[18]

[Hill Walking]

[1]

[The user can climb or walk-up hills and mountains, especially steep ones, with ease. They are careful not to fall, and they can move on such areas extremely well without falling]

Kastor: The fuck?

Lydia: What?

Kastor: Um…. There's this floating text hovering in front of my face.

Lydia: Oh cool, did you awaken?

Kastor: I…. I don't know. There's just a description for an ability called Hill Walking. I can basically climb and walk up hills and mountains with "ease."

Lydia: Wow….. that sucks. Hahahahaha!

Kastor: Bruh. 

Lydia: Hmm….

Kastor: Why are you looking around?

Lydia: It's just- there's a trigger for a person's awakening and I'm trying to figure out what that is. 

Kastor: Trigger?

Lydia: Right, you were sick that day so you missed the class. Awakenings refer to when a person awakens their ability. Awakenings are triggered by well, triggers. They can be life or death triggers and be extremely traumatic or a trigger could be an extreme desire for something or an intense emotion.

Kastor: What was your trigger?

Lydia: I got black out drunk and woke up on the moon. That's how I discovered I could make portals. I swear I told you this before.

Kastor: Huh.

Lydia: You hungry?

Kastor: Yeah.

Lydia: I'll order something. What do you want?

Kastor: I don't know. Any ideas?

Lydia: Pizza?

Kastor: Sure. 

Lydia: That was fast. We usually get into a debate that escalates very quickly.

I watch as Lydia exits the room to retrieve her phone and make the call.

A trigger, huh?

I already knew the trigger. It was an assumption but I think I was right. 

If a life or death situation can trigger an ability, what type of ability does actually dying trigger? What about reincarnating into somebody with your memories? What about for someone from a world without abilities?

Questions, questions, questions. Questions like, how come I know some memories of Kastor but not others? How do I know Lydia's name and my name, but not about abilities and triggers? Will I get those memories back? What is this world?

Kastor looked at the tv and watched as a man in full black tactical gear in a long black trench coat over a black turtleneck dispatched several gunmen in a few seconds. He took some down with what looked like CQC and used tools like a grappling gun, knives, stun grenades, smoke bombs and tranquilliser darts all launched from a device attached to his wrists and bracers. 

[Mutated Clone]

[2]

[The character is a mutated clone/copy of another being. They are a genetic duplicate who underwent genetic mutation either before or after the cloning process. Unlike modified or unmodified clones, the character possesses abilities and traits that are somewhat superior or in other ways altered to that of their genetic template. Though much like standard clones, the character may be unique being with their own consciousness and soul. Clones will usually have the same physiology as the being from which they are duplicated, but they are genetically mutated and possess superior or different powers and traits in some way]

[Template: Thorinn Lexer

Alias: Shadowbane]

Kastor: What- whose memories are these!?

Glimpses, more like flashes. Like interrupted cutscenes that cut one after the other randomly. They appeared in my head, as if they were always there. Like I'm remembering something I just forgot about. But they aren't mine, they're his. The guy I watched on tv. These are his memories.

[Thorinn Lexer]

[Alias: Shadowbane]

[Rank: A]

[Powers:

[Enhanced Physical Capabilities, Enhanced Mental Capabilities, Weakness Detection, Ageless, Prime Form, Pain Immunity, Elemental Immunity, Psychic Immunity, Magic Immunity, Death Tally, Close-Quarters Combat Mastery, Firearm Proficiency, Bladed Weapon Proficiency, Dimensional Storage, Stealth Mastery, Clear Mind, Body Language Analysis, Toxin Generation, Energy Independence]

[Various Immunities and Resistances are not named due to the nature of user's physiology, allowing them to develop resistances and immunities over time]

[Energy Independence]

[The user has an independence from energy, having no need to eat, drink, sleep, ATP, Mitchondrion (and by extension the lack of need for calories or other units of energy). They do not fatigue or get tired. Those users that have powers can use them continuously/repeatedly without a need to recharge or refill their energy]

[Death Tally]

[Lives: 892,192]

[The user can gain an additional "life" every time the user takes the life of another being. Whenever the user kills a subject, they will be able to resurrect physically healed upon death and continue to do so according to the number of beings they have murdered in life. With each death caused by the user, the number of times they can resurrect increases]

[Weak < Average < Peak < Enhanced < Supernatural < Godly < Absolute]

Ah….. I get it now.

