The idea of the events of twenty years ago being the preamble to another story might cause everyone in the room to laugh out loud, but if patient enough to listen, they are bound to reconsider.
I'm a man. Born eighteen years ago.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, my fate and that of the world were deeply connected.
In a short time, everything would change again and again, and I would find myself in the center of the events that led to it.
However... This is quite a long story.
To make it as brief and concise as possible, I believe it's best to skip over unremarkable things such as my birth and early years.
At least for now...
The name I was given by my father was Miwen.
This name wasn't particularly known, even locally, but that's hardly a surprise.
Simply put, there was almost no reason for anyone to know me.
I wasn't athletic or particularly smart. I lacked the drive for most things people consider important, and when it came to looks... The best I can say is that I wasn't ugly.
Even when looking from a different perspective, I wasn't dumb, lazy, or weird enough to be noticed.
As I said, quite unremarkable for the most part.
Thus, I think the pivotal point, and the one I'd like to start telling my story from, is the one I'd call my second beginning.
Or, perhaps, my true one, as it would be the one to define my legacy.
During my early years, I was fond of the stories of what happened during my infancy. The ones about the people who acquired their Gifts during the First Contact and went on to fight monsters, fate, and all types of challenges for the sake of the world while claiming fame and power.
But I was also a little envious of the protagonists of these tales.
It was a reasonable feeling, in my opinion.
Many people my age had this anger toward the world for denying us.
Quite normal for adolescents throughout the ages, from what I heard, but our generation had a little more justification, as it turned out that the First Contact had blessed everyone born during it with a Gift.
And so... Those born later were not blessed with one.
Our entire generation was forced to be on the sidelines while myths unfolded every day right before our eyes...
We were exposed to stories we could never hope to participate in, to people we couldn't even dream of becoming.
Even through all the chaos of that era, while the adults fought hard to protect and reclaim the world, it was a hard pill to swallow.
The desire to be one of them sounded cruel, but what could we do? This envy... It was natural to us.
As time passed, most of the people who weren't blessed gave up on it and, one way or another, accepted their reality.
For over a decade, it didn't seem like anything was going to change.
Some were lucky enough to be alive during the First Contact, and then some were unlucky enough to be born even a minute later. That was all, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Admittedly, I also chose to prioritize other things in my life as time went on. I chose different paths and had realistic objectives considering my own circumstances.
I'd be lying if I said the desire to carve an epic of my own was gone completely, but... I learned to live with what I had, and frankly, I can't say it was all that bad.
But accepting reality as it is... The First Contact had already shown us how foolish that could be.
Which finally brings me to the pivotal moment I wanted.
A very special day in my life, my eighteenth birthday.
As it turns out, this was around 20 years after the First Contact, and a few years prior, humanity had made a very interesting discovery.
Even those who were born after the First Contact could obtain a Gift.
There was only one condition...
They had to survive until they reached their eighteenth birthday.
This relieved almost everyone on the planet as there were growing concerns about the future of the world if acquiring Gifts were to be impossible for the next generations.
Nonetheless, the hopeless generation suddenly found themselves with the power they once sought.
And for me, this power, my Gift, manifested in the form of a system called [Gacha Kingdom Building].
We were never able to discover what decides a person's Gift. There were theories about it reflecting a person's life, their nature, their mind, their past, their future, their wishes...
I think most people wanted to believe there was a deeper meaning, that they weren't completely random, but for me, I could at least say it had nothing to do with one's life.
Average as I was, I couldn't have hoped to obtain such a unique Gift if the life I lived was the determining factor.
Even my hopes weren't great.
I would have been happy with a basic Gift that facilitated my life, and one that allowed me to raid Dungeons, even if never achieving notoriety or immense power, would have been a dream come true.
However... [Gacha Kingdom Building] was way more than what I, or anyone else, could have expected.
From the name alone I was able to instantly figure a few things out.
"Gacha" referred to a genre of games that involved luck and randomness, and "Kingdom Building", similarly, was often seen in games and literary stories.
From the get-go, I imagined something that involved scaling and randomness, but without investigating, I could never pinpoint exactly what it would entail.
And so, for the first time in my life, I did something I would later do so many times...
I focused my thoughts on bringing up a pop-up-like menu, and inside it, I could see my Gift's name, almost as if a title screen.
I imagined myself "clicking" the words, and then, a general description of my Gift and its abilities appeared.
