[SS] Chapter 4: The crown on my head is only cool cuz it glows.

Part of me, most of me, just wanted to get on with it but I swallowed my complaints. They were stupid, I was being impatient. I had to fight for every scrap I got. And these were important. I put my game face on and looked at the 6 options in front of me. I got to select two of these but they were much more simple than the Authorities.

[Immunity Type:

Your crown now exudes an aura of purity. When wearing your crown you are unable to be affected by any negative status effects, as well as curing any negative status effects. Pure of Mind and Pure of Body, proof of a Ruler.]

[Enhancement Type:

Your crown now exudes an aura of power. When wearing your crown your physical stats are increased by 15% and any minions within 2 miles of you gain a 25% increase to their physical stats. Only the strong can be called worthy of serving their King.]

[King Type:

Your crown now exudes an aura of respect. When wearing your crown, you will be seen as strong and wise. Creatures will be overall more convincible, willing to follow your lead, and follow through on their orders. A King that all will follow to their dying breath is a King indeed.]

[Protection Type:

Your crown now exudes an aura of indomitability. When wearing your crown, you gain an invisible magical barrier around you that can block weak attacks in comparison to your strength. No sword, arrow, or spear can touch the King.]

[Desire Type:

Your crown now exudes an aura of desire. When wearing your crown, you will be seen as the zenith of beauty. This will make it way easier for you to seduce any creature you want. Your minions are also much more attractive as well. To be King is to be Perfect in Body and Mind, to the lust and envy of all.]

[Learning type:

Your crown now exudes an aura of intelligence. When wearing your crown, you can learn skills about 10% faster than normal. Your minions also benefit as well, when your minions are within a 2 mile radius of you they can learn skills about 20% faster than normal. A wise Ruler has many smart and useful underlings.]

Well, right off the bat, Desire and King Type are straight out. Desire for the fairly obvious reasons of being damn near useless and King type because it’s just trying too hard. You aren’t a king because you have a fancy crown or the get up or make up or anything like that. You are a King because you are a King. Besides, I want people to respect me and be convinced by me, or at least, well, kinda. I at the very least don’t want people to respect me because of a piece of gear on my head. No thank you, pass.

The next out is the Learning Type. Sure, it’s super useful, but it’s too long term. It would turn 10 years of training into 12 years for my subjects and 11 years for me. That’s a significant boost but I need to survive those 10 years. It just isn’t going to be enough for me.

That leaves Immunity, Enhancement, and Protection.

I was about to turn away Protection immediately but then thought better of it. Sure, weak attacks were, well, weak. But wasn’t this basically tailor designed for fighting an army where you could be facing a million weak attacks at once? You’d never have to worry about death by a thousand cuts again.

Immunity was 100% being taken. If status effects exist, because of course they do and did even beforehand, then applying bleed, poison, confusion, paralysis and many, many more are probably basic standard fare when going up against a truly powerful creature. Which means I need that to not have a truly, truly bad time. It will never not be useful, especially if I get cursed or poisoned or something. I could just flip it on for a second to clear my system out and then turn it back off.

The Enhancement type was interesting. Not for me, necessarily, but nothing else had actually offered to empower my subjects beforehand. True form had only applied to me and learning was too long term. This, right here, could take a 10 and make it a 12.5. That could be the difference between life or death. Especially if I don’t go around telling everyone I can enhance all of my people to be 25% stronger. And making myself 15% stronger isn’t anything to sneeze at. I have the same opinion on it as I did with True form, being that no bonus would be enough if I’m truly getting my ass kicked, but a bonus is a bonus.

My decisions made, I selected Immunity and Enhancement.

Instantly, I could see and feel it as a Crown was made. I felt like I could direct the process, to modify the look of what it would be, but because of the Type I had selected, it had to be made from Diamonds and Magic Crystals. Those materials were innate to the very idea of being immune to the elements and an item wielding power. Made enough sense to me. With that in mind, I molded my Crown so that I had diamond running through and mixing with the crystal itself, streaks and fused material making up the crown, as I made a few spires stick out of it. There was really no reason or anything, I just wanted to make a cool looking Crown if I was going to be stuck wearing it for eternity.

