Victor felt as though his mind was wrapped into a blanket. He couldn't feel anything. No sight, hearing, smell, touch or taste. In fact, he had no body. He simply perceived an endless nothingness.
He still hadn't quite come to terms with the fact that he was hoodwinked so easily by the system. At the same time, it was also interesting that the system seem to have some sort of clairvoyance since it's quite clearly acquiesced to his request because it knew he wouldn't gain much time. He wanted to continue pondering this when the system popped up and reminded him that there might be some more important issues to think of right now.
[
[...]
[You have been reborn]
Victor felt something change. It wasn't anything substantial that he could describe. There was still only his own thoughts and the system windows. But deep inside something was slightly different.
He could only guess that it was because he had been "reborn" even though he still didn't seem to have a body.
Victor thought about what to do next. In the corner of his imaginary eye there was a small glowing menu button. But he didn't have any hands...
'Menu', he thought in the hope of some thought control.
The system reacted immediately by opening a new window on top of the previous notification windows.
[Status]
[Inventory]
[Quests]
Victor felt, it made sense. This was how he would've imagined a system made to make you more powerful but test you at the same time. Though he did feel that Death was supposed to be able to judge someone's character and, if he approved, propel them to the necessary power level instead of using this system.
[Indeed. However, his lordship felt you might learn more this way. He also mentioned wanting to test the system's viability.]
I guess he doesn't really care much for us mere mortals.
[That is correct.]
Victor sighed - to the best of his current abilities - and opened his status.
[Name: Victor Dunn]
[Title:
[Race: Wisp]
[Level (Lv): 1/5]
[Experience Points (XP): 0/1]
[Health Points (HP): 1/1]
[Mana Points (MP): 5/5]
[Agility (AGI): 0.5]
[Intelligence (INT): 20]
[Spirit (SPI): 1]
[Stat Points (SP): 0]
[Unique Abilities: System, ]
[Race Abilities: Ethereal, Chilly Aura, Undying]
[Abilities: Ethereal Whisper Lv1]
'What the fuck?!'
Victor was dumbfounded. Mostly because to him he was still floating in a sea of nothingness his mind had most likely imagined to cope with the comprehensive lack of stimuli or orientation. He hadn't had the faintest idea that he was apparently a Wisp. Actually, what was a Wisp?
[Wisp:
An ethereal life form usually found in places where death is present such as cemeteries. They have close to no intelligence and are weak. They do regularly kill flies that are weak to resist their aura.]
'System, are you joking?'
[No]
'What are those abilities then?'
[System:
You have this system.]
[:
???]
[Etheral (Passive):
-no physical form
-immune to physical damage
-invisible
-floating]
[Chilly Aura (Passive):
You are constantly surrounded by a chilly aura dealing Magical Damage to entities weaker than you.
The damage scales with the difference in SPI.]
[Undying (Passive):
You will not die unless killed.]
[Ethereal Whisper Lv1 (Active):
You are able to influence entities to approach you. This influence can be easily resisted. The greater the difference in INT, the greater the influence. It has no influence on entities with INT equal or higher than you.
Cost: 1MP/min
Cooldown: 0s
Care is advised as this skill may reveal your presence.]
Ignoring the first two nonsensical explanations, Victor carefully read through the rest.
[Ethereal] seemed amazing at first glance but he also saw it as a great restriction. Because of it, he had no way to properly interact with actual physical world. Without a physical form he existed on a totally different plane of existence.
[Chilly Aura] on the other hand seemed to be his path to a level up. It was his only damage dealing ability. He could only hope that there would be a lot of creatures with basically no spirit coming along. Victor realised that he would most likely have to rely on killing flies for now.
[Undying] simply gave Victor a theoretically unlimited time frame to level up.
And [Ethereal Whisper Lv1] would hopefully accelerate his killing speed. He wondered whether he should activate it because of the hint but eventually concluded that [Ethereal] would most likely negate that side effect. It seemed fairly hard to damage him or even discover him. The system used the word "presence" which implied that one would at most find out that something is there, not what or where. He also took into account that the only entities he would bother where too stupid to search for him, namely flies.
'Activate [Ethereal Whisper]'
[Acknowledged]
It took between four and five minutes.
[
[Level Up!]
[+1 SPI, +1SP]
[HP and MP restored]
Victor put the stat point into spirit with no hesitation. His damage depended on that stat.
His status now read:
[Lv: 2/5]
[XP: 0/2]
[HP: 3/3]
[MP: 15/15]
'Great. If it's one more XP per level then I'll only have to do this another 9 times. At least I've got more MP now.'
Victor decided to look at [Inventory] and [Quests] first only to realise that both of them were empty. Their purposes were obvious but he obviously wasn't reborn with items and Victor wouldn't say that was currently capable of doing any quests. As such he resigned to waiting for levels.
Victor was curious about what would happen when his level reached five.
---
Victor estimated that it took him about two hours, judging by his mana consumption.
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[Level Up!]
[+3 SPI, +3 SP]
There came a pleasant surprise along with it.
[Ethereal Whisper Lv1 -> Lv2]
However, there was no change in the ability description.
He had once again put all his SP in spirit since agility was fairly useless to him considering that he had absolutely no perception of his surroundings.
[Lv: 5/5 (Evolution Available)]
[XP: --]
[HP: 9/9]
[MP: 45/45]
Victor was excited. His time had come. He was going to evolve.
[Evolution Options:]