VOL 1 Epilogue : The Game of Life

So, Uncle was just laughing at my question as if I'd just told him the funniest joke ever.

“Ha ha! Ha!”

“Hey? It’s not that funny!” I puffed up my cheeks and pouted. “Is my life really a video game or not?”

This was a serious question. I could have been living my own RPG style life, after all! A girl's gotta' plan for stuff like that.

As Uncle's laughing fit came to a calm end, he let out a sigh and became more earnest.

“Sorry. You just made me think of something your father said once.”

It was a rare treat to hear him laugh like that. Without my overwhelming curiosity, I might have decided to laugh along with him too. Whatever dad said must have been real funny.

Hey! they weren’t making fun of me, were they?

“To answer your question, no. You're very much living in reality.” He transformed into his human form and kneeled down to me. “What you’ve just discovered is your leveling system. Your father made it to emulate a video game so you’d be encouraged to grow and learn new things.”

Dad always did know I liked video games.

I noticed when I leveled up for the first time, a little ID card icon appeared on my hotbar. Apparently, this was the USER IDENTIFICATION menu. It had all my stats and information.

-Yalda Asamo :: Level 7 :: Type 3 Exceed :: Female :: Homeworld : Eden-

-Age : 6 :: DOB : 509/09/05 (ED)-

-Serial Number : 282-475-249-

-Theta Level : Theta (normal form)-

-Crystal Hearts Collected : 4♡-

Wow, this just got interesting. There was a lot to go over here.

I knew a lot of this information already, like my name, Exceed type, homeworld, serial number... But there were a few things that certainly stood out in that crowd of data.

For instance, when did I gain 6 other levels before this? What did they even do? I'd never heard anything about this before, so I was at a loss how I got all the way to 7.

Also, there was that Theta level thing again! What was that? I really wished I knew what the Theta Drive was, because it sounded so cool.

I thought it was cute how it was keeping track of how many crystal hearts I had, including the one Janus gave me. That meant I'd probably have to find more and collect them. They probably all had different powers and abilities associated with them, all awaiting me to discover and take advantage of in the name of good. I wonder what they'll be?

At the way bottom of my USER ID tab, it showed my physical and mental stats. Nothing looked very high at the moment. Some of them were even grayed out.

“Uncle, how does this work?” I asked.

“It takes real life attributes and translates them into video game values. It’s not the most perfect representation, and the system will likely need some maintenance in the future, but it’ll give you an idea of how to play your cards.”

“My cards?” I said while sifting through my stats.

“Think of your strengths and weakness like a deck of cards. In a game, you need to know which card is going to be the best for the moment. Battle is no different.”

Oh…I see. So, these stats reflected who I was as a person.

A little box in the corner of my FOV said I was 'healthy' and in 'good condition,' but I received an advisory message that stated I should stay out of combat all together right now and act as support.

“So, I have to level up to make myself stronger?”

“Sort of. Like I said, it reflects real life attributes. So, if you train yourself enough, those stats should increase on their own without leveling.”

“So then what’s the point of leveling in the first place?” I asked.

“You gain skill points every level that you can use to upgrade powers and abilities. The more you use a power, the more you’ll be able to upgrade it.”

I’ve played so many RPG’s with that exact system. It was pretty common. But I wasn’t seeing any way to upgrade anything at the moment, which kinda' made this a moot point. Uncle claimed it would show up eventually as its own tab on my hotbar.

Well, that was all cool and awesome, but how did I even earn Xp? I’m guessing things like fighting monsters and stuff. According to Uncle, that was exactly right! He explained that Xp was mostly gotten from defeating enemies like monsters and demons. But there was some experience to be gained from doing other tasks, which he stated I would discover in time. He probably didn't know too much more about that.

"I still don't understand why this suddenly unlocked now."

"That was something else I revealed to you earlier." He said. "You must not have noticed till now."

Oh, that made a lot of sense. Getting wings probably took priority...

There had to be more to this, but right now there were a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle that would take time to fill in. Uncle said I'd just have to keep growing and learning new skills to get deeper into the system.

"I suppose it may also be time to have you learn self-defense techniques. But we'll start that another time. Dinner should be ready."

So, I'd learn the ways of battle, eh? Sounded exciting!

