I was in the dark.
I was the dark.
I was nothing.
Then light appeared. A round white flame in the distance. A wisp.
Pain.
Pain!
PAIN!
Something was being removed and it was so painful! It consumed me.
The flame. The wisp. It got closer!
It stopped in front of me. A wordless question in its non-existent mouth. A promise of a second chance at life.
No, not just a second chance. A better change.
Power unending. Riches untold. Glory unlimited.
I accepted.
The wisp filled the void.
And I breathed.
"What the fuck!?" Adam shrieked.
I opened my eyes in time to see him and five other people jumping back from around me. They had probably approached out of curiosity about the crazy suicide.
The skin over my heart hurt like hell, but when I touched it, the wound had already closed. I kept to the ground, awaiting the incoming true pain.
"What was that?!" Adam demanded. His shout had attracted everyone and people were looking. Most had seen me die and now moving. Those who hadn't were being filled in.
"I was accepting a spiritual seed," I replied absentmindedly. Instead, I was focused on the blue screen that had just popped up.
Title received: Awakened
By accepting the Tower of Destiny's gift and taking control of your fate, you've awakened your true potential.
Effects:
» Removes risk of death when leveling attributes beyond 50 points
» +5 to all attributes
The only way to get any spiritual skill at all was by [Awakening], as the system called the act of accepting an essence seed. It could only be done by piercing one's own heart and accepting the power offered. It was supposed to be a show of determination to the Tower gods, or so the [Guides] in the Third Floor said.
Everyone in the Tower had nine attributes that defined our power. For humanity, all of them came with the default value of 1. It was a simple number with simple meaning, the absolute average for adults. We had all been placed at the same starting line.
The math behind attribute levels was also simple. 2 meant two times as strong as the Average Joe. 3 meant three times.
With +5 to all my attributes, I was becoming six times as strong as the current me.
And it wasn't a pleasant experience. My body was of a sedentary fat nerd, but suddenly, everything I was physically, spiritually and socially was being improved, stretched, almost remade from scratch.
Most people believed this was the reason our attributes were set to 1. To the Tower, it was easier to remove any power we thought we might have, reset us, and build us the way it wanted from the ground up.
All that meant one thing for me.
Pain.
Growing stronger, more agile and getting a better constitution, the three physical attributes, meant a lot of changes on my body. Flesh, bone, tendons, cartilage, and skin were getting stronger and more resistant. Some of it also got faster. Most of it was restructured to be much more effective than natural human anatomy could make it.
That wasn't all. Getting more agile also meant making decisions while I was moving faster than any human should. This, in turn, meant that what I saw, heard or felt had to get to my brain faster, be understood swifter, and bring a reaction quicker.
My brain was being changed. New synapses formed and the way it was structured also got more effective. Almost as painful, all nerves in my body burned as they were remade in a way to carry information faster.
Growing a larger essence pool, having my essence regenerate faster, and getting better control over essence, my three spiritual attributes, also meant changes on my body. Spiritual pathways were growing from the seed that had been placed in my heart. They were invisible, existing both in body and spirit.
The elves in the Tower took years to grow their pathways because of the pain and stress it caused. I was getting mine in instants.
Again, changes to the brain were also required. I would have to interact with essence and humans weren't built for it. At least not in the way the Tower wanted. Pathways and spiritual connections grew on my brain too, making it capable of feeling and controlling essence.
Getting more charismatic, persuasive, and growing a stronger presence, my three social attributes, meant even more changes in both body and mind.
Charisma and presence both had a lot to do with how people perceived me. A fatty might be more charismatic than a handsome man, but most would agree that a handsome guy with a beautiful smile would feel more pleasant at first. Well, that, and presence affected it too. Someone once said first impressions are forever and the Tower seemed to agree.
Thanks to both attributes, I was getting healthier-looking and handsome, at least to the average taste of humankind. Hollywood's brainwash affected it a lot. This meant the Tower was burning my fat at a ridiculously fast and painful pace. I felt as if I was being burned alive, and I was, only there was no fire or way to put it out.
Getting more charismatic and getting a better presence also affected the brain. I had to posture myself in certain ways, have certain innate mannerisms. I couldn't be the charismatic funny-looking fatty, I had to be the impressive-looking, self-respecting guy who could be funny if he wanted. People couldn't just assume I was funny, the Tower deemed it inferior. I had to have a presence to me that would inspire awe to people before anything else. A weight to my existence.
Not to mention becoming persuasive. That also required mannerisms, posture, and knowing how to argue my case. How to talk or behave in ways to reach my goals. Persuasion was named the snake's attribute for its effects were by far the most scary of all attributes.
Killing myself had hurt, but only for an instant. I was pretty good at it by now and knew how to hit my heart in a way that made my death instantaneous.
