Flashes of action, tiredness and crazy dreams looping on themselves into hyperbolic Mobius strips become my world.

With each flash of consciousness, I knew this situation was my choice and that I could release my grasp and go fully asleep if I wanted. To make it all go away and let the darkness envelop me for the duration, but I choose to keep going.

Something important is happening and I can’t give up. Even as my limits were tested, I don’t hesitate to keep myself on the edge.

That is all I know time and time again.

Instants of thought that can't develop in the logic chain because I get reset to the start over and over again.

But even within this strange cycle, I can feel myself becoming a hint more than I was before. Training with a singular focus and growing beyond what I had been. I can’t quantify how much I grow or how long passes, but I know deep down the process is transformative. If before I could crawl, now I could walk upright and proudly.

Then the silence arrives.

Perfect and complete stillness. Though I don’t know if that extends into the world, because the stillness is in the absence of any sensation.

With no interruptions, I form a continuous stream of thoughts and start interlinking everything back together before I feel the system’s touch, this time much more pronounced as it guides me awake.

I feel I’m not supposed to be aware of this step. Even given how smart the system is most of the time, it can’t escape some of its routines, though few if anyone would be like me with a constant stream of Vigor streaming in their body this early on, so I do manage to rise by myself.

I try to open a screen prompt and feel my soul, but a veil somehow completely locks me from them and I think about forcing the issue but it feels unnecessary. With each second that passes my senses stream back until they are too much and I don’t want it coming back to me.

I let the rush of information hit me.

Like stepping out of a closed off house at noon I squint and cover my eyes trying to get used to the direct sunlight and when I actually physically open my eyes, I’m dumbstruck.

I stand in the most beautiful garden of them all.

A sanctuary with Aspen trees so old and strong they bear only mild resemblance to the original one, but I recognize them nonetheless. A faint sense of Aether permeates the air with the epicenter at my back and I spin to take it all in.

I come across the widest tree I have ever seen and tentatively let out a hint of perception field to bisect it. It crosses it all and my suspicions are proven. Fourteen meters wide.

But then I remember there is another direction to look at and my eyes start to tilt up and up and up, seemly to infinity. It feels like I’m looking straight upward to get a good glimpse of the crown.

And at such high angles, my guess at the height becomes totally useless so I rely solely on the perception field to take in the heart tree.

A hundred… seventy… eight meters.

The 60 meter tall average trees surrounding seem like saplings in comparison even if they are already some of the tallest I would have witnessed before the system.

Nash.

A wave of warmth and meaning of such magnitude crosses the space without needing direct contact and then I can no longer control myself.

I run forward and hit the largest tree trying to hug it and send all of my well wishes to it. I let go of my preconceptions of the limits of my body and reach out trying to become one with it.

Finally, I know that we were safe and I had Pando back.

Together, there is nothing anyone could do to stop us and soon enough my newer friends will show up. Which would make the world spin the right way.

I bask in the light of Pando and the constant stream of his willpower that reaches even beyond his main tree and flows through his whole domain. But a thousand questions pop up, like: why do I feel complete again?

I reach into my soul and see the Aether constructs propped up with ghostly structures and after a moment getting used to the idea, I can also feel that the 50% penalty on my stats is gone. I jump, kick and punch a few times, limbering myself up after so long with little exercise.

Try as I might I can’t believe I didn’t lose a single point and a couple even had seen increases, like even a massive pool of willpower I now had at my disposal…

A thousand changes call me at the same time but I will look at each of them in turn, now my stat screen seems like the right choice.

Name: Nash

Level:100

Titles:3

Class: One with the World (*)

100 M+/0 EXP

Strength

184

Soul

80

Constitution

184

Agility

195

Dexterity

195

Endurance

329

Perception

571

Intelligence

309

Willpower

599

Health

3486/3486

2172

/day

Qi

267/6094

676,6

/hour

Stamina

2355/2355

37,53

/min

Seeing the number of my willpower I could barely believe it. And as look within me, I see the patch to fix the damage in my soul constructs. Though even at a glance I knew the ghostly props are temporary and Pando needed to maintain them constantly, so I would lose them if I left its domain but that seemed almost irrelevant in comparison to the monstrous growth of my Qi which was fast regenerating.

So far it seems to make little difference, especially as I kept picking all low hanging fruit and increasing my pool of natural attributes that had nothing to do with the system. But as I grew in levels, the class sourced stats would compound into something I couldn’t ignore. Especially given not just the flat increases were nerfed, but the percentual ones as well.

So you found a way to use Qi?

Yes. Very useful.

A stream of consciousness reaches for me as a few roots hug my feet and I open myself up in faint memory of the decades the system was trying to keep me asleep.

