I sat up with a gasp. Huff huff. Panting, I looked around. This wasn't Gregory's house. I was currently in the shade of a large oak tree. A sea of grass surrounded me as I felt bare dirt beneath me.

Blue screens started appearing in front of me.

This is Game Administration Director, or GAD as some of you have begun to call me. With the tutorial now over, most of you will now understand what status points are important and just what things you should buy. Use this knowledge wisely in your fresh new start, so that you don't end up dead. Let the games begin! Congratulations on passing the Tutorial! You are currently on Nanite World 1.0 Your level has been reset. Your Nanite Count has been updated. Any blueprints gained have been converted. Shop has been updated! World Terrain has been updated! Enjoy the new beginnings players!

"Open Status."

Name: Tony Eisen Species: Nanite-Human Gender: Male Level: 1 (7 Status Points) Age: 27 Agility: 1 Charging: 1 (EP Regen Rate: 2EP/Second) Dexterity: 1 Intelligence: 1 (Percieved time: 1.01x normal speed) Shield: 1 (Shield Points: 10. Costs 1EP/Second) Storage: 1 (Energy Points: 10) Strength: 1

Great. I was right back where I had begun. Still, maybe I could use this to my advantage.

Actually, I needed to check on my nanite count before I started anything.

501 Chunks, 69 shards. Maybe it was wrong, but I believed that the extra nanites were from the wolves I killed. I remember that I gained 1 chunk for completing the wolf monster wave, so that was where most of my suspicions came from.

Anyway, this was a blessing, of sorts. After all, I knew a lot more about the shop and the weapons. Speaking of the shop, it was supposed to be updated. What kind of updates were they?

Weapons Combat Upgrades Armor Tools Abilites Food Property Liesure Objects Status Points Information Cosmetics Search

All the tabs were there still, though there were three additional tabs. I really needed information right now, so I tapped on it, causing another screen to appear.

Twilight: 1 Shard Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson & The Olympians): 1 Shard Fundamentals of Physics [12th Edition]: 1 Shard Pre-Algebra Explained [3rd Edition]: 1 Shard .......................... ........................ Basic Map: 10 Shards Beginner's Manual: 10 Shards Advanced Monster Manual : 10 Shards Nanite Humans 101: 10 Shards Gun Types: 10 Shards Underlying Physics of Nanite World: 100 Shards

The list of things available continued downwards. Math, chemistry, physics, and other textbooks were being sold alongside famous novels and more obscure books. There seemed to be no rhyme or rythm to how they were listed, they were just thrown in the list.

I guess the information tab was short for 'everything written.' Still, I immediately bought the Basic Map when I saw it.The map formed from my hands in a now familiar manner. Looking at the map, I realized that things had changed.

This was not, in any shape or form, the world that I had grown up in. Unlike Earth, where it was mostly ocean with some land, this was the complete opposite. The world was instead completely composed of land. There was what appeared to be a large lake in the exact middle of the map with many streams and rivers flowing throughout the world before looping back around to the lake. I wasn't sure if it really was water though. You wouldn't think that nanites could survive water.

Mountains were scattered here and there, deserts usually around them. Large swathes of forests cut through the land and grasslands were also frequent. There wasn't any names or towns, no signs of any civilization on the map. There was no evidence that humans had ever existed on the planet according to the map. Then again, I had only bought the basic map. Maybe there would be more on an advanced map?

Anyway, now would be the time to check out the rest of the shop. I clicked on Combat Upgrades, the blue screen appearing below.

