When I woke up it was raining.

On my head.

I looked up and there was a small rain cloud about the size of my fist soaking my head, my bed, my sheets, everything. I scrambled off the bed falling over the side in my globe and anchor boxers trying to get a handle on what the fuck was going on.

The damn cloud followed me. As it got closer dripping miniature torrential rains all over my room it began to dissipate.

I stood there scratching my head trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Then I felt a tap on my shin.

I looked down to see Meg looking up at me.

"Hungry"

"Didn't you just eat?"

She nodded her little head at me and said it again.

As I looked around I could see the sun was high in the sky. I'd slept for at least a couple of hours. So I went to raid the fridge again.

In the bottom, I found an entire head of lettuce. I'd been meaning to make a kick-ass salad I saw on a food show and never gotten around to it. So I unwrapped it and gave it to her on a plate.

I was definitely going to have to raid a gardening shop or a Walmart gardening supply. If I could find some vegetable seeds I could plant them down by the lakes and that would be a start for food.

I was also gonna have to cross my territory and go outside to hunt for meat. Not to mention I needed to figure out how to get the power back on. A bunch of shit started running through my head.

Normally I'd make a few notes on my laptop or phone and head out. With no power, I decided to search the house for such outdated items as a pencil and pad of paper.

Eventually, I found a small pad of paper and a pen. Then I started making a list. Typically, people need three basic things to survive. Food, shelter, water. And not in that order.

Fortunately, I had entire pallets of MRE cases below as well as a few fifty-gallon water drums. I also had hand carts for the stuff downstairs so if I needed to I could haul empty drums to the reservoir behind the building and fill up the drums.

All in all, I figured I was set for 6 months to a year. Even if I did have to survive on MRE's. My biggest problem was Meg. If she didn't eat meat there was no way she'd eat prepackaged freeze-dried food.

I had a few cases of Mountain House laying around and those were great but even then it was still freeze-dried vegetables. I was going to need a supply of regular food for Meg.

That's when I remembered the giant obelisk sticking through my roof.

It was some kind of system interface right? Maybe I could use that in some way. Some of the stories I'd read mentioned system stores and kiosks or ways to upgrade buildings and territories.

So I grabbed some flip flops and padded out on to the roof in my boxers. I kept low due to how visible I was up here and placed my hand on the obelisk.

Nothing happened.

So I tried various commands. Still nothing.

Then meg said "blood."

I looked around and she was floating on the porch staring at me. Then what she said registered.

"I need to bleed on it to get it to work for me?"

She nods at me and pads back inside.

So I went back to the house and grabbed my K-Bar, took it to the obelisk and pricked my finger dripping blood on the damn thing.

Red sparks flared and a window popped up.

Territory Node:

This is the central node of a territory. From here authorized users can spend Aether Coins or Multiversal Credits to Upgrade, Build, Deconstruct, or Expand their territory.

Then it began populating a list of options. Some I understood and some made no sense.

Looking at the Expand tab I could order territory obelisk's to increase the size of my holdings, for a whopping two hundred thousand Aether Coins. I could also order everything up to a Legendary Claim Obelisk, but those were in the millions.

So I looked at the Build option. It had a ton of choices. Some like Alchemist Lab were self-explanatory. And expensive. Then there was something called a Ty'pod Distribution Center? It dispensed edible Ty'pods. Whatever the hell those were.

Those were actually fairly cheap at ten thousand Gold Aether Coins. But there was no way I was blowing half my cash on some building I didn't understand.

So I went to Upgrade. I regretted it immediately. A massive laundry list of buildings popped up. It spun by so fast I didn't have time to even register most of them let alone read them.

After a few minutes, it stopped. On top of the list was a McDonald's So the damn thing wasn't even in alphabetical order.

I sat there wishing it was sorted by building type and alphabetical order like any normal system would be.

Then I blinked. Cause the damn list altered. Suddenly there were tabs for Personal, Business, Residential, Resources, and Infrastructure.

I immediately looked under Personal. And my warehouse popped up.

