"Head's up!"

The warning may have been more effective if I hadn't been napping, but anytime I used a bus, I would fall asleep. There was something about riding the bus that lulled me into slumber, it didn't matter what kind of bus or what the destination was; I was rarely able to stay awake a few moments once the bus started moving.

Jim and Eric had been horsing around, nothing strange for them. They were the school jocks, and would often jostle, joke, or in this case, toss a football back and forth. I'm not sure how the ball wound up heading in my direction, but the warning came too late and my nose began bleeding from the impact. My eyes watered up as I woke enough to understand what was going on and that my nose may have been broken.

My anger at Jim and Eric had barely manifested before my vision that was already seeing double began seeing a blue box.

[System initializing…]

[Working…]

[Known Gods and Demons identified…]

[Building database…]

[Determining beginning stats…]

[Building class selection…]

[Adjusting Rank requirements…]

[Introducing Dungeons…]

[Adapting planetary resources…]

[Restoring Landmass designation: Atlantis…]

[Creating safe zones…]

[Progress 57% complete…]

[Absorbing waste materials…]

[Building monster and beast lexicon…]

[Creating Zone Levels…]

[Populating zones…]

[Modifying physical reactions of matter…]

[Inhibiting Nuclear and Explosive reactions…]

[Modifying Electrical and Communication Grids…]

[Progress 97% complete…]

[System Initiation complete.]

[Beginning Character Creation.]

My new life began for the second time with an opening cut scene. I say a second time because I've been here before. The ball hitting my face. System initiation. As I woke fully, I remembered. I knew what was about to happen, the choices I and the rest of the world were about to be given, and how our choices changed our lives forever.

And it all began because of the man in the cut scene that was being projected to every individual around the world. Prince Teigh Mac de Beleros y Cyronax had succeeded in a quest. The System had tasked him to deal with and close CERN. A human experiment that allowed man to test a hypothesis about the nature of physics and the truth behind reality.

CERN had been emitting particles that crossed dimensions, and in the world, he lived, those particles had been used to corrupt and introduce a virus to the System that governed the laws and rules for that set limits on those that inhabited the Universe. Teigh's actions had accidentally introduced System to Earth and would wake the Gods.

All of this was familiar to me. The path I had taken before. A classer leveling a warrior. I had made my choices based on popular computer and app games I was familiar with. But those choices had been a bad fit for me. It soon became obvious that it takes more than a few button mashing skills, more than nimble fingers to be an effective warrior.

And without a healer, leveling was a slow, tedious grind of fetch and carry quests and farming mobs that barely gave any experience because of level difference.

Once the cut scene was over, and an explanation had been given for what came next, reality changed. I didn't feel myself moving, but one second, I had been bleeding on the bus heading to school, and the next I was in a white space. A place of billowing fog with nothing else, at least nothing that I could see or detect until the System began integration.

[Select Race -]

I ignored the prompt for now, trying to understand what was happening to me. Twenty years in the future, after spending most of those years frustrated, vainly attempting to level, I made the foolish decision to attempt a dungeon that was out of my league, a dungeon above my level. I'd thought the mix of healers and focused damage dealers taking part in the raid would allow us to kill anything we came across quickly enough that the level disparity wouldn't make much of a difference.

I had been wrong. We had survived the first pack of roaming mobs. But when we came to an intersection and a bad pull along with the mage's fireball splash damage had hit a neutral pack, we were swarmed. I tried to contain the mobs and did manage to pull aggro, but the healer and the rest of the party decided to cut their losses and run leaving me in the lurch once I'd established control.

For most, their actions came as no surprise, pick up groups often devolved into acrimony, recriminations, and fights between members. But one of the people who abandoned me was Kristine. We had been childhood sweethearts, and although that relationship had long passed, we did remain close friends.

Her decision to run was logical, it was what she did as she was running that was the true betrayal and got me killed. She activated a magical ward that set up a barrier and barred the passageway. The spell wasn't intuitive enough to recognize friend from foe; it was a physical manifestation for protection, a gift of power from the God she had decided to worship as part of her [Priest] class.