Lydia: Did you call me?

Lydia looked towards me before looking towards the tv.

Lydia: Ah, thought you said my name.

I glanced at Lydia before he retreated back to the kitchen, seeing several points on her body highlighted with a red target symbol glowing on the points. Her weaknesses in full display with just a simple look. No doubt about it.

The number it told me in the beginning is the number of powers or abilities I'm getting. There's a number associated with each power when I'm given it, given in order of which the ability came.

The question is what triggers it? Was it people? First there was Lydia and then when I looked at Thorinn, it triggered the second ability. I should test this.

I pull up random videos of people in view. From cooking shows, to podcasts, to lets plays, to military drills to superhero footage to executions to a wide variety of different types of videos.

Nothing. Maybe it's random? I did some research on triggers while I watched and I realised that many triggers can be quite random. Many can seem unrelated and insignificant while others are the exact opposite.

"I awakened during my service in the Finno-Korean war after I watched my comrades die in front of my eyes. They were there and the next second they weren't. All that remained were their legs. I think that influenced the fact that I have metal manipulation abilities"

"I was vibing out to CPR and got the ability to heal people. lmaooo"

"I awakened my fire abilities. You see, when I was young, a Kaiju attacked the plane me and my family were on when we were on holiday. I woke up to the sounds of pained screams as my father was impaled by a sharp bit of metal, my mother was being burned to death by a fire and my sister, she was being slowly crushed by a detached wing of the plane. I watched her slowly suffocate to death and their screams still haunt me at night"

"I was drinking some water and it went down the wrong pipe and while I was coughing, I accidentally manipulated the water in my cup and exploded it 🥲"

"Not some of y'all going through traumatic experiences and the others are my goofy ahhh at 3 AM 💀"

"REALLLLLLL"

"The trauma or the goofy shi?"

"Yes"

It could be random. For all I could know, I won't ever unlock the rest of those abilities ever. Just these two. The rules of these powers are quite loose, reminds me a lot of One Punch Man.

Nothing much interesting happened throughout the day. I was mostly doing more research in abilities, heroes, villains and triggers. They usually follow a certain theme, however.

One hero, Ocean, apparently gained her powers after almost drowning during a shipwreck at sea. Another hero, Blizzard, was left out in the snow as a child, almost died, and awakened with ice and snow related abilities. 

Which is kinda fucked if you think about it, but funny if you don't. Whatever god who created this system has a sick sense of my humour that I like. 

Lydia: You're still at it?

Kastor: Yeah.

Lydia: Still only awakened two abilities?

Kastor: Mhmm.

Lydia walked over and put her hand on the top of my seat, leaning in and looking at the computer. I was looking at certain statistics for abilities. The more specific and detailed an ability, the less common it is. Even the same ability can have different rarer variations. Flight is more common than having angel wings.

Lydia: That's still a lot more than most people you know. 

Kastor: Yeah. I know I still have more to unlock. 

Lydia: You were never this interested in abilities like this before, you know.

Kastor: Might have been because of my second ability. It kinda rewrote how my mind worked quite a bit.

Another thing I learned, people can awaken another ability throughout their life if they experience another "significant" trigger. They can also evolve their ability through a specific type of awakening but information about evolutions are a lot more limited because they're more uncommon than normal awakenings. 

Lydia: Well, don't stay up too late. You have a class tomorrow don't you?

Kastor: Ah, yeah. 

I have no idea what you're talking about but I'm going to nod anyways. It's going to be a hassle pretending to be Kastor. In my old life I went by Dominic. In my old old life, I was Sunny. Don't think about the implications of that sentence, I promise it won't be relevant in the story later. Unless the author runs out of ideas and calls back to this detail. Anyways, enough about breaking your immersion.

