John floated in his new disembodied spirit form. Below him was his new, or future, mother. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, oblivious to his presence. The room they were in reflected a rustic organic aesthetic. The walls and floor were made of smooth, flat, irregular shaped stone. The stone reminded him of river rock and appeared to be fused together without any obvious mortar. The ceiling was made of a combination of wooden planks, whole logs, and thatch of some kind. The furniture was made of wood that maintained a natural shape while being polished smooth.

  He couldn’t travel very far from his new mother. The silver tether tied him in place. With little else to do John chose to more fully explore his new Guide. The Guide was an instinctive and intuitive tool. All John had to do was think at the Guide to get detailed responses back, in whatever format he chose. He could ask for a simple visual interface or receive detailed, full sensory, memory like responses. The memory-like mode was the default it seemed. No need for screens, voices, words floating in the air, just pure information dumped right into his mind as if it was always there.

  He chose to have the Guide create a visual display just to give him something to look at while his mother slept. He chose the form of a simple status sheet. There was a lot of information to parse and the visual reference helped him think.

  He had already figured out that that his name was missing and that he had two ages due to being both a spirit and zygote, but he chose to look at his racial entries more closely.

  Three races…He was a bit of a mutt in his opinion; human, elf, precursor. Each seemed to have a distinct impact on his future physical form. He really wondered what he would end up looking like. He was surprised at the amount of information he could glean from those short paragraphs. Of course he could get more from delving deeper into the Guide memories, but chose not to at this time.

  If John understood what he was reading correctly he was essentially a ghost, or...well a spirit, as the Guide called it. How was he supposed to live and experience a new life as a ghost? He couldn’t change or control his situation. He had also agreed to it so he decided to move on.

  The Traits the Goddess gave him were particularly interesting and gave him insight into part of his new heritage. The Precursors had to have been an odd, but powerful race. Each Trait had also given him a new Skill.

  He made the Guide show him more information on each of his new Traits and Skills.

  Shapeshifting was an exciting Skill. Who hadn’t imagined changing their appearance or becoming another person altogether? How far could he stretch this Skill? Could he become an animal or a chair? The Guide was unclear. It seemed some information was only revealed as he leveled Skills. He would have to look up Stats and Attunements later.

  John had never been particularly skilled with languages. Sure he knew multiple programming languages, but he only knew a smattering of words in other languages besides English. He wondered how many languages existed on Sierrallas. Earth had 100s of unique languages and an unknown number of distinct dialects. This Skill would definitely come in handy assuming he had any way to communicate with others.

  He had or would have a split personality? He didn’t know if he understood this Trait and Skill completely. As far as he could tell he had only one mind and that was the same mind he had on Earth. Would the zygote develop their own mind or would it be a copy of his? John didn’t know. The part about parallel thinking intrigued John. Parallel processing was a powerful aspect of modern computing after all.

  This Trait and Skill combination explained his current ghostly existence rather clearly, but there were hidden implications that worried him. What would happen to him if this Skill was turned off? His mind seemed tied to his spirit form. Without it what would he become? The thought was scary and felt like thinking of death.

  So he could sense Essence, which was kind of like mana from stories right? It wasn’t just sight, it was every sense. He tried it briefly and experienced synesthesia. What he experienced defied his ability to describe, but he knew instinctively that this may become his biggest advantage.

  Prime Stats reminded John of more generalized attributes from role play games. They were inclusive, rather than specific, and seemed to allow someone to focus on different aspects of themselves.

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  Body enhancement, magical body enhancement; that was what this Stat did. It would have been exciting, if he had a body of course, and seemed mostly self explanatory. John had the Guide show him more information in the form of memories about this Stat. He wanted to understand what supernatural feats meant.

  The Guide showed him memories of martial artists projecting force from their hands, using touch-based telekinesis to lift things that should have been impossible, and even defying gravity. His favorite was of a woman floating on the wind, and landing on a flower without bending the stem. Physics seemed to bend around Physical Cultivators according to their whims.

