The last thing that Leon remembered was sitting there watching the moon blow up. Then he’d felt like he was falling, and the world was spinning. Now he found himself in a room made of some kind of pale white substance that seemed somehow plastic and metallic at the same time. There were no doors or windows, and for some reason he was no longer drunk. He was sober, and actually felt quite good.

Just as he was getting his bearings and trying to figure out what was happening an android looking thing just appeared out of thin air. It reminded Leon of one of those robots from the IRobot movie with Will Smith. Only it stood at about eight feet tall and was built like atlas man.

Leon felt the hairs on his arms rise, as his fight or flight instincts began to kick in. Fear of this unknown boiling up in his gut as he realized that he had no weapons and no way to fight back if the robot wanted to harm him, nor was there anywhere to go. The room was silent of all but Leon’s heartbeat and accelerated breathing.

After several seconds of silence, the robot spoke in a smooth monotone voice that reminded Leon of automated messages created by computers.

[I am the emergency integration protocol manifestation.] It said, holding up a hand in a gesture that Leon presumed meant that he was supposed to wait for whatever spiel it was about to give before he asked questions.

[You, Human, have found yourself in a rather strange position. Just before your planet was totally obliterated. You fell through a wormhole that managed to deposit you in system world 03-255-2-L. The location of your arrival was the first layer of the seven layered Dyson Sphere #7409-2. Emergency integration protocols were initiated as the matter that your body is made up of is the antimatter equivalent in this universe.] The robot lowered its arm and seemed to be waiting for questions now.

Leon remained silent and pondered the information while his body remained tense and heartbeat still fast. Many questions finding their way into his mind as he contemplated what was going on. First and foremost, on his mind was that he was not dead. From what he understood the moon of planet earth was only like 200,000 and some thousand miles from earth, meaning that The End would plow through it and arrive at earth within only three or for seconds. So, the fact that he was still alive, and somehow still breathing meant that he could not be on earth anymore. A bit of confirmation of what the Robot had just told him. But the other questions on his mind were about what the robot meant by System World. If it was like some of the books, he’d read that meant leveling up, magic, and a whole plethora of other possibilities. However, System, might be the name of an extremely advanced alien races governing body. In which case this could turn out to be the worst-case scenario where Leon was about to get probed and dissected. The other thing on Leon’s mind was that if he’d been dropped through a wormhole then it was possible that others had arrived here as well.

When Leon finally opened his mouth and began asking questions they spilled out in a torrent. His stress levels right now were too high for him to not keep rolling out question after question as those questions then led him mind down other paths. And still more questions rushed out of him. Until he was spent. He didn’t even really remember all of the questions he’d asked. But the android immediately began answering as soon as Leon was done.

[The System is a program developed by the Forerunners, that was designed to halt the heat death of any and all universes that it could find and maintain them at an L-Class state indefinitely. While at the same time providing a means for Sapient life forms to grow and explore those universes in all their wonder and glory. Each sapient within the System possesses an interface that allows them to see what skills they have gained and what they need to do to advance those skills. And no, the system does not promote a “Murder Hobo” environment as you called it. Only skills that are specifically meant for killing will benefit from killing. And even those skills can be trained efficiently without actually killing.]

The robot paused for a moment to allow Leon to digest that information before continuing.

[Your universe is currently being integrated into the system, and there were no others from your planet that survived. You were the only one to leave it in time. You may not have saved your planet, but your travel here has saved an entire Multiverse from eventual heat death.]

[Many of the other questions that you have asked cannot be answered as you do not possess a clearance necessary for that information or they are so irrelevant that I am not allowed to answer them. As to you question of how the system will affect you… That depends on the skills that you take and level. There are not ‘Stats’ like you mentioned. But there are skills that do what you conveyed to me. Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Perception, Willpower these are all examples of skills that can be gained and leveled up. However, as the name Skills, implies, Skills can be anything that you want or can imagine. Yes, the number of skills you can have is limited. But it is only limited to how many your soul can support. At a certain point you will simply no longer be given the option to gain more skills when you have reached that point.]

[Now onto the most pressing matter at hand. You have a few options to choose from for your integration into this new reality.]

As the robot finished speaking a pedestal rose from the floor in front of Leon, making him jump back in surprise. On the pedestal was a screen that had three little boxes with information displayed on them. Leon read them over and his eyebrows raised.

