My eyes slowly eased open as the sun shone through the gap in the curtains and directly onto my face, forcing me to cover up the sun with my hand before I quickly reached over to pull the curtain more closed and turned around pulling the cover back over me.
It's still 6:50 AM, that means another 10 minutes before my alarm goes off. As if staying up all night gaming wasn't bad enough now I even woke up early because of a weird dream. Ahh, maybe I should just skip school today and catch up on sleep… that sounds like a good idea.
[Oh oops, I was hoping to finish transferring all the memories during your sleep, but I guess it's a bit late for that now… Time for plan B.]
Ah? What was that? Did I leave the TV on when I went to bed? But that sounded really close and the TV is in another room…
Reluctantly, I lift my head from the comfortable pillow to figure out what is going on, only to come face to face with a floating see through girl with a strange hat clicking away at her tablet.
[Sorry, this will sting a bit!]
"What the fu-aaaaagh!" Before I could even question what was happening, the promised 'sting' came by violently assaulting my head, which I slammed back down into my pillow to suppress a scream lest my neighbors think something is wrong.
The pain went away just as quickly as it came and only a few seconds later it was entirely gone, almost as if it never existed in the first place, replaced by countless memories that did not belong to me. Or were the memories of the previous me the ones that don't belong?
"That wasn't a dream?" I mutter out as I try to wrap my head around these new memories in my head belonging to me yet at the same time a different person sharing my name. Opening up my eyes again, the figure I noticed briefly before floats around upside down in the air.
[Good morning, sleep head] the floating see-through hologram that was no taller than a few inches flipped herself to right-side-up and greeted me by making a V with her fingers. [You're probably a little confused right now, but that is to be expected. The two souls and memories should fully merge within the next few days at the latest, at which point all of that will be gone. Until then, though, how are you feeling?]
"I'm feeling… fine." I say carefully, narrowing my eyes and focus on the floating chibi hologram. Did I get drugged or something? I mean, I did get invited by Gwen for dinner last night, but I don't think she nor her father would feed me anything suspicious.
Wait, Gwen as in Gwen Stacy? Oh, wow, I live next to the future Spider-Gwen! Wait, why are yo- I mean-why am I surprised at that? We've been neighbors for years now. Agh, this is weird.
"Maybe I'm not entirely fine." I admit after the few seconds spent in confusion, to which the chibi nods with closed eyes and a thoughtful face as she crosses her arms.
[Well, that's not entirely unexpected. As I said, this should correct itself within a few days at the latest and a few hours at the earliest, so just roll with the punches and everything will work out.] She gives me a thumbs up. [I'm Galacta by the way, your assigned, or I suppose, volunteered, system administrator. Feel free to call my Gali as thats what my friends call me.]
"Well then, hello Gali," I greet, deciding to not stay in bed any longer and instead figure all of this out before I have to head out for school… oh right, we are going to Oscorp, I'm sure that will be fun. I turn off the alarm clock prematurely and get up in a sitting position, making sure to keep myself covered with the blanket instead of getting up as I sleep naked and Gali is still staring at me. "So since you are the system admin, can you explain what this thing does to me?"
[Of course! I can give you a full rundown. Also, don't worry about me being here. I swore to only be helpful and not hinder you in any way, so just pretend like not he-AAAAA what the hell man! At least give me a warning!] Gali suddenly yelled and covered her eyes as I stood up to put on clothes.
"Hey, I was just following your words… also why are you peeking through your fingers."
[I know, I know, but please consider my heart as well. Ah, well whatever, I guess we can get started. To start with you can bring up your Status window at any time by just thinking the word 'Status' in your head, no need to say anything out loud.] Gali explains calmly a few seconds after her panic as I put on clothes.
'Status' I think in my head and a panel shows up in my peripheral vision, very much see-through just like Gali herself.
******************************
Name: Reo Hill
Might: F
Finesse: F
Spirit: E-
Skills: None
Current Dungeon Floor: 1
******************************
"Hey, this is pretty bare-bones, no?" I ask, seeing the very short panel. At least it will be easy to understand, I guess?
[You could say that sure] Gali flies over and lands on my shoulder as she shrugs [But anything more complex really isn't needed to be honest, this does everything that is needed of it. Here, let's go over things one by one.]
