunted and roughly where the hunter doing the hunting is located relative to you alongside a strong feeling of when a trap or attack is about to happen to you or others near you.”

‘Oh. Huh, that's interesting… But what is more interesting is it mentions the sixth sense by name. So it is real then? I mean… I kind of already knew that because of the way my Passives worked, but it was always up in the air or whether it was that or just a system thing. Looks like I guessed right them.’ I thought to myself, happy with the confirmation. ‘And I can definitely see this being insanely important in this world, as a demigod.’ I thought to myself, making me more happy than ever with the Skill.

‘But… Doesnt this description make this seem more like a Passive Ability rather than a Skill?’ I paused, wondering about what the difference between a Skill and a Passive actually is. I had thought that a skill was something that you had to trigger, like the Soul Forge, but this seems like it would trigger automatically like my Passives do.

Then I felt something that I hadn't felt since I had gotten the Soul Forge Skill. A strange energy coursing through my soul, and moving deeper into my very being. I watched in shocked silence as I concentrated inwards, looking at the energy coursing in waves and thousands upon thousands of tiny trails of power as they moved into me from somewhere that I couldn't see. They looked like they were searching for something… Then one of those strings touched something inside my soul and I felt a twinge in my mind itself. It didn't feel bad… just weird. But I knew this type of weird. This was the same thing I could feel when some parts of my Passive Abilities activated. The sixth sense. I could feel my mind expand and I could start to feel… feelings around me. But I couldn't tell what was what, it seemed… infinite. Everything was so… full of knowledge. I could sense… everything.

Then the pain started, my brain getting overloaded with the information in the split second after the euphoric sensation started. I grunted at the pain, recalling the pain that came when I got the Soul Forge and Perfect Recollection. This was just as bad as then, but I could handle myself better.

Then I could parse through all the foreign sensations, just enough to feel the strings of energy suddenly join with the string that activated this whole thing. They wrapped around each other, again and again. The splitting headache started to die down.

Then with one final connection, I could feel a pulse in my soul and suddenly it all stopped. I felt like normal again. Nothing seemed to have changed… but now beside the Soul Forge’s gateway in my soul, there were lines and lines of energy curled around a part of my soul, stretching and connecting and stabilizing things that I could barely tell existed with my senses.

I had never felt my soul like this before either. It was like… my soul was like a puzzle, with all the pieces making up my soul. The part the Skill was wrapped around and channeling through my mind, was the sixth sense. It was limiting it, but tapping into it for me.

‘I guess… This is what a Skill is.’ I thought to myself, still recovering from the sudden gaining of the Skill. ‘It is the system itself, using itself to enhance or manipulate my soul!’ I realized, as I could feel my Skills inside of me.

But even with this groundbreaking revelation, the notifications kept coming and I looked up at the next notification before me. The day was only getting started… I hadn't even gotten out of the shower yet. This was going to be a long day.