With no way past once she had set it, and I was swarmed under by the dungeon mobs, and death no matter how gamelike the world seemed, it did not come with respawns. I hadn't chosen a Pantheon in the twenty years I'd worked on leveling, I should have. The bonuses that the Tuatha de Danaan Pantheon offered were amazing buffs, the experience multiplier that was awarded to those that selected the faction was a benefit that none of the other Gods could offer.

I'd allowed my character to default to the Judeo-Christian religion, but no one had realized how important Pantheon selection would be during creation. The System only announced that those that worshiped the Gods of Teigh Mac de Beleros y Cyronax would receive certain buffs.

I wasn't sure what had happened. I had died, but why had I returned to the past? I didn't remember being given the choice, no Divine being allowing me to turn back time and return to where it all started, but I was going to take advantage of this opportunity. With a lifetime of knowledge, a life of lessons learned the hard way, I could make choices in character creation that would allow me to survive and flourish, choices that would change the trajectory of my life.

I knew spawn spots, dungeon guides, the best places to farm loot drops, I'd studied Internet discussion about builds slavishly, hoping to find a way to improve my circumstances. The most powerful people and their classes had been immortalized in a deck of cards that shared their build with everyone.

An entire industry devoted to following and maintaining databases that detailed every nuance and choose those who reached the height of power had made. A Magic the Gathering gaming event had been formed around those playing cards that had been assigned damage multipliers based on real-world stats, skills, and spells.

The System had left most of the infrastructure in place when it initialized. So power, the Internet, communications remained available. There was a System imposed quest to rebuild and adapt utilities to a magic-based power grid. The increase in the planet's surface, required that adaption even if System hadn't made it mandatory.

I never did understand how cities and towns that were moved, their new location determined based on zone levels, managed to stay connected to power grids and cable lines. I just chalked it up to magic and took for granted that technology still worked, grateful that computers still operated.

There were people who created builds that allowed them to exploit that tech, capable of wading through giga-realms of bytes and compiling detailed lists that contained information about quests, skills, spells, stats, classes, and races.

The re-introduction of lost people like the Atlanteans were given a fantasy twist. The continent was restored to Earth but remained submerged. Residents were able to breathe water as well as air and had the strongest affinity to magic related to water and mind.

Telepathy and telekinesis were essential skills when living under the waves where sound and language was hard to transmit. It made the species some of the most powerful mentalists in the new world. They also received an experience buff, not as generous as those received by worshippers of the Tuatha de Danaan, but a buff that stacked.

All the lost races and civilizations received that stacking buff.

The world had increased in size, expanded, and eclipsed that of both Jupiter and Saturn. A combined 400,000 miles at the equator. It allowed those civilizations and races that were introduced enough isolation to grow and prosper before they were forced to deal with human greed. Something hard to do when the entire world was saturated with Internet capabilities.

Once enough data had been shared people discovered that character creation was more important than they believed. Boons were available if you made the correct choice. A lot of min/maxing and theory crafting went into discussions that often became contentious as one person or another spouted a theory and idea on what the best 'build' would be.

Children that came of age and got access to the System at sixteen were often screwed because they decided to believe the hype over the latest trend. There was a month when every child who reached character creation locked their choice into a hybrid beast race, a mix of Panda and Lhasa Apso a breed of dog. The combination gave the appearance of Ewok's, a furry race of small people based on a movie. Unfortunately, they had none of the strengths of dwarfs or any of the other small races.

Very few of the children who matured that month managed to survive. It forced the caretakers to put restrictions in place so that children would not make the same mistakes in the future.

After that, people who posted theories and data were required to track their past comments and certify authenticity, upvotes, and supporting evidence. In the end, those people who managed to gain a Gold class certificate had loyal followings. Their ideas were data-centric and verifiably proven.

That knowledge allowed me to make choices during character creation this time, which would make for a stronger character. I had often wondered what I would have done differently if I could turn back time and start my new life under the System over again.

Now I would find out if those theories I'd pored over and considered would make a difference, or if destiny and fate were inviolable. I hoped not; I hoped that I decided how I would live and grow, not the whims of Fate.