The warmth of the blanket eased herself to gradually wake up from the morning light.
She rubbed her eyes before noticing that this was not her room.
She looked around in panic before suddenly a wave of pain went through her head and heard a cold yet chiming sound of a mechanical bell.
[ Host found. Initiating synchronization mode complete. Choose the pathway that'll dictate your future. ]
[ Super Hero or Villain Pathway]
Aria who thought she was hallucinating soon came to the realization that she came into a parallel world when the original owner's memories settled down and integrated.
So she possessed the other her in a different plane.
She skimmed through the new memories and realized that although they both shared a similar life, she transmigrated into a super powered society of heroes and villains in a mashed up world with highly intelligent beasts and monsters.
So aliens.
Aria called out to the blue holographic panel that normally would've been an exciting moment for all otakus but this was too much information at once.
Yes, Aria was an all out otaku nerd that loved to spend her time reading these types of books with systems and golden fingers.
However, realizing she actually went into a parallel world of superheroes and villains.
Only seen in comics and books was too stimulating for her brain.
Though it took awhile to get back to normal, the time she spent thinking to herself, managed enough for her to go back to her normal operating brain cells at assumedly the morning.
"System, wait— what does it mean to choose a hero or villain path?"
[ Host's decision directs what type of system she'll get. ]
Oh, this is flattering to be able to choose as she internally grinned knowing that her past precedents of system hosts was forced into differing types of systems.
The chills of some of them.
"No, I mean the definition of a hero or villain because you could be called a hero by society but be greedy and evil under a good persona cultivated by the media.
Or that a villain isn't always a guy who is psychotically evil and likes to mass murder people but could have a moral line like everybody else that is just... Slightly more grayer than others.
They could just have a goal that isn't socially accepted by society but nothing too bad y'know?"
Shit— here it goes again.
Aria wanted to immediately facepalm into a hole somewhere.
It always happens to her.
This was her life.
Guess dying doesn't change the fact that she still prates words like parrots without thinking.
That sounded dumb right?
[ The system will be customized to fit your ideologies based on your mind of what you think of the pathways for yourself. ]
Wait— she didn't say all those words for nothing? She has the options? This sounded way too flexible for a system to be this adaptable for a host like her, especially her.
She didn't know she had god-tier luck that was by her side.
There must be some type of catch.
But in a moment of impulsiveness, a light bulb popped in her head and slowly came to the realization that she just came up with the most genius idea ever.
There was no way in any shape or form, she was going to be willing to take the time and effort out of her life to help other people because of the goodness of her heart.
She'll help when she wants to not because she needs to.
And she knows she is too lazy, she wants to live like a salted fish.
Villains?
They don't follow normal guideline rules, they just do what they want and would do anything to achieve it even if it's against society.
And she has a family to protect in this world too, the same family that also grew up with her.
They were basically identical.
The memories that integrated within her already smoothly transitioned herself with her new identity and she knows that she was selfish. She would protect her family first before all else even if her life depends on it.
It doesn't matter if she was labeled a villain because she knows she would rather be a villain then know that she harmed the people she cared about.
There were too many cliche hero troupes where the heroes end up doing their part to save the world but at the same time lose loved ones to evil at the beginning, middle or end part of their journey.
And since this was conforming to her ideas of what a hero and villain meant, this was beating the system with their own game!
She chose the Super Villain Pathway and the moment she chose it, the blue holographic panel distorted into numerous pixels.
Oh— what if she made a mistake?
What if she made an error and this wasn't as a genius idea she thought?
Then after a second, it went back to normal but her new system appeared.
There was no going back.
[ Thriving Super Thief System at your service.
This unique system custom to you details your accomplishments to be the best proficient villain in your field under the veil of anonymity of an alias that would storm fear to those who hear its name detailing missions that you can pick up and decide with water-drooling rewards.
Never stealing from the poor and needed but only those who can afford it.
Further details would require further inquiries.
Shout 'Activate' to unlock your personal system administrator to help you in your journey. ]
[ Have fun, Aria. ]
The last message left too quickly for her to register, leaving behind an empty yet uncomfortable feeling inside her like she was missing something important.
She quickly said, "Activate."
"Hello Host! I'm your system administrator 2028 who will help you in your journey. You can ask me questions and I'll try to be as helpful as I can!
You can also give me a name!"
An animated white and brown cat appeared in front of her and jumped into her embrace.
Why did this cat look so familiar but she had never seen this cat before.
"I'll call you Gatsby, you look so adorable!" Aria cuddled him into her embrace and she was zapped of energy.
She sighed in warmth and annoyance that it would've been convenient if she could talk to Gatsby inside her head.
She was already mentally drained when she had to force herself to finish her last word.
"Dear host! Don't worry about it. You can just talk to me and do all the commands inside your head like if you shouted 'Status' it'll show you your basic information!"
Aria side-eyed Gatsby on how he could read her mind but she still was appreciative that she could talk to him inside her head.
Gatsby was a really helpful and cute system.
'Thanks but haha I'm not that dumb to forget that.'
She wondered, actually, what her status would be like so she said, 'status.'
