Myles’ POV

Because it would be very unwise to have all or even half of the population practically comatose for six hours straight, Myles gifted the System in groups of twenty, and the whole thing took a little over thirty hours and left him with notably shorter hair.

Considering Myles was handing out superpowers, the whole event went off remarkably well, though that probably had more to do with Elder Raad running the show than anything else.

Before Myles’ hairs were even passed around, everyone—but the three guards in the entry tunnel—were gathered and given a demonstration of the inventory by Atakarr and Elder Raad, then Elder Raad explained that for Myles to give them the System, they would need to swallow his hair (which was mixed with water and served out all at once) and that it would cause them to fall into a long uninterruptible sleep that... wouldn’t really feel like sleep.

After that, everyone split up into groups of twenty and Myles just went group by group.

So yeah, gifting the System was an entirely unmemorable experience, almost dull even.

It was what happened after people got the System that definitely stood out, because, as it turned out, when you hand a near limitless ability like the System to a group of people who have been starved for entertainment their whole lives and basically give them free reign to do whatever they want with it, well, things tended to happen.

Before group 3 even finished System Initialisation, two new skills had been unlocked:

Hot Touch_ Lv. 1/50

Type: (active)

Increases the amount of heat that can be generated by the palms per skill level.

Warning: this skill does not grant the user resistance to the heat of their own hands.

Heat Resistance_ Lv. 1/25

Type: (passive)

Improves the natural resistance of your body to all kinds of heat per skill level.

[Hot Touch] had been unlocked by the children while playing. The game was simply to rub their palms together as hard as they could for a long time, so that they could either touch each other’s cheeks with the heated palms, or sniff their palms to get a whiff of that smell of slightly roasted flesh it gave off afterwards.

It was just a simple, (very weird and relatively) harmless game, and they’d gotten a skill out of it. A skill that at level 2 already generated enough heat to make the children’s hands feel like those of someone running a severe fever.

That was when Elder Raad had laid down the law; experimentation was okay (because she knew that not even she could make them stop), but everyone had to make sure that they were supervised by at least one other person while they tried out whatever they had planned.

It was a good thing she did, because barely two hours after word spread that the children rubbing their hands together gave them a skill, people started doing... very weird things in the hopes that it would give them skills too.

And they often did.

From punching a wall about five hundred times, which gave the [Iron Fist] skill:

Iron Fist_ Lv. MAX

Type: (active)

Makes your arms powerful enough to throw a single punch that packs the power of five hundred of your normal punches.

Notice: use of this skill requires as much physical energy as it would ordinarily cost to throw five hundred normal punches.

To holding one’s breath for over a minute, which gave the [Extra Lung] skill:

Extra Lung_ Lv. 1/15

Type: (passive)

Reduces your body’s dependence on oxygen per skill level.

Skills started to pop up all over the place. Some of which were utterly nonsensical, like [Unblinking].

Unblinking_ Lv. 1/15

Type: (passive)

Reduces your need to blink per skill level.

Three guesses how that skill was unlocked. Or [Tongue Twister]:

Tongue Twister_ Lv. 1/15

Type: (passive)

Increases your ability to speak tongue twisters without getting your tongue twisted.

While all this happened, Atakarr decided to get [Hot Touch] and [Heat Resistance], “just in case,” she told Myles when he asked.

She got [Hot Touch] as expected, but when using it gave her [Heat Resistance], something very unexpected happened, and Myles, at Atakarr’s behest, used [System Scan] on her for the second time ever.

Ding!

Congratulations! The skills [Nimble], [Physical Exercise], [Regeneration], [Tough Cookie], [Pain Resistance], [Strongwoman] and [Heat Resistance] have merged to create the skill [Physique].

Physique_ Lv. 1/1500

Type: (passive)

Improves all aspects of your physical body per skill level.

Would you like to slot in this skill?

«Yes» || «No»

Looking like Christmas, New Year’s, and her birthday had come all in one, Atakarr slotted in the skill. Then she turned to Myles and said with a tone of voice that sent chills down his spine, and not the good kind, “come with me.”

Myles had the [Physique] skill in record time.

After finishing with Myles, Atakarr worked with the other members of the tribe, ensuring that every able-bodied Seena was equipped with both the [Physique] and [Pole-arm Handling Proficiency] skills, as well as having a spear in their inventories at all times. And then she tried to encourage everyone to get [8th Sense], which, with how they were all excited to try any new thing, didn’t really take much.

Personally, Myles felt like Atakarr might be going just the tiniest bit overboard, but he kept that thought to himself; that chameleon had spooked him too, and if this was how she dealt with her fears... well, there were worse coping mechanisms. At least this way if her fears ended up being justified then the tribe would be in a better position to deal with it.

That all came later though, after the celebration. Atakarr and Dadaan had headed out earlier for a quick hunt, and adding their catch to the leftover chameleon meat, the whole tribe celebrated after the last group finished System Initialisation, and it was the first time any of them ate cooked food in their lives (Myles actually saw people cry, though he couldn’t tell if it was because of the bland taste of the meal or not).

Naturally, Myles was the person of honour, and that was the first time he clearly saw something he would come to be very familiar with in the following days; hero worship.

