*Bzzt* * bzzt* *bzzt*

I slowly wake up from my peaceful sleep, a little bit dazed from how early in the morning it is. A soft light is coming through my window, signaling that it is almost time to get up, despite my desire to stay in bed. unfortunately I always keep my phone away from my bed so I have to get up. As I stretch my body trying to dispel my grogginess, I reach over to my phone to check what the earlier than usual alarm is about.

Reminder: Ingenuity Online release today.

My mind goes blank for a short moment as I read the reminder, as the memories of last nights excitement flood my mind. After so many years, it is finally available to play, I finally get to play the first truly immersive VR game in history, Ingenuity Online.

Rushing out of bed, I grab a pair of jeans and a blue blouse out of my closet. Thankfully I had the foresight to braid my hair last night to minimize the prep time in the morning. I undo the braid and let my wavy snow white hair cascade down my shoulders. as I look in the mirror I see my pale but delicate skin, pink lips, and pair of stunning amethyst colored eyes (purple). The only makeup I decide to apply today is a tube of black lipstick and some mascara.

Going to the kitchen of my two bedroom apartment I reminisce on how I got here as I made breakfast. When I was seventeen, a friend of mine pointed out a particular talent of mine and how I'd be able to use it to make a lot of money. To my surprise when I had learned the basics they were right, and I was able to make a lot of money through different high growth, high risk stocks, easily earning over ten thousand dollars in a few months before I finally graduated high school. I quickly found this apartment to be able to live in and have been here ever since. Soon after I purchased a VR game cabin and had it installed in the second room, because I had always loved video games. While many had high immersion, they weren't even close to the level of what Ingenuity is supposed to provide.

At 7:30 I finished up my breakfast and cleaning up. I triple click the lock button on my car remote starting it before I reach my car. Getting in I start making my way to the nearest game shop to pick up my preordered copy of Ingenuity Online.

Seeing some men close to where the game shop is, I decide to stay in my car until just before the shop will open. Just as it's about to hit eight o-clock and I see john walking from down the block to open the shop I get out.

One of the men intercepts me as I am walking to the shop, a bulky man at about 5'10" having well over half a foot on me.

"What do you want?" I ask him in the most frigged tone I can manage. Unfortunately with my small stature it isn't all that intimidating to anyone that isn't acquainted with me.

"A small girl like you shouldn't be out here all," sick of the lustful tone as well as the threatening glare, I stop him in the middle of his sentence. Grabbing the arm that was about to grab my shoulder, I maneuver towards his back pinning his hand between his shoulder blades. Kicking him behind his knees he loses his balance and falls down on his chest.

Whispering into his ear, the frigidness of my tone has a lot more impact this time, "fuck around with me, and you'll find out that my looks don't match my ability. Now leave me alone."

As John unlocks the door I look over just in time to see him smirk at the scene, as if it was completely normal and regular occurrence with me. To his credit though, he always seems to be around when stuff like this happens. After the first close call, I almost didn't leave my apartment until I had the confidence to protect myself, basically becoming a near textbook definition of a NEET, though not quite as I guess I could be described to be training... and contributing to society in a few ways.

As I walk into the store, I can see the man and his little crew scurry away like the rats of society that they were. Ignoring that I just walk to the counter to pick up my copy of Ingenuity. While I could have just preordered the digital and not have had to come here, something about going to game stores makes me happy.

"Morning Winter, you here to get your copy of Ingenuity?" John asks as I walk up to the counter.

"Hey John, that is what I'm here for, suck that you have to work most of the day though."

"Actually, my boss was nice enough to let me close up the store at 12. So, I will have plenty of time to get ready for the game launch thankfully. I was just about to send a message that we will be closing early for the launch to the phone numbers listed with the stores pre orders."

"Well isn't that nice of him, I wish you luck then for the beginning of the game, whatever you decide as you playstyle."

Putting my thumb over the scanner like always, the scanner verifies my identity through my fingerprint, as well as the ID chip that everyone has in their thumb. Once that was done I also grabbed a few logo stickers for the new game to put on my cabin before heading back out to my car.

as I'm driving home and stopped at a red light I hear two snaps from above and some yelling. Curious as to what's going on I look up out of the car window, just to see a several tone I-beam falling straight toward me. That was the last thing that I saw as it landed almost perpendicular to the ground on top of me.
After a few moments of darkness I found myself in a pure white room. After zoning out for a few moments I finally come to realize what had just happened.

"wait... d, di, did I just die?!"

"Oh, look at that, I wasn't expecting to see anyone here for quite a while," a mysterious voice said, seemingly directed towards me, yet more to theirself, in a pure and curious tone.

As I heard this voice I turned around to see a red haired woman who was absolutely stunning, with perfect proportions all around. She was a little taller than average height at about 5'6".

When she saw my face though, a look of despair came on her face. As if what she was seeing was the worst case scenario, before going into panicked mumbling. "Wait a second, shit. No, no, no you're not supposed to die for a few decades. You shouldn't even be here! How am I going to explain this to the rest, the other god had such big plans for her on Earth!"

Slightly curious as to what she meant I decided to ask. "What do you mean by that?" Still wildly confused as to where I am, I'm still able to keep most of my composure.

