Chapter 3: Chapter 3: System Activation

I read the message in the text box. And then I reread it. Before I can reread it once more the text shifts before my eyes. 

[Preparing perks. Body and mind upgrades commencing installment.]

As the words shift I begin to feel different. I feel a powerful calmness wash over me, to the point that all of the emotions I had just been feeling before are suddenly less potent. I also feel the slight tiredness I was feeling from a full day’s worth of classes disappear completely. 

At the very same time, I also watch a 2D map come into being at the topmost section of my field of view. The map is of my immediate surroundings and also has a symbol on it straight ahead of its current direction to symbolize Ghriza. The 2D map does not reveal anything beyond the room, which was a bit disappointing, but I have an instinctive awareness that the area beyond the room is being purposefully hidden for now.

“I can see you interfacing with the system. I designed it myself, it’s… very powerful.” Ghriza explains, smiling all the while. As she speaks more of the system she has somehow put into me makes itself known. The colored bars that linger near the top of my field of view begin to become understandable to me, and as I study them I chuckle. 

The bars are all abstractions of some sort of limited, but replenishable, resource that I possess. Whether it is my current lifeforce, my stamina, or something altogether stranger than either of those things, the bars are all mechanisms by which I can be kept aware of my current state. 

I also begin to gain a strange, clearly supernatural awareness of new aspects of my condition. I can instinctively tell that I no longer needed to sleep, though I certainly can if I wanted to. If I were asked how I know this I wouldn’t be able to give someone a clear answer, but I know that whatever means informed me wasn't natural. It was something beyond the limitations of nature. 

“I can tell that you’re taking to the system quite well. How nice!” Ghriza exclaims as she continues to study me. 

More text boxes begin to appear, steadily informing me of various aspects of the system I’ve somehow acquired. They inform me of various things called “Perks” and reveal the ones that were more immediately important to me. 

I smirk as I read them, and by the time I was done reading just a few of them, I glance at Ghriza. 

“Is all of this really necessary to take down some child from District 12?” I ask her, and she frowns. 

“Don’t underestimate Katniss. Plot armor is a really difficult thing to shatter.” She warns me, causing me to wonder what the hell “Plot armor” is. Nevertheless, even without the blatantly supernatural abilities that I possess, at least the ones that I know about which were “locked”, I am now a creature beyond anything I could have imagine at the moment. 

I allow silence to fill the air between Ghriza and me. As I do I chuckled internally. I was attuning more and more to my abilities with every passing second. Countless text boxes await my direct attention and I know that exploring them will take me a good deal of time but that the awards would be worth the time I invest in myself. 

“I can tell that you’re already growing bored in this place.” Ghriza tells me, the quiet complaint audible in her voice. I look at her and shake my head in disagreement. 

“No. It’s not that. I’m just… I’m filled with all of this knowledge and power and even if supernatural things are locked away I can still do so much more than I could have before. It’s hard not to feel restless, you know?” I ask her, speaking rather honestly. She had given me a lot of incredible powers, countless of these strange “perks”, and I wanted to use them. 

One of the symbols that lines the edges of my field of view is a symbol of a hand surrounded by thin lines representing some sort of thin energy field. I know instinctively that this was the sign for the “location” in my system where information on my perks could be found. The symbol was a representation of “Superpowers” though I have no clue what those were. 

I mentally tap on the symbol, by focusing on it for a fraction of a second. As soon as I do I begin to see a vast list of perks that were bolstering me in minor ways. The strongest ones were all locked away, symbolized by them being greyed out. That said, the ones that weren’t locked away all gave me an array of minor buffs and at the strongest levels some real boosts. 

Many of the names are interesting to glance at. Some of them are quippy like “Lightning Quick” while others are descriptive such as “Hide in shadows”. I scan them and found it impossibly easy to recall what they are named and how each of them benefits me. 

There are many of them and at some point, I should have begun to struggle to remember them but I never do. I spend several seconds dashing through the list and scanning as many as I can, and yet it never got harder for me to remember them. As I mentally scan through the assortment of abilities I possess I begin to speak. 

“Okay, so let’s assume that all goes according to plan. Our plan. The one where we take down Katniss, Peeta, and I win the games. What happens next?” I ask, curiously. My “Sponsor” smiles at that remark. 

“In that case, you go to your first jump. I know what it is, but I won’t spoil it.” She tells me, sweetly. There is a strange look on her face as she speaks though, and I can somehow sense a level of excitement in her body language that previously would have been beyond my capabilities to sense. Something about the first place she wants me to go is quite special.

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The quiet being, a newly ascended “Jumper” is still as he feels the power flowing through his very being. He silently senses every aspect of himself increasing in potency, and he revels in it. 

His mind is racing with information, with ideas and goals that he both couldn’t have and wouldn’t ever imagined in the past. At the moment countless perks are empowering his body and mind and he is filing with a healthy amount of both meta-knowledge and out-of-context-knowledge. 

