It has been 4 days since Luna came back to Washington to spend some time with her friends. They have thoroughly gone over budget, with Luna spending nearly 6k. 7k, if you include all of the Ubers across the city.

  Luna didn’t mind all that much, as the Random Loot Box she opened today came with another cash infusion. Didn’t make the trip costless, but it meant that she was well on her way to getting the assurances she felt she needed. Luna could get many things, but there was a specific need she felt she could research.

  As such Luna was lying down on Hector’s couch, scrolling through an online gun shop aptly named ‘Guns.com’.

  Luna’s ‘Mystical Shop’ was useful, but it didn’t have everything. It had most modern items one could think of as long as they aren’t completely electronic. For example, modern smartphones from the last 10 years aren’t in the shop. However, something like an MX7 rifle, including fancy modern attachments were. There were some pretty exotic ones, with the guns themselves and ammo only costing a few hundred points. However, points are a rare resource for her, money was not.

  For a direct comparison, a Mosberg 500 shotgun costs less than 2k. In the shop it costs around 500 credits depending on the gauge. Luna may not get 2k every day from her random loot boxes, but 500 credits were worth an [ Ability Card Shard ], or a 20th of a cultivation ability. Wasting it on a shotgun simply wasn’t reasonable, even if it would save Luna time.

  “Why are you looking at guns?” asked Hector, looking over Luna’s shoulder.

  Luna quickly hid her phone, as if that was going to stop Hector from seeing what she was looking at. For a brief moment the two just look at each other. Hector raises an eyebrow and walks over to sit on the chair next to the couch, forcing Luna to sit upright if she wants to see him.

  “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you have been somewhat frantic these last few days,” said Hector, looking down at his hands rather than at Luna, “I know you, I know you well, We may have met online first, but we have known each other for the better part of a decade.”

  “I’m not acting that oddly am I?”

  The look Hector gave Luna told her… yeah she really was.

  “What brought this about Luna?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Bullshit it’s nothing,” said Hector, “Ever since you started school this year you have been acting strangely, You used to talk to me and Amy every day with little exception, now you only talk once a week if that.”

  “I’m just busy with school, that’s all,” said Luna, trying to salvage the situation, “I have been taking multiple Honors level courses, and each gives me hours worth of homework, after that I’m just drained and don’t have the energy for games, I’ve said this.”

  Hector rolls his eyes at that, “Luna, you have never once said that you were interested in Honors classes until this year, The whole reason you were doing college was to keep your mom off your back and maybe get some more experience talking with other people, During all of Highschool and even the first semester of College you were that person who said ‘Cs Get Degrees’, This is way too much to just write off as you suddenly feeling a burst of passion, especially with how miserable you are.”

  Luna tries to speak up, but then looks down at her hands. When did they start shaking?

  “I just want to know why you are killing yourself over all this Luna, maybe then Amy and I can help rather than just being a sort of escape for you to retreat to whenever you have any sort of break.”

  “You can’t help!” shouts Luna, way too loud than seemed necessary for the conversation, “Don’t you think I’ve tried?”

  Hector was taken aback by Luna’s outburst, but tries to slowly approach her on the couch, “What do you mean by ‘tried’, cuz I don’t remember you ever talking to me about this kind of stuff.”

  “Hector, I have tried talking to you about the Apocalypse Countdown, about the role I have to play in protecting people, about how I need to get stronger and steel myself for what is to come…” says Luna as she looks down at her shaking hands, “You just… don’t remember.”

  When Luna looks over to Hector, she sees the same blank look in his face as she saw on her brother’s face. Tears start to well up in Luna’s eyes as the pressure from The System starts to weigh down on her soul. Luna has tried dozens of times to get around The System’s restrictions on information about itself. Tried casually mentioning it, talking about it as if it were a video game, talking about it as if it were a story she was writing. Have tried writing notes and sending them rather than saying it out loud.

  None of it worked. That blank look… Hector is going to forget the last few seconds, and Luna can’t do anything to stop it.

  “I blanked out and this was supposed to be a serious moment,” said Hector, “What did you say again?”

