Chapter 18

　　Integrations` Greatest Achievement Is Getting You To Think It Doesn`t Exist

　　Maria awoke to find herself in a hospital bed and gown, surrounded by her family, all of whom were passed out. Apparently, they hadn`t gotten to the point where they read and fully understood the ramifications that the system message before them stated. That was the thing, Maria herself had the same issue, she too had to read and fully understand everything that was happening, or at least understand enough of what was being tested to be able to be set free, fortunately for her, she knew what was in store for her, at least from a repetition point of view. So she was one of the first, if not the first to rejoin her body.

　　World First Notice: First To Awaken

　　Title: First To Awaken: You are the first to have awakened, as such your system and status pages will be available to you, without the thirty day trial period. You are also the only person who will see this message.

　　Seeing the message, Maria couldn`t help but wonder why there was a thirty-day trial period. Had that always been there? Or was this something new to make it so the conquering of Earth would be that much easier.

　　Grrrggrr.

　　A sudden sound of danger sounded from the doorway. Looking around, Maria`s heightened senses took in everything and realized a few things. First, her back had a huge draft thanks to the way her clothes were not fully fastened behind her back. Second, these were not her clothes, and third and likely most important monsters were already spawning around them. One monster per human, this was meant to make it so every human could prove their worth by taking down a level 1 monster, but this also made it so the world would ultimately be conquered faster.

　　Fortunately for Maria, she hadn`t been idle during this temporary restart of the planet. Despite being locked out, she had done a lot of practice, with magic. Not just any magic, but Soul Magic, one of the most powerful and deadly forms of magic in existence. At least that is what she sort of remembered, and sort of gleamed from her incorporeal training outside her body.

　　If she had to say anything, it was the idea that being separated from her body as an incorporeal spirit had been a blessing in disguise, as she could now fully wield magic. The first stage of her training let her Sense the magic, second stage let her Feel and Move the spirit magic. Now as a Beginner, she could Control the magic.

　　Maria`s body was already working, well this wasn`t her body at all, but the spiritual part of her body that was now once again properly housed within her mortal shell, if only a little tighter than expected. Still, Maria`s energy was already full, already aware, and once she heard an enemy being allowed to merge with her planet. An enemy shoe`s sole purpose was to target her, she focused her will and without even looking at the creature, she began casting her spell.

　　Energy coursed through her spiritual self, using her spiritual construct of meridians, inside those meridians her energy was formed, compressed, and ultimately released in the form of a spirit shard.

　　Fwoom!

　　The amount of spiritual pressure she had been able to release from her center, was enough to cause her hair to rustle slightly, as a strong breeze seemed to generate out of nowhere, grabbing the spirit shard and hurling it towards the beast that was just standing there, waiting.

　　Shatter!

　　Then just as quickly as the shard of compressed spiritual energy was fired, it landed and cracked open the spiritual energy of the monster that was still trying to come to this dimension of reality.

　　World First Notice: First Kill

　　Title: First Kill: You were the first person to survive your initiation trial. Rewards: All Attributes increased by +1%

　　World First Notice: First Mage

　　Title: First Mage: You were the first mage to realize their potential, and to realize there was more hidden behind the curtain of the universe. Reward: +10 Intelligence, +10 Power, School Master +1 phantom ranking.

　　Note: Power Attribute bonus automatically switched to Spirit Attribute bonus.

　　That was an odd message. On the one hand she was glad that her training and diligent working on increasing her Spirit Attribute did not go to waste during the time, as even the bonus from this title was applied to her exceptionally high Spirit Attribute, but the last part of the Title gave her pause. What exactly was a phantom ranking in a school of magic anyways?

　　Seeing that message prompted her to pull up her Status related to her magic use.

　　Spirit Magic Rank: Beginner+ (Intermediate)

　　Remaining Magical Potential: 18 / 21.