But he had a good point. I was really getting tired from all the excitement of today. We could start learning that later. And boy, was I hungry!

~☆☆☆~

It wasn’t very late just yet, but training my awesome new wings and trying to figure out my leveling system really tuckered me out.

The nice thing about the wings was that I could hide them whenever I needed too. All I had to do was think about them disappearing and they would vanish. It wasn’t like they just turned invisible, they would dematerialize completely.

I was almost ready to tuck myself into bed, but then Uncle reminded me that there was cake in the oven. A sudden jolt of energy boosted me to my seat at the dining table.

He put a really fancy design on the cake, stacking a few round pillows of baked goodness on top of each other. It almost looked as pretty as a wedding cake! I gotta' say, he can really cook!

All the other bees brought out a whole feast along with the cake. The dining table was packed with food all over. A big turkey, salads, vegetable pie... I've never had such a big dinner. We'd be eating all this for weeks!

This felt awesome. I was super happy with it.

"Please, enjoy as much as you'd like, Young Mistress."

"Thank you, Uncle!" I dug right in!

Uncle smiled.

After the hard work of the last few days, it was nice to kick back and have an actual birthday feast. It really gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, like around the holidays. Too bad dad couldn't be here, but one day we'd get to all share times like this again.

~☆☆☆~

It was starting to get dark. I couldn't keep myself awake anymore. All that food and training got to me.

Uncle picked me up out of my chair and carried me back to my room. No chance I'd make it back on my own like this.

He plopped me down on my bed, then pulled the covers over me. Samael uncoiled from my hair and slithered into his cup holder on the desk. He must have been sleepy too.

With the last bits of my physical strength, I circled my arms around Uni, my stuffed unicorn, and held her close.

"Uncle, thanks for all the fun stuff today."

Everything we did made it feel like it was a birthday celebration. It made up for my actual birthday crisis. If I could have asked for one more thing today, it would have been to have friends and dad here as well. A party isn't fun without friends and family, you know?

"It was my pleasure to serve you." Uncle rubbed my head. "I hope you'll rest well tonight."

Something was on my mind before closing the sleeping pod door, and it made me a little anxious. Not enough to keep me from sleeping, but just enough of a problem to make me wonder.

I was thinking about that big hacker guy that broke Anima. My mind couldn't put a name to him, I just kept thinking about that creepy gold hand with the face I saw in the tower system. Could he have looked like that? Yuck.

Daddy says that when we make something, a little piece of us is put into it. So if the hacker made that evil gold hand, he must have been gaudy to the core.

"Uncle, do you know who the real hacker is?"

"You mean Janus?"

"No, the one who corrupted Anima."

He just stared at me for a moment, forging for some sort of answer in his mind.

"I'm not sure."

Knowing him, he probably knew more and didn’t want to tell me. To be fair, if he did tell me more, I'd probably take the inch for a mile. I'd wanna' know everything I can about this bad guy. That way I could practically defeat him with a single punch!

"Anima said I was made to challenge God, is that true? She said that's who corrupted her."

His face was still and emotionless, not changing much since my last question.

Then he asked me, "Is that what she said? Don't believe everything a corrupt AI tells you."

He was right. She was really corrupted, so who knows what that hacker made her think?

"Go to sleep, you'll need your rest if you'd like to continue your training tomorrow."

"Okay, Uncle. I love you."

"I love you too."

He left the room and turned off the light. The windows were covered by the blinds, so everything went totally dark. A thin strip of blue light lit up across the edges of the wall, acting as my nightlight. There were also a few glowing green star stickers on my ceiling too.

I almost forgot. I was supposed to pray before bed. I did make that promise. Sitting up would have been too uncomfortable, so I just stayed laying on my back.

"God, please let daddy come home safely. I really miss him. Oh, and I hope I make more friends soon."

Was that all there was to think about? Maybe I could pray for the future.

"Also, I hope I don't have to challenge you one day. I hope we find that hacker and stop him from hurting any more AI."

I think those were good wishes for now. Anything more would have been greedy. I didn't think I had the good karma reserves for more.

"Amen."

With praying done, I let my eyes close peacefully.

Time to shut down…good night world, hello dreams.

-Empyrion OS, shutting down…-

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-Shut down complete- -entering REM sleep-

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-Good night, Yalda (ᴗ˳ᴗ)zZz...-