“Ngh…” William groaned. Whoever invented portal teleportation needed to figure out a way to make it smoother. He felt like he was about to wrench his guts out. “Esther, I feel so-” he paused. Where exactly was Esther anyways?
“Hello.”
William glanced around, but there was no one there.
“I’m speaking into your mind which is why you can’t hear me. I’m Polaris Australis, but you can call me Lucien. Nice to meet you, William!” exclaimed a cheerful male voice.
“Where is Esther?”
“In my divine realm, she’ll be back soon.”
“Your divine realm?” William raised an eyebrow, “so you really are a god?”
“I’m an Astral God, which are divine beings who are linked to the energy of the stars who have reached the rank of divinity, otherwise known as the stage above S rank. The majority of the Astral Gods are all part of the Astral Pantheon which Esther will receive an invite to someday if she manages to become a divine being and follows a path based on stars,” Lucien explained.
“I see…” William nodded to himself. This was useful information about the multiverse. “So, do you know how I unlock my attribute?"
“Oh!” Lucien snapped his fingers. Or at least William heard him snap his fingers since he couldn’t actually see Lucien, “that’s super simple. Just sort of ‘will’ your status window into existence and then the system will register you as a new member of the multiverse and then be able to give you stuff.”
“You want me to ‘will’ my status window into existence? How does that even work?”
“Just try it!”
“Okay…” William said skeptically. He focused on the air in front of him, trying to ‘will’ the status window into existence or whatever that meant.
Status:
Name: William Minaret
Titles: [redacted]
Attribute: TBD
Race: [Human (G) - (lvl 0)]
Stats:
Strength: 7
Agility: 8
Endurance: 6
Vitality: 5
Perception: 8
Mana: 100/100
Skills:
[Language of the Multiverse (Unique) - lvl 1 (max)]
[You have a message from the System Moderators!]
Hey you got your status window open! Well, with some divine help that is. I honestly can’t believe your friend, Esther, managed to figure it out on her own. Sometimes when we have an integration, literally not a single person out of quadrillions manages to figure it out on their own. Well anyways, you’re probably wanting your own skill, aren’t you? Give us a moment to spin the wheel! (gacha games for the win!)
[Spinning the [Wheel of Attributes (???)]...]
[Success.]
Gained Attribute: [Cherished by Magic (Mythical)] - you are now Cherished by Magic! You now have an extremely close bond to magic, and as the one cherished by Magic, this [Skill] will give you [Skills] relating to magic and mana and also make learning any [Skills] related to magic 25% easier. You are now beloved by magic. This [Attribute] will evolve over time.
“I told you that would work,” Lucien said smugly, “so what [Attribute] did you get?”
“Some kind of [Skill] that gives me [Skill] options relating to magic. It also makes learning [Skills] relating to magic easier,” William explained. Probably not the best idea to tell the god I just met the details of my skill, but it sounds like we’re going to be in with him for the long run if Esther really did make some kind of permanent bond.
“That actually sounds really good depending on what [Skills] it gives you. Has it given you any [Skills] yet?”
“No. It’s just my intuition, but I think I need to activate it,” William stared at the skill for a moment before asking, “how do you activate [Attributes]?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“It’s like the status window. You just kinda… ‘will’ it to happen,” Lucien paused, “I’m struggling to explain it. It just sort of works, you know? It’s a natural thing for the inhabitants of the multiverse.”
“Thank you, for the very helpful explanation,” William said sarcastically. So it should just… happen? He focused on the [Attribute], trying to make it happen and to his surprise, a metallic rainbow light started to shine around him. “Huh, that actually worked. Although, I don’t really feel like it’s doing anything.”
“Wait hold on, did your [Attribute] say anything else? Something relating to being beloved by a certain type of magic or element?”
“Yes actually. It said that I was beloved by magic but it didn’t seem that important-”
Lucien cut William off, “Are you kidding me?! That’s probably the most important part of the [Attribute]!”
“What’s so important about it?” William questioned.