　　After seeing the adjustment made to her status, she assumed that it meant she was now considered to be at the upper end of the Beginner spectrum and close to breaking through to the Intermediate ranking. How this applied to her was yet unknown. Was this like the skill increases she saw with her Psychic Titles, Titles that have since been revoked?

　　Also, there was the question that she still had the knowledge, she still knew what it was to be a cultivator, but she had not yet demonstrated to the system her current standing. If she did, would she once again gain an additional bonus, or would it remain the same?

　　Since she was now able to see her status, as she was the first to awaken, she quickly pulled up her full status to show her how much she had grown overall.

　　Name:

　　Maria Alvarez

　　Race:

　　Human ***

　　Attributes:

　　Current Attribute Rating(s):

　　116 / 400 (All +1%)

　　Spirit

　　223 (+11%)

　　Strength

　　126 (+6%)

　　Speed

　　126 (+6%)

　　Endurance

　　126 (+6%)

　　Intelligence

　　151 (+1%)

　　Blessings:

　　Blessing Received: Blessing of Spirit Stability: Your Power Attribute has evolved to be able to process spiritual essences.

　　Blessing Received: Blessing of Perfect Perception: Able to view the spirit of everyone. Allows the viewing of everyone`s true potential, along with their current progress towards achieving their true potential.

　　Blessing Received: Blessing of Perfect Evolution: You managed to perform a perfect evolution of your body, when going for your first transformation. Base Attribute Potential increased by +1,000% (Maximum of 400).If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it`s taken without permission from the author. Report it.

　　Skills:

　　Visions

　　Minor

　　Necrotoxin Resistance

　　Immune

　　Time and Space Resistance

　　Immune

　　Meditation

　　125

　　Psychic Focus

　　+125%

　　Psychic Manipulation

　　+125%

　　Titles:

　　World First Notice: First To Awaken

　　Title: First To Awaken: You are the first to have awakened, as such your system and status pages will be available to you, without the thirty day trial period. You are also the only person who will see this message.

　　World First Notice: First Kill

　　Title: First Kill: You were the first person to survive your initiation trial. Rewards: All Attributes increased by +1%

　　That was her, according to the system. Pausing for a moment, Maria paused, realizing that her time away had provided major dividends, as she was over 200 points in Spirit, which really seemed to help her be able to use and manipulate the elusive power behind Spirit Magic exactly. Why would a class of magic be labeled directly after an Attribute, Maria didn`t know. It wasn`t like there was a Fire Attribute, though looking back, maybe there was, and she just never got to that point of comprehension. Regardless of the case however, she was now fully awake and aware of the different monsters beginning to appear.

　　From what Maria could gleam, the monsters all began appearing the moment people first started reading their messages. Once there, they were held in a state of perpetual stasis, while the person they were summoned for read their terms and conditions, internalizing all of the laws, by laws, and clauses that were present.

　　Seeing the monsters appear around the room, Maria acted.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Bolt after bolt of energy left her body, lancing out and striking the monsters that could only stare on in complete shock as the explosive shards of energy pierced through the veil separating the realm of mortals and the spirit realms where these monsters were apparently waiting. Waiting and being fueled to full energy by the ambient reserves of energy that were there. Ambient reserves of energy that Maria herself, well her spirit self, had up until moments ago been feasting from and absorbing.

　　In rapid succession monsters that had been summoned to her realm, monsters that had been summoned to target her twin sister Anita, her brother Juan, her mother, her father, the goofy looking cheater who confessed his mistake to Maria while no one else was present. They all died, well the monsters that had been summoned to challenge them.

　　With those five dead, along with her original kill, all began to release energy. Energy that would normally stagnate in the air, before ultimately falling to the ground unclaimed. This was the problem, and part of why humanity was almost destined to die off, at least Maria noticed this as an issue. Humans either by default, or as an act of evolution had become detached from their souls so much that they could not cultivate without having permanent markings on their bodies that listed their soul`s true name in an archaic script. An archaic script made up of pictures and images. Maria still remembered hers, though since the restart her name had changed slightly, normally this would mean a decrease in the potency of energy she could meditate, but as she was now a Spirit Mage, she no longer needed the tattoo on her body to be an exact copy of her soul. Instead, she could use her Spirit Magic to carve a path through her body that would allow her to cultivate the ambient energy around her.

