'Status,' he thought, and a system window appeared in front of him. Only he could see it, so he didn't have to worry about the people in the bus.

 

 

According to his memories, his status was incomplete, but that was expected. The system only revealed things when there was data to show, and he had no class, achievements or titles, for instance, so the relevant fields weren't there. On the other hand, zero was still data, a number, hence his level was shown.

Everyone in the tower started at level 0. From babies to huge dragons, the tower kidnapped indiscriminately, and none was given a shortcut. However, stronger beings had an advantage that made them level up faster: they could kill faster.

Leveling up in the tower was done by spending the versatile sentinel points, SP, and the easiest way to earn them was by killing.

The Sentinel Tower was a merciless place. It loved to see the races struggle against each other for its limited resources, and gave bonus rewards if they killed demons or beings that belonged to the Demonic Horde. Yet, most people agreed the tower was a toy created by the demons to bring despair in the form of a hopeless challenge. Luke didn't know how true that theory was, but the fact that no one had ever cleared the 100th floor seemed to agree with it. After all, some races in the tower had found ways to live there for thousands of years and still had failed in clearing it, so it probably simply wasn't possible to do.

Anyway, he wasn't in the tower, so none of that mattered—especially the bit about killing. He didn't plan on killing anyone.

'Stats,' he thought next, and a new system window appeared in front of him.

 

Those numbers defined his physical and magic power. Like levels, they could be increased by spending SP. Everything in the tower's system was about SP, making each point incredibly valuable.

The first four stats were about his physical prowess. Strength was, well, strength, brawn. Agility affected his speed, dexterity, and reaction time. Endurance affected how long he could last while doing physical activities, his stamina. And recovery determined how fast he recovered his stamina once it was spent.

He was really lacking. His memories told him the average male adult had 7 strength, 7 agility, 5 endurance, and 2 recovery. His endurance had leveled up recently and it was still only 3. As a 16-year-old, Luke should be better than that, but the low numbers just went to show how undernourished he was.

It was no wonder Jackson and his goons had no difficulty beating him up.

The next four stats were related to mana channels, and indirectly to magic. However, humans weren't born with mana channels. In the tower, such channels were given as a reward for passing the Test Floor. But what about now? Did Earth even have the mana levels required to let him form mana channels with sheer effort?

How far did the system influence Earth, if at all?

Then came the two untrainable stats, defense and luck, which couldn't be improved through training, but only by spending SP.

Defense determined how much damage he could ignore, or in other words, how much damage the enemy had to deal with Luke before he was actually harmed. The human skin wasn't great in protecting against harm, and Luke's 1 point in defense was the average for humans. Only calloused areas of the body had a stronger defense than that.

Luck, despite its name, didn't affect the world at large, like coin tossing or dicing, but only tower-controlled things, like random rewards and opportunities it gave. Mostly everyone had 0 luck, and increasing it was considered wasteful at best, outright stupid at worst.

It was a huge surprise to see his luck at 100. Even that much would only stir tower chances 5% his way or so, yet it would've cost him whopping 5,050 SP. Who would be dumb enough to ever waste that much SP? He had no idea how he had gotten those points, but he definitely would rather have gotten 100 points in any other stat.

Yet again, the question was: how would the system affect his life on Earth? Was luck useful at all? Was the system itself useful to begin with?

How could he use the system to his advantage?

The first thing that came to mind was working out, for he was a phoenix-hybrid now.

He was feeling more calm about losing almost half his humanity than he believed he should, but to be honest, being human meant nothing to him. He had seen the dark side of humankind and didn't care for being the same as the ones who bullied him just because he was poor and powerless.

The rules for hybrids were simple and affected both his stats and affinity. Stat-wise, his stats would improve twice as fast as a human's until they became 40% the stats of an average mature eternal phoenix. That meant training his stats naturally would be twice as easy, and buying them with SP would cost half. As for affinity, he would have an easier time with skills related to fire or related to phoenixes in general.

After that stat limit was reached, his stat leveling speed would decrease by half a human's for the rest of his life, but he didn't care much about it. It was impossible to reach his phoenix limits without leveling up anyway, and he definitely wouldn't become a serial murderer to level up.

Anyway, he could become a bodybuilder with relative ease. Well, as easy as inhumanly possible, at least. He knew a lot of focus and dedication was required even with his advantage, and he wasn't sure he had it in him. He would have to be stupid not to try at least though.

