After looking over every book that was brought to me I couldn't hold myself and sigh internally.
I was screwed! I was royally screwed!
After reading the books I had a general idea about this world and about powers called systems. And after reading that I knew that I was screwed. I thought about my system and semi transparent system interface appeared before my eyes:
APOSTLE SYTEM(Natural)
Name: Rodney
Title: Enlightened Fool
Lvl:1
Age: 19
-Stats-
Strength: 10
Vitality: 10
Speed: 10
Perception: 10
Magic Power: 10<•
-Skills-
Enlightened Fools Gaze(E), Enlightened Fools Phraseology(E), Natural Healing(E), Water Walking(E)
Special Status: Handmade by God
The more I looked at my stats the more desperate I got.
The system is the power system in this world. Origins of the system are unknown. Some theorize they were given us by gods and others theorize that we stole the system from gods. Their origin doesn't really matter actually so let's just skip over it.
What matters is that every person in this world has it. System is the essential part of this world. Who you are and what you will be, all depend on the system.
How do you get a system you ask? It's easy! You're born with a system! When a child in this world is born the first and only thing they have is their systems. There are many variables that effect what system you get but most of the time the system they get would be same as their parents or the mix between them. There are some rare cases where the system would just be random but the chances of that are almost negligible.
There are three types systems in the recorded history. One of them is a natural system. The natural system is a system that is natural to their species or race. For example humans can be warriors, blacksmiths, farmers, or even prostitutes. Human having a warrior system or farmer system is natural. The word is very self explanatory actually.
The second type of system is a hybrid system. Hybrid system is harder to define because it is very weird. The hybrid systems are the systems that go against the world order, they're something unnatural that shouldn't really exist. Let me give you an example! Human A falls in love with an Elf A and together they have a child. Being a half elf and half human what is natural for him. Is it having human system or the elf system? You may say that it doesn't matter because elves and humans look the same and that is very true. But in actually humans and elves are very different.
In this world every race has his own system and the stats in their system differ by race. Humans have magic power stat but elves do not have that stat. They have a stronger version of the stat called spirit magic power. It's basically the same as magic power but far more stronger.
This sounds simple, yea? Now comes a hard part!
In this world there exists a weird concept of balance that I don't really get. Because of that weird concept of balance everyone is screwed. Spirit magic power is stronger than magic power so to make up for that to use spirit magic power you have to use vitality. Elves have a very high vitality levels because of their Stat Skills(more on them later). Your vitality stat relates to how long you can live. Normally elves could live to hundreds of thousands of years but because they use their vitality to use their spirit magic power their lifespan is shortened to around two hundred years. Their lifespan is still longer than humans but it's minuscule compared to their original lifespans.
Using their lifespan for power works for elves but this would be deadly for humans. Now let's look at the previous example with a half elf. When the human and an elf have a child together the weird concept of balance strikes again. This leads to human having an elf system. I don't know what is fair or balanced here but it always happens. Because it is unnatural for a human to have an elf system this system is a hybrid system.
Elf example was just a fraction of possible hybrid system examples. There are many records of humans having dwarf systems, dragon systems, and even monster systems.
Hybrid systems are more powerful than natural systems but having a hybrid system in this world is a very bad thing.
Let's take the previous example of human having an elf system. Because spirit magic power needs vitality to use and because almost all the elf systems require use of spirit magic power, a human whose lifespan is around 100 years is screwed if he got elf system.
That's not even the end! Hybrid systems are more susceptible to curses. Curses being a special statuses that are impossible to get rid of. If the hybrid system owner is not screwed by their race then they're screwed by a curse they are born with. They did not even have a choice.
The third kind of system is called concept system and I'll talk about it later.
Every system has a title, stats and skills.
Titles are awards given to you by the gods after you meet some requirement. There are infinite titles in the world so it is impossible to know what you get. Some requirements to get the titles could be so similar and minuscule things could change what title you get. Most of the time titles will give you a special skill or increase your stats. Some titles are just decorations.
My title which is Enlightened Fool gave me two skills.
When you get a title it would say some god acknowledged you hinting that there are gods that always look after us. But it is also debatable because almost no human or any other race in this world talked with a god. At least from what I know there was no one like that.
Now we arrive at arguably the most important gear in a machine called system, the stats.