Tom read the information greedily.

Traits

* All Experience Shop or ones bestowed by trait stones are lost.

* Ten percent of contribution shop purchased traits are carried through. This appears to be at DEUS discretion.

* Only traits awarded by retained titles are guaranteed to be kept.

Spells

* All spells not associated with a retained title are removed.

Skills

* All skills below tier 4 not associated with a retained title are removed.

* Skills above tier 4 may be maintained unaltered or reduced in tier level. Higher tier skills have an increased chance of persisting and doing so unaltered.

Tom nodded to himself.

It seemed that the system was not generous when it came to allowing abilities from the first Existentia life into the second. The only exception out there was for the high-level skills, and that last line explained why Social Silence still functioned. He wondered if any of his other high-tiered skills had made it through. He guessed it was unlikely, as his other two prospects - Fate Weaponised, Black Dodge, and Contract Binding - had only been tier five. However, if his Black Dodge skill had gotten through the gauntlet even at a lower level, that would be a massive win. As for Contract Binding, Tom really couldn’t care much if he lost it.

Tom flipped the page and saw the sub-heading of titles. This was the entry that he had the most hope for.

The points below are the key guiding rules for the transfer of titles to the second Existentia life.

* All titles ranked uncommon and below are removed.

* All titles related only to the body are removed.

* Titles rated above uncommon and related exclusively to the soul are maintained.

* Titles that bridge this divide may be kept, downgraded or lost entirely. Evidence suggests this is at DEUS discretion, as some individuals lost identical titles that others kept.

Tom read the summary once, then a second time; he still didn’t understand what it was talking about. The first condition was easy enough to follow, but what about the other three?

He flipped the page and was relieved to see a significant amount of extra detail - a worded explanation in natural English with clear examples. Two paragraphs in particular caught his attention.

An example of a body-specific title is something like the classic healing sponge version that most primary community tanks receive. This title is earned exclusively by the body receiving a set amount of healing over a set time.

An instance of a soul title would be one awarded by someone achieving a unique, or a near-unique, insight into the system, competition, or knowledge field. The award of such a title is completely independent of anything happening to the body.

It was that second paragraph that let him understand what the different terms meant, because he had received a soul related title in his first Existentia life.

Title: Complex Conspiracy Discoverer:

* Reward: Your highest-cost contribution store item ‘DEUS’ Chosen’ has been upgraded to require only six days between question resets.

* Awarded for: Discovering that the flexibility of human racial gift was artificially hobbled in the tutorial and teaching others about this fact is restricted in Existentia.

* Legendary Title. Competition Rank: 1st, 500 Ranking points, 10,000 experience.

* Geas of ‘Fate Restriction’ Strengthened: Extra constraints around discussing or even alluding to the extended capability of fate have been placed on your soul.

That title had been earned by him working out that the GODs had been preventing communication about the use of fate. A Geas prevented written instructions from being exchanged on the auction house and even made it hard to talk about fate with your friends.

It had nothing to do with the body, so he knew he still had it. When he had received it the first time, he had been excited by the reward because it had upgraded the most powerful trait he had bought in the contribution store. Forty years alone, struggling to kill things, had gotten him that trait; that sacrifice had been worth it, and that upgrade had made it even more useful.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

In this new life, Tom didn’t know if the trait had been allowed to come through with him or if this title could influence it. The trait had allowed him to ask a single yes or no question every eight days. It was an ability that could shape strategy at a level beyond human comprehension. For example, you could ask something like, is it better for humanity to go to war or not? To have that answered explicitly was a massive boon if, as a society you were considering the pros and cons. The trait had been a trump card that was supposed to get stronger every year that he had survived.

Instead, he had only lasted a little over six months.

In many ways the purchase had been wasted… but, based on the amount of fate that he had had available as a child, it was possible that others had completed his quest. If they had done it, and succeeded despite the odds, then that forty years of sacrifice, of loneliness, in the tutorial would have been worth it.

But they hadn’t…

He put his hands over his eyes in sudden despair.

They couldn’t have done it, because it was supposed to be a knock-out blow. But the competition was still ongoing, and humanity’s position remained precarious.

Failure was the only explanation. Briefly he felt like crying - the size, the consequences, the impossibility of everything almost overwhelming him.

Stay calm, he reminded himself.

“It’s not over. You’re here. You can be the difference. The fact you’re reincarnated means there was a chance,” he told the empty room. Deliberately, he recalled the conversation he had with DEUS when he had died. The only way he could be reincarnated was if humanity could be saved. That was why he was here in the first place, and he would not fail. He would use every waking moment to drive himself to greater and greater heights. Nothing would stop him from getting humanity to the third place on the rankings. That would be enough. They didn’t need second or first. The rewards for third would give Em a future, and his parents too, of course, but mainly he was doing this for his defenceless innocent little sister. She was currently in stasis until the end of the competition. What he was fighting for was the resources she would have when she came out of it.

The competition continued, so he prayed that he still possessed the trait, because its power in this late stage would be almost unrivalled. It was only now that humanity had established towns that they could consider acting with a thousand or more people at once. And the more people the questions could cover, the more impactful they became. He had assumed that the trait would be lost, that DEUS or the other GODs wouldn’t let him keep it, but the fact he had a title that had once referred to it gave him hope.

Nothing was certain, though. It was equally possible that the reward of the title had changed. and he made a mental note to explore that once he worked out how to check his status.

There were three other titles that Tom thought might have been transferred. With his excellent memory, it was easy enough to record exactly what they had been. They had all been awarded for outcomes that were non-body related, so he was pretty sure they counted as soul-based for this purpose.

Evolution Master:

* Reward: Requirements to evolve an existing ability are reduced by 50%.

Unique Skill Creator:

* Reward: Provides a boost to the chance of evolution and, when a skill evolves, it has a higher chance of gaining an additional sideways evolution.

Sage of Fate (Earth):

* Reward: All Fate used is ten percent stronger.

All three titles were going to be a huge bonus for him. Evolution Master would effectively allow him to make twice as many evolutions as he would otherwise be able to. Instead of taking one-tier zero spell to tier four, he could promote two in the same amount of time. In practice, the benefit was significantly higher than that, because to evolve something you usually had to pass three tests: comprehending knowledge thresholds, determining unique applications. and number of times used. For the first two of those tests, getting them to fifty percent would take a lot less than half the effort required to reach a hundred percent. If you needed ten unique applications of the abilities, then thinking of all of the first five was probably easier than just coming up with the tenth when you had already found nine.

The other two titles would also help. His progress was not a hundred percent fate locked, but a substantial amount of what he was going to achieve would be aided by the attribute. Having it work ten percent stronger would make a difference. As for the Unique Skill Creator title, it would mean that as he progressed his skills up the tiers, they would gain useful additional abilities.

Those sideways evolutions, as he had discovered with Black Dodge, would each increase the power of the ability by a significant percentage.

Together, it was a massive head start over everyone else. He kind of wished he had other titles, but the six months he had lived in his second life had not been enough to build up a huge backlog of them.

“You can do this.” He told himself. “You can make a difference.” And, knowing that those titles existed, and he almost certainly had them, made him feel a lot more confident about his chances. He would become powerful, and he would kill the dragon, and this time permanently, Tom promised himself fiercely.

He would do it.

But for now, he had to make the most use of his isolation time, and that meant gathering knowledge. He flipped back to the contents and then opened the book to the chapter titled.

Determining your skills, spells, traits and titles.