Chapter 2 - System Awakening

Scientists have discovered or invented many things over the years. Before making the things they've discovered or invented public, there's an enormous number of experiments that are carried out. Even before that, there's the phase of speculation as to whether that one thing might exist or whether it could come into existence. Most of the questions that scientists ask themselves are eventually realised, even if this takes decades. Of course, there are subjects in our daily life that they still don't know anything about. An example of this is what comes after death, or what the person experiences while dying. There are many theories about what exactly happens, but they've never been proven. The problem is that right now I'm not sure if I'm experiencing any of these theories. What I can say is that if I'm dead, the theory where consciousness perishes and the person is not aware of their death is dead wrong.

Do you understand the pun? If so, be honest. It's a good one. Anyway, right now I find myself in a pretty strange place. The area where I'm standing is pitch black and at first glance, it seems that I'm in a void of some kind. It also seems that all my senses have disappeared. All I can do is look around, even though the pitch-black surrounding is the only thing I see. After an unknown period of time, I notice that somewhere in the distance a silvery-white orb begins to form. Don't ask me how, but for some reason, I now find myself right in front of the forming orb. I thought to myself that I wanted to get closer, and I saw the orb getting closer and closer. Or is it the other way round and has the orb moved in my direction? I have no idea.

Once close to the silver object, I start concentrating on it. It's remarkably fascinating how it builds itself up. Around the orb, a silvery-white mist emerges and is absorbed. During this process, the orb expanded and grew in size. This continued until the orb was the size of a tennis ball. After the materialisation, I start to hear a buzzing sound in the distance that's approaching with great speed. It's also the moment I realise that my senses have returned and that when I look down, I can see the silhouette of my body because of the dull light emitted by the orb.

After a while of getting used to having my senses back, I see a golden flash in the corner of my eye. I turn around and see perhaps thousands of golden threads moving at an enormous speed in my direction. Because of the golden light that is emitted and the shadow that is created by it, I can tell that the surrounding space is not infinitely large, but has clear proportions. the space is about 10 by 10 metres. I had however expected it to be larger because of my previous thought that it was infinite.

Because of the light, I now notice that there is a pitch-black obelisk-like structure under the silver orb. While I'm focusing on the obelisk, all the golden threads are gathering under my feet and the light is starting to be very blinding. At first, I tried to keep my eyes slightly open and could only just make out that the darker colour gold was entering the sphere through the obelisk. Less than half a minute after the intense light, I had to close my eyes and turn the other way because it started to hurt my eyes.

After what seemed like an eternity, the light suddenly got a huge increase in brightness before dropping in intensity. As the light was dimming, I suddenly saw in front of me a blue loading screen like that in a video game. I'm extremely confused and start to wonder if looking at the light for too long has caused a spot like when you look at the sun for too long, even though it was blue for some reason. I had to abandon this reasoning quickly because the blue loading screen began to fill up at a slow pace. Because the light was still too bright, I didn't dare open my eyes yet. A minute or two later, the loading screen filled up and disappeared from my sight again. A second later, I suddenly heard a kind of notifying sound and something happened which I even found strange although nothing normal had happened up to that point.

[System Alert: Mana storage is filled up]

[System Alert: Activating of the innate talent [System]]

[System Alert: Analysing host and searching for other innate talents]

After this message, I started to get hotter and hotter until it started to hurt slightly. For the first few minutes I didn't have a problem with the slight pain, but the longer it went on I got a more and more uncomfortable feeling and it even started to get very annoying. This continued until the moment when I wanted to scream from the aching feeling. Fortunately, the heat went down before this could happen and it returned to a person's normal bodily temperature. Unfortunately, before I could recover, I started to hear those unpleasant sounds again.

[System Alert: Analysis made]

[System Alert: Innate talent [Omni Mastery] found]

[System Alert: Starting the fusion of innate talents]

The heat from before began to rise again and I started to scold those stupid notifications as I had never done before. Fortunately, the change in my body did not last as long as before.

[System Alert: Talents fused, obtained innate talent [Omni System]]

[System Alert: Activating of [Omni System] commercing]

[System Alert: Congratulations, you've activated your personalised system]

After that last notification, there were thankfully no more and I finally had time to take a good look at everything. The more I read, the more convinced I was that I had started hallucinating. First of all, I have no idea what Mana is. And then all those comments about analysing me, I assume that by host she meant me. The most incomprehensible of all is the activation of my System or something. The only thing I could use as a reference is the System concept I sometimes read in online novels. Because this would just be the most absurd thing ever, I finally became convinced that I am indeed hallucinating. Maybe I should see a psychologist when I get out of this weird realm of dreams.

The intense light has finally dimmed enough for me to open my eyes again. I open my eyes, curious as to what exactly happened to the silver orb after the golden threads invaded. But just before my eyes could adjust to the surroundings, I begin to feel dizzy, and for the second time that day, I fall unconscious.

I wake up and start to hear crackling sounds while I've got an unpleasant taste in my mouth. After opening my eyes, I notice that I am back in the classroom. I get up and see that part of the ceiling has collapsed just next to someone's body. I walk over to the hopefully unconscious person to see if everything is all right. As I approach, I see that it's the teacher who, fortunately, without any immediately visible wounds, looks reasonably fine.

While I am checking whether the teacher is still breathing, I recall everything I dreamt and wonder if it has some kind of meaning. I try to remember what the main characters in online novels were supposed to do and start reciting a few commands in my head. Not long after I started, I suddenly see a familiar colour appear before my eyes after the mental command 'status'.

[STATUS]

[Race: Human]

[Level: F (Lvl: 1)]

[Exp progress: 0%]

[Strength: 13]

[Agility: 11]

[Dexterity: 11]

[Vitality: 10]

[Constitution: 10]

[Intelligence: 6]

[Wisdom: 9]

[Innate Talent: [Omni System], [Adaptivity]]

[Skills: [Active], [Passive]]

I am stunned by the hologram that has appeared before my eyes. The excitement begins to rise the longer I look at it. This is exactly the same kind of concept one can read about in online novels, which means that I can get stronger and stronger with each level I acquire. I want to better understand how my system worked but before I could focus on that, the constant crackling behind me suddenly became extremely loud. I jump up and look behind me in the direction of the sound. Because of this action, I only now realise that 4 other bodies were lying unconscious either on the ground or halfway on their workbenches.

I start looking for the source of the loud crackling as I move toward one of the four bodies to see if they are truly just unconscious. All of a sudden, in the corner of my eye, I see small pieces of debris falling from the ceiling. When I look in that direction, I see a body lying on the floor with the ceiling slightly lowered above the body. I begin to have an unpleasant foreboding and walk towards the body to see what's going on.

The crackling suddenly became extremely loud and more and more debris began to fall over the unconscious person. I start to run and the worst scenario I could imagine at the moment has just become reality. I see the piece of the ceiling coming loose and beginning its descent towards the ground. I'm running as fast as I can but quickly come to a conclusion that I don't want to witness.

'Shit, I won't make it there on time.'