In a dark room on an unknown island, Dylan wakes up. As he does, mind numbing, soul splitting pain was felt all throughout his body as he regains control of his body.
"Where... where am I?"
Slowly, memories that aren't his begin to trickle in. From little toddler to now, he relives another's life in a few seconds. After he finishes, the pain slowly dies down to an odd throb of the head here and there. Slowly, he tries to raise his arm, but a shooting pain forces him to stop. As he looks around, he realizes that this place is both familiar and also not. Looking around, he realizes it's the Mysterious Island, on which a secret government base is located! Except this time, rather than looking at the cells from outside, he's inside one of the cells, and it looks like one of the ones used for experimentation.
As he swivels his head around, the door creaks open. Out from the passageway, a lady in black comes through.
'Isn't that the Black Reaper Tonva?! However, she doesn't feel evil right now. Wait, could this be before the incident? Then this means not only did I transmigrate, but I also went back in time... and this is definitely Tainted Existence. Then, if I'm right, this should be where the Kamino government tested the Black Serum. If that's true, then I'm probably one of the few survivors. Then, did I also awaken my ability?'
As he sat there in a daze, Tonva, that just walked in, seemed to get impatient. She kicked him, before commanding him in a cold tone.
"Get up. As the only survivor of the Black Serum, your gonna have to go through hell to become an agent. I won't tolerate a single mistake, got that. Otherwise..."
Saying the last word in an imposing and murderous tone, Dylan understood that failing meant death. However, he was confused about the last part. Only survivor? There should be more, right? At that point, though, he realized that he went further back then he thought. One of the backstory elements of the beta version and Versions 1 was that the Black Serum was used on countless people before getting to a level where it could have a 50% success rate, which led to its use in the Continental Chaos storyline of Version 1. However, players weren't part of that period and only came in a few years before the completion of the Serum, which was the beta, before having a time skip to Version 1, where it was already complete and later used in the war. If he was here, then that must mean he was before the beta test. However, he hadn't forgotten what Tonva had said, and walked out the door with her.
As they walked along, Tonva spoke one last time before shoving him into the training room.
"Your now known as Dawn, Agent Dawn. From now on, you'll be training with me."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's been a week since Dylan, now known as Dawn, started training. He just finished another session and was thrown back into his "house." This "house" was three rooms put together, with the smallest being the bathroom, the next smallest being the bedroom, and the biggest being the kitchen and dining room together. As he walked in to his bedroom, he heard a sound in his head.
[Ding! Optimization complete, fusion progress: 100%. System self-activation complete.]
'Wait, this is... this is the game system!'
Dawn realized that the game system seemed to have followed him, and going into his status page confirmed his greatest suspicion.
[Status:]
[Name: Dawn]
[Level: 3 (24/300)]
[Title: None]
[Class: None]
[Strength: 16]
[Dexterity: 20]
[Perception: 14]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Charisma: 14]
[Luck: 10]
[Energy: 1,500/1,500]
[Skills: {Expand/Collapse}]
[Talents: {Expand/Collapse}]
[Time Until Next Update: 3Y, 4M, 24D]
'So, it isn't just a world similar to the game, its is a game. It seems like players will come in during the Beta Test in three years. Alright, at least I get a heads up.'
Once he finished thinking about the game and players, he went into the skills tab
[Skills:]
[Sprint: While running, activating this skill gives plus 50% movement speed for double the energy cost.]
[Quick Shot: By using 200 energy, shoot the gun your holding 50% faster and bypass any mechanical limits.]
After he finished that, he looked at his talents and found a surprising discovery.
[Talents:]
[Quick Aim: After your training as an agent, you have learned to aim at weak spots quickly and without hesitation. +10% Critical Chance, +25% Critical Damage]
[Intuition: You have developed a sense for danger and opportunity. At certain times, intuition will tell you of either great danger or great prospects.]
'Huh. This is a talent I haven't seen before. Why is it here?'
Usually, Talents are connected to what kind of person you are and what you've done. A T.V. star might unknowingly gain a Talent like "Great Charisma," increasing their charm and other people's opinion of them. A General might spontaneously gain a Talent like "Commanding Expertise," giving them a great ability for strategy and increasing the morale of those under them. There are many other examples, but it usually follows this basis. That should mean that this person has found lots of life and death encounters, narrowly avoiding all of them (except this one), found lots of great opportunities, or even both, to cultivate a Talent like Intuition.
As he was mulling over this new information in his head, Dawn received a message on his communicator. Communicators were essentially advanced technology similar to phones that can take many forms, from a watch to wrist guards to an earpiece. This is because they have two modes: hologram and traditional. Traditional is simply like a phone, where you can tap on the device itself and look at the screen for information. Hologram, on the other hand, is self explanatory. It gives a screen in the form of a hologram, which is useful for smaller devices like earpieces. That's also why communicators are so diverse: they can be practically anything as long as you use hologram mode, which is also the only mode for, like was said earlier, earpieces. In case you haven't realized, an earpiece is exactly the kind that Dawn has.
Dawn answered the call, finding it to be Tonva, or rather, Black Reaper, her agent name.
"Dawn, we have your first mission. Remember, we're always watching, so don't even think of trying to get away."
After saying that, she turned off the call, and a file was sent to Dawn's communicator. The System automatically analyzed it, turning the mission into a quest and using the information to create the backstory for the quest.
[Ding! New mission available.]
[Mission: Enemy Official]
[Objective: Find and eliminate the target "Oberon Lightstreak"]
[Completion Condition: Target is eliminated.]
[Failure Condition: Target escapes or you are captured/killed.]
[Reward: 300 EXP, 1 Skill Point, +50 Favorability (Kamino Agent Corps.)]
'Well then, I can't say I don't like these rewards.'
The experience was enough to get him to level 4. Like any normal NPC, he can gain experience through training. So far, that's gotten him to level 3, and then some. Each level requires quite a bit of experience. Levels 1-50 require 100, 200, 300, etc. EXP/level. After every fifty levels, it costs and extra 10% EXP and continues with the same pattern. So while going from 50-51 will require 5,000 experience, 51-52 will require 5,100 + 10% of that, which equals 5,610. Although right then it's only an increase of around 500 points, it gets exponentially stronger as you go to higher levels. Going from level 201-202 would cost 29,400 experience, an extra 8,400 points required.
And so, Dawn set off. As he went to the rival nation, he noticed several peculiar oddities that could be useful for escaping the Kamino Government's control.