I should go to bed. I mean I don't need sleep but I should probably at least pretend to be somewhat human. I don't feel fatigue or tiredness but it's a sort of habit. If that makes any sense at all. It's less physical tiredness and more mental. Believe it or not but dying and reincarnating into another world with superpowers in another body can take a lot out of you.

My senses have been enhanced thanks to the clone ability. Even more than Thorinn due to my mutation. I can see in the dark better than most can see during the day.

I stood up from my desk where my computer was and sat down on my bed. This room was a lot more high class than what I'm used to. It however helps me psychoanalyse who Kastor was.

There's a lot of black. The colour palette is what I would describe as a starry night aesthetic. Blue, black, white, pink, purple etc. There's also purple lights that, even in the dark, bathes the room in a dim violet light. 

Stars, moons, clouds, galaxies, planets, spaceships, and cosmic decorations adorn the room. The bed is really big. And full of tons of plushies. I genuinely think Kastor was trying to drown himself in plushies. There's also this transparent rose coloured veil around the bed. The blanket, pillows and bed are also lunar themed.

There's also this… I don't know how to describe it but like a chandelier light but it was shaped and modelled like the solar system. It spins too and each planet and moon has different lights, it also casts shadows of stars and moons around the room which I think is sick.

One part of the room is just a large bookshelf and the wall opposite of that where my computer, as well as several electronics, has all sorts of artwork displayed in these highly detailed frames. There's also frames and displates as well as other random things Kastor found cool, I assume like various instruments and discs/CDs, weapon displays and art pieces that confuse my brain in a good way.

My bed was a canopy bed and was also painted black. The posts had these decorative vines and flowers crawling up them that also doubled as lights. I had a remote to control all the lights so if I really want it to be dark I can just turn everything off. The remote also doubled as the tv remote. There's this hatch at the end of my bed and when I pressed a button on the remote, a flatscreen tv slowly pops up from the hatch. I also noticed in built speakers in certain parts on the bed so the sound feels like it's happening around me which is another thing I find cool.

I listened to some of his music. He seemed to really like electroswing jazz specifically but also classical music, rap, musical songs and when I checked on his mobile devices (he has multiple) he listened to a lot of "yandere and villain playlists" and I don't know how to feel about that.

There's a lot of drawers and hidden compartments everywhere. The only way I managed to find these hidden compartments and get into his devices is muscle memory. I didn't know my passwords but if I closed my eyes and just clicked, I usually got it on the third try.

Let's talk about the library. I went row by row and well first we have books on subjects like philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, criminology and your social and political sciences.

The next row had books on history. History of all eras and around the world except anything more modern like the world wars or the actual 21st century. It's such a whiplash seeing it end at the Victorian era and that's it. 

The next row had occultism, cosmology, eldritch?, hypnotism, magic, theology and mythology in the same row sooooo not controversial at all. I can't get over the Ars Goetia next to Aztec mythology next to the New Testament and proverbs next to vampirology next to Filipino legends and then dragons.

The next is all about weaponry, war, engineering, technology, strategy, the military, martial arts, manufacturing, business and industry. There's also the art of war thrown in there.

The next row is about art and entertainment. Think books on painting, sculpting, film, theatre, music, fashion, literature, architecture, decorative arts, applied arts, artistic history, aesthetics, fashion, poetry, calligraphy, art movements and now I'm gonna stop and let my eyes rest for a bit. 

The next row is listing a bunch of fields and sports. I think these were things Kastor was interested in. This also includes martial arts and some games. Cooking, gardening, smithing, swordsmanship, firearms, archery, fencing, chess, dancing, climbing sports, invasion sports, racket sports, swimming sports, combat sports, cycling sports, flying disc sports, gymnastics, ice sports, kite sports, marker sports, motorsports, musical sports, orienteering, parkour/freerunning, sailing, snow sports, shooting sports, animal husbandry, street sports, strength sports, animal sports, mind sports and god almighty why is this guy's library so big?

