“Emmanuel,

Sup kid? Figured I’d give you time to talk to your ‘rents and get settled into your new bod. How do you like it? Feel like I did a pretty good job. I thought you could stand to look a little more Chosen-like. No offense.

Now before you head out into the world and begin your journey, there are a few things I need to review with you to make sure you know what to expect. I know, you’d rather just get to adventuring now. But these could easily mean the difference between life or death, so listen up good!

Number One; Being the Chosen is cool. Make no mistake about it, you do have the spotlight. People will gravitate to you. Fortune will grace you, loot leaping into your back almost of its own accord. Quests that promise power and fame beyond any normal Blessed will literally fall into your lap. You will have every opportunity imaginable to excel, to grow.

But its not all fun and games Emmanuel. Being the Chosen is playing both sides of the coin. For every boon, you must deal with the negatives as well. You’ll have more friends than you can count, and just as many enemies, if not more. People will hate you for lucky you seem to be, envious of how quickly you grow. They will try and rob you of your riches, if only because they can.

And though the quests you get may promise power, you will have to fight for them. Nothing in your life shall ever be free, everything paid for in blood, sweat, and tears. When things seem too easy, or like they’ve been slow recently, watch out. Things can and will go wrong at anytime, as Foronea Herself now dictates your story.

Number Two; Don’t tell anyone that you’re the Chosen. I cannot stress the importance of this enough. In the past, there have been Chosen of noble birth, who’s families would relish in announcing to all of Foronea that they are the family of the Chosen. You are, obviously, not one of these. One word of your true importance to the wrong people, and your whole life will come crumbling down around you.

Seriously, telling a single person is practically begging for it to spread like wildfire. Assume that if one person knows, everyone knows. For example, if you told your parents (I know you didn’t, good job!) I would have had to wipe their memories. But now that I’ve warned you, I won’t be doing that, so its up to you to be careful. Very careful.

Number Three!; That beautiful piece of literature in front of you is your Journal. Her name is Syscile. I worked very hard on putting her together, so make sure to treat her well. She’ll be alongside you as a traveling companion, as well acting as the best damn Foronean travel guide you could possibly have, Yours Truly excepting of course. Just crack her open and introduce yourself after you’re done reading this.

Last but certainly not least is number four; Your Blessing. I’m gonna try and keep it short- don’t want to spoil all the surprises after all- but I have to at least say this: BE FUCKING CAREFUL. I had to do a ton of fiddling to even get your Blessing to work right—Oh! Sorry about all that by the way. I know exactly how bad the process can be. If it makes you feel any better, that was definitely one of the worst transformations a Chosen has gone through, so I dunno, take that as you will.

Anyway, I had to make a lot of tweaks for the System to even allow it to exist. You’ll see what I mean (Like how your Blessing is technically three different ones cobbled together) but before you get into a single fight you need to know this: Your Blessing is almost as dangerous to you as it is the enemy. Almost all of your moves have recoil to them. I know that doesn’t *sound* that bad, but trust me, if you aren’t careful, you could easily kill yourself, or leave yourself so badly damaged in the middle of the fight that you’re easy pickings.

Other than that, the basic rules apply. You’ll need to ask Syscile to see all your information, and she’ll fill you in on all the rest.

Uhhhhhh, yeah, pretty sure that’s all I needed to tell you. You’re a smart kid, you’ll———Well, you’ve got good instincts at least, so you should figure it out okay.

Signing out,

Godking Samuel Lionheart

———————————————————

I whistled. “Damn, kind of a lot to unpack there, huh King Sam?” I guess the name of the game was just being cautious, and using my head. I grimaced. Not my best subject, but I guess I’ll have to work on it. Re-reading the last section, I bit my lip in anticipation. What kind of juice was I playing with if I had to have built-in recoil damage?

Folding the letter up and putting it in one of my bag’s pockets, I lifted the massive book off the floor with a surprised grunt, and sat on my bed. Calling this thing just a ‘book’ was the understatement of the year. It was gargantuan, two feet by two feet I’d say, and easily a full thousand pages thick. What was that, a tome? A grimoire? Not totally sure what the difference is.

Either way, when His Majesty called it—uh, ‘her’, I guess—beautiful, He wasn’t kidding. The tome had the same color scheme as King Sam’s seal did. The cover was mainly gold, with the words ‘Chosen’s Guide to Foronea’ emblazoned on it, though in a more muted red than the King’s crimson inferno. Six royal purple vines descended from the top of the cover, forming around the title in the shape of a heart, the vines acting as the heart’s prickly veins. I gently stroked the cover of the book, marveling at it. It just screamed ‘divine artifact’, the kind that even the strongest, most influential people would go ballistic over.

There was an audible creak in the spine as I opened the front cover. The letters on the inside glowed softly with white light. As I read, they seemed to project off of the page and directly into my mind.

