Whether or not this was all just a strange dream, and let’s face it; a strange god-like existence recruiting me to help another species adapt to life on a new world?

  No matter how you look at it that’s pretty strange. Still I had made my decision. It wasn’t like I had anything left to lose anyway.

  “Hey Admin, I’m in.”

  “Sorry for taking so long to come to a decision.”

  “Uh okay,” I was pretty sure that the being that I was conversing with was mocking me. But I’ve wasted enough time and it was too hard to tell without access to my emotions. So, I decided to just do as I was asked.

  “Status.”

  Okay some of the stats were familiar to the ones in games I had played when I was still alive. There were a few different ones I wasn’t expecting like the ones I was guessing were Coordination and maybe Toughness?

  It was a little bit hard to tell since they were abbreviated but it seemed like a pretty good guess.

  Those were the only things that I could think of that made sense when I was looking at the rest of the Stats. Currently they seemed pretty low but from the looks of things there was a way to not only increase my Stats directly but change how many I got when I Levelled Up.

  Okay so this told me three things. One the Admin knew when I accessed my Status. Two, my Soul Aspect was important to my growth, so I was very thankful that I already had it unlocked since the last thing that I needed right now was more trauma. I would already have enough of that to deal with when the block on my emotions was removed. And three, Skills can grow more powerful by levelling up which will in turn fuel more growth. This was getting complicated pretty fast.

  “Will I have any Skills when I arrive, and also could you explain how Additional Growth Rates work? I think I have some idea, but I’d just like to make sure.”

  Well at least I’ll be able to communicate with the Yajash but hearing that I only had one Skill made me feel a bit like I had wasted my life. Then again these were only the Skills that my new body would have so it shouldn’t be too hard to ‘relearn’ what few survival and fighting skills I already knew. Another interesting thing was that Growth Rates did indeed seem to work how I thought they would. But I wasn’t sure yet how this would actually fit in with the rest of the system.

  “Sounds like I’m going to be pretty defenceless.”

  So basically, this planet was chosen because the Yajash can survive there even if they can’t bring enough supplies with them to last very long. However due to these ‘rules’ that the Admin was referring to they wouldn’t know what was safe to eat and what wasn’t which was one of the reasons I was being sent ahead.

  “Alright, what about the Yajash?”

  “Wait, they won’t be there when I arrive?”

  That’s interesting. I wonder whether the Admin could have even helped them get to Edra or they had no choice but to do it for themselves there was so much I didn’t know about the situation. Worryingly what this did mean was that I would probably be on my own in a dangerous environment for two months, not what I was expecting when I signed up for this.

  Well that last part didn’t sound good, but it was something I would just have to deal with myself. Being able to see things rationally was all very well and good in a situation like this where not being able to think clearly could cause problem was all very well and good but without my emotions it was hard to know how I would react when I arrived on Edra.

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  If I had a body right now, I would’ve nodded my head at this, but I didn’t so I decided to just answer.

  “All right ready when you are.”

  And once had finished reading this last screen everything slowly faded to black.

  Floating in the blackness I started to wonder once again whether this was just a dream created by my dying brain. Well, it was nice while it lasted. I guess this is where I find out whether any religions were right about what happened after death.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  As I thought this, I saw a small light appear in the previously endless black. Huh, well there’s something here, things are starting to look up. The light started to grow, slowly at first but faster and faster until it filled my vision.

  With a jolt my body jerked upright and looked around while I blinked my suddenly blurry eyes in an attempt to bring everything into focus. When my eyesight finally cleared, I saw that I was in a small clearing surrounded by unusual trees and other plants.

  Alright now I’m confused where is this?

  Edra! This is Edra! But that means…

  …That I’ve been abandoned on an alien planet.

  Suddenly it seemed far more likely that I had in fact died and I would never see my friends or family again.

  A ball of pain and grief started to form in my stomach as the weight of my memories pulled me to my knees, hot tears streaming from my eyes, never again would I see the people I once knew. I was alone.

  Every passing second my treacherous brain called up more details I would miss. From the things that used to annoy me to things I hadn’t even thought of as important until now. Like the way that my mother would always get me to go and read a dictionary to find what a certain word meant if I didn’t know instead of just telling me. Or how when we were kids my brother would always bug me until I went and played with him, no matter what I was doing at the time.

  Even if I survived until the Yajash arrived it’s not like they would accept me so easily. We could just be too different, and if that was the case then I would still be alone. Even if the things that I had learned in my previous life back on earth would help me to survive in this wilderness they would only serve to isolate me further when the Yajash arrived. From what the Admin had told me about the Yajash it seemed to me that our societies were just too different for them to accept me easily.