Scope: 5 Shards. An upgrade that can be mounted on a weapon to allow for long-distance shooting. Laser Sight: 10 shards. An upgrade that can be mounted on a weapon to provide support in aiming Silencer: 20 Shards. An upgrade that can be mounted on a ballistic weapon to muffle gunshot noise or muzzle flash. Cannot be applied to energy weapons. Electric Generator: 300 Shards. An upgrade that allows for electricity to build up on a hand-held shield, shocking any that attack it. Barrier: 500 Shards. An upgrade that lets a hand-held shield generate its own forcefield using an Energy Capacitator. Shield does not draw energy from user to be mantained. EP in energy Capacitator is considered SP for this upgrade. Holographic Overlay: 500 Shards. An upgrade that allows for a predicted weapon shot to be shown while the trigger is pressed Bullet Converter: 1 Chunk. Processes uncontrolled nanites and converts them to bullets. Bullets cannot be sold or traded. Vibration Generator: 1 Chunk. An upgrade that allows a melee weapon to vibrate at high-rates of speed, increasing the damage. Cannot be applied to guns Energy Capacitator lvl 1: 1 Chunk. An upgrade that allows the storage of energy for weapons that use EP or shields. Further upgrades allow for more EP to be stored. Currently, 50 EP Burst: 2 Chunks. An upgrade that uses the stored energy of an Energy Capacitator to fire a charged shot from a gun. Cannot be applied to pistols or to ballistic weapons. Push: 2 Chunks. An upgrade that allows the use of stored energy of an Energy Capacitator to create a shockwave in the direction of a hand-held shield's front. Grenade Launcher: 2 Chunks. An upgade that can be mounted on a weapon to launch grenades at a distance. Cannot be applied to pistols. .......................... ............................ ..........................

There wasn't just these upgrades though. There was at least 50 more upgrades besides this. Homing upgrades for bullets and grenade launchers, plasma upgrades for grenades, and even an infared upgrade for a laser to make it invisible. All sorts of things were available for sale.

Tapping on weapons, I decided to see if there was anything in there. Nope, nothing new.

Armor was the same, though there were now hand-held shields that were available for sale. There were metal shields and very expensive energy shields. When I selected tools, it was pretty random. Things like nuts, bolts, nails, hammers, forks, knives, and other household objects were included.

Cosmetics popped up a screen with a replica of me on it. My blonde hair, glasses, blue eyes, 191lbs, and 5ft 10 height. For 30 shards, I could change anything about my body that I wanted. Voice, height, eye color, gender, and even species. Though, I did notice that there was a disclaimer changing the species did not increase or decrease stats. Another thing was the ability to change the appearance of my armor and weapons to a 'variant' form, though the usage of the weapon wouldn't change at all.

I could change my laser rifle to be a Spatan Laser Cannon, a stormtrooper's E-11 blaster, or even a Star Trek Phaser. Popular guns from all genres appeared. It only changed the appearance and at 50 shards, I wasn't going to be doing that anytime soon.

So, Cosmetics was a pretty much useless section of the store. When I opened liesure objects, there were Holo-projectors, TV's, spas, shampoo, and everything else that involved the word 'relax.' Again, fairly useless. I was assuming, at this point, that I wasn't going to be sweating. I might be wrong, but I'm sure I would know fairly soon.

I checked out the last thing that had been locked before. Property. When I tapped on it, something unlike all the others happened. It was a view of everything around me from a bird's eye-view. A blue grid covered the aerial view, each square of the grid havig a pricetag in the middle. Most of them were under a hundred shards, though a few were almost worth a chunk. This was most likely how you bought land. I didn't see an option to build anything, but I likely had to own a piece of land first.

What I found really odd was that there wasn't any trees at all in the property view. There was grass, but even the tree that was directly behind me was gone on the property view. The land slowly faded out as well before turning grey the farther it was from me. I assumed that this was sort of like the fog of war from most other games. I wasn't quite sure how it worked, and I didn't have the time to find out about it.

With the new tabs out of the way, I went to abilities.

