The list of skills, spells and traits seemed infinite until I decided to intervene.

  “From what I just saw, skills are information you shove into my brain, runes are used for magical abilities, and traits change my body.

  That about right?”

  “You mean I should just ignore the obviously corrupted text in the mutation part of my screen? Is that some eldritch cancer or what?”

  “Sure, just separate them into different categories please.”

  “That seems intimidating, will there be later points for me to choose more?”

  “I guess that means becoming a gim bro, power level whatever my class will be and a lot of killing, if that Anima chimera trait is how I’m supposed to grow my soul.

  I was grinning at this point, all my previous lives enjoying the promise of power the system held.

  “Give me the list of this cryptic trait group.”

  Of course, every trait in here seemed similarly corrupted to the name itself, and was thus quickly dismissed after I nearly got an aneurysm trying to decipher them.

  “Understood, probably something to do with my eldritch cancer trait, right?"

  I mumbled, taking a deep breath as I prepared for the next step.

  While all my lives agreed on being a showoff, none of them were stupid enough to think being born as an obvious undead could possibly be a good Idea.

  It left me with about fifty traits, most of them pretty boring, until I managed to suss out four I liked.

  “Can I somehow upgrade these traits once I got them?”

  “So Mystic bones will probably at some point turn every spell of mine into a Necros version, and Unblemished will turn into a death touch? No thanks. Show me the traits humans get to choose from.”

  I asked, and the system complied with the longest list of things I had ever seen, even compared to the undead and encrypted traits together.

  “Understood, shorten it by filtering for things that do not clash with the undying mutation, which probably means utility and back line support.”

  The list now spanned several hundreds only, though things like greater physique and hard skin disappeared.

  “So, five left that I am somewhat interested in.”

  “I don’t want to have long hair, my eyes are good enough and being small comes with enough downsides, besides, would I grow shorter eith every level in it?. I’d rather have those necrotic bones than being a bit more nimble, I guess persistent does give me the best opportunities while being not as obvious, and it’s available to both undead and humans, so they won't be that suspicious if I have it.

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  “One done, five left to go.”

  He announced, letting the system dive right into the next part.

  “So, there are 3 starter runes for every group, but I have to choose three out of all of them? That’s mad! How do I even use these runes?”

  “Then I’ll go about which spells have the most uses and future potential. Now, I don’t seem to have a life affinity, which means I should probably not get my hopes up.”

  “I love the Infect rune already, so let’s start looking what makes sense with it. System, do you have a note function?”

  Let’s look at my favorite spell ideas.

  “Seems decay will be in there, and move is too useful not to take, I mean, it sounds like the base of telekinesis, and with my stunted growth and everything, I can use every option to not use my hands. The choice is between close, open and infect at this point.

  Close decay would probably result in a wound or something being closed, now, close open doesn’t make too much sense, and any combination of the three is pretty useless, so we probably don’t have a lot of reason for this choice.

  Let’s think about move. Move open decay makes a lot of sense, move decay sounds better though, doesn’t require the decay to be open, while decay open might magically pop a pimple.

  Open move sounds like something to start a fight with, or something that helps against restrictions placed on my movement? This sounds fun.

  Now, can Infect even come close to that? I mean, Decay infect sounds like a sanitizer, Infect decay like some way to make an already bad wound even worse, move infect sounds like a good way to spread a disease, and infect move is probably some form of debuff.

  “System, I want move and decay. Now, get me infect to complete this.”

  “Thanks for the Description, captain obvious. Now let’s get to those skills. Any you would recommend to me? Knowledge that’s a bit harder to gain?”

  “So, you recommend I learn the skills to increase my growth faster. Makes sense, though I’m not sure which one to pic. So far, traits seem somewhat interesting, but given the decay thing, I don’t think I should focus on rounding out my biggest weakness. My mind is great the way it is, and I simply love the Idea of magic too much, so Meditation and Spellcraft it will be!”

  As they all settled in, I felt an overwhelming rush of power and knowledge pass through me.

  Then, I fell asleep, my body giving in to exhaustion. After all, I was an unborn.

  I immediately attempted to use the knowledge meditation gave me, falling back into my mind as I began to inspect my soul.

  The moment I laid my inner eye on it, I almost barfed in disgust, kicking my mothers belly out of reflex and pulling me out of the effect as I comprehended how curse my soul looked

  Following that, I fell asleep, somehow knowing that my next life was just around the corner.