Option 1

Convert your body to the matter of this universe and be placed at the location where you would have arrived through the wormhole.

Option 2

Be reborn to a random female Sapient still as an Earth Variant Human with all of your memories intact, in the area where you would have arrived through the wormhole.

Option 3

Have your body transported into the nearest black hole and be annihilated.

Leon’s first instinct was to choose the first option. But he had no information as to where he would be would there be civilization around? And with no individual levels, MurderHoboing was off the table, he couldn’t just rely on a meteoric rise in stats and power that would allow him to survive in an unknown potentially hostile environment like in most of the books he’d read with a system world. The more that he thought about it the worse the idea of option 1 sounded. Obviously, option 3 was a no go. So Leon was torn between the two options.

After debating the pros and cons with himself for several minutes Leon pressed his finger on option 2. It meant that he would be placed in a civilized society, and he would be able to start from scratch. Even though he would have to grow up again, he figured he would be able to be a good kid this time around and be able to make his new family proud.

With option 2 selected the screen flickered to a new box.

As this is an emergency integration, please select up to a maximum of ten or your soul’s capacity of skills to be given automatically upon integration.

Leon was surprised by the option, so he thought about it for a while. Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Perception, and Willpower made eight skills and Leon kinda wanted to have those as it would make this would feel more like a game to him. Then he thought about most of the books he’d ever read with magic in them Meditation was always something that was overpowered in the end and always seemed to be the key to allowing extraordinary growth. That made nine. As for his tenth skill Leon was stumped as to what he should choose. Until he realized one thing. Every game needed an inventory. An inventory that didn’t weigh the character down and allowed him to carry everything with them at all times. So, he selected a skill called Utility Pocket which had a description that matched his desires.

Confirming his selection Leon was met with another screen that showed him everything he’d selected and asked him one more time if he would like to confirm. Taking a deep breath Leon tapped the confirm button and his world immediately went black.

The emergency integration protocol was satisfied with the results of this integration. The human had selected skills based on its concept of gaming and that was just fine. In fact, the emergency integration protocol knew that a full set of body and mind enhancement skills would make this particular human devastatingly powerful by the measure of his own kind rather quickly. With the integration complete and the humans soul being ready for transport to a randomized host mother he turned the situation over to the rewards protocol.

The Rewards protocol looked over the accomplishments of this human and if it could have frowned it would have. There was no math that could add up to saving an infinity from heat death. The rewards would have to be given though. It looked over the information it had on the human a decided that at the minimum it would have to upgrade the tier of skills that the human had selected. Searching through the humans’ memories the rewards protocol shifted the tier of the skills and brought them more in line with what the humans’ concept of them was. This was not something that the human would ever notice, but it was still a reward given.

The tiering up of the skills was a good start but not enough. So, the Rewards Protocol turned to titles it could grant. Easily done. Outworlder was a given, Monster Biologist was one it had to craft for the human based on the human’s knowledge, Alpha and Omega because the human was the first of his variant in the system, and the last, Hero because he had saved an entire multiverse, Progenitor because if he managed to reproduce, he would be the father of an entirely new variant of human. Last but not least, Paragon Earth Variant which would ensure that the human’s genetic structure and resulting body when grown would reflect the perfect human form.

But all of this barely scratched the surface of what was demanded of the Rewards Protocol and so it gave the only reward that was able to compensate for infinity. It grabbed the Strength, Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Perception, and Willpower skills and merged them into one new skill. Body And Mind Of The Traveler A passive trait that does not take up the same space as skills do in the soul, it had all of the effects of the skills used to make the trait plus, if the human used it enough and leveled it up enough, would allow the user to be practically immortal meaning that a potential infinity of time was granted to this human in exchange for saving an infinity so long as he used it and leveled it up. Then the Rewards protocol created a voucher for seven system given skills on the human for when it gained consciousness again.

That still didn’t quite add up to the total rewards needed so the Rewards Protocol took the Titles that he’d given the human and turned their percentage modifiers up and fiddled with their settings until it felt the equations balance enough for the system to deem everything done. No living thing had ever gotten so much from the system for one unintended action before. The Rewards Protocol would have shrugged if it could have. The system didn’t actually care about balancing out powers of its inhabitants. Its task done, it shut down.