Van continued to bite down on his t-shirt harder and harder as the pain continued to increase. He soon began to have a metallic taste in his mouth as blood started to slowly trickle out of his gums from the force of him biting down.
'What the hell is going on is this what death feels like. I don't even know how or when I ended up at this orphanage. I heard families are way better than here I wish I could have at least died with a family.' Van began to have a wide range of thoughts as the pain increased and his body began to heavily twitch in pain.
While trying to contain the pain his vision began to get spotty as he began to fade in and out of consciousness eventually falling ever closer to the lulling call of sleep which he thought to be death himself.
He then became fully conscious and aware in a completely white space. 'So I died? How am I here though? Wait does this mean there's life after death!?' Van began his internal dialogue again but was pleasantly surprised to hear another voice in his head as the figure of a dangerously beautiful woman manifested in front of him through bright motes of light.
'Calm down Van you're not dead, your physical body is asleep because you passed out during the upload process. You're currently in what's called a true universe, the only true universe to exist within this sector of the void. But you're not strong enough for your senses to comprehend the nature of it so it manifest itself in your eyes as a blank infinite space.' The angelic voice of the woman sounded in his head baring striking resemblance to the voice that had appeared in his head during his 'schizophrenic' spells and before the so called upload process began.
Hearing this van was shocked, he didn't expect this kind of response when he thought he had died. 'Wait if my body is asleep this should just be a dream, but what do you mean true universe, you can't mean that I live in a simulation or video game?'
'In time the answer to all your questions will be revealed now listen for you have been selected by their greatness for a mission of grave importance. You have been selected to become the avatar of your universe' the woman's voice again sounded in his head.
'Woah woah wait I don't want to become some tall blue freak just because someone chose me' Van immediately Interrupted the woman when he heard her say he'd become the avatar of his universe.
The woman had a confused and slightly irritated expression hearing Van interrupting her again. 'I don't know what you are talking about but I don't think you understand what I am talking about, once a universe reached a certain age they gain consciousness and by nature they seek to infinitely expand themselves and grow in strength by any means necessary'
'Once a universe gains sentience it's not best left unchecked that's where the role of an avatar comes into effect as the avatar's duty is to subdue the universe's sentience and become one with it. Normally a universe would have randomly birthed it's avatar some time after gaining it's sentience.'
'However in your universe's case it's strength is growing too fast, so it called for the intervention of a higher power to select it's avatar.'
Hearing all of this Van thought deeply for a while trying to understand what this meant. 'So you're telling me all of this isn't a dream and I'm supposed to become some kind of god in order to become one with the universe im from?'
'That is more or less correct, you are to become one with your universe's consciousness to stabilize it's development and growth. You will become the savior of your universe from the doom currently coming it's way. You will have approximately 42,000 years to subdue the consciousness of your universe or it will ultimately face eradication.'
The woman replied in the same constant and soothing tone she'd always use, but her words felt like a brick house being dropped from the sky onto vans head. 'The eradication of the entire universe, 42,000 years last time I checked the oldest person to live on planet Cyrus was 200 and that was just rumored' there were more rumors of people on higher level planets living well past 1,000 years but none of that was within the reality of a poor orphan on a low leveled planet.
A planet wasn't considered high level until it broke past the level 100 barrier. Planets were broken into 6 categories, newborn planets that had just formed life as level 0 planets. Then there were planets where the lifeforms had began to develop intelligence and form colonies these planets were usually between level 20-25.
After this came planets where the lifeforms could call themselves civilized and they began to build civilizations and kingdoms, these planets normally had already progressed passed their own industrial revolutions and were relatively peaceful compared to lower leveled planets. These planets ranged from level 45-50.
Then there were the planets that began to step into a different world entirely as they had individuals that would become awakened due to evolution allowing them to harness the energy of the world in a tangible manner within themselves. These awakenings ranged from awakening magical elemental power, to superhuman strength and superhuman intelligence. These planets ranged from level 51 all the way to 100.
The reason there was such a large difference in the level range was because between level 51-100 represented how much of that worlds population had awakened.
The reason why level 100 was considered the bottleneck of planets, where only 3% of planets exceeded was because to break through to level 100 in addition to 100% of that planet awakening there were additional requirements. That planet had to have at least 100 idol level beings living there in addition to 10 god level beings living there.
A lot of the time when planets passed level 51 they would regress due to the avarice of the beings living there as the powerful newly awakened beings would oftentimes cause massive bloodshed in order to try and take over territories causing civilization to regress. Only the planets with well documented history normally made it past this point as the younger generations were able to learn from the mistakes of their progenitors.