　　It was like this that Maria once again saw a new-old message appear before her eyes.

　　World First Notice: The First Cultivator Has Awoken.

　　Title Gained: First Cultivator: You have seen the energy of the universe and were the first to consume it from your planet. +10 to all Attributes, +50 to Meditation.

　　World First Notice: The First Seer Has Awoken.

　　Title Gained: First Seer: You were the first to harness your soul to only take in the light-blue mana available to your world. +15 All Attributes.

　　Yet, after receiving the messages, Maria noted that nothing had changed. She even noted that the Visions portion of her First Seer title was now missing. Did that mean she would no longer get Visions? Or did that mean that she had never lost the ability to perform Visions, as such the notice was considered unnecessary? One thing she did appreciate was the way that she didn`t have to be forced from her body to interact with the four spirits that seemingly govern fate and provide blessings. Seeing as she still had the blessings from the previous restart, this too made sense in that they would likely not appreciate having to apply blessings to her once again.

　　All of this was to say, that the entire thing was odd, then again that could likely define any life that experienced time before, during, and especially after an apocalypse.

　　With the world momentarily paused, Maria took a moment to quickly breathe in the abundance of ambient energy that was now available.

　　There were no levels in the Apocalypse, such things were considered arbitrary to say the least. What was a level 1? There were no levels, at least not in the world that Maria had come to understand, there were only people who possessed knowledge. Knowledge that would be recorded and measured by others in the form of Rankings and Tiers. Rankings for Magic, Tiers for Cultivation, and maybe Tiers for Mind rankings? Maria didn`t really know as she had been forced to reset when she made her Tier II breakthrough for mind. Maybe Mind was weird in that it used Tiers that were described in degrees of knowledge like Mages, making them sort of a hybrid of the two. So rather than being a Tier II Mind Cultivator she would be a Tier Intermediate Mind cultivator? She didn`t know, nor could she truly recall from her previous memories that were becoming more substantial, but also less defined. She could remember what she did to succeed, but not what that change in succeeding ultimately was called. In the end, she realized that it didn`t matter what her rankings were called, as the only thing that truly mattered was that she had made the next level of progression.

　　To Maria, at this point the only thing that mattered was taking advantage of this temporary lull, where the world slowly spun to be integrated into the system. Everyone was clearly passed out, or in a state of suspended animation as they worked to understand and internalize the messages of the system. Messages that Maria had mostly figured out on her own as time went on over the past two restarts.

　　Breathe in, absorb energy, condense energy, focus, breathe out.

　　The five steps of cultivation performed and demonstrated by Maria. Now that she had ambient energy, she could feel her reserves refilling, the Spirit Shards she had used as an attack method were both powerful and costly. This is not to say that casting the six total Spirit Shards had fully depleted her reserves of energy, far from it, as her exceptionally high Spirit Attribute, and her Beginner ranking in Spirit Magic made it so she was more than capable of casting these spells and more. But this time, her cultivation was different. Before when she had been cultivating, she had been doing so in pure and unaltered energy, this was energy that was the purest one could get, but it was also bland. Now that Maria was breathing in and absorbing the energy of slain enemies, there was a spicy intoxicating aroma that she now associated with the energy. For in killing something a part of its spiritual essence, the knowledge and power that made the creature so formidable was captured as a residue on the essence. This essence was then added to her core.