  But in the end, even with something controlling my emotions I still wouldn’t have made the choice to come here if I was just going to give up, even back on earth I was stubborn and coming here hadn’t changed that. All those things that were causing me pain were also a part of what made me choose to come here. Even if the people I had cared about back on earth would never see what I ended up achieving in this new life of mine they still had a part to play in it because they had made me who I was today.

  Like hell I was going to let my regrets overpower my desire to live the way they had taught me to. Reaching up to wipe the tears from my face I saw a screen floating before me and felt a manic smile appear on my face as I read it. To think that my stubborn nature was so obvious that the System gave me a Skill that pointed it out.

  But my previous actions had still taken their toll and my head began to throb.

  I didn’t know whether my headache was a result of the emotional stress I had just endured, unlocking that Skill or a combination of the two. Still not only had I unlocked what seemed to be quite a powerful Skill on my own, but I’d obtained 5 more Aspect Points and some Stats because of it!

  Rising to my feet I realised there was something odd about my hands, glancing down I froze in shock, my hands were covered in greyish skin!

  Raising them up to my face I realised that wasn’t the only change, my hands weren’t as slender and long-fingered as the ones that I was looking at.

  Huh, wonder how different the rest of my body is.

  I rubbed my face trying to get an idea of what I now looked like. My face felt narrower than it used to be with a slightly longer nose. Reaching up further I felt that I still had what seemed to be the same shaggy hair I used to have. But tugging on my fringe I managed to reveal that in fact here was a visible difference to my hair colour and stared in surprise. Instead of the brown I was expecting the lock of hair I held was a mossy green!

  Well that’ll take a bit of getting used to.

  Looking down at my body which was thankfully clothed in a short-sleeved shirt and some pants I saw that it was thinner and shorter than I remembered but my limbs seemed to be longer meaning that I felt like I was at least of a similar height to my previous body. It was a strange sensation having longer limbs than I was used to making my balance feel a bit off. I also had a small knife hanging from my hip which would seem to be the weapon I had been promised.

  My arms seemed to have long blotches of darker skin looking like someone had splashed me with body paint. My arms were also very slender something which I wasn’t sure was due to my low Strength or because of my new species.

  Wait a minute!

  After a bit of fumbling I breathed a sigh of relief, everything seemed to be normal ‘down there,’ or at least as normal as possible considering my weird skin.

  Well thank god for that, no guy wanted to have a stranger changing anything down there without permission, especially when said stranger was about as far away from being human as physically possible.

  Looking around the clearing once again I noticed there appeared to be nothing capable of threatening me nearby.

  Well that Admin did promise to protect the area I ‘spawned’ in for a week, there wouldn’t have been a lot of point in lying about that.

  Having examined my surroundings I decided that it was time to check out this whole ‘Aspect’ thing.

  Huh, so that’s what my Personal Aspect is; The Aspect of Evolution. That’s pretty vague I wonder what benefits something like that will give me?

  Since I had 15 points to spend so I decided to put the first one into Aspect of the Yajash to see what would happen and received a notification telling me that my Strength and Endurance had both increased by one point.

  Hmm, not bad. Wondering what would happen if I added more points into the Aspect of the Yajash I felt a pull on my consciousness. Not one that pulled me out like what happened when I died but inward.

  I found myself floating above a planet, staring down at the surface I saw that the land was barren of life, volcanoes belching smoke and ash into the air. My point of view floated slowly down towards the roiling ocean and soon I was immersed in the depths.

  As I looked around, I noticed some strange shapes beginning to form in the water surrounding me. Interested I watched these shapes slowly change into a form that I remembered from my biology classes from back in High School. The double helix of DNA.

  As soon as I realised this my consciousness was returned to my normal leaving me with an even worse headache than I had before.

  Well that was interesting, more than a little bit terrifying but interesting. It seems that my Aspect of Evolution was even rarer than I had anticipated, if not completely unique which could very well be the case since it was linked to my souls somehow. I really didn’t want to know what the notification meant by ‘beyond my worst nightmares’ though.

  Anyway, I suppose I’d better check the details about my new Skill and resource.

  Alright, so if I’m reading this right, I now have the ability to drain the ‘Essence’ which I’m assuming is the Amino Acids that make up DNA from a corpse. That’s… kinda creepy. I wonder what Skills use a resource like that. Another odd thing was that the increase to my Growth Rate seemed rather small, although it was an Unassigned Stat Point which made it much more flexible since I could assign it to any Stat that I wanted to.

  In fact, the Unassigned Stat Points are more than a little bit useful right now. Especially as I’m willing to bet that in my current state I’m not going to have a shitshow of surviving on this planet if I don’t get stronger and fast.