There appeared a revolving mini-sized avatar that was next to her status to the side of it.
Host: Aria
Level: 1
System Points: 0
Super Power: Singing {{ E-ranked }}
Talent: Linkage Enhancements {{ E-ranked }}
Skills: N/A
Ah— so it was this type of set up for her status.
It listed her superpower and hidden talent both at E-ranked which by society standards was promising for an eighteen year old girl but how come she had no skills?
And what the hell was this human-shaped mannequin doing there?
"What does skill mean and why don't I have any?
Also what's this avatar doing here? For fashion?" She raised her eyebrow and twitched her mouth in confusion.
"The skills show your techniques, general and unique abilities that you can raise and show your progress in. You do not currently have any because it is hard to learn a skill with most requiring a medium to learn.
This avatar is part of your system function to disguise and design outfits with different attributes to steal your targeted items in a fashionable manner as it doesn't matter if you dress extravagantly or not as either way a good thief would never get caught even in the limelight or not.
Are you satisfied this was a great choice to choose the villain pathway!"
Aria smiled at Gatsby and rubbed his head comfortably as the earlier message was really not lying.
The system was oddly made for her in a sense that it didn't seem all too bad though she knew that she would still need to do some things out of her consciousness.
It was like that ideology she forgot by who, that you make a worker happy and you get a more productive result. She tilted her head, maybe this was what the system was doing.
Wah— Gatsby was really a cute and friendly system.
She rubbed his cheeks as she knew that a part of her secretly wanted to dress up for eighteen years. She lived as before she was slightly— never mind, I mean high-key level of social anxiety she always wore for comfort and laziness even opting to wear the same clothes days and weeks.
She couldn't help it, a habit was formed and it was hard to let go when life seemed monotonous and dull.
But then, she was pulled into a parallel world where hope was brimming in life.
If you just excluded the fact that this world had aliens ahem monsters and this was definitely not as safe of an overall society.
There was hope to feel alive and overpowering over one's life.
After somewhat analyzing the system's answer, she finished looking through and noticed the multiple tabs on top of the blue panel and clicked on one of the tabs called the 'shop.'
She was quickly amazed by the different categories that the shop had to offer with personal items suiting her taste, especially the fashion category of some dark yet cute clothes that hung in the top with thousands of system points.
"You're amazing, Gatsby!" Aria looked at the items with a drool hanging out of her mouth.
She had very low expectations for the price of these items because her novel knowledge led to her automatically thinking that these systems were money-grubbers that wanted to empty your system points in seconds.
However, they were cute and reasonable and fulfilled her narcissistic tendencies that would occasionally pop up to be stylish and bold.
She saw through that although there were expensive items, there were also cheaper items varying 1-10 sp like spy cams and customizing lock picking keys.
There wasn't just basically a clothing department in there but also including necessities and other overpowered items.
It was laughable that the cheaper end goods were very suitable for stealing and she was all for it.
Hey, already joined the villain side so might as well get used to thinking as one because too many protagonists Aria has read questioned the system's authority by not wanting to do any of this shady system business.
No shade to this cute and friendly tst system Ovo.
They get frightened into submission because they'll die if they don't follow the system's order.
It was a useless question to ask and there was nothing to lose because in the end, the system was made to help her become powerful and a powerhouse to be remembered for generations.
And she didn't want to slight her Gatsby because of a question that was already illogical to ask to this whole system business as Aria already found an emotional connection to him.
Look at how cute those emerald eyes are. How innocent.
She did not know until many years later that she found out even if she did not do anything and actually pursued her salted fish lifestyle she would not die. Her cute and friendly tst system was really cute and friendly.
She looked at her mission tab consisting of only one current mission. It seemed like this was an easy mission for her to get a starting for her new villain identity and villain hood!
[ Mission tab: The Start of the Era's God Thief ]
Create an identity and name for your thief alias.
Reward: {{ Customize default avatar, villain outfit, weapon and one attribute for each outfit/ weapon with two random attributes drawn randomly }} {{ 10 system points }}
Aria decided to finish this mission by first naming herself Rain in accordance to the factual meaning behind her other name that was given to her Yu Jia but she mostly goes by Aria.
Once she inputted this, the mission was cleared and she could now customize her new outfit on her avatar.
"Aria now that you have completed your first mission, you can customize your villain alias. This is where you really start your journey so please don't restrict yourself as a villain you don't have to care about any one's opinion. Be you, Aria! Nya~"
Hearing Gatsby's warm encouragement filled her with warm thoughts about what type of person she wanted to come across as a villain.
She looked at her avatar and finally adjusted her everywhere to make her avatar seem totally different from her. She did it in full confidence because she remembered what Gatsby said.
"The avatar is your default disguise for Rain that all adjustments differing to your actual appearance would not affect you courtesy to only making physical appearances not internally."
She made the avatar 5'10 with long legs and a well-developed endowed chest that was twice as big as her normal size.
She beautified her normal features everywhere with smooth skin and made her a one of a kind east asian beauty.
It was just basically her taller, not flatter, and smoothing out features like a rich lady who took great care of herself with numerous expensive products since birth.