Tak-Ti-Kill

Building type: Hybrid (Business/Home)

Space: 50'000 sqr. ft. (500)

Upgrade Slots: 20

Current Upgrades: 3 (Security System, Weapons Bunker, Home Addition)

Available Slots: 5 large, 4 Medium, 8 Small.

I began scrolling through the upgrades I could make. To my building alone I could add walls with turrets and guard towers. I could add workshops for crafting, Mana Generators, a fucking Shield Generator. There was even an option to add a Class II A.I. if I had the coin. I didn't cause that last one cost damn near a million Aether Coins.

What I did do is make a list.

Upgrade List

Power Generator [10,000 Power Units] (Medium)- 10,000 silver. Machine Shop [Basic](Medium)- 8,000 silver. Mana Garden [Basic] (Small)- 17,000 silver. Vehicle Bay [Basic] (Large)- 10,000 gold. Library [Basic] (Large)- 10,000 gold. Creature Harvesting Array [Basic] (Medium)- 5,000 silver

Once I had my choices I decided to stop and save the rest of what I had. The most expensive things I chose had been the Vehicle Bay and Library. But the description for both had made them a must.

Library [Basic] (Large)- 10,000 gold.

Stocked with a wealth of basic system knowledge this room allows a 20% bonus to reading speed and research. Upgrades include a Librarian Automaton, extra shelf space and a dedicated Vault for rarer acquisitions.

Vehicle Bay [Basic] (Large)- 10,000 gold.

This room comes complete with storage space for 4 medium-sized vehicles, an auto repair system complete with 4 automated arms and the ability to upgrade vehicles. Comes furnished with 4 complete sets of tools for use on Mana Engines as well as various mechanical and biological engine types. 20% increased repair speed. Upgrades include a Repair A.I. (basic to advanced), increased vehicle capacity, Vehicle Upgrades database and more.

Both were going to be incredibly useful. Or at least I hoped so.

The machine shop, mana garden, harvesting array, and generator were basic needs. I needed a place to start my crafting, the mana garden grew plants at an accelerated rate with mana, the harvesting array auto harvested monsters. It rendered down any creature Medium sizes or smaller for everything from hides and cores to alchemical components. And of course, the generator-powered it all. All in all my buys used about 4500 power so I also had room to grow and add upgrades.

After checking over my choices one more time I hit Accept. Then the show began.

A truly massive orb of light landed on the entire building from the sky. It flashed golden and my warehouse began to change.

Slowly the same materials that the massive pillar appeared to be made from grew outwards from the obelisk. As they did a section of the roof changed. Ten feet from the house small, one cubic foot pillars began rising to take an octagonal shape. They popped up every ten feet or so till there was a space one hundred Square feet and twenty feet high.

Once the pillars finished it began to fill in the walls stretching outwards from the pillars growing a dark green crystalline matrix of some kind.

When the whole thing completed it looked like an enormous square-cut emerald sitting on my rooftop. The door was seamlessly bonded.

Once it completed that the material spread again flowing outwards. I'd been so fascinated with the show it didn't even occur to me this shit might like till it had already passed under me and gone on it's way.

In hindsight that was pretty fucking stupid on my part. Sure I'd read a ton of stories about System Apocalypse stuff. But in reality, I didn't know jack shit. Sure some of what I'd read was generally accurate, like monsters and dungeons and building upgrades. But so far most of it was generalized.

At that moment I decided to pull my head out of my ass and make smarter decisions. This definitely wasn't a game.

I walked over to the door and tried to open it. Meg walked beside me. I tapped the door but nothing happened. There was no handle. Placing my hand on it I thought open.

Sure enough, it opened outwards. Inside it was humid as hell. There was a deep earthy smell to the whole place. There was a small waterfall to my left that fed a stream flowing to my right that seemed to disappear into a hole. Other than that the entire place was filled with rich dark earth.

Stepping in and on to the dirt I knelt down and placed my hands on the dirt. It was soft and loamy. It felt more like compost than actual dirt. And it was deep. I sunk my hand wrist-deep into it and didn't find a bottom. That's when I stepped back off the dirt, not dirt. Reference my new "don't be a dumbass" policy.

