Teresa was going to kill herself.
She stood atop a cliffside overlooking the beach, taking shaky breaths as she looked down. The drop had to be around 60 meters, if she had to guess. Surely she would die on impact if she were to jump, right? Just in case, she would dive off headfirst.
Teresa had a lot going for her, emphasis on had. She made mostly good decisions throughout her life. She got good grades in school, got a few scholarships and went to university for a few years. She had worked through highschool and was able to afford a studio apartment nearby, if barely.
Then the fuckups began. Teresa didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, so she had dabbled in a bit of everything while undeclared. She took introductory classes in engineering, computer science, business, biology, chemistry, and a few general education classes. Teresa found that while she was good at all of these subjects, she wasn’t great in anything. More importantly, she didn’t feel super passionate about anything.
Well, she did take a kickboxing elective that was really fun, but it was only offered for one semester and Teresa did not have the build to ever go pro. She was athletic, having gone to a gym four times a week since she started her second year of college, but she was also short, standing at five foot three.
By the end of her second year, she was still undeclared, not being particularly interested in anything. She dropped out, and wound up job hopping for a while in temporary positions. She had applied to long term job listings, but almost never got a response, let alone an interview. She only ever got a response from temporary job listings, and her life had just stagnated.
She made enough to get by, but not enough to ever have much of a savings. She was one emergency away from bankruptcy, and her future looked bleak. The odds of her ever retiring were practically zero, Teresa began suffering from depression, and she just didn’t want to live a life like this.
What was she going to do if she broke a bone or got sick? What if her car broke down? Being one disaster away from being broke was unbelievably stressful, and no matter what she tried nothing seemed to help her situation.
So she was going to kill herself.
She had sold most of her possessions, not that she had many. She sold her computer, her car, and whatever various knick knacks she owned. She didn’t renew her lease, so technically she was homeless. Once she gave away her money to a few charities, she figured she crossed the point of no return. Teresa made a few phone calls to various family members, having a normal talk with them not knowing it would be their last.
Now all she had to do was jump.
Teresa had been standing at this cliffside for the last two hours, taking in what would be her last view. The sun had finally set, and she decided it was time. She shakily took a few steps back, figuring she should get a running start. She placed her phone down on the ground, her last possession.
Her phone had no password, and the only thing on it was a video that would function as her suicide note. She had already made the rounds calling everyone important to her, checking up on them one last time. She tried not to think about how this would impact everyone in her life, but this was her selfish decision to make, right?
Fuck I hope this is high enough, Teresa thought. People have survived some crazy stuff before, and she was really hoping this would not be one of those situations. I mean, if you can fall in the shower and break your neck then surely this will work just fine.
Teresa tied her hair back, deciding getting her hair in her eyes just before she died would be an unnecessary annoyance. Really, just because she was about to kill herself didn’t mean she shouldn’t make the process as smooth as possible.
She took a few steadying breaths, and began running forward. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and the moment she took her first step her eyes started to water. She approached the edge at a running pace, then dove.
As she arced over the edge, suspended in the air, her heart skipped a beat. She didn’t have any coherent thoughts, just the feelings of overwhelming panic and calmness simultaneously taking hold. Time seemed to freeze as Teresa plummeted to her death.
A moment passed, then two. Then three. It took a bit to register, but Teresa wasn’t falling. She was floating, frozen in the air a short distance away from the edge. She frowned, confused. Or at least, she tried to frown, but couldn’t move her face. She couldn’t move anything.
What?
FWOOMP
Teresa felt like she just got shot through one of those tubes outside of a bank, and the world briefly flashed past her. One second, she was falling off a cliff, the next, she was standing in a white room. The room was a perfect cube, each corner a sharp 90 degrees.
Is this what the afterlife is like? Teresa thought to herself. She hadn’t felt herself die, so she wasn’t entirely sure if she was even dead. Maybe when you die, you don’t actually experience the last moments to avoid trauma in the afterlife. Or maybe it just erased the memory of those last moments. Hell, how should Teresa know? This was her first time dying after all, if she was even dead that is.
A holographic screen appeared floating in the air right in front of Teresa, making her jump.
Scanning {Human(?)}…
Origin: Earth
Okay, so apparently the afterlife has floaty hologram panels. Sure, why not. Teresa was just taking it as it comes at this point.
Scan Complete
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Integrating Metaphysical Paths
Teresa’s entire body burned with heat for a moment, and she felt her veins alight. The agony only lasted a fraction of a second, but Teresa caught something during that instant. Throughout her body, a tiny vein-like system had suddenly come into existence made of what might have been fire, before quickly vanishing.
It didn’t really leave a lasting feeling that Teresa could notice, but she could vaguely remember some of the paths that had been formed by the tiny veins of fire. Otherwise, she just felt normal.
“What the hell was that?” Teresa asked, before immediately regretting it. Great, I just died and the first thing I say in the afterlife is “What the hell?” Great first impressions Teresa. Hopefully the afterlife didn’t mind minor vulgarity.