  The Social Stat appeared to be something a celebrity or politician might use. It made someone more appealing in multiple ways, but the most intriguing part was how it affected others. The memories of Social Cultivators showed generals rallying troops, singers bringing audiences to tears, and artists whose work somehow conjured images in people’s minds. The supernatural abilities of Social Cultivators reminded John of Bards from games.

  One of the most impressive displays of a Social Cultivator’s power showed a woman inspiring a group of rebel peasants in a fight against well armed professional warriors. Her songs rallied the peasants to fight like rabid beasts and caused the warriors to flee in terror. One woman changed the course of an entire battle.

  John was particularly intrigued by the Mental Stat. His entire career had been built on mentally challenging tasks and problem solving. Anything that could help him in that area seemed like a boon. He got the impression he would even be able to remember things he forgot he even knew with this Stat.

  Mental Cultivators were psychics and scholars. They could act as living libraries, delve into the thoughts and feelings of others, or even learn the past from a stone. The Guide showed him memories of a historian using a mental ability to document a forgotten battle from a sword found at an archaeological site. The historian pulled impressions straight from the metal it seemed. There were truthseekers that determined when people lied in courts of law, dreamweavers that soothed away nightmares, psychics that helped find lost children, and many other fantastic abilities. All involved gathering and processing information in strange ways. It seemed that high level Mental Cultivators could even access something called the Astral Plane for astral projection and communication.

  The Spiritual Stat was more esoteric than the other Stats, so far. It was the Stat John would associate with priests, clerics, shamans, and others who claimed a connection to higher powers. In this case it was true. The Spirit Stat was all about connection and how people were able to relate to and commune with non-corporeal entities be they gods or demons. As a spirit, John figured this would be an important Stat for him.

  When he reviewed the memories for the Spiritual Stat John saw people performing literal miracles. There were priests that prayed devastating wounds away, paladins glowing with holy light fighting monsters, shamans communing with their ancestors, and even people summoning literal demons.

  Magic was the dream of virtually every child growing up. Who didn’t want to make things levitate or cast fireballs? The entire Guide and System seemed to run on Essence. So the Magical Stat seemed like the most important Stat to John, but it also seemed complicated. The Guide showed him wizards casting spells that devastated armies, witches brewing cures for the common cold, alchemists creating elixirs that extended life, and enchanters creating artefacts of great power.

  It seemed natural to John that he would check the Essence section of the Guide next.

  The description of Essence was rather lacking. It was by far the shortest entry he had called up to date.

  It appeared his Essence was divided into two types, Attuned and Personal.

  Again the descriptions were lacking in this section. John wondered why the Guide was suddenly providing less information, but didn’t have any idea of why it would be doing so.

  At least Attuned Essence was a little more detailed, but only barely. John got the impression it was like different frequencies of light being better for certain things. Like how you could cook with microwaves or communicate with radio waves, but it felt far more complex than that.

  His Traits gave him five attunements each. One related to a different Prime Stat. Sadly, John discovered that their descriptions were also lacking detail.

  Attuned Essence types appeared to be about efficiency and specialization. He got feelings and impressions from the Guide that it would be far cheaper to uses Attuned Essence to power Skills vs Personal Essence, but that was all he could get for now.

  Cultivation like, Essence, seemed to be minimally defined. It seemed to be required to progress and was used to improve Stats, Skills, and so forth, but the how and why was missing. He would have to try the ability to understand it better.

  John had five more Skills that seemed to be System and Guide specific. The Guide Skills were, perhaps, the most game like aspect of the System, so far. They each had clear game like parallels and uses.

  Analyze reminded John of the common Identify Skill in role play games. It seemed he could only get information he could understand. Without the proper context the Skill would provide nothing. At higher levels the amount of information provided could be staggering. This was also the first area where John noticed that the local System had any impact on him.

  Loot? Who doesn’t like loot? Half the fun of video games was loot, but it appeared there were quite a few limitations and stipulations to this Skill. John gleaned that he needed to know how to process something in order to use the Skill effectively. The lack of passive looting sounded like a pain. What if there were swarm monsters?