So working out was a must. What was next? Magic?

Building mana channels without the tower's help was possible, but hard. It needed ambient mana to begin with, and he had never heard of real mages on Earth, only illusionists and magicians. Then again, he had never heard of system users either, but here he was.

Luke would need to investigate whether other people could use the system. He couldn't just ask his non-existent colleagues at school, but the internet might be the right place to look for it. As long as someone answered correctly which stats existed, they should be legit instead of trolls.

He would also investigate whether he could build mana channels. That would have to wait until he was back home though, as he needed to focus for days to feel mana.

That brought the question: what would he do if he could do magic? Without SP, growing his magic stats would be way too hard. He would be able to do some parlor tricks, but nothing great. Conquering the world was definitely out of reach even if he had such inclination, which he hadn't.

On the other hand... small healing tricks were doable. Together with the perfect memory his heart gave him, he could become the greatest doctor ever. Save lives, do some real good in the world.

He had been on the fence about which path to pursue to follow his mother's last will of making her proud: law or med school. Now it seemed his path had be chosen for him. He only had to make magic work.

The second to last thing he had to think about was what the system being on Earth meant.

Had the whole world been put inside the tower? As far as he knew, the tower kidnapped people, not planets. Then again, he had no idea how trustworthy his strange memories were.

Had the flat Earthers been right all along? Was the Earth flat and were they just a floor in the tower all along? Was there a conspiracy to keep things under wraps?

As strange as it sounded, Luke would have to check on that too. Maybe visit an observatory and talk to the people there.

That led him to the last, big question: what if there were other strange things coming? What if those memories had been given to him as a prelude of change? What if he could see the system because Earth would become something like the Sentinel Tower?

He had no answers to that; he could only wait and see. Working out and, if possible, learning magic would help in case the worst happened too, so it was a must.

All paths led to self-improvement. Luke was fine with that, used to that; that was his goal in life, the reason he studied hard. The only difference was that now, it also meant getting a more physically fit body than he ever thought he would.

He suddenly frowned. One of the reasons that led him to not do physical activities was that it required energy so he wouldn't faint, and energy meant extra food than the minimum to survive. He simply didn't have the money for it. He looked at his hands and arms to find a thin boy...

...and frowned deeper.

After getting one extra point in endurance, he wasn't so thin anymore, was he?

His arms were visibly bulkier than before. Still not healthy, still not big, but not as sickly as before.

The answer was obvious and led him to his first important discovery: yes, there was mana on Earth.

In the Sentinel Tower, people could reach new limits thanks to mana. It was a hellish place full of death and battle, but it also unlocked living being's potential. Food was required for survival, but system-assisted physical growth used mana instead. It looked like it was creating things out of nowhere, but it was instead turning a huge amount of mana into matter. Even on Earth, people knew matter could become energy—hence the atomic bombs—and vice-versa.

Anyway...

Magic was real.

The realization made Luke's eyes shine even as the bus approached the place he hated most in the world, the school.

To be honest, he had been feeling a bit silly to consider magic real even with the system there to prove reality had much more secrets than he thought. But now? Now he was ecstatic. If he could become a proper mana user and cast some healing spells, forget becoming a doctor, his immediate future would become much easier. He could heal himself after getting a beating and improve his life by leaps and bounds!

As for resisting Jackson?

Luke knew better than to resist the bully. The boy's previous target hadn't just dropped school, her life had become such a hell that she had... taken her own life.

And Jackson had just laughed at that.

The investigation was thrown into the cold cases and forgotten. Jackson's family made him untouchable, and it was better to get a few beatings everyday than to risk dying, or even worse, risk his grandfather's life.

The bus parked, and Luke absentmindedly left with everyone else rather than waiting. That was a mistake. As he was climbing down the last step of the stair, an unknown foot kept his leg back and he fell to the ground. At least this time no one held his arms too, so he didn't fell on his face. Still, his grand entrance at high school on this day of hope and revelations was much like in the past, before he had learned to let people leave the bus first: on all fours, humiliated.

Laughter and some empathetic looks followed him as he walked with his head down in shame. Soon, he entered the beautiful and large Victorian style school. He switched his focus to the here and now.

The system and the marvels of magic could wait.

First, he had to survive another day in this battlefield.