“Okay, so essentially, in the multiverse there’s millions, if not billions of different types of magic and submagics. Being beloved by a certain type of magic is honestly not that uncommon, appearing in about one in a trillion people which while that may sound tiny, it’s just uncommon in the scale of the multiverse. It’s called an affinity and there are different ranks of affinities. Affinities aren’t always all that useful though since some types of magic aren’t all that useful or you might not be compatible with that type of magic, or you just might have a really weak affinity, but if it’s a really good affinity, like a tier four water affinity and you have some talent in using that kind of magic, you’ll probably get recruitment offers from some pretty good groups. The only downside is that it essentially forces you to make the type of magic you’re beloved by your main type of magic and you also can’t use the opposite type of magic very well, with varying difficulties with the weaker your affinity, the easier to use the opposite type, and the stronger your affinity, the harder it is to use the opposite type. Sometimes, someone might be born with an affinity so strong that they can’t even cast any spells from the opposite affinity. You, though, just became one of the luckiest people out of people who have ever gotten affinities because you got a magic affinity and if you’re able to unlock unique classes because of it, it sounds like you got a high tier one. Seriously, magic only ever chooses to give someone an affinity once per eon, this is a massive deal. You essentially just won the best possible item/character/etc in a video game from a gacha system with zero pity and won your 50/50. Forget about just offers from just some pretty good groups, you’ll get offers from some of the top players, like the Calamities, the Demon Lords, the Progenitors, the Emperors of the Beast Empire, and essentially every single peak faction.”
“Thank you for the explanation, I’ll… keep that in mind,” William’s head was spinning, it seriously was that big of a deal?! Man, and here he thought that it didn’t matter. I have to be careful not to get arrogant. If this was a novel, I would probably end up dying if I got cocky since that’s what always happens to the arrogant genius. They die. …If they’re a side character. I don’t see myself being the main character though so I have to keep this in mind.
Lucien interrupted William’s thoughts, “Anyways, I think I have to go. I’m sending Esther back now. Bye!”
“Bye,” William waved his hand. Wow, I can’t believe he just left after dropping that bombshell on me.
“Holy shit,” Esther stumbled out of a swirling gold and midnight blue portal before proceeding to double over and promptly vomit, “whoever invented spacial travel needs to find a way to make it less bumpy. That was like that one roller coaster we went on where the only person who managed to not throw up was Dietrich, except this was ten times worse.”
“I can’t disagree with you there,” William laughed as he extended a hand to help Esther up, “so what went wrong this time?”
“Hey! Just because it’s me, doesn’t mean that something automatically went wrong,” Esther protested.
“Esther. You wanted to get boba and our whole entire reality got flipped upside down. You’ve got absolutely no leg room to be talking,” William said, deadpan.
“W–well…” Esther trailed off, unable to come up with a retort. “Okay fine. I may have signed and agreed to a contract I didn’t know the terms of because half of it was redacted and I have zero clue what I just signed up for.”
“That’s just like you,” William sighed, shaking his head, “oh well, worst comes to worst, we’ll deal with it.”
“You could’ve at least acted a bit concerned or surprised,” Esther grumbled.
William shrugged, “It’s not like we can do anything about it. The most logical thing to do is to just deal with it when the time comes.”
“Okay well so that’s great and all, but what do we actually do now?” Esther gestured to the area around her, “we literally have no idea what we’re supposed to do now.”
[You have a message from the system moderators!]
Funny you should mention that actually, we’ve just finished setting up the tutorial now that all the eligible candidates for this tutorial have arrived! Just sit back and hang tight for a moment!
[Commensing tutorial…]
[Success.]
[Tutorial X-11 Panel]
Time Remaining: 59 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 58 seconds
Tutorial Type: Scenario
Tutorial Objective: Survive the scenarios
Tutorial Information: this is a scenario tutorial where you have to go through the tutorial completing scenarios (obviously) which will in turn give you things like skills, items, stats, and other various stuff to help give you a start before you return to the newly remade earth. You also will earn Tutorial Points (TP) depending on how well you do in scenarios. TP can be spent at the tutorial store (please note the store will only be available for the duration of the tutorial so make sure to spend your points before the allotted time is up) for various things. Good luck!
People Remaining: 799/800
TP Collected: 0
[Comensing 1st scenario…]
[Success.]
[Scenario 1 Panel]
Time Remaining: 29 minutes, 59 seconds
Scenario Objective: RUN! GET TO A SAFE ROOM!
Scenario Information: didn’t you hear me? I said RUN! Read this while you’re running because the monster stampede is being released and you’ve got to get to a safe room (marked in green on the map. Access the map as you would the status window). Also I would not recommend trying to fight the monsters. Yes it will give you TP and good stuff but you’ll probably die considering that you definitely don’t have a class because no one has a class, and since you may or may not be able to use your unique skill, it’s just plainly a bad idea. Why are you still reading through this? You need to focus on running! There is no more important info here! You are literally about to die!
“Esther, why is it that whenever you do something, something else has to go wrong?!” William cried.
