BANG!
“AHHH! What the fuck!”
Richard woke up with a start and yelled while checking his surroundings. A flat white expanse stretching into the distance was all that could be seen.
“Congratulations,” a bored feminine voice sounded out. “You’ve been chosen out of a select few. You’re lucky that your karma was just good enough from saving those people from drowning all those years ago.”
“Who’s there!? Where am I?” He asked in a panic seeing no one in sight.
“In order to save time let’s run through the list of FAQs shall we? First of all you died after getting shot in your sleep. Your soul has been here for approximately 57 years and you’re now finally conscious. Your family and friends have long since come to terms with your death and you’ll be a great grandfather in a couple hours. As said before you lucked out for being such a goody two shoes in life and now you get a choice; reincarnate in this world with no memories of your past or reincarnate on a different world with your memories. There’s also an added bonus for either. Ah, you get to choose one of the bonuses of course.”
“Uh… Er… w-what?” Richard stammered in confusion still searching for the voice. “Listen miss, I really don’t know what the hell is going on. This doesn’t feel completely real at all to me and I honestly don’t believe any of what you just said. In fact I think you’re wrong about some of it…”
“Ah wait that must be it, maybe I’m still sleeping,” He muttered to himself as his eyes lit up and relaxed. “Yeah that should be it, can’t be anything else otherwise it be too much of a cliché.”
“If that’s what you want to believe then that’s up to you,” the bored voice sounded out again. “Now since you’re not exactly brimming with questions and thinking this is a dream I’ll start with the choices. Your reincarnation on Earth will start you off with a poor family but as a bonus you’ll have an IQ of 322 and a bit of extra luck and charisma. Your reincarnation with your memories will have you start as out as an 18 year old male with above average charisma in a world with an administrative system and you’ll get to choose a unique ability as the bonus provided that you agree to a couple conditions.”
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“Well the high IQ would be good but I’d rather keep all my memories, probably wouldn’t enjoy the dream otherwise,” Richard commented as he firmed his belief upon noticing the lack of his physical body. “The unique ability would be good though and I get to fool around in a young body for a bit, I think I’ll take option number two miss. Just want to make sure, the system you’re on about is game like yeah?”
“I guess you could say it’s like a game,” A heavy sigh sounded out. “You’ll probably find it fun but a lot of it isn’t. Now for the couple of conditions which you’ll have to agree to. The first is that there’s an extremely hostile race planning an invasion, it wants to completely devour and corrupt the plane starting from the world you’re going to as the fabric between dimensions is thinnest there and you’ll need to delay or completely stop them. The thinned fabric is also a reason why you can be sent there in the first place but be warned, getting extra help isn’t likely since sending people to it only serves to destabilize it further. You also aren’t allowed to talk to anybody about the invasion to get help there either. The second condition is that you agree to being monitored by having a tracking cypher engraved onto your soul so we can keep up to date with your progress.”
“Uh that doesn’t sound like I’m getting a choice for not having the bonus right? That sounds like a lot of work, I might go for the reincarnation on Earth rather,” Richard frowned at the thought of having to put in so much effort in a dream.
“Unfortunately you’ve already made the choice. Now choose between having the bonus or not,” the voice stated in annoyance.
“Whoa okay, sure, I’ll take it I guess… You sound like my sister when it’s that time of the month,” He complained while wondering at the forcefulness behind her voice. Is this really a dream? Surely this is supposed to go how I want it to? Maybe this is more a nightmare. Mhmm, I shouldn’t have had that cup of coffee before bed, look what it’s done to me...
“Great, you’ll get to choose the ability when you get there. Now to make space for it and also do the engraving,” the voice stated in an eager tone. “Ah, just so we’re on the same page, this is gonna hurt, a lot.”
Her tone got really dark, pretty quickly. He thought worriedly as the white expanse seemed to start glowing brighter.
“Hey, what do you mean by ‘it’s gonna hurt a lot’? You can’t be s-AAARGHHH!” He questioned until a pain so deep hit him as if he was being torn to pieces. The brightness of the room seemed to become blindingly painful until, as sudden as its change, it went dark.