　　Thinking about it, the way Maria would describe the whole process was eating rice. At its core, energy was the equivalent of eating unaltered white rice, tasty at first, but grows bland over time, even as it seems to offer everything you need to survive. When absorbing the energy of a slain enemy, you add spices to that rice, which gives the rice a new flavor and value. For days Maria had been forced to be a vegetarian, not just any vegetarian, but a vegetarian on an extremely bland diet of rice and water. Now that she had fully awakened to the system, and was able to hunt normally, she could feel her body letting her know that a hunger she never realized she had was now being satiated. With this new understanding of both herself, and of the world around her, Maria got up and not wasting another moment of her chance to save the hospital she began clearing away any and all monsters that she saw but had not fully manifested in her plane of existence.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Spirit Shard Strike.

　　Like a tanned Terminator drone Maria made her through the hospital floor by floor, killing off would be monster after would be monster. Once all monsters in an area were destroyed, she would take a moment to rest, breathe in the fumes of her slain foes that smelled of ambrosia and other intoxicating scents, before continuing.

　　Only once she got to the lobby, where several people and thereby monsters waiting to be summoned to slaughter said people were waiting for the integration to happen, so they could fully manifest in the real world. To Maria it was like the carnival game where you were given a dart to throw at a balloon, but rather than a balloon, you were aiming at an incorporeal entity that was slowly being summoned to the real world. Once she was here, she felt a sudden updraft of wind after she slew five monsters in a row. Their pops of energy generating enough energy in the world to gently rustle her hospital gown enough to let her realize she was naked. Well mostly naked, as she could clearly feel the soft wind blowing against her backside in a mildly disturbing way that only hospital gowns can offer. Feeling this, Maria panicked, and decided to make her way back up to her hospital room. Mainly for the idea of being able to find clothes that would fit. Hopefully she wouldn`t have to go home in the same dirty clothes that she had been brought in with, which would have been her pajamas from Sunday night, pajamas that would offer a tad more comfort than what she was currently wearing, but not much.

　　Only once she got back to her room did she realize what she had done. She had saved the hospital, something that she knew for a fact couldn`t have happened in her last timeline, well the timeline from two times ago. In that first timeline, she couldn`t remember, but she assumed given the cramped nature of hospitals that there had to have been a complete loss of life from everyone involved. Looking at it, these were the perfect spots for killing and mayhem, as one monster for every individual present would be exhausting, and most people in a hospital were already violently ill or injured, meaning they would be easy pickings for one monster to get through, let alone more as more and more patients would fall to monsters summoned to attack others.

　　It was a vicious cycle, and one that Maria had single-handedly thwarted. In a way, it was something that Maria herself almost expected to be rewarded by. Feeling quite pleased with herself, she got to her room, checked the cabinet that indeed had a fresh change of clothes. Seeing the bag, Maria let out a huge sigh of relief, Mama Alvarez was a saint, pure and simple, and she knew this was from her mother as she would be the only one to remember such a thing. Still, she changed clothes, and was about to rejoin her family, when she saw a new system message.

　　Anomaly Detected: Sending Investigation Team Now!

　　Seeing the system message, Maria froze for a moment, then felt the moment the world around her paused. There wasn`t any one thing that truly noted that the world had been paused, everyone was still standing still, the sunlight still shown with the same brightness, but the only difference was the rate of ambient energy coming into the room stopped for a moment.

　　Wondering what would happen, Maria paused keeping still, trying to listen for what could have caused the disturbance. Then just when she was about to chalk it all up to her being crazy and taking the moment to go out and explore more of the world, while she waited, she heard a familiar voice call out.

　　"This sector again? I really think we need to escalate this." The first voice of an arbiter for Earth`s integration began.

　　"I told you, we can`t as we don`t have a good baseline to deal with, and besides, how would that look on our futures." The second voice of the more senior arbiter added.

　　"Oh, looky here, if it isn`t our very own problem child, right at the center of everything, can we at least get rid of the glitch?" The first voice asked.

　　And like that, Maria felt her chance at a peaceful existence slipping away by people who could arguably erase her with but the click of a button.