Gali hovers up to be right next to the panel, first pointing her finger at the very top. [This is your name. Very easy to understand, right? Nothing much to it, just gotta make sure you remember it.]
I nod. Yeap, I'm Reo Hill, that hasn't changed. By the way, Hill isn't my birth name. My real parents died years ago in a work accident, and I was adopted by one of their coworkers and got her name instead. Haven't actually ever met the woman, though. Guess she doesn't care enough to come see me, but the money she sends is enough for me to take care of everything, so I can't really complain.
Hey, wait a second… ah fuck it, I'll worry about that name in the future. For now, it looks like Gali wants to continue.
[Might encompass most things about your physical body, like your physical strength and durability. As an F rank, you are pretty much just an average human, but I'll go over the ranks in a bit in more detail, for now let's move on to finesse.]
[The easiest way to think about finesse is speed. Both your movement speed but also reflexes and the like. It also affects how good you are with your hands, your hand-eye coordination and other similar stuff. Physical speed is also something heavily tied to Might as it has to do with your body but make sure neither lags behind the other too much nor you might run into problems.]
[As for the final stat, spirit, it has a lot to do with how strong you are magically. How much energy you can put out for skills, how strong you are in terms of willpower and your awareness. It is kind of hard to quantify but as with the other stats, higher letter equals stronger so that's good enough right? It looks like you are already E- rank there, probably because you had two souls merged together, so good job!]
Gali finishes explaining the skills in one long breath before moving on to the ranks.
[Now for ranks, they are sorted by letters. F is the lowest followed by E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS and finally EX. Each rank is also split into subdivisions with either a negative or a plus at the end, so F-, F and F+ followed by E-, E and E+ and so on. Only EX has no other subdivisions, since at that point you would be as strong as The One Above All or The One Below All at their peak. Can't really imagine anyone reaching that, but you are welcome to try.]
"I think I'm a bit far away from that right now. How does one improve their stats anyway? Training?" I ask Gali. Should I start hitting the gym?
[Stats in the system panel are just a way to keep track of your abilities, so sure you could technically train, but that will only really work for early levels. F ranks and low E ranks are just what a human can reach, so training hard for a few years will raise your ranks sure, but the scaling gets pretty crazy pretty quick. By the time you reach B ranks, we are talking about some lower level cosmic beings. S ranks are real forces to be messed with, beings like my father. Let's not even go beyond that. My point is that lifting some dumbbell won't get you there.]
Where did you get those glasses and pointer from?
"So… if not training, then how?"
[The answer is the dungeon.] Gali declares [You can see at the bottom that you are currently at the first floor, that's because you haven't entered the dungeon yet. Every dungeon floor is another small universe filled with enemies that The One Below All has summoned to invade our universe to destroy it. It is your job to clear them out and as you do that you will be able to get stronger by killing enemies. It works out, right? Here, I can even promise to give you a special gift from me once you clear the first 5 levels. Oh, and you can also get skills from the dungeon, but we can talk about that later once we find some.]
Gali removes her glasses and throws the pointer away behind her back, seemingly done with her teacher act. Wait that's all?
"Hold on, is there nothing else to the system? Levels, classes, quests, uhhh…shop?" There is no way it's just the dungeon and stats, right? Surely…
[Nah, that's all to it, everything else is kind of unnecessary or limiting towards your growth. Oh wait, you do actually have an inventory. Call it a persona gift to you from Infinity and Eternity. You can store things there and stop time for everything inside as you wish. There is also one other feature actually that was demanded by The Living Tribunal but made more accommodating by The One Above All. We will talk about that a little later once you clear the fifth floor of the dungeon, though.]
Well an inventory is better than nothing and if nothing else, not having quests means no stupid penalties or forcing me into things I don't want to do… I'm a bit worried about what The Living Tribunal would have wanted to be a part of the system, but I can forget about that for now.
I close the system panel and Gali goes back to sit on my shoulder. I guess I should eat breakfast and get ready for school. It won't be long till Gwen calls for me, and as her dad promised to drop us both off at Oscorp for the tour today, I don't wanna keep them waiting.
***
Author Notes: There will be R18 later in this story. It will be seperate and fully skippable chapters for any who dont care for it and wont really effect the story itself. I just dont really have experience in writing smut and want to do some.