She was satisfied with her avatar so then she thought about what type of style and experiment she wanted to try out that she never was able to do in her last life.
She visualized a high low black off the shoulder dress with fine details that went all the way down around her mid-thighs in the front and was paired underneath a sensual red lingerie that was matched with black high heels that were closed.
The avatar then wore a pair of black laced gloves all the way up to half way of her forearm and was also enriched with ruby rings on both of her hands.
Her makeup look then had a soft red lipstick color that highlighted the middle of her lips with a red eyeshadow liner look that transitioned from the inner eye to the end of a gradual red color scheme.
Giving her a beautiful yet evil look as she then decided that it was too much of a gamble to show her refined face to the world if somehow someone was not skewed by the author's logic and noticed the commonalities of her features.
This was her life she's talking about!
She can't gamble on such a thing so she decided to put a blindfold that covered her eyes to make it enough for her to only look cool but still only allow others to see some of her features.
But then it would hinder her eyesight because she didn't have a skill to overlook that so she asked Gatsby if she could somehow make her see through the blindfold like a one way view.
"Yes you can use 1 sp to make it see through from your perspective as with system points through a fair exchange point, you can buy anything... As long as you have enough points!"
Aria used 1 sp and saw that it went from 10 to 9 but she was happy that she at least looked cool.
It was all about that fashion alright? She had one life and now she is willing to do it all.
After finishing the final details, she decided that she would add a dainty silver ankle bracelet around her right ankle for looks and a black garter belt around her left thigh to store some suitable tools and weapons.
She was satisfied with her overall avatar but noticed that something was missing from the overall picture.
Her weapon was missing so she thought about it for a couple of seconds and projected a beautiful detailed parasol that filled in the gap of the missing piece that didn't feel right.
She looked at her parasol and made her customized attribute the ability to be all seeing underneath her parasol.
Meaning that the parasol was not only cute but she could detect every second detail in a three hundred sixty scope view of all directions to formulate the perfect escape or entrance route in and out.
She also made the customized attribute for the outfit a fool-proof ability of making herself to never be able to get traced back to her real identity.
Like the moment the hair detached from her head, the hair will automatically disintegrate, along with anything that also leaves her body even with spirituality traces like the residue left behind by super powers.
This will make her traceless and feel more secure about wantonly messing around.
After she was done making the avatar for Rain, she questioned Gatsby if Rain will have her own separate status to differentiate between her own and Rain's status.
"Aria because you requested it, I will make you a status separate for Rain once you complete the avatar and will be moved beside your status or when you call for it."
Aria thanked Gatsby by giving him a hug for answering and helping her as it would've been confusing if all the skills were just applied to one or that's what she thought.
Now getting that clarified and finishing what she wanted to do for her customized attributes, she called Gatsby to pull the random attributes now.
He meowed and out of nowhere, his paws pulled an identical pair of wheels that were both large in shape but had different tabs in the wheel.
Aria quickly prayed and pulled the lever not forgetting the squeeze Gatsby's paw as if that'll change anything.
The wheel to her left revealed that her parasol would now also include an amplified voice enhancement and a multi-arrayed weapon that can manifest 5 forms including its defaulted form of the black parasol.
The five forms being the default, gun, shield, sword, and mic.
She decided to call it the Finite Fold Parasol.
Aria screamed in god's blessing when she saw that she pulled out the multi-arrayed weapon like that elite gamer she read where this is a clear definition of an OP weapon.
She excitedly looked at her new outfit's attributes and there gleamed starlights in her eyes.
The wheel had landed on quick-change and an analytical enhancement.
She instantly locked eyes on quick-change and multi-arrayed weapons and did a happy dance to celebrate how happy she was feeling. This was a step to becoming an overpowered protagonist that would not need to worry about whatever comes their way.
The weapon system grades their equipment by color ranging from the colors of grade red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
[Common Weapons- Grade Red
Uncommon Weapons- Grade Orange
Rare Weapons- Grade Yellow
Unique Weapons- Grade Green
Legendary Weapons- Grade Blue
Customized Weapons- Grade Violet
God Weapons- Grade Gold ]
She pulled a grade violet weapon that in her new world, only an equivalent B+ Hero would be able to retain and if they had enough reputable power and money to fund a blacksmith to make one.
The quick-change, you can hear it from its name, from how good of an ability it is for a thief to be able to quickly blend around their surroundings and mislead their pursuers into an empty wall.
When she finished celebrating how her hand got lucky, she felt apprehensive of the good luck that was coming her way. Her pessimistic thinking quickly flew out of the window, when she finished looking through her system and heard a call from downstairs.
Now getting out of her stupor in this whole ideal. She examines her new surroundings as she gets ready to go downstairs and meet her family.
The room spooked her in the beginning because it looked different from her original bedroom that was messy and had piles of clothes lying around.
Here, the original owner had more personality shown and a cleaner outlook but what's wrong with a messy room, it's still going to be as dusty as it was in the closet as it is on the floor.
She looked intimidated by all the clothes that were neatly piled in her closet and drawers.
Her bedroom now is even cleaner than the day she left it yesterday.