[Gacha Kingdom Building
Every day, the [King] will obtain [Gacha Tickets] corresponding to his level.
These tickets can be used in a variety of [Banners].
The [King] has access to a secondary special Gacha where mana is used instead of tickets.
This special gacha is called [Mana Banners].
Please note that the probability of a higher-quality outcome will increase according to the mana used, but even if high quantities are used, external factors such as the user's luck will impact the result.
For the [Mana Banners], certain items may be locked and only obtainable if a certain amount of mana is spent on a single roll.
The [King] has access to his own [Kingdom].
As the [King], you may permit others to [Access] your Kingdom, and you're able to designate others as your [Citizens] as long as both parties agree.
[Kingdom Points] are the main resource of the [Kingdom]. They can be claimed daily and are the sum of every citizen's levels, including the king's.
They can be used for a variety of different things, including changes, upgrades, buildings, or items for your [Kingdom] and [Citizens].
As your [Kingdom] develops, more features might be unlocked.]
All at once, I was flooded with information.
Clearly, this was not a simple Gift.
However, this was not all.
Every word in brackets was a menu, and by repeating the process I had done with my Gift's name moments prior, I was taken to a new page.
The first of these pages I wanted to take a look at was [Gacha Tickets].
[ [Claim Daily Tickets]
Owned Tickets: 0]
It was a very simple menu, containing the number of tickets I had and the ability to claim more.
Reflecting my level, as soon as I claimed the tickets I could, the number of tickets I owned became 1.
The "button" for claiming daily tickets disappeared, and in its place a timer appeared telling me how much time I would have to wait before claiming the next ticket.
Obviously, a ticket by itself had no use, so following the instructions of my Gift, I tried the [Banners].
A gigantic list appeared in front of my eyes, no matter how much I read, it seemed like there was always something new to find, and I could never go back to something that caught my eye in passing.
Thankfully, there was a search function, so I searched for the things that interested me, like Weapons and Skills.
Both results appeared as banners of their own, but I also found an interesting banner called [Companions Banner].
Intriguing as this was, I decided that I should be as careful as possible with my first ticket.
It was humanly impossible to look at all the banners... Probably even in a lifetime, but... Out of the ones I had seen, the [Companions Banner] seemed to be the most risky and potentially problematic.
I was afraid of misusing this power I had just received and hurting myself, or even someone else, so even though I was interested in this, I focused on the [Skills Banner] and [Weapons Banner].
Skills and weapons... Since I always wanted to enter a Dungeon at least once, both could be immensely useful.
I don't think there were any wrong choices, especially considering the randomness aspect, but I thought that since both would ultimately increase my power, instead of relying on something that could be stolen or lost like a weapon, I'd prefer to have the power directly in the form of a skill.
With some experience, the monsters of an Easy Dungeon could be dealt with their fists too, and also, I could always grab something to defend myself with from home..
Even if by no means a decent weapon like those of top-tier adventurers, a kitchen knife should do the job pretty well...
And so, I decided on my first banner roll, the [Skills Banner].
As for my hopes... I just wanted my luck to not fuck me over and give me something incredibly terrible.
But before I could even imagine what a bad skill would look like, I felt dizzy, my mind a complete blank, as if it had left my body behind.
It was a little disturbing, but as fast as it came, it went away.
If not for how unusual this was for me, I might not even have been able to connect the dots of this happening because of my Gift.
But in a way, it also worked as confirmation that something had happened, so I decided to check my skills.
For that, I had to go back to the first menu where my Gift's name appeared, and there, I was able to check the [Skills] menu.
Like everyone else, I had access to two options, the [Current Skills], which as the name implies displayed all the skills I currently had, and the [Available Skills], which allowed me to see the skills I could buy using the points I gain after leveling up or could obtain naturally.
These [Available Skills] are always different from person to person, depending on their affinities and abilities, but everyone should be able to at least learn something...
In any case, I wasn't worried about that, so I checked the [Current Skills] first.
And there it was... The result of using my Gift for the first time...
[Movement Speed Up
The holder of this skill has a bonus to his movement speed, allowing him to be faster and have better control over his movement even under higher than usual speeds.]
Simple, yet convenient.
Especially for combat.
I can't say it was a total game changer, but for a first attempt at the Dungeons, I felt like this would do nicely.
But before that, I wanted to check everything else to know exactly what I could do, and since the [Available Skills] were right there...
I tried giving it a look, not really expecting anything extraordinary...
I regretted this decision almost immediately.