All of this though, was hell.
I didn't scream as much as let out guttural roars of agony. There was no holding back. The pain of [Awakening] was one of the worst I had ever felt and even after feeling it for almost a hundred times, I hadn't gotten used to it. Not at all.
My body started spasming hard. I had no control over it. My nerves were sending all kinds of strange signals to myself. My brain couldn't even form coherent thoughts. There was only pain.
It took a few minutes to end.
It felt like eternity.
When it did end, I felt the almost complete opposite of what I had been feeling.
Power.
I felt capable of taking the entire world.
It came as a wave of warmth while adrenaline, dopamine, and endorphin filled my brain. The Tower knew what it was doing, it wanted people to feel rewarded, motivated, and addicted to feeling powerful. It wanted [Awakened] people to look for more.
While I thought myself addiction-free, sometimes I wondered if I was climbing the Tower over and over again for humanity or for another shot of attribute growth.
I took deep breaths to calm myself. Enough people had killed themselves stupidly after thinking they were immune to death because of what they felt after [Awakening]. The feeling of prepotency wouldn't go completely away, not until I got a class, but it would get better.
A few moments later, when I thought I could get more of those sensations, I checked the system window I had forced myself not to read.
Title unlocked: Precursor
You were the first to [Awaken]. The Tower rewards you for your foresight and decisiveness.
+10 to all attributes
One thing in the system that divided opinions was how you only got the rewards described in the blue boxes if you actually read them. I liked it, as it made it possible not to get something at a time it would kill you. You only had to become good in ignoring transparent blue stuff in your vision and you were set.
There was also pain in growing one's attributes outside the [Awakening], but nothing like before. The system had already set the new blueprint of my body and mind in a manner it could grow without it requiring to remodel me every time.
I felt pain like cramps and some burning throughout all of myself. My body was growing stronger and my nervous system better. But it was only for a couple minutes and then came the sensation of power and euphoria from the chemicals the system released on my brain.
This time I had to breathe even harder and for longer though. The amount of chemicals were proportional to how many attributes I got. [Awakening] gave me five on each of my nine attributes, 45 in total. Now, I was getting double that, 90.
Suffice to say, if I opened my eyes and saw the Demon Emperor, I'd believe I could beat him right now. And I'd act on it, even though I knew better. The feelings were that strong.
Alas, as almost everything in the Tower, it eventually died down.
I took a last deep breath and opened my eyes. The people around me had gotten even further away from me. In fact, I was alone in the clearing, everyone else was under the trees surrounding it, some thirty yards away.
I hadn't gotten the spiritual skill I wanted yet, but it was as easy as breathing to get. Literally.
As air got to my lungs, I focused on feeling the essence in it. Essence was a mysterious energy the Tower had. Some called it mana or qi — or ki — instead, but the Tower called it essence and I did the same.
Essence felt like chilly air, only it was warm instead. Yes, it was that weird. Unique. I felt it in my lungs and pushed it into my heart. Or more specifically, into the ethereal essence seed that was located in there.
I knew all my spiritual pathways, it was easy for me to find one and push the essence through it. The seed took the essence and automatically released it throughout all pathways connected to it. Obviously, that little essence spread so thin did nothing useful.
It took me some extra tries to get a skill.
Skill unlocked: Novice Essence Sensitivity
Level: 1 / 10
Type: Spiritual
Attribute: Any
Effects:
» +1.7% (0.1 + 1.6) easier to feel essence
My attributes made the effect much better than the skill base. It would be so for most skills until they evolved from the Novice Tier into Apprentice one.
TP received
+5 TP — Unlocked a spiritual skill
+25 TP — Unlocked your first spiritual skill
+50 TP — First of your race to unlock a spiritual skill
Total TP: 240
At last, I got the bonus I wanted.
Now, for using the Tower Points I got.
The math was simple, I could exchange 10 TP for 1 attribute point. I paid 180 TP for 18 attribute points I spread over all my attributes. It was considered suboptimal, but there was a nice title for growing all attributes equally to 50 points and I wanted it.
This time, both the pain and the pleasure were much more manageable.
And that was it.
The only thing I could do now was unlock new skills and level them up. There was a bonus to being the first to unlock ten skills of a type, physical, spiritual, and social, but there was no rush. No one could get the spiritual or social ones in three days, not without knowing what they were doing.
As for the physical one, I already lost the bonus. Too many people went wide in the cave, before the teleport, and got ten physical skills that way. Therefore, the only way to get it was by doing the same. I had gone for unlocking [Leadership] and getting a sizeable group instead.
Not getting that 50 bonus TP sucked a bit, but they didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Now I only had to open my status to change my name and I could focus on setting up the foundations of my future empire.
'Status,' I thought, and a blue box popped into existence.
Blob Neutral