  Luna raised a hand to her eyes, wiping away the tears before they could fall. This was an important moment. If Luna just said ‘nothing’, the oddness of the situation would completely pass his scrutiny. It might even end this confrontation entirely, making him ‘satisfied’ with her lack of an answer.

  “I… I am in the midst of making a choice,” she says, trying her best to explain things in a vague enough way that The System won’t fog Hector’s mind, “Should I focus on short term gains, even if they could lead to better growth in the future, or should I sure up my foundations for as long as I can before I am forced to make a choice.”

  Hector leaned back considering the question. That sight made Luna light up with hope. She managed to be vague enough about the dilemma around her [ Character Packages ] enough to allow Hector to actually understand. If she didn’t do it well enough he would just blank out. She knew because she had a similar breakdown back when she first took her honors classes and had to drop two of them to not completely burn herself out. She had to make that decision on her own.

  “You’re worried about some weak shit like your future, right?”

  Luna nods, just trying to not say anything that could get The System to intervene.

  “It’s fine to not know what you want to do in the future, but you do have an idea of a direction, You are a fantastic writer, I have seen your improvement over the last few months.”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “Are you on some shit right now?” asked Hector, “You could start writing and posting stuff professionally if you put your mind to it, college be damned.”

  Luna shut up, taking the compliment as it was given. She didn’t feel as much pride as she should have though, mostly due to the effect of The System’s bursts of inspiration. They improved her abilities without the effort she would have normally needed to put in. Even though she was proud of how high she got her skills, the effects of her skills made using them feel like cheating.

  “You want to know what I think you should do?”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “What do you think I should do?” asked Luna, hoping that what he says would still be applicable to her actual situation.

  “Stop holding yourself back, Just take a few classes next semester if you need to, but you have the money to get yourself a place to stay for years, years you could use to hole yourself up in a quiet room and type, The stories you have sent me are good enough to actually have me read them.”

  Luna felt a small surge of determination. Putting things together to make a better ‘story’ for herself and the future. Luna checks some of her notes on her phone. She had made a few possible lists of characters that could all work together in terms of [ Character Package ] focuses.

  Jason Asano, Zachery Atwood, Eric West, Richter, Elorion, Michael Caer, Dave Nelson, Matthew Alexander, Arthur Rowantree, and Boxy T. Morningwood. These are all the main protagonists of all of the stories that were listed by the first message she got from this dreaded system. If going purely by usefulness to her situation only 4 of them had any appeal.

  Jason Asano’s racial gifts are powerful, and could help flesh out the functionality of The System massively by giving her an Inventory, an ID system, and ways to evade detection.

  Richter has 100% affinity in anything he tries, and is never limited due to his race in taking skills or abilities, as well as getting a more powerful language ability than even Jason Asano, which will allow her to interact with whoever appears in the Apocalypse.

  Elorion has Light magic and Blue magic. The former can heal anything, including fatigue and hunger. The latter will allow Luna to copy racial based magical abilities from essentially anyone.

  Finally, Matthew Alexander has proportional magic scaling. The lower his magic reserves gets, the faster his magic regenerates. He also has a different curve for his magic scaling, allowing him to be both martially and magically focused at higher tiers.

  All of the others either do too little, or have effects that would be too volatile in the new system. That leaves 1 Character Package without a character linked to it. Thankfully she had an idea of a good character to tie to it. It’s also kind of a freebee given the effect of the character’s abilities..

  Emmanuel Sophron is the leader of The Empire from The Path of Ascension. His talents? He can copy the talents of anyone else.

  Luna then tries to activate the character packages right now. No more waiting!

  Luna glares at the prompt that appeared in front of her. Character Packages can interfere with each other or with other abilities she got? If Luna got a Cultivation ability she could very well have completely fucked herself over. She was right to have held off for as long as she did.

  “What are you looking a-”

  “Wait no!” said Luna as she quickly hid her screen from Hector, but it was too late. His vision had already glazed over.

  “Damnit!”

