Year 0 Day 30

Non-Pioneers started to appear. Through extensive tests, we’ve managed to discover that they’re indeed 100% human and not body snatchers as some of us started to think. After a query from a [System Connected] Blessed, we learned that the Origin collected enough souls to expand its population. 

I don’t have enough data to know how new souls appear in this System of Reincarnation. I can only hope I solve this mystery before my own death.

I can, however, make suppositions. As we hurtle through the Void, inactive souls or fragments could be collected when in reach of our World for future use. Perhaps a form of soul mitosis is possible as well, slowly growing souls from those in Origin...

Until the population reaches a certain point, the Origin will continue to trickle in people while slowly increasing the souls in its System. While the System continues to spawn new conscious individuals and wildlife from nothing for now, it seems this will not last and this world will return to one where reproduction will be necessary.

It doesn’t seem this will cause a major problem since we’re barely a month in and some people can’t keep it in their pants. 

I leave it to the reader’s imagination while merely noting that no one got a Blessing of contraception and some Pioneers got overzealous already…

Anyway.

These souls may be reincarnated as various beings including wildlife or back to conscious, enlightened individuals.

In the Origin’s eyes, is our only difference from Wildlife our consciousness? Even this definition doesn’t really hold considering some Druids managed to contact and communicate with some Wildlife, including the wolves we’ve been killing in troves, that started developing wisdom and intelligence. I reach the uncomfortable conclusion that the only definite difference between Humanity and Wildlife is our base physical forms.

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Note: I’m adding the term “base” to physical form considering I just saw a Druid shapeshift in front of me to talk with some deer. Lines will keep trying to get blurrier while it’s our role to try to keep our terms as precise as possible.

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A mere base parameter set up by Probatio is what allows us access to the system before others. I can theorize that this adjustment is made with equilibrium in mind between these two sides. 

This answer from the System made a good portion of people uncomfortable, Pioneer or newly arrived. It's very interesting to see these new arrivals not recalling lives before a few days ago yet somehow have educations, feelings, knowledge, and, above all, flaws and virtues.

From the information I’ve collected, the less than sane Pioneers are starting to work toward new goals such as Immortality.

I’m not sure if I’m impressed they waited a month to declare their ambition or stunned they only took a month to fear their deaths and the possible cycle of souls. At the very least, this new long-term goal keeps them busy.

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Even for [System Blessed], the System is quite tight-lipped about the Circle of Reincarnation. It seems to precisely distinguish what should be known by Pioneer, what can be known if asked about, and what is forbidden knowledge. It seems Probatio’s mention of our needed mortality and eventual death isn’t an offhand remark.

It doesn’t seem like I’m hit too hard by the news though?

I again suspect a certain detachment due to my Blessing. Regardless, I still feel emotions when I want to so that’s still a plus. It helps me both in my firearm training and in my personal research.

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Note: Reader, understand that I’m not writing its exact abilities or name here in case this ends up in the wrong hands and would be used against me.

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Pioneers want to create the concept of Adventurers now that they have a population that is overall weaker to make requests. It seems we’ll keep the cliche of fantastic worlds with their adventurer guilds… I can only hope I will influence these changing times in the right direction.

I’ll keep updating big changes in Origin.

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Year 1

Day…irrelevant, the System Update updated itself with a new timescale, thus it's Day 1 again

After quite some time, I’ve decided to condense everything I’ve found out about during this short year as the first System update finally went through. 

First of all, Yay, it added a calendar that ruined our astrologer’s entire work of creating a sensible day, week, year System without orbiting around a star. Needless to say, they’re pretty pissed about it and have already started cursing the System while drinking their sorrows away heavily. I think they’ll be fine after some time, I hope.

Anyway, the most important point of the Update is this:

Humanity as a whole gained access to Skills today.

I mention Humanity but the term has to be updated as one of the main points of discovery this year is the emergence of other races and the evolution progress of wildlife.

For the question of wildlife and the slow emergence of monsters, the System itself answered. It seems races as a whole who haven’t reached enough wisdom or accomplished enough will be qualified in the common category of Monsterkind. Those attached to this category will benefit from smaller aid from the System, always receiving the same Systems as Enlightened Races a step after. This disadvantage is somewhat mitigated by their stronger than average bodies, their varying specialized morphologies, and their [Instinct].

[Instinct] is apparently an actual mechanic that allows them to feel things they shouldn’t be able to. it’s similar to the [Magic Sense] the Magical Pioneers created (as they dub it) but while weaker in the mana sensory department, it’s more wholly encompassing. This makes [Instinct] a trump card to always consider against Monsterkind or even interacting peacefully with them. 

Noted effects are as follows, for now: Energy Sensing, Intention Sensing, Threat Assessment, Lie Detector (Rarely appears), Danger Sense.

Now about the new Enlightened Races, which include Humanity:

The new races do not have Pioneers among them, just as the ones who spawned before them. Considering they were not here from the beginning, this makes sense and proves that they aren’t one of the madder Pioneers attempting to reincarnate as an immortal race (or long-lived enough race to be the same from our current point of view) they created. 

It seems the Origin collected enough souls from the Void and its other unknown sources to begin expanding beyond the scope of Humanity. These races are numerous and we couldn’t scour the land to confirm this theory but we’re noting a physical commonality in their appearances. They seem all based around Humans physically. 