As I stepped back on to solid roof I noticed a small table to the right of the door on the inside. I'd missed it entirely when I entered. Sitting on it was a small manual. On the cover, were a bunch of seeds I didn't recognize and the title Gardening for Nubs. Feeling like an idiot for the third time in as many minutes I grabbed it and went back inside to read up on my new greenhouse.

One thing I had learned both as a marine and a contract vendor? Read the fucking manual! Seriously, you do not want to be the guy who didn't check his backblast area while firing off an AT-4 because you didn't. Dropping the grenade and throwing the pin? Also a sub-optimal situation. Reading the manual is like a religion for most operators. Those who can, do. And those who can't? Get shot in the face while trying to clear a weapon they jammed because they didn't.

So I began to read.

I'll slip the technical details and just say the greenhouse was amazing. It could be set up with individual grow zones. Got a plant only good for winter climates? Set up a zone and drop a few seeds. Need tropical climates for your nifty new coconut trees? Easy peasy. Even more interesting was the fact that it could be used for extreme environments. Got an alchemical flower that only grows on Volcanic River terrain? This thing could accommodate that too by forming a small lava pool and simulating river flow.

All in all a great investment. After that, I went to look around at my other purchases. As I did I noticed the obelisk popping through my roof was missing and the roof was sealed.

I went down to the ground floor and it was completely gone except for a four-foot-tall version sitting in the middle of my warehouse floor. I guess it had changed itself when the building altered to become more compatible or something.

This whole situation was weird. I touched it to see if I could access it and it was still fine. So I went to check my library, shop, and garage.

The shop was fairly simple really. It had tools I knew intimately, some tools I'd never seen before, and on benches, it had power tools. The best thing about it was that some of them were designed for intricate electronics work. There were a full-sized lathe and mini lathe for tiny detail work, a smithy in the corner, a self-heating forge a hydraulic press. I mean you name it. I could build anything from a tiny metal dog sculpture to a full-sized transmission in there.

The garage was also amazing. When it had said medium-sized vehicles I'd been thinking your standard S10 pickup or maybe a hummer. Nope. The four bays could fit something the size of a Bradley. Vehicles were a loose term also. The database had upgrades for everything from typical four-wheeled vehicles to mobile combat suits. Both organic and inorganic. That last part was ringing alarm bells. The infodump for this had said as much when I bought it but I hadn't paid much attention. Turns out Organic referred to things like Biomechs or Exoframe Symbiotes. And they came in all shapes and sizes. One thing I did find out was I could combine bays if necessary, each was individualized. But if I chose I could combine two of them into a Large bay capable of repair work on massive vehicles. Or if I combined all four I could fix Colossal Vehicles. I'm talking shit the size of a Sand Crawler from those Space Wars movies.

Best. Investment. Ever. The thing that blew my mind totally out of the water though was this was a Basic vehicle bay. What the hell was I getting if I bought the Advanced or Master level bay? I had a feeling that was a long way out. First I needed skills and to figure out how to use them.

The library though was my best purchase of all. As soon as I stepped into the room I was greeted by a voice from a computerized desk in the middle of the two hundred square foot room.

"Hello, sir how may I help you?" It asked. It's voice was decidedly monotone and robotic. Which made sense since it was indeed a robot. It was cylindrical with a tiny dome on a stalk for a head. It had two arms on each compass point that were on rotating disks.

"Uh..id like to know about skills and how to use them." The thing exploded in a flurry of motion. It telescoped up extending its torso somehow, much like you would a pirates spyglass. Only this was seamless. Then it's arms went whipping around grabbing three books off the shelves lining the room.

When it settled back down three books were on the desk stacked neatly in front of it.

Common Skills, Skill Slots for Dummies, Linking and You.

I picked up all three a little hesitant to get near this thing and said my thanks before darting out the door with a wide-eyed Meg in tow. Then I went back up to my place to gear up and get ready. I was going to have to read up on how to work my skills but I also needed to head out and get Meg her food and whatever I could get from a couple of gardening places nearby.