You think it's just a singular wall but then you pull this one purple book and it opens a hidden door in the wall that leads to more shelves and rows of books. His collection is massive but some aspects are just missing. Like he has rows of books of different genres but there's this small section labelled romance. 

Like, his fantasy collection has to be split up in sub genres, languages and nationality while romance is just a small section. That's fucking hilarious. 

I also noticed there's a mix of different languages like English, American, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian- ok I'll stop. There's mostly English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. There's also French, German, Greek, Latin and Italian but are less predominant than those first five I mentioned. Spanish would be the minority if you were to rank them by how numerous they are.

On my bed stand was a red light rose lamp and in the drawers are just a bunch of weapons. My other bed stand on my other side has stuff you would expect: my electronics, chargers, confectionery, stationary etc. There's also a mini fridge and pantry but back to what I was talking about.

Just a bunch of weapons. Knives, guns, gadgets like EMP devices, alarm remote, pepper spray literally right next to me in arms reach in the drawers. 

Kastor. Who are your opps for you to stay armed like this!?

There's a lot more hidden things I could mention. Safes hidden inside safes camouflaged as normal decor. Hidden exits and rooms. An entire armoury and stash of money, resources, jewellery and a suspiciously large amount of the exact things you need to change your identity or become someone else. Like passports and foreign currency all hidden inside a hidden museum displaying antiques and artefacts hidden inside a closet dresser room hidden inside a painting. 

Said closet has a wide variety and range of outfits, accessories and anything you could ask for when you need to change your appearance. I found prosthetics, modified clothing to fit certain body shapes or enhance certain features. Forget shoes that make you taller, here's some drugs that just alter your voice.

The more I explore this room, the more I begin to question who Kastor and Lydia were. The more I discover in this room, the more I think about the things I haven't discovered. All I've found is things I just accidentally stumbled into or found through muscle memory.

I wonder. If I kill myself would that count to my death tally?

I open my drawer and pick up a pink knife with an anime girl imprinted on it. I'm not surprised, I saw the hidden room inside the hidden library filled with manga  and light novels and a large screen for watching anime. I also saw a bunch of tablets for reading manhua, manhwa and webmovels. There's also a bunch of snacks and drinks, and a stash of notebooks and stationery. Then there's the consoles and pc in the same room for visual novels and games in the anime genre. 

I stand up and head to the grand mirror in my closet. No weaknesses detected.

There's only one way to find out.

[-1 Life]

[Lives: 892,976]

Yeah, nope. Just lost a life. It doesn't matter much in the grand scheme as I realised earlier this day that any lives Thorinn takes also gets added to mine. Any lives he loses doesn't count towards mine but any lives I lose count towards his. I can see his lives counter too and his accumulating lots per hour. He is on that grind. A murderous bloody grind.

The knife I used wasn't even leaving any scratches so I opened up my dimensional storage, which I also have my own copy of Thorinn's and can access his dimensional storage. Also operates on the same principle of my death tally. 

Anything out inside the storage is replicated in my own storage, anything removed is not removed from mine and while I have my own copy, I can choose to take stuff from his own inventory.

I mentioned this because I had to use a copy of one of Thorinn's weapons to actually kill myself. His body is very durable but mine is mutated so it's even more durable. After slicing my throat, you saw what happened and that's my loophole gone.

Now how am I gonna hide this wound long enough for it to heal? My recovery was also enhanced like Thorinn's and mutated. 

[Darkness Healing]

[3]

[The user can heal themselves and/or others by using darkness and shadows]

I stared into the mirror and watched as the wound on my throat had darkness erupt from it like black flames. As the flames calmed and dissipated, the wound was gone. It didn't just heal, I felt like that part of my neck was stronger. Not even a scar was left behind.

The blood also disappeared, being burned and absorbed into the dark flames that left as soon as it appeared. The whole process took less than a second. The wound I gave myself however was a very clean cut so I wonder how effective the healing was with other bigger and more severe injuries. Can it heal a limb? An organ? What are its limits?

This made me realise that to gain my abilities, I need to experience and go through triggers. This makes a lot more sense. I head to bed, putting the weapon back into my inventory. That's enough experimenting for now.