Greetings, Chosen Emmanuel Burroughs. I am Syscile, a Blessed Journal created directly by His Majesty to serve as your traveling companion.

In order to fully complete the soul-binding process, please sign your name on the line below. Simply will a little bit of your mana into the tip of your finger and sign. I shall take care of the rest.

I realized with a start that there was no ‘seemed to project’. There actually was a voice speaking directly into my mind! It was clearly female, as cold and smooth as frozen silk.

“Oh shit, you can talk?”

The words currently on the golden page vanished, a new paragraph replacing them. Syscile’s mind-voice had a professional aloofness to it.

Of course. I would not be much of a companion or guide if I had no way to communicate. Now please, Chosen Emmanuel. Sign the line.

The words disappeared again, a large arrow appearing in their place, pointing directly at the ‘Sign Here’ line at the bottom.

I chuckled and held up my left hand, pointer finger out. “So, what do I do here? You said to will my mana to my finger?”

Correct. Close your eyes and feel for the flow of mana in your body. It should be relatively simple, as you have a high mana density.

Alright, that sounded easy enough.

I did what Syscile said, closing my eyes and focusing on what I felt in my body. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was really looking for. At first glance, everything felt the same. Well, no, that’s not quite true. My body was full of more energy than it ever had been, like I could run five marathons with no problems. My mind was clear as a cloudless sky. But it wasn’t magical feeling.

So I focused harder, blocking out the physical sensations of my body. I thought back to the Blessing ceremony, during that brief span of time before everything had gone to total shit. About how it felt to have the lightning running through my veins, empowering me.

I felt it then. A tingle of power in my chest, the image of that chain-link in my heart appearing in my head again. A thin current of electricity, barely a trickle and so much less than during the ceremony, flowed out from my heart and through my veins. My mana.

I visualized mana collecting in the tip of my finger. Then, tensing my finger, I sort of ‘pushed’ with it, like I was trying to open an invisible door with just my fingertip.

It responded immediately, the current of mana flowing purposefully from my heart and towards the tip of my finger. As it traveled down the length of my arm, the branches of lightning that marked me lit up, glowing a dull yellow. Mana concentrated in the tip of my pointer finger, and the smallest arcs of lightning began running across my skin and fingernail. My breath caught for a moment. That was my lightning! I was making fucking lightning!

“That. Is. Radical! Alright, let’s do this."

I brought my finger down to the line and pressed it to the page. A chill ran up my arm as the mana began to drain out of my finger and into Syscile. As I signed my name, the electrical mana burned it directly into the page.

Emmanuel Burroughs

When I finished the last letter, there was a cheerful ‘Ding!’ noise from somewhere, and the drain of mana from me into Syscile stopped. I pulled my finger away from her, and she snapped her cover shut. Syscile began glowing with a pale light, then slowly lifted off of my lap and into the air. She hung there in front of me, gently bobbing like a cork in water.

Soul-Binding completed. Now you may access my full range of features. Our soul bind also makes it so that no one but yourself may open my pages, as well as allowing us to keep a general idea of the other ones location.

I nodded my head. That made sense to me. The average Blessed person would never realistically need that kind of security, but this wasn’t an average situation. If I ever goofed up and got my shit jacked, someone reading through Syscile and getting all that insider knowledge would be a disaster.

“Alright, so what’s the full range of features? Lets run through the tutorial real quick.”

The massive tome bobbed deeply once.

Of course, Chosen Emmanuel. Like all standard journals, you may look over your Sheet, including your stats, skills, and abilities. Unlike a standard journal, I am capable of showing much more detailed information, including normally hidden modifiers, and even the calculation formulas for many of numbers you will see. Also, I am much more flexible. You can customize the appearance and layout of the pages to your leisure.

“Wow, that sounds awesome! Can I go ahead and see my character Sheet? I really really wanna see what I can do.”

Syscile bobbed again, tilting slightly to the right.

Right away, Chosen Emmanuel. I must warn you; As it is the first time you will be reviewing your Sheet, it will be quite long.

I tilted my head and quirked a brow at the floating tome. “What do you mean?”

The first time you view your Sheet, you will see everything that it has to show you. For the average individual, this might be limited to their stats, an active skill or two, and the handful of passive abilities that the System quantifies out of their previous life experience.

I nodded. “Right, right. Everyone gets a couple of starting levels in whatever they were best at to help them develop. I know that.”

Correct. However, for the Chosen, the System will quantify all of your skills. Anything you have even basic competency in will be recognized and listed, potentially giving you access to several Major skills and dozens more subsidiary Minor skills.

I blinked in surprise, then chewed on that for a second. “Wow. Uh……I guess we’d better get started then. Syscile, please show me my character Sheet.”

Of course.

Syscile’s cover opened, three golden pages flipping by. Like before, the words appeared on the page in front of me, while Syscile spoke them directly into my brain.