Extreme Jump (level 1): 5 chunks. You may now perform a super-human feet by jumping extremely high or far. Additional purchases increases height and length of jump. (EP Cost: 1) Duplicate (level 1): 10 chunks. You may create a duplicate of an inanimate object that lasts for 1 minute. Additional purchases increases duration time. (EP Cost: 10 at minimum, variant. Nanite Cost: Dependant on size of object) Flight (level 1): 10 chunks. You can now hover up to ten feet off the ground. Additional purchases increases height and speed. (EP cost 5/second) Magnetic Manipulation (Level 1): 30 chunks. You can now manipulate small objects through magnetic emission. Additional upgrades give you the ability to manipulate larger objects. (EP cost 1/Nanite shard). Status Boost (level 1): 50 chunks. You can increase one of your status points by 10% for one minute. Ten minute cool down on the status point boosted. Additional purchases increases boost percentage. (EP Cost: 20) Creature Summon (Level 1): 50 chunks. You may now summon one creature that is level 1 to fight for you. You choose the type of creature that is summoned. Additional upgrades increase the number or level of the creature that is summoned. (EP Cost: 20) Fire Emission (level 1): 50 chunks. You can now emit small amounts of fire from your body. This can be a constant stream or a pulse of fire. Additional upgrades increase amount of fire you can emit. (EP cost 20/second, variant) Electric Emission (level 1): 50 Chunks. You can now emit small amounts of electricity from your body. This can be a consant stream or a surge of electricity. Additional upgrades increase amount of electricity you can emit. (EP cost 30/second, variant) Plasma Emission (level 1): 100 chunks. You can now emit small amounts of super-heated plasma from your body. This can be a constant stream or a bolt of plasma. Additional upgrades increase amouunt of plasma you can emit. (EP cost 50/second, variant) No further entries available. Gain more nanites to see more options.

Yeah, they were the exact same. I bought Creature Summon, Flight, and Electric Emission. I checked the ability upgrades now.

Extreme Jump (level 1): 5 chunks. You may now perform a super-human feet by jumping extremely high or far. Additional purchases increases height and length of jump. (EP Cost: 1) Duplicate (level 1): 10 chunks. You may create a duplicate of an inanimate object that lasts for 1 minute. Additional purchases increases duration time. (EP Cost: 10 at minimum, variant. Nanite Cost: Dependant on size of object) Flight (level 2): 10 chunks. You can now hover up to fifteen feet off the ground. Additional purchases increases height and speed. (EP cost 10/second) Magnetic Manipulation (Level 1): 30 chunks. You can now manipulate small objects through magnetic emission. Additional upgrades give you the ability to manipulate larger objects. (EP cost 1/Nanite shard). Status Boost (level 1): 50 chunks. You can increase one of your status points by 10% for one minute. Ten minute cool down on the status point boosted. Additional purchases increases boost percentage. (EP Cost: 20) Creature Summon (Level 2): 50 chunks. You may now summon a number of creatures that may not have a combined level greater than level 2. Alternatively, you may summon a creature up to level 2. Additional upgrades increase the number and level of creatures you can summon. (EP Cost: 40) Fire Emission (level 1): 50 chunks. You can now emit small amounts of fire from your body. This can be a constant stream or a pulse of fire. Additional upgrades increase amount of fire you can emit. (EP cost 20/second, variant) Electric Emission (level 2): 50 Chunks. You can now emit medium amounts of electricity from your body. This can be a consant stream or a surge of electricity. Additional upgrades increase amount of electricity you can emit. (EP cost 40/second, variant) Plasma Emission (level 1): 100 chunks. You can now emit small amounts of super-heated plasma from your body. This can be a constant stream or a bolt of plasma. Additional upgrades increase amouunt of plasma you can emit. (EP cost 50/second, variant) No further entries available. Gain more nanites to see more options.

Well, that was good. The price of the abilites didn't change, even though they became more powerful. I checked the nanite count. 391 chunks, 69 fragments. The damage from my purchases really showed. I went ahead and bought the laser rifle, laser pistol, and a sniper rifle from the shop.

Moving on, I checked the blueprints. Or at least, I tried to. Instead of getting a list of available blue prints, I got a bluescreen.

You previously had 'Electric Moped' blueprint. This blue print has been converted to 'Electric ATV.' Do you wish to keep this change or sell the blueprint for 200 Chunks? Sell/Keep

Well, I wasn't quite sure what to do with that. I needed some form of transportation, but I wasn't sure how rare that would be. I went to the search and looked up ATV. It cost 70 chunks to buy one. Well, I didn't need a blueprint. I just needed a ride. I sold the chunks and bought the ATV, leaving me with 521 chunks and 69 fragments.