  The Inventory Skill reminded John of bags of holding from games, but it appeared the System issues would hamper here as well. He hope the manual costs still allowed him to use the Skill.

  The Map Skill was perhaps a little obvious compared to other things in the Guide. It sounded very much like a Map app someone would use on the phone, but in his head instead.

  The Guide gave him a built in alarm clock and calendar. Again this seemed like a phone app, but he could see how it could be useful. How would this Skill level? John decided to check on that later.

  With his exploration of his Status and Guide complete for now John decided to turn his attention elsewhere.

  —

  John chose to test a few of his Skills while he hovered above his mother. There wasn’t much else he could do besides delve deeper into the Guide’s lore.

  He used Analyze Skill on his mother first. It told him her name was Shinobin Aseralis, that she was a member of the Wylderfolk ethnic group, and that she was approximately 40 years old. The information mostly made sense to John, but he noticed a problem. She didn’t look 40 at all. She looked like she was in her early twenties. Was this an effect of Physical Cultivation or Social Cultivation? Her weight also seemed higher than her frame indicated. Was gravity different or was her body denser? John didn’t know. He had no reference points.

  He used the Analyze Skill and Essence Perception to examine the room around him. It appeared that most of the furniture was made out of Wyldwood and that there were a number of enchanted objects in the room according to his new Skills.

  An oddity that John noticed was that there was an unusual lack of metal, glass, and ceramics in the room. The furniture was rustic yet exceptionally well-made. The bedding appeared to made of some type of plant fiber called Jucha. The quilted blanket reminded John of something his grandmother might have made on Earth, but used irregular fabric sections, rather than perfect squares, that created a more organic appearance. A small glassless window sat just beneath the ceiling. The walls were made of smooth grey stone blocks with irregular polygonal shapes, each about 18 inches in diameter with no visible mortar as he had noted earlier.

  The floor stones were smaller and darker than the ones used for the walls, but were mostly hidden beneath colorful rugs. The rugs were all in natural colors and earth tones.

  The room;s only door was made from a thick piece of Wyldwood in a curved shape. Thick logs, bent to form, framed the door. All the woodwork was smooth and polished yet retained the irregularities of natural shapes and appeared to have been bent to form and fused together. The construction method baffled him.

  Using Essence Perception to peer inside things, he found no metal, glue, mortar, or glass in the room's construction beyond the bronze door hinges, handle, and a small bronze mirror that hung over a polished stoneware basin.

  The enchanted objects were obvious to his new Skill and appeared to have various markings on them. The markings were a form of language, according to his Polyglotism and Analyze Skills. l There were two languages; one called the Lingua Arcana and one called Celestial. Similar markings surrounded the window frame, door, and other places around the room. The markings resembled decorative runes and scrollwork from Earth.

  There were no electronics or machines of any sort, not even candles or oil lamps.

  By Earth standards, the room was simple and rustic, but spotlessly clean. Everything was well-built but neither obviously machine-made nor hand-made. He wondered if Sierrallas was a primitive world and worried his physical self might face a lack of modern comforts. He couldn't reconcile how a primitive world could have an AI overseer like the Guide System.

  After using Analyze and Essence Perception a couple dozen times John discovered that his Personal Essence, Mind Essence, and Arcane Essence were depleted. He also experienced an odd pain while trying to use a Skill. It seemed he had depleted his Essence. The Skills had automatically used the best Attuned Essence before switching to Personal Essence.

  With no other options for entertainment John chose to use his Cultivation Skill. When he activated the Skill his world seemed to shrink, his focus sharpened. There were eddies of Essence all around him moving in a languid dance that he could sense without actively using Essence Perception albeit at very short range. The Cultivation Skill encouraged him to reach for one of the eddies and draw it into himself. The Skill then processed the energy in a way he couldn't follow before a tingle ran through his consciousness as his Essence increased.

  When he deactivated the Skill his Essence was full, but it seemed an entire hour had passed. It had felt like moments to John.