"Well now that you've died early the details don't really matter anymore. In short, because of the kind of person you are the gods were guiding you to be able to benefit a lot of people in need. You should be able to figure out the rest with your intelligence."

I could already see what she meant after she said that, as with the money I made in stocks I helped those I could. Unfortunately I wasn't able to help as many people as I'd have liked with my limited time on earth. Thankfully though with my parent teachings of being prepared, I already had a will set up for all my money. A portion of my savings and stocks will go to my brother, with specific instructions that my parents aren't allowed to touch it. The rest will be distributed to different orphanages and a fund to help underprivileged youths go to college.

"I guess you do have a point, but I have two questions for you. Who are you and where am I?" I ask the woman looking at her inquisitively.

"I'm glad you ask, you are here because you meet the two requirements for reincarnation. Firstly you had good karma, secondly you died earlier than you were supposed to. These circumstances put you in front of me, the Goddess of Reincarnation."

As I heard this, I barely managed to keep my jaw from dropping to the ground. "So what you're telling me is that I'm getting reincarnated just like those people in some of the books I've read?"

"Yes, that is exactly what I'm telling you. Not only that but because of your karmic value you get to reincarnate with almost whatever you want."

"Okay, okay I'm gonna need to take a minute to think this through."

"Don't worry about it take all of the time you need," the Goddess said to me.

"By the way I never caught your name miss Goddess, what was it?"

"Thank you for asking, my name is Reya."

"Ya, not a problem Goddess Reya, I'll get back to you when I figure out what I want to get."

Siting on a couch in the room, I started to brainstorm several different ideas on what I could get when I reincarnate. I thought through some of the books I read, but the main one that stuck out for what I want was a system. With all of that thought through I went back to Reya to let her know what I wanted.

"I know what I want, I want to have a system that functions in a similar way to what Ingenuity Online was going to have. I would also like a scythe which will get more powerful along with me and has high elemental conductivity."

After hearing my request Goddess Reya nodded her head approvingly at my choice. After making the finishing touches on the system she started telling me it's functions.

"In honor of what the system is based off of, we'll call this the Ingenuity System. I don't need to explain most of the functions for you since you already know, but I added a map, spatial storage and appraisal to its functions. Now for the scythe I'll need you to help with the design to fit your liking."

We spent a good amount of time designing the scythe together. As we were doing so I learned that the Gods were a lot more like us than I'd ever have thought. Over the course of the experience we developed somewhat of a bond with each other.

"With that done all we need to do to finish is have you assign your points, with the rest of your remaining karma you will have some extra points to use. Also there is a communications function with the system, if you ever want to talk I'm usually free."

"I'll definitely make sure to keep in contact. It was really hard making actual friends who didn't just want to be around me for my money so this is a refreshing change."

As I said this I started to open the system and started thinking of how I would need to assign points. I knew this was incredibly important as it would determine my starting point in this new world, so I had to make it count.
First to start off I needed to make my Ingenuity Skill, which in another word would be my main and most important skill. I already knew what I was going to do so I imputed the information into the system and had it generate the skill. My main skill would be Elemental Channeling which would make it so I could channel my elemental mana through my body to provide it with certain buffs at the cost of mana. I could also use my mana to enhance my skills as well improving their effectiveness as well as their damage.

After that I gave myself the affinities that I wanted to start out with, which were lightning and Ice. Lightning for the attack power and speed it could provide as well as a small amount of crowd control ability. Then the ice which when used correctly can reduce friction and increase speed, but the main ability being its control ability. Then I added Scythe Mastery to the list, which surprisingly was upgraded to intermediate mastery straight away with the skills I've honed from when I found out about the game. After getting Scythe Energy so I could do energy attacks from a distance with my scythe I started to get a few basic crafting skill that would help me in making my own leather armor. After making a few attack and movement skills with my points I came to the final stretch of using my points. Before adding any points to my stats I decided to use the Ingenuity Points that I can use. For me the most suitable descendant would be from dragons, as they have high physical ability as well as elemental affinities. I set it so that I would get bonuses based off of the affinities that I have at the moment and I wasn't disappointed in it. I would be getting a high amount of agility every level as well as a good amount of vitality and intelligence every level as well as a little bit to dexterity. Not only that but my affinity gain for my main elements would be much higher than before. Finally I spent the rest of my points towards my stat points.

Winter Jenson
Race: Descendant of Dragon-kind
Ingenuity: Elemental Channeling
Level: 1
Strength: 16
Agility: 24
Dexterity: 5
Vitality: 13
Intelligence: 17
Wisdom: 11
Skills: ^

'Close status screen'

"Finally it's over, that took way longer than I thought it would, since I didn't have those extra points accounted for what I was going to do in game. Thank the Gods stat allocation wasn't restricted. I guess I can go to my new world any time now. It's time to say goodbye to Reya then."

As I was saying this to myself Reya walked over with my new scythe. "Looks like I'm just in time," she said seeing I finished assigning my points. "This is your scythe, it doubles the power of elements put into it, and like requested it will grow in power with you. You excited to go down?"

"Excited? Of course I am! This is what I've dreamed of since I started reading web novels and light novels! I think I'm ready to go, I'll definitely keep in contact through the system messaging feature." As I said this slowly everything around me started to fade, and I found myself lying in a small, well hidden cave.