"Woohoo! JT, my man! Nobody can say that you don't know how to have some fun!"
I smirk and look over at my best friend since the third grade, Tanner McGrath. He is short and stocky, around 5'8", with a mischievous glint in his eyes that never seemed to go away. His curly blonde hair does nothing to the huge grin plastered on his face. He looks out the window of the Gulfstream G800 that I "borrowed" from my dad.
"Huh? What's that? Were you actually... doubting me? You should know better than anyone that when Jake Taylor makes a promise, things get batsh*t crazy!" I say with a wild grin as the AI operated plane heads straight for South, heading for the Amazon Rainforest.
Why the Amazon Rainforest, you ask? Simple. Because I'm an insanely rich 18 year old guy. I'm impulsive and reckless. At least... according to everyone around me, that is. But do they have a net worth of $342 billion and $220 billion in liquid assets? Answer... No. People will always hate those who are at the top. In my eyes, I'm a giant, and they're ants. No matter how many ants there are... the most they can do is annoy me.
A few minutes go by, and I start to get antsy. I start to scroll through my phone when I see an interesting ad pop up. Random System Generator. Curious, I tap the ad, and the link takes me to an overly cheesy web page with a horribly basic carnival type wheel. It gives me three spin attempts. The first attempt lands me an item called Luvellia of Lucke. It supposedly grants me a boost of luck for my system. The second attempt grants me a +1 wish ticket. The third attempt is a complete bust as the item's details only show a bunch of question marks on my phone screen.
Next is a personality survey with three questions. It looks like this:
|1| Which is your preferred scenario?
|A| Being the strongest person in the world and living forever
-OR-
|B| Being the richest of all time and dying young
I choose |B|. My reasoning for this is simple. Boredom. If I'm the strongest, then that's fine. But throw in in Immortality, and it's a hard pass for me. I don't wanna be unmatched for eternity. Unrivaled strength + Immortality= eternal boredom. Guess watching One Punch Man really did pay off, huh?
|2| Which is your preferred scenario?
|A| Being perceived as weak by society and being unrivaled behind the scenes
-OR-
|B| Being viewed as unrivaled by society, but earning no respect
I choose |A|. Not even a question. Being behind the scenes means I'll be able to play the world like it's my chessboard, a thought that absolutely exhilarated me.
|3| Which is your preferred scenario?
|A| Being Unrivaled in Physical strength
-OR-
|B| Being Unrivaled in Intelligence
I choose |B| Duh! Brains before brawn! Just because I'm impulsive and reckless doesn't mean I'm stupid. I just chose to ignore the side of me with an IQ of 128. But I'd pick Smarts over strength 10 times out of 10 hands down.
As soon as I finish the personality survey, the Random System Generator site starts to process the data. I grin, thinking it's gonna be some stupid result as one would expect of a trashy looking AI generator like this one.
A cheap animation on the screen of my phone shows the personality survey and the three items I got from the carnival wheel merging in a flash of light on my phone screen. After a moment, a transluscent white and blinding gold circle on the screen. Silver calligraphy lettering read: Midas System. Class potential ||MULTI-VERSAL||.
I chuckle at the screen of my phone as I look at what I believe to be an extremely overexagerrated system. As I turn my phone off, an impossibly blinding light appears in front of me.
"SH*T! WHAT THE-" I start to say, but stop when the light dies down. I stare in utter disbelief at the seemingly divine spectacle unfolding before my eyes. The smooth, transluscent stone, littered with dazzling veins of gold, slowly rose into the air in front of me from the depths of my phone. I stare at it for a second, then it zooms forward in an instant and fuses with my heart inside my body. A warm feeling spreads throughout my body as every cell down to the electrons is imbued with the power of NY system. Soon, however, the comfortable warm feeling turns to intense pain, and I stumble onto the sleeping Tanner as my insides start to boil. Suddenly, a golden panel appears before my wildly vibrating eyes.
[Midas System bonded. Initiatiating integration sequence. 1%...5%...19%...37%...56%...89%...100%. Integration sequence successful. Beginning Reincarnation.]
As my physical body slowly starts to fade, I barely manage to look at the panicking Tanner. All I see is his face as he yells frantically, but even that is fading.
The pain stops, a blinding white light flashes through my vision once more, then all is peaceful as I embrace the light.
[END OF CHAPTER]