I had more money to play around with now. Last time when I had to face the wolves, I'd felt overwhelmed. I had energy to spare, but not enough firepower to bring them down. I bought the scope, laser sight, energy capacitator, burst, bullet converter, and grenade launcher, leaving me with 515 chunks, 54 fragments.

Whenever I got the first upgrade, it was simply a round ball with the label [Scope] on it. I was very confused by that. I pulled out my laser rifle and touched the ball to the rifle. When I did, the ball melted and crawled up the rifle, forming a scope on the top of it. Cool. I promptly added on every upgrade I had bought except the bullet converter.

I put the bullet converter on the sniper rifle, eager to see what it would look like. What happened was that the clip for the gun expanded slightly, becoming longer and thicker. A blue screen with directions prompted me on what to do. I took out the clip and grabbed a handfull of dirt. Stuffing the dirt in the clip where the bullets went, I watched as the dirt turned silvery before forming several large bullets. The bullts then melted through the bottom of the clip before dropping to the ground.

I saw a flickering out of the corner of my eye and focused on it. It was the nanite counter. Beside each diamond shape was a bullet shaped icon. Just like with the diamond shape, they became progressively larger with each one down. The largest one had now been updated, now displaying the number 6. I assumed that the large bullet was a sniper rifle. I wasn't sure about the medium or small bullets, but they were probably for assault rifles and pistols.

Now I had 515 chunks, 54 fragments. Plenty to mess around with. Now, I would leave me around 50 chunks like I had last time to buy anything else I needed. That meant I could buy 232 ability points, 26 more than I had last time.

I started thinking as I started tallying up things. The last time, I had upgraded my charging, storage, and shield. Undoubtedly, shield was important along with charging to keep my shield up. Storage though, that wasn't completely necessary. So long as I was recharging just as much energy as I would be using, I didn't need a large storage.

The laser rifle used 2 EP per shot, though I wasn't sure about the beam mode. Electric stream was 30 EP/second and flight was 5 EP/second. By my estimates, I needed around at least 18 more charging points and then I needed to add 1 point to charging for every 2 points in shield.

Lets put the shield at 50, so I needed 43 charging. Lets calculate that then... 86 EP regen rate. Subtract 50, which gave me the 36 EP I needed. Give myself a little buffer by increasing the charging to 45 and now I had 40 EP. Enough to where I could use Electric stream with flight or I could use the laser rifle in beam mode. Great.

93 stats claimed. I have 139 left to spend! Being rich was amazing. Intelligence was necessay since it helped me see threats, but agility was necessary too since I needed to be able to react to it. Strength was defenitely required, since I had, in one way or another, gotten close and personal with several wolves. Dexterity... I still wasn't quite sure what Dexterity did but I probably needed it. Storage was a dumping ground for points since my regen rate might be off and having some extra energy to tap into didn't sound like a bad idea.

To summarize. Priority Intelligence and Agility, second priority strength, leftover would go to dexterity and storage. So, probably 60 Intelligence and 60 Agility, left me with 21. Since I was increasing my 1 Intelligence to 60, I really only spent 59 status points. Ugh. This mental math was really starting to get to be a pain.

I looked down at the ground where I had scribbled in the dirt with my hand. Okay, maybe not all mental math. Still, thinking over so many numbers was bound to give anyone a headache.

I decided to increase strength to 15 before increasing dexterity to 4 and storage to 5. That was all of my status points. Let's check it out!

Name: Tony Eisen Species: Nanite-Human Gender: Male Level: 27 (265 Status Points) Age: 27 Agility: 60 Charging: 45 (EP Regen Rate: 90EP/Second) Dexterity: 4 Intelligence: 60 (Percieved time: 1.6x normal speed) Shield: 50 (Shield Points: 500. Costs 50EP/Second) Storage: 5 (Energy Points: 50) Strength: 15

Alright, I was looking significantly better than before. Nanite count time. 51 Chunks, 54 fragments. Easy come, easy go. I went ahead and bought ten grenades for the grenade launcher. Now, I was fully prepared for whatever it was that was going to try and kill me.