  Opening up my Stat Screen I started to fiddle around trying to figure out how each of the Stats actually worked without actually confirming the changes which allowed me to see and feel what each Stat did. The stats like Strength, Agility, Charisma and Perception seemed to be fairly obvious in how they worked. Increasing them only changed, how strong, fast, likable or perceptive I was. Alright, so I was guessing for the last one since without someone else to notice any changes the effects of increasing my Charisma wouldn’t affect me very much personally right now. This was especially true considering the fact that this new body of mine looked like it hadn’t been fed in a month. Curious I decided to add a point to Strength or Agility which caused my muscles to grow warmer for a brief period of time. They didn’t look any different, but I did feel slightly stronger and faster. Increasing my Perception made the world come slightly more into focus, my vision was sharper, sounds and smells were more noticeable and so on.

  On the other hand, the other stats got complicated really quickly, but they had a much more noticeable effect on my Stat Screen. Increasing my Constitution increased my Health by 5 points and my Stamina regen by 0.5. Increasing my Endurance increased my Stamina by 5 and my Health regen by 0.1. Toughness increased my Health by 2 and made my skin feel slightly tougher. Adding points to Intelligence didn’t make me feel any more intelligent but did have the noticeable benefit of increasing my MP by 5. Increasing my Coordination had the odd effect of making me feel more flexible, something that I guess is there to offset the negative effect of Toughness which seemed to increase how tough my skin was as well as increasing my Stamina regen by 0.1. Vitality increased my Health regen by 0.5 and my Stamina by 2. Wisdom increased my Mana regen by 0.5 as well as my total Mana by 2. Willpower, which was perhaps the Stat that I was now most interested in due to the fact that it was now my highest stat as well as the one that had the highest growth rate because of my new Unbreakable Will Skill. Sadly, it only seemed to increase my MP regen by 0.1 according to my Stat Screen which made me a bit disappointed but that’s alright. All that means is that it must have another effect that is harder for me to quantify like increasing my resistance to certain attacks and effects which is what the description Unbreakable Will seemed to be suggesting.

  Speaking of which I wasn’t quite sure why Wisdom was also increased by that Skill, but I guess that being sure of one’s self can be considered a form of wisdom as well which could explain it.

  So now that I had figured out how some of these Stats worked, I decided to assign the Stat Points I had received.

  Seeing the changes that I had made I nodded happily. Since I still wasn’t sure how all the Stat worked, I had decided to raise all of my Stats to at least 5 and add the leftover points to Constitution and Endurance for the extra Health, and Stamina since those were both things that I could be certain of needing. Since I couldn’t see much point I having high Charisma when I was the only one around I had decided that now that I had increased it to 5 points I wouldn’t use any more of my Unassigned Stat Points to increase my Charisma and instead rely on the points from my Growth Rate.

  I was guessing by the increase to my Growth Rate provided by my other Skills that the Charisma boost was coming from the one Skill that I hadn’t received a notification about and quickly brought up my Skill List and selected the Skill.

  Earlier when the Admin had mentioned this Skill, I had been surprised by how its name suggested that there was a different Skill for the written language and seeing the way the Skill Description was worded only served to confirm this idea in my mind. This would mean that I would have to learn the written language from scratch when the Yajashians arrived. Still the 2 Charisma per level was a welcome thing. Even if I didn’t have much use for it right now getting a head start on making myself more likable didn’t seem like a bad idea since I didn’t really know how the Yajash were going to react to me when they arrived. The fact that this Skill seemed to be a common Skill and still gave a 2-point increase to my Growth Rate was also quite telling as was the fact that it maxed out at Level 10. I was willing to bet that wasn’t the case for most Skills. I didn’t have any proof that this was the case, it was just a feeling that I got. Anyway, the fact that this common Skill was giving me 2 Stat Points every time Levelled Up suggested to me that as I increased the Level of my Skills the amount that they increased my Growth Rate by would also increase. This would increase the importance of training the Skill you already had instead of only trying to gain more and more Skills to increase you Growth Rate.

  The only thing that was really bothering me right now was that other than my Essence Drain Skill which could only be used on a corpse I didn’t have any Skills that used MP. My MP currently had both the second highest total of all resources and the highest regen and that would only continue to grow because of my current Growth Rate. Every time I levelled up, I would receive 2 points of Willpower, 1 point of Wisdom and one Stat Point which I could add to any Stat I wanted. This was all very well and good of course but without Skills that used MP the increase of 2 MP and 0.7 MP regen every time I levelled up would quickly go to waste.

  Still from what the Admin I had talked to had told me about the Yajash it seemed likely that obtaining some form of magic Skill wouldn’t be too hard.

  Closing my Status, I decided to continue adding my Aspect Points to my Aspect of the Yajash since I had been interrupted by everything else but then what should happen that I am interrupted once again by the loudest gurgle I had ever heard.

  “Oh yeah,” I groaned clutching my suddenly aching stomach. “This body has never eaten before.”