‘Ouch.’

  A groan of pain could be heard as Kal slowly regained consciousness.

  ‘Well that gave me a headache. I guess protecting yourself from a world ending, apocalyptic event wasn’t my best idea.’

  Looking around his surroundings, he could see a large room with a bookshelf on one wall, a bed, a desk, a chair, and a large digital panel. The walls were white, and the room and its contents looked completely unused. Also, there was a door in the wall that Kal knew led into a small bathroom. In general, the room looked like a slightly larger version of a one person room that can be found on university campuses around the world (like the image in this link ).

  Even though waking up in an unknown room would normally shock or surprise someone, Kal had already lived through all of this once so his reaction was very different to that he had the first time around. Instead of looking round and panicking over what happened, all his attention was focused on the digital panel.

  The numbers shown were ticking down with it reducing by around 500 each second. Therefore, it should take Kal almost 184 days to get to first place in the queue.

  After seeing this, a smile spread across his face.

  ‘Seems like I was the final human on Earth. This means that I can now properly prepare myself for the future. Let’s get some plans done then.’

  ‘Hmm, thinking about it, last time, I was in the third billion of people to die and got transferred to Aloda just as everyone there was trying to get hold of us otherworlders. That’s how that King managed to find me and help “save my life”, thinking back on that, that whole thing was quite possibly staged. I mean what are the chances of bandits attacking a man in the middle of a forest, just for the King and entourage to come along and save his life. I really was na?ve and gullible back then. Anyway, time to get started with what I need to get done in these 184 days.’

  After this slight monologue, Kal proceeded to walk over to the bookshelf that held around 50 books and pulled the first one down. The hardback book was called ‘The World of Aloda’. Opening the book, Kal started to read.

  Kal finished reading the book a few hours later and as soon as he finished reading the book, he could feel all the information that he just read being embedded into his brain. All of a sudden, the following message appeared.

  ‘Finally, now I can start to train my body as well. Let’s get my stats as high as possible before it’s time to be sent to Aloda. Anyway, time to check my status. Status.’

  ‘Well, fuck. That’s not what I was expecting. I mean I can understand being more intelligent and everything… But how the fuck did my name change? I mean, I don’t remember changing it at the passport office or anything. Well I guess my name did change when I first travelled to Aloda anyway. Also, my luck went from 2 to 100. That’s a pretty big jump. No clue what happened there. Now what’s with the titles, let’s take a look.’

  Spoiler: This is his original stats from his first life

  Spoiler – original status

  ‘Crap, those two titles are overpowered. And I guess the progenitor title explains why my race has changed from human to a mix. And the 25% experience gain is the highest I’ve heard of from a single title. No time to waste, time to train.’

  After looking at the changes for a further minute, Kal started to move again. This time, he went to the middle of the room where there was an open space and he started to do push ups and sit ups in sets of 20.

  ‘This body is so weak and the amount of fat that I currently have is way too high. Guess it’s time to ask for a gym.’

  Going over to the desk, Kal grabs a plain piece of paper and a pen and proceeds to write: Large gym with a full collection of weights, machines, punch bags, running track and a swimming pool.

  A sudden flash of light and a second door appears in the wall. Walking through this door, Kal enters a large gym area that has everything that he has requested.

  ‘Time to work out for real!’

  Two hours later Kal re-enters his bedroom and picks up another book to read. This one being ‘The Status Screen and What it Means’.

  Finishing the book, once again the information was embedded into his brain. Following this, Kal started to repeat his previous steps, he would go work out, read, work out, and read as the queue position counter kept on counting down.

  180 days later

  ‘It’s almost time to meet the gods again. Will it still be the same three gods this time or will it be others. Well, only one way to find out, but first let’s check my status again and then get two days of proper rest. Status’

  ‘It’s just a shame that skills cannot be gained or trained in this space but when I start using them on Aloda they should scale up with my proficiencies. Personally, I didn’t expect that reading all the books would give me a title and that it would increase my wisdom and intelligence by so much. Anyway, my new titles are pretty cool.’

  ‘Ahahahahaha… Well, these titles will help me become OP, but now it’s time for some sleep.’

  While Kal slept, the queue position counter kept counting down until it reached 10,000 and a glowing red door appeared in the room.

  Waking up due to the sudden light, Kal got up, did his business in the bathroom, and took one last look at the room in which he’d spent the last 183 days. As the counter hit 1, the door turned green and Kal walked through it with no hesitation.

  It was time to face the gods and see what they had in store for him this time.