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Meta-knowledge is knowledge related purely to the setting he is in, that of “The Hunger Games” and “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”. That particular setting poses little danger to any creature with superpowers but is at least mildly dangerous to mundane humans due to the repressive government that oversees the majority of the known world and the death games that its leadership mandate occurs annually. 

Cossus does not know the intricacies of all of this. He does not know that he is a fictional character, or rather that he is in some ways less than that since he does not exist in the “true canon” of the setting of his birth, and if he had known all of this he wouldn’t have cared. He has lived a real life, one of heartache, memories, dreams, and growth and he doesn’t want any of that to stop. 

He also quietly rebels against the idea that some powerful outside force determines the fate of so many. If someone wants to have that much influence and power they should have the decency to try and seize it themselves, in person, in front of the masses. It is this quiet aspect of the young man that makes Ghriza like him so much. 

As he gains further attunement with the perks lurking inside of him he began to dream more ambitiously than he ever dared to in the past. His mind, amplified to beyond the highest possible peak for humanity, fills with alien whispers of things both possible and impossible. 

His brain teems with scientific knowledge and he quietly wonders what is possible and what isn’t. As he delights in the powerful sensations of his mind forcibly and dramatically expanding he also begins to experience greater desire than he has ever felt. 

The desire he feels is the same desire that characterizes many of the anomalous entities known as “Jumpers”. He is experiencing his first bout of lust. He is filled with powerful desire but not for bodies or anything so carnal or simplistic. 

He is experiencing lust in a stranger sense. The desire he feels is a powerful desire to experience as many things as possible, without constraint and without concern for things like mortality and fear. Now that his mind has been awakened to the existence of more than just Panem, he is quietly adjusting to his increasing awareness of the width and enormity of the omniverse. 

He does not have an accurate understanding of the scope of reality, but if anything that only makes his understanding of the existence of the omniverse all the more impressive to himself. It only makes it easier for his imagination to run wild. 

For the next few minutes, his “Sponsor” would quietly explain the basis of “Jumping” and what it means to even be a jumper. This explanation is not complex, as Ghriza knows that at the end of the champion’s time on Panem she’ll get a chance to talk to him, like this, again.

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One of the more important things she explains is the strange location in which they currently reside; a “Warehouses” of the sort that belonged to many different jumpers. 

“The location we’re in is your personal plane.” Ghriza tells me, with an excited smile on her lips. I look at her in confusion and wait for her to expand on what she means. 

“This place, your ‘warehouse’ is a powerful dimension, a… layer of reality, attuned to you.” She explains, not feeling discouraged by my look of confusion. As she explains this I feel a portion of my mind fills with knowledge of what she is explaining more intimately, allowing me to gain a sudden and unnatural awareness of what she is telling me. 

“Whoa, so I can command this place?” I ask as I absorb the information that has been revealed to me. Ghriza’s eyes widen as she begins to bounce up and down when I speak. 

“Yes! That’s exactly it. To an extent anyway. For now, while you fully undergo your apotheosis, you can only truly access this place while you’re sleeping or while I’m here to bridge the gap. In time, however, you'll gain the power to truly access your warehouse in its entirety.” She exclaims, excitedly. 

“For now we’re in a part of it that is tethered to your next jump rather than visiting the Panem-inspired portion of the place because that part is still under construction.” She tells me brightly, her eyes alight with excitement. Her words fill me with curiosity and I voice a question to her. 

“How big is this place?” I ask, in the wake of hearing her utter “Panem-inspired portion”. That causes her to smirk mischievously at me. She leans in very close and begins to whisper to me.

“One day it’ll be as big as a whole universe.” She tells me with a devilish look on her face as she speaks. This news causes me to gasp and step back in shock, though her words have little context to me. I can instinctively tell that the news she just revealed is significant. 

“There are a number of surprises that’ll be waiting for you when you eventually win your Hunger Games and can access the warehouse for real. But for now… All you really need to know is that your warehouse is already the size of Panem.” She tells me, boldly. That legitimately causes my eyes to widen, as it is a powerful revelation. I do not know the exact dimensions of Panem but I know enough to know that the nation is fairly sizeable, and if this… warehouse can somehow contain the entirety of the country to start with that’s truly impressive.

“Anyways… I can feel the energy I can exert on reality beginning to dissipate for the night. I think it’s almost time for me to send you back. When you return you’ll be on your own, but with your system, you can communicate with me a few times a day and begin to piece stuff together on your own.” She says, cryptically but quite happily. Her eyes suddenly narrow as she looks at me and I see her lips part to whisper one more question to me. 

“So before I go, what class do you want to select to be your first one?” She asks me, with an inquisitive look in her eyes. My own eyes narrow and I quietly wonder, aloud, a question of my own. 

“What is a class?” I ask, softly and curiously. This causes my companion to rear back and laugh loudly.

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