"Ughh..."
That one hurt, as evident from me being dead right now.
"Note to self: don't stand near live breakers when there is- never mind, just don't stand there in general."
For a small bit of context, while I am floating through the void. I am just some poor boy from the country who was working around the house when there was a power surge. I was in the garage next to the breaker box when the electricity put on a nice fireworks show as it lit the misplaced two-by-four, which then lit the oil that the gunpowder was next to, which then led to where I am now.
"Note to self: Pay attention to your surroundings and don't turn up your music so high that you can't hear your surroundings."
I spent the next fifteen or so minutes complaining about how much non-existent pain I was in and how blind I was to my surroundings until something happened to pull my attention away from being annoying, just to pass the time. A small pinprick of light appeared and started pulling me in like some sort of reverse black hole.
Letting it happen as I had nothing better to do, I found myself in what looked to be a massive sea of clouds, with golden rays of sunlight bursting through from underneath. About ten feet away from me was a girl in what looked to be a school uniform sitting at a small desk, slumped over an open textbook, sleeping. Seeing nothing else around, I cleared my throat to see if she would wake up.
"Ahhhh!"
She bolted up so fast that she flipped her chair and landed sprawled on the ground.
Getting up, she readjusted her uniform and straightened out her waist-length hair before turning towards me.
"Wait your not-! Don't scare me like that!"
Apparently confusing me for someone else initially, she then accused me of something that was completely unintentional.
"Sorry, but I just showed up here, and you were the only person that I saw, so..."
"Wait, what? Oh...oh. One moment."
She then snapped her fingers, which somehow changed her clothes to a one-piece white dress that some people call a goddess dress or something like that for some reason.
"Is this not what you thought that we all wear?"
"Honestly, you could wear whatever you want, and I wouldn't care."
"You also don't seem surprised that I can read your thoughts?"
"Well, with what you are wearing and your question from earlier, I already mostly confirmed the genre, and that is just one of the typical tropes."
"So, are you expecting to be reincarnated then?"
"That's what it seems like. Oh, and I don't want to know the reason I am getting this chance."
"Isn't that what you would want, though?"
"Leaving me guessing would give me something fun to ponder."
"Okay, well, there are some rules involved with the processes that I will explain first.
The first is that due to some unforeseen circumstances (for some idiotic deities, at least), you are no longer allowed to choose your own world outside of some extenuating circumstances. The second is that you will be given up to three wishes that can be granted depending on whether or not I will allow them. This means that for the current moment, you will have to spin a big wheel of which worlds you can currently go to and that none of them are cultivation worlds."
"Okay, I want to know what caused the first rule to be a thing?"
"An idiot-I mean a higher ranking deity than me who gave someone way too much power and a world all of their own that ended up causing massive time fluctuations and had to be cut off from everything else."
"Was there a gap between those words?"
"Yes!"
"My second question was why I can't go to a cultivation world?"
"Too much yang energy and stuff like that. So unless you're willing to turn yourself into a woman, you can forget about going there."
"What if I was?"
"Well, then it would be —WAIT! What?! I'm sorry, this is my first time handling something like this, and I was told that you would be the best person to figure this out with."
"To be fair, I don't think this request is that weird, especially because of some of the things that I have read. Also, I roughly understand the consequences of this decision and have already thought of countermeasures. This would also come with some stipulations, of course."
"Alright, before I decide anything, what are those stipulations?"
"Well, this is all on the basis that I will be going to a cultivation world, so if I am not, then I would rather stay as I am now. However, if I am going, I would like to see what it is like being a woman, as I have always been since I was a kid, and I believe that the only way to do so is to be one. This would also give me a different outlook on the world, maybe not immediately, but it would change over time with this as a significant factor. I also would not want just a gender change but to spice it up a little. So basically, I want to be a fox girl or kitsune, or however, you call them, with the emphasis on being a human-looking girl with fox ears and a tail. It would also be nice if there were an evolution mechanic, but I will just combine that with my wishes.
"Of course this does not matter that much to me, and I only offered this option because I wanted to go to a cultivation world. I also don't care that much about what my gender is in my new life because if I did not have a choice in my reincarnation, it could be anything."
"Okay... I... am- going to have to ask one of my friends for help with this. Be right back." Then she just puffed into white smoke, leaving me alone with a desk and textbook.
Looking at the textbook, I find that the question she was asleep on is a math problem, and quickly doing the mental math, I have the deep supercomputer's answer. Then, just as I step away, she reappears in a flash of golden light. "My friend gave me the okay and said to give you all three wishes to go along with it. However, I will only give you two wishes as I will consider this as your first wish, but I will allow them to be more powerful in exchange. Now, what kind of fox girl do you want to be?"
"Actually, can you just give me a character creator? Not right now, of course, but instead, when I am about to go to the world. Before getting there, I would do the character creation and then drop in ark style or wake up in the woods. Although, it would be nice being next to a source of water with woods nearby. You know, given how an inland sea can be the size of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans put together, and while I did say inland sea, it is similar to the great lakes in comparison to the rest of the world. To add on to that, if you wanted me to do character creation here to watch me, can't you just watch me when you want?"
"Fair enough, then what do you want for your two wishes?"
"Well, for the first one, I want a survival crafting system like those in open-world survival crafting games, but with some RPG elements like traits, skill levels, and such."
"Alright, since I am not familiar with this, just think of roughly what you want, and I will make it that. Though the more details, the better."
"Alright." With that, I thought of all the details and added a few extra things to make the system more adaptive and even reusable so she could use it later if need be.
"There we go, that's finished, and thank you for making it reusable. Now for the next one."
"This one is a bit more complicated as it is kind of like two wishes in one."
"Okay, let me hear this before I shoot it down. Just see how much this is going to break my brain and confuse me again."
"Then, for the first part of this, I want to be able to learn and find all of the errors in any technique that I come across. This does not mean that I will be able to use them, as some of them will be racially locked or require things that I don't have. This leads into the second part. I want to be able to easily create any technique using my existing knowledge at the time as well as improve them or other techniques later with the same ease."
"That is actually fairly reasonable. Fine then, granted." With that, she waved her hand, and a spark of gold and white light flew towards me in the blink of an eye. The spark impacted my chest and disappeared, leaving a faint burning sensation behind. "With that done, it is time for you to leave." After she said that, my body slowly started to fade.
"Thank you. Oh, and I forgot to ask your name?"
"Elinaria." As she said this, it seemed like the world around us came to a stop. Then, just before I disappeared, I saw a skinny middle-aged man wearing black pants and a white button-up shirt step through a portal, as I said.
"By the way, the answer to your next homework question is the answer to everything, 24 written backward."
"What?" Then, I disappeared entirely while hearing the middle-aged man laughing his head off.