He shrugged it off at first. Chalked it up to gratitude when people greeted and thanked him during the celebration, smiling and crying and gazing upon him like a miracle worker. He told himself that it was simply like when he’d newly arrived here, that in time their wonder would pass.

He was very wrong.

Wonder didn’t fade with the passing days. It grew.

See the thing was, Myles himself never really put much thought into the System. Actually, he went out of his way to not put much thought into it, and this didn’t bother him in the least. Why? Because, hard as it is to believe, he had actually been preparing himself for such an eventuality his whole life.

One of the first movies Myles ever saw was Bambi, an animated film about a talking deer and his rabbit and skunk friends, who also talked. Another was Toy Story.

Suspension of disbelief came easy to Myles. He was used to seeing things that completely went against everything he understood and going “meh”.

The Seena weren’t.

For the Seena, imagination was for murky, barely remembered dreams, not reality. So waking up every time and finding the System to be an actual thing, a thing which with every passing minute (and wasn’t that just insane; actually being able to tell the passage of time) proved itself to be more amazing than they’d previously thought... well, they never really stood a chance, did they?

The truly amazing thing was that there were any (like Atakarr, Elder Raad, and, to an extent, Seeng) who proved able to adapt relatively well to the understanding that Myles was, for all intents and purposes, salvation personified.

There were many amazing races in Ahunna, even the Seena, recluses that they were even before they were trapped here, knew this. And yet what Myles could do, had done, and was doing so far surpassed any tales passed down through the generations.

So when someone clapped really hard a number of times and got the [Boom Clap] skill:

Boom Clap_ Lv. 1/20

Type: (active)

Cause a shockwave by striking your palms together.

They didn’t think, “is there anything the System doesn’t have a skill for?” with a roll of their eyes, they thought, “wow, so Myles can do this too,” in pure awe.

So when barely two days after they got the System, some random guy idly speculated on a ‘what if’ scenario where Myles was not actually a person, but some sort of deity (maybe even one of theirs) who had heard the cry of their people and came to help them, pretending at first to be a weak, normal person to see if they were deserving of his Gift, well, they didn’t exactly believe him, but they didn’t really wave it off as offhandedly as they should have either.

After all, everyone still clearly remembered receiving the message; Congratulations! You have been gifted the System by being [System Prime].

When the first person, a guy he’d talked to a few times, called him System Prime, Myles didn’t really know how to react. He simply stared at him for a few seconds in confusion, then said, “um, you know my name’s Myles, right?”

The dude, who looked a few years older than him, shrugged. “Well, yeah, but the System message called you System Prime so...” he tapered off with another shrug. A rather nervous one this time. “I can stop if you want—” he quickly began to say, but Myles stopped him.

“No, no, it’s fine. You don’t have to—just... call me whatever you want.” The relief on the other man’s face made Myles feel weirdly guilty of something, though he had no idea what.

By the next day, about half the tribe were calling him Prime.

*****

“Well, I don’t like it,” Myles complained as he ducked under Atakarr’s swing.

“I know you don’t, Myles, you’ve been very vocal about your opinion on the matter,” Atakarr said, her spear clashing against his.

They struggled in a contest of strength for a few seconds, but Myles hardly ever won those, besides his smaller physique and slightly lower skill level, he just didn’t feel too comfortable trying to overpower an opponent at such close range, so he quickly retreated to create some space for himself, but Atakarr, now familiar with his preferred style, pressed the attack.

“All I’m saying,” Atakarr continued, “is that it’s not really all that bad. I mean no one has tried erecting a statue of you yet so—” She was cut off as Myles almost landed a strike.

It had been twenty-five days since the Gifting of the System (as the tribe had come to call it), and in that time, the hero worship thing (or whatever the hell this was) had gone from rather uncomfortable and sort of ridiculous, to just uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. And annoying.

People stopped talking when they saw him, they stared when he walked past, and discussed him in carrying whispers when he walked away.

He’d told Elder Raad, hoping she’d be able to do something about it, but she’d simply shrugged apologetically and explained that since she couldn’t rightly order people to not be in awe of him, he would simply have to wait and hope that it passed in time.

At least Atakarr hadn’t gone weird too. That may very well have driven him crazy, since they were dating now. Kinda. Maybe. I mean, they still spent time together, and did.. other stuff together too, but was there supposed to be something else? Maybe some sort of mutual agreement? The changing of their relationship status on Facebook?

He sensed the spear coming, but was slow too dodge, and Atakarr struck the side of his head with the blunted tip of her spear.

“Ow!” Myles rubbed at his smarting temple; Atakarr never pulled her punches.

The woman in question rested her spear on the ground. “Look Myles,” she said, “it’s obvious this whole thing is really bothering you—”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Myles muttered.

Atakarr ignored him as she continued. “And as much as I would love to solve it, Elder Raad is right; you can’t order people not to feel a certain way.”

Myles gave her the stink eye. “For the sake of our relationship I’m going to assume that you’re getting to the part that makes me feel better.”

Atakarr rolled her eyes with a smile and walked over to him. “Remember that trip to the Bridge we’ve been planning? How about we do it now? I think our skills should be high enough, plus you clearly need some time away from all this. What do you say?”

“Atakarr, you had me at how about,” Myles said.