Granting Fundamental Skills
Skill Learned:
Initiating Status…
Teresa read the hologram, then read it again. Clearly, the first line said skills, plural. Why did it only give her one skill? Stop being so damn impatient, it says initiating status right there. It’s probably still loading. Teresa thought to herself, realizing she might not be as calm as she thought. Rushing the afterlife might have unintended consequences that she didn’t know about. She had kind of latched onto the idea that she was dead now, although she wasn’t one hundred percent certain.
A few seconds later, a much larger hologram appeared in front of her.
Status:
Name: Teresa
Race: Human (Earth)
Level: 0 (F) (0%)
Class: N/A
HP: (71/71)
Stamina: (71/71)
Mana: (45/45)
Strength: 6
Fortitude: 3
Endurance: 6
Vitality: 6
Agility: 4
Intelligence: 7
Wisdom: 4
Perception: 5
Unallocated Points: 0
}
}
She read the status page that had appeared, and immediately thought of a stat sheet from a video game. There was no chance the afterlife was an MMO, right? Was all of existence just a simulation maybe? Teresa really couldn’t help herself from thinking about every possibility of what was going on. To be fair, this was a first time experience for her with no precedent. It’s not everyday you dive off a cliff then teleport into a white box that treats you like a video game character.
Looking over her stats, she felt it was pretty reasonable. She didn’t really have a point of reference for what good stats looked like, but thought it was relatively balanced across the board.
Intelligence was her highest stat by a small margin, and Fortitude was her lowest. Well, “Unallocated Points,” was her lowest, but Teresa figured that wasn’t really a stat in the same sense. She felt some of them were self explanatory, with Strength being how strong she is, Agility being how fast she is, and Perception being how perceptive she is, though some gave her pause.
What was the difference between Intelligence and Wisdom? Was one how quickly she thought, and the other how much she knew? That wouldn’t really make sense as a stat though, since how would you measure that? Maybe her memory capacity? Basic video game knowledge also told her that they were probably tied to her Mana.
Oh yeah, Mana. She had Mana. What?
Why would the afterlife have Mana? Was she going to be slinging spells in heaven, casting fireball at mobs? The afterlife was weird, man.
Endurance and Fortitude seemed like the same thing, though she could probably guess some differences. One of them was probably related to her Stamina, and if she had to venture a guess it would be Endurance. It had the same value as her Vitality, which she figured was responsible for her health points. Her HP and Stamina had the same values as well, so that was a pretty good indicator that Endurance raised Stamina and Vitality raised HP. That was assuming they scaled the same, however.
If that was the case, then her Mana probably scaled the same as well. Her Mana was lower than her HP and Stamina, meanwhile her Intelligence was higher than either Vitality or Endurance, which were both higher than her Wisdom. This meant her Wisdom stat was probably responsible for her Mana, and her intelligence might just be how quickly and accurately she can think. Maybe.
“Excuse me,” Teresa said to no one in particular. “Is there a rule book or instruction set to any of this?”
No response came, and the room remained silent for a moment.
“Earlier it said it was going to give me skills, but I only have one.” Teresa said tentatively, hoping she wasn’t about to get smited. Really, she wasn’t that upset about only being given one skill, she didn’t even know what it did. Teresa was mostly just curious, wondering about what that tiny detail implied. Was it possible for some people to start out with more skills than others? What would let some people have more skills if that was the case? Would being good at something during life result in getting a corresponding skill in the afterlife?
No, that wouldn’t make sense. If skills were carried over from your skills you had while being alive, then Teresa’s skill set was completely wrong. She wasn’t really great at anything, but she definitely knew some basic kickboxing, for example. Meanwhile, the only language she spoke was English, so it didn’t make sense that she would get a translation skill. It did make sense that it was level 0, however…
“How does this work? How do I level up? What do all the things on the status screen mean- oh shit.” When Teresa spoke the word “status,” her status screen had disappeared. She paused, then spoke again.
“Status.”
The status screen appeared once more right in front of her. She said it again, then it disappeared. Huh. Neat.
Teresa smiled as she suddenly got a really stupid idea.
“Status-status-status-status-status-“ Teresa said as quickly as she could, constantly making the status screen appear and disappear rapidly. It didn’t lag for a second, instantly toggling its appearance as fast as Teresa could say the word “status.”
Beginning Tutorial Sequence
A hologram interrupted her train of thought as she was spamming her status screen, and she once again felt like she was being shot through one of those bank tubes again.
FWOOMP
Teresa had been teleported to another white room, this one larger and more rectangular. In front of her lined along the wall were five glowing orbs of energy, looking like perfectly spherical supernovas.
Additionally, there were four other people in the room. There were two guys, who looked to be around 18-20 years old, and two girls in their mid to late twenties.
“Dude,” one of the guys said, looking at the other man. “What the shit, right?”