Pando takes control and slides root tendrils under my skin and it feels natural to let him take over for a moment. My right hand raises by itself and I focused rings of fire with laser like precision that I almost mistake it for Merlin’s impeccable work.

A single point of Qi shoos off in the distance racing across the gaps in the trees a good 300 meters away before losing cohesion.

I try to do the same and although the first try is a flat out flop puffing into pure smoke, the third one can almost match Pando using my own body.

That is very interesting, but how much Qi can I now use at once?

Mirth travels through our connection and instead of giving me a straight answer a stream of Qi reaches from Pando itself as he somehow maintains a very loose control of the energy, but the torrent is greater than anything I had seen before.

I almost kick him out of my body, but given how long I inhabited his it was only fair and even in my fear I knew he doesn’t intend me any harm.

His will reaches somewhere new within me and I’m open to the world in another dimension, ready to channel all that energy and in a rush of power runes form around my body. I get the sense of his actions and I go with the flow, driving myself deeper and making the whole thing sharper.

The rush of Qi turns almost physical and it tries to lift me up from the ground in the maelstrom of power. The Earth runes fold my surroundings and with a thump, I let the world know that I’m awake. The ground becomes playdough, but not just a few square meters like a hundred mana points might let me do, but a smarter runic design makes anything around me completely mine to do as I please. And though it does take effort, I can simultaneously cover thousands of square meters anywhere within a kilometer or two by relying on the underground network.

I increase the flow of Qi higher and higher plowing the soil in moments and then with one last breath after taking in the feeling of nigh omnipotency, I stop the flow and let it all fade.

I didn’t know that those were your limits.

Neither did I. Three thousand points per second.

Usually going above a thousand started to strain you even using this new technique.

Yep, but I felt what it was and took it to its natural limits. Now what I want to know is how you ‘healed’ my soul.

Not sure.

I’m talking about…

The ghostly props replace the missing Aether construct of the eye in the sky. I just felt a connection that I managed to push through after a few years. From there I poked at it until I got it just right, but it needs constant attention or it will fade.

It takes me a moment to let it all sink in but then how he referred to the system calls my attention.

Et tu Brute? Calling the system the eye in the sky?

I have a few mild advantages compared to other nonintegrated beings, but it still seems apt. You haven’t seen its scary side and that is why you call it the system.

His words really drive home how different our interactions with the new arrival of the system were. Mine even if a mixed bag had the veneer of civility, but he didn’t have that luxury.

I let the silence build for a minute as I admire the surroundings. But even as I appreciate the moment, a thousand things call my attention and I choose to look at the system’s prompt nearly screaming its importance to me.

You are the first system user to return to Earth.

While you are the only system user to return all skill growth, experience and rewards are doubled.

You have returned 0d 0h 0m 0s after system integration. Choose one further reward to last until another system user returns:

1% skill growth

2% skill growth

5% skill growth

10% skill growth

20% skill growth

50% skill growth

100% skill growth

1% Exp growth

2% Exp growth

5% Exp growth

10% Exp growth

20% Exp growth

50% Exp growth

100% Exp growth

+1% bonus for any class or subclass effect

+2% bonus for any class or subclass effect

Experience a deep peace in slumber

…

..

.

Double regeneration of all resources

All first achievements acquired won’t affect other system users

I look at the list in conflict. Each new line sends my eyebrows higher and higher. There are a couple of interesting options and as I touch each of them with a hint of pure Aether, I can narrow down their specific effects. But I feel like a kid with a single quarter in a candy shop.

I know that I probably won’t be satisfied with anything I choose, after all, there were no large cakes that I could stuff my face in, only small peanut brittles or paper bags with 4 or 5 hard candies, hardly enough to satisfy me.

If I could choose every single option I might be satisfied, but that is clearly impossible.

Still, as I think about how I could exploit the quirkier ones, my eyes keep glancing at the last option. A high risk high reward option that I knew could bite me in the ass, but each time I look at it seems more appealing.

To get a bunch of first achievements. A month’s worth of achievements without actually taking anything from another soul when the first month rolled around?

Although I had a couple of things to my name, I hadn't gotten anything in the instance. Even if I wasn't quite as unlucky this time around, it is still possible that I would get useless titles or that the system would unintentionally screw me over another way.

And even the possibility was predicated on the people that had been cooped up inside the inner world for ages would agree to extend their stay there. After all, even if the system didn’t quite count them while they were hidden inside, I doubted I could get away with letting them run around and not lose the benefits from being the ‘only’ person to return just yet.

And even before that, I also need to update the thousands of pages they must have gotten while in the inner world and that should give a lot more information to go on given my book’s propensity to focus on what was running through my mind.

Yeahhh