[Ok? What just happened?] Staring at the hundreds of red notifications slowly flickering and fading away, I tried my best to make sense of the absolute chaos I had just witnessed. One moment I was falling from space, and the next, I was practically blinded by a wall of glitchy error messages screaming at me.
I sat there, well, I'm not sure if sitting made the most sense, since I was a ball, but I was completely stunned, as my brain buffered as the last few alerts blinked out of existence. And then, like a truck of pure realization plowing into my brain at full speed, it hit me. I had a system.
[OOOH SHIT! I HAVE A SYSTEM! WHOOOOOOOOO!]
I would've jumped up in happiness if I had legs. Hell, if I had a mouth, I'd be screaming at the top of my lungs.
All those novels, all those fanfics I binged, most of them had some kind of protagonist getting a system that granted them powers, skills, and stats. And now… now it was my turn to have one.
So saying the magic words, I called out the system.
—
Name - Orin King
Species - C.I.T.A.D.E.L. Type α
Level - 1 (0/1000)
SP - 0
RP - 0
—
[Equipment]
[SKILL TREES]
[TECH TREES]
—
[Token Wheel] - (2)
[Quest]
[Inventory]
—
[Woah, this system is actually somewhat… empty.] There wasn't much to look at. My name was listed, and apparently, I was some kind of species called C.I.T.A.D.E.L. Type α.
Type α? The symbol made me kinda nervous… alpha? Was there a whole tiered system of these things? Were there others like me? That thought started to gnaw at me, but I quickly pushed it aside. Worrying about some unknown number of potential people like me didn't do me any good, especially when I couldn't even move or do anything at all. So I focused back on the screen and looked below my species, slightly praying that I was at the highest tier already.
[So I can level up.] I was pretty sure I knew how that worked, but then, what the hell was SP and RP? I stared at those terms for a while. My brain had already been overloaded by falling from space and getting hit by a semi-truck, and now I had to figure out what they meant.
Luckily, after reading tons of books about systems and powers in novels and fanfics, I knew there had to be a way to access this with my mind. It took me several minutes of concentrated effort, like finding the right mental switch to flip, but eventually, I managed to click on the screen with my mind.
It felt like a normal click, like opening a window on a computer, except there was no mouse, just my thoughts guiding it. And when I mentally clicked on SP, it expanded just a bit and displayed: [Skill Points]. Simple enough. Then I did the same for RP, and it popped up with [Research Points].
Both had a big, fat zero next to them. And that was it. No tooltips, no help menus, no glowing "Click Here to Learn More" buttons. Just... a name and a zero.
I let out a mental groan and moved on to the next section of the system since there was nothing that I could do. Scrolling a bit down, there it was, [Equipment], [Skill Trees], and [Tech Trees].
Naturally, I clicked on them, and just like SP and RP… nothing. No response, no menu, no error message. Just a cold digital shrug.
[Bruh.] That was all I could think of. My amazing system was so great that I got the version with missing UI. But then I saw it, something different. Something that actually had a number next to it. [Token Wheel] - 2
[Ohhh, now we're talking.] Mentally clicking on that tab, two massive wheels appeared right on my system screen. And to be honest, I felt butterflies in my stomach when I saw the wheels, as they just gave me a sense of awe.
Zooming in to get a closer look, the wheels looked nearly identical at first, but there were key differences, mostly in the interface right in front of each one.
Both wheels had five colored buttons lined up beneath it, arranged in a neat row, white, green, blue, purple, and gold. All of them had a glowing zero floating just above, except for the white button, which had a one instead.
So… I had exactly one spin on each wheel using the lowest-tier button. Pretty good, I guess. Still, better than nothing.
Zooming in mentally, inspecting the setup a little closer. Just above the colored buttons on each wheel was a dark, obsidian-colored nameplate. One had the word 'Equipment' etched into it in glowing white ink. The other simply read 'Tree'.
And I could literally feel myself shaking, or, well, whatever the mental equivalent of shaking was, because I was so damn excited. My entire round body buzzed with anticipation. I was close enough now to actually read some of the names on the wheel, and for a moment, I genuinely thanked the big man upstairs for giving me this chance.
I focused on the 'Equipment' wheel first, letting my eyes, or whatever counted as eyes now, slowly scan over the potential rewards.
[Kuva Bramma? Elixir Pump? The fuck am I gonna do with an Elixir Pump? Brisant… isn't that from War Robots? Mmh… Aegis Field Generator, Talon Exo-frame, Mauler Shells, Goliath MK-IV Rotary Cannon, Jesus Christ, what the fuck are these things?!]
I was completely gobsmacked. The range of items on this wheel was absolutely wild. One spin could get me something useless like a slingshot, or something that shoots black holes. Literal cosmic weapons.
And the crazy part? A lot of the really flashy stuff was colored purple or gold. Of course, this made me a bit sad. But they were probably ranked like that due to being insanely powerful.
But it was too much. I had to stop reading before I mentally overloaded myself. The temptation, the possibilities, it was overwhelming. I took a small, deep mental breath to calm myself, then slowly turned my attention to the second wheel. And if I do say so myself, it was pretty hard turning my eyes away from the 'Equipment' Wheel. But with my curiosity growing thanks to the other wheel, I managed to pry my eyes.
[The 'Tree' Wheel. Let's see what kind of madness this one has to offer.]
—
Yo thanks for reading, sorry for the very long updates. I'm literally in my last month of high school, and my teachers have been making us work more. But since I have pretty decent grades, I can probably focus on writing more.
So, please comment on any mistakes or changes I should make.