For instance, elves are slender humans with sharp ears, while dwarves are stout and short bearded humans. We’re not sure if the design was based on the Pioneers' base appearances or if it has a deeper meaning. I remember that these appearances are similar to the ones found in my previous life’s culture and those that came from supernatural worlds confirmed these physical racial characteristics as rather normal ones.

These new races opened a lot of possibilities as they came with new knowledge and various affinities to energies. The Winged race (name pending) for instance, manipulated the wind like a limb as a demonstration and proposed to exchange some of our firearm tech for their research on flying armaments. These cultural exchanges will reinforce our powers with new ways to improve ourselves and new equipment available to Adventurers as a whole.

As a last point of interest, it seems that race changing is now possible through the passing of a quest approved by the leader of a race and the System. While these two conditions limit the total amount of quests possible in a certain timeframe, it ensures that impossible or childish quests are discarded instantly.

While this option interested quite a few Pioneers, it seems the quest will be rather lengthy to prove their interest in the race. It included, from my research with these race leaders, cultural knowledge tests, proofs of bravery, battle, [Soul Testing], and other miscellaneous tasks.

As mentioned before, the new System update gave new Skills [Soul Testing] and various privileges to certain powerful individuals in the form of these new System created Skills. 

Most Pioneers got those gifted abilities. It isn’t that strange considering their innate advantage and connection to the System. Among them is the ability to test a Soul’s durability, [Soul Testing]. At a higher Skill level, it has other uses and gives more data but only the basic effect of checking the integrity of the soul is useful for race changes. 

It seems that changing race damages the soul, which limits the possible population that will go through with it for now. Other, less damaging, methods may be found with time but even for the current Pioneers, we’ve got an estimated downtime of a century for the soul to heal itself from the operation, more or less depending on the compatibility.

For instance, individuals with stronger affinities with Natural Energy such as Druids and Wild World Blessed are prioritized by the Elf elder, even proposing himself to conduct the Race Change. The difficulty of the quest changes as well with these factors that represent this compatibility.

As no one has finished their race change quests, we’re lacking information to know more but various side effects are expected to appear considering the advantages seem overwhelming for now. Body dysphoria may occur in some cases.

I will keep my race as human for now, both due to there being too many unknown variables and simply by nostalgia for my previous identity and World.

I still did test my Soul durability with a friend by curiosity under a Confidential Contract made by a soul mage. 

While he was casting the spell, he started bleeding through his skin and seemed shocked before passing out. He couldn’t remember anything he saw when he woke up after a visit to a healer, both a physical one and another soul mage, to be sure.

My condition seems extraordinary considering his Blessing was System related. This type of Blessing maintains a tighter connection to the System that should have protected him more than the average Pioneer from a System gifted Skill's backlash.

This is a pretty good result, for now.

Let’s hope it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

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System Skills on the other hand seem to both represent the System’s help to push forward our abilities and a consolidation of what we can do already. Essentially, it numerizes the abilities we’ve already developed but by doing so preserves them to a certain extent. I say, to a certain extent, because someone noted that a swordsman that gets his arms cut wouldn’t lose the Skill he has but wouldn’t be able to use it regardless.

Nobody maxed out an ability yet but we’re betting on 100 for now since the highest Skill level we’ve found was a level 74 [Research Skill: Fire Magic] from one of the Magics, a pyromaniac too, I should note, which explains an obvious obsession. Due to how expansive this new System is, new information may be added with time. I’ll add a new category at the end. There are no negative Skills to be gained alone as of yet discovered. Curses applicable by others' abilities or Skills are noted down in a System Status, both temporary and permanent. They can, however, be hidden from a [Status] Command with the right Skillset.

I’ll summarize my most important Skills for now:

[Marksmanship] level 54; 

[Lifestyle Magic] level 36; 

[Technological Research: Unspecialized] level 62; 

(Note: rereading that I reached this level when the current highest leveled Skill is barely 10 makes me realize I need to take a holiday or work less, I should have known when [Sleep Resistance] got added to my Status I had a problem with overworking myself)

[Adventuring Basics] level 48. 

While only relevant information such as recent changes and primary Skills appear with [Status], [Complete Status], or [Status:###] followed by demand or a category will change the scope of information displayed.

It's interesting to see the ever-evolving system working on our statuses at all times.

For instance, most [Status] Commands display 10 main Skills at most for very versatile individuals. This creates new Skills that represent the fusion of each basic Skill we possess that are related and are accessible through the [Complete Status] Command. Following this logic, we get a Combat Skill, a Research one, a Magic one, and a Survival one in my case as those are the aspects I've developed most about myself. The difference between a fused Skill and an evolved one has to be noted as a fused Skill is merely the effect of similar basic Skills in concordance while evolved Skills take this effect beyond what is achievable with basic Skills and are acquired through reaching max Skill level.

[Adventuring Basics], for instance, contains [Camping], [Wild Survival], [Dungeoneering], [Makeshift Crafting] and a few others.

The category name can be a bit misleading however and caution is advised. My [Marksmanship] skill does contain a [Knife Mastery] level 20 and a [Close Combat] level 27 as an example.

 

I’ll leave this update, for now, I’m going to see if Iro recovered to see if our friend group can set out soon to see if the world changed with the update. Maybe Dungeons or new Materials are now accessible.