  Luna growls as she stares at her phone. She stands up from the couch and starts pacing around the room, thinking as best she could during the time Hector was getting his thoughts augmented by The System.

  This isn’t an unmitigated disaster. Just… inoptimal. Luna’s lack of a Cultivation Ability choice probably saved her an immense headache. It would limit so many of her Character Package options, but by this point, there is little reason to hold back.

  Hector was still right. Luna can't wait for fear of what might happen in the future. She needs to rearrange her character packages while still getting stuff that is big, flashy, and scalable.

  The incompatibilities with Jason Asano and Matthew Alexander make Luna write them off completely. The former could probably have the benefits of being an ‘Outworlder’ matched or even exceeded by her [ Character Overhaul ]. The latter… will likely just need to be left behind. It’s a powerful option, but if it interferes with every form of mana cultivation even in this new System, then Luna would likely lack any way to mitigate the downsides of it. At least, any that are easy to get a hold of.

  Emmanuel Sophron just can’t be gained from Character Packages for some reason. This probably means that other similar character packages with such ‘system breaking’ abilities wouldn’t be allowed or translated easily. Luna really wished that these came with some sort of manual, rather than just a vague feeling that they can only work on characters from the stories mentioned in that first prompt.

  The final question was to have either Richter or Elorion stay. One fixes all of Luna’s affinities at 100%, allowing her to diversify her abilities in any direction without feeling any limit. The latter suggests that one can raise their affinities above 100%.

  “You alright Luna? I sorta blanked out again, and my back is starting to hurt again,” said Hector, the System’s influence leaving his mind.

  “Is it better to go for broke or should I play it safe? Should I…” she tries to think of a good metaphor that won’t trip The System again, “Try to write a story straight up, or try and get a job writing for a company as I build up a portfolio?”

  The way Hector looks at Luna made her fear that she wasn’t vague enough, but his words made his lucidity clear.

  “You just won the lottery Luna, in the short term, you don’t need money and you don’t need school, You are in a very privileged position and can turn your money into results if you go all in, so until you start having money troubles, I’d honestly say to write your story and try to aim for the stars,”

  A smile comes across Hector’s face.

  “You are a better writer than anyone else I know, so even if you don’t get it on your first try, you have enough wiggle room that you will be able to catch yourself before you fall.”

  Hector is right, Luna will reach for the stars. Elorion will be what stays. The effects of that package has the ability to reach even higher heights than Richter in this new system.

  Mel is a side character from Underworld as well. His ‘Talent’ is in Dark Magic, directly opposing Elorion’s Light. Luna hopes that they will merge to allow her to form a cycle of some sort. At worst, it would allow Luna to create explosions by mashing the light and dark together if the affinities work at all similar to that series.

  Qin Silaz is a side character from 10 Realms. She had a medical condition that crystalized the mana within her body, making her sickly for most of the first book. However, it gave her an immediate boost to her mana cultivation as well as a wide boost to all forms of mana cultivation.

  Next, Luna chooses Melinda Combs. She has a powerful talent that lowers the cost of abilities that heal while making them more effective. Later on, she gains a powerful ‘Overheal’ effect that can bypass limits on healing effects. Both Light and Dark magic can heal in Underworld, with the effect depending on the affinity of who was being targeted, and similar effects are in many of the other series.

  If all of these abilities merge together as she hopes, Luna will be able to outlast everyone. Her fuck ups would be able to be healed away, or at least mitigated.

  Finally, Luna chooses MacKenzie Atwood. A prominent side character from Defiance of The Fall. She has similarly crazy abilities to her protagonist brother, even if she is pretty clearly not as strong. She has a powerful AI companion that merges cultivation and technology. Luna hopes, much like her previous choices, it will work to further boost her ability to rocket past the rest of humanity. AIs like that can be found in a few of the other series as well, so, hopefully, the limiting factors of the AI in Defiance of The Fall get watered down by the influence of the other systems.

  Her body needed to sleep to fully use the character packages. If Luna had known this, she would have gotten into a more comfortable position. She crumpled to the floor like a sack of potatoes.