It came out looking pretty well. It definitely was eye catching, that was for sure. I was actually pretty proud of it. I had made the fused material and streaks on a whim but it honestly didn’t look like anything a regular person could make, yet it still was very clearly made in a design. It gave it a, well, it give it a magical feeling. Like a creature beyond your understanding had made it, like a Fairy or some kind of Crystal Alien. It didn’t exactly give the feeling of anything Divine but that was okay. I liked it, and that was all that mattered.

As it finished, I felt it mix and fuse further, becoming a singular entity, not just with me, but also with my Authorities. It kept going and my mind and soul boggled from what was happening. Beforehand, the Crowned Monster System had become a part of me, but now, I was it, and it was me, and so were all the rest of me. The Authorities were as much me as my own hand was. The crown, even more so. It was right next to my soul in terms of “me-ness”. It felt so, so weird. I felt it rest on my head for a second and then vanish, disappearing inside of me. I wasn’t even remotely strong enough to pull that thing out. It was truly a monster of strength. I wasn’t a high enough tier being to wield it yet. But I would be.

Chaos clapped, shaking me out of my thoughts.

“Now that we’re done, let’s go visit my sister Order.”

As soon as she said that, she waved her hand and we were somewhere else and I immediately felt like I had the air punched from my lungs. That room, that domain or place, had really been messing with my head. Where on earth were all my weird ass thoughts even coming from on authorities and king and all of that? What? What on earth? I had never once thought about being a King before hand and, what, I just knew that reaching out near an Authority would provide me more information? And that something just didn’t fit because they weren’t me? What the hell?

I felt, really strangely, like a person who had just been knocked on their ass right after spending about 10 years sitting on a mountain top and listening to the scriptures of the buddha. I wasn’t exactly unhappy with all that weird spiritual stuff I had just been through but getting thrown out of it and back to normal was like being dipped in freezing cold water, except for my soul.

I shook my head like a wet dog and tried to focus and come back to being me.

When I looked forward and focused on my surroundings again, we were in a white void and I immediately hated it. Way too white in my opinion. But there was also another person standing in front of me.

“Greetings Godling.”

It was only a few hours at most since I had heard that, but I was shocked at how it felt like it had been days already. And how much more meaning that term now meant to me.

“I, as my sister no doubt mentioned, am Order, a True God.”

Chaos had been striking and Order was no less so. She was so much that it was hard to take in all at once. Where to even start? Well, she was wearing greaves or whatever you called iron metal legging that went up slightly past the knee. She was also wearing thigh highs, that went up her thighs. She had an extremely flowery, pink and see-through, I hesitate to say skirt, to her sides that were hovering and flowing as if she was flying in place. She was wearing what seemed like white panties but the see-through skirt slightly covered them, so they could have been pink. She was wearing what I could call a bundle of something as a shirt. It was pink and cloth but showed off most of her neck. The reason it was confusing was over that? Attached to that? Was what looked like part of a white cloth hanging over it that covered her chest to the point I couldn’t at all tell her breast size.

Now all of that, was the really simple stuff. Her giant massive pink and white wings, the glowing floating yellow and golden feathers constantly swirling around her peacefully, her pink hair, her double wreathed floating golden halo, and giant magical staff all combined to make her look like thee most magical girl that had ever magicked, that was doing a partial female knight cosplay over their magical girl costume. And they just happened to be part pink angel.

If all Gods and Goddesses were so flamboyant I was seriously worried about my future if I made it. I hadn’t even mentioned everything I was seeing but I was kinda being blinded by too much at once, especially in this white void, which I was only now noticing that it had hints of pink in it. Chaos was specifically looking at those hints of pink with light disapproval and I had no idea what that meant at all.

I ignored it.

“Hi. I’m uh, Mark.”

“Greetings Mark. Normally, I would be the one to instruct you if you chose the Human Hero System. We would spend the time carefully crafting and sculpting your body and selecting your class. As you have chosen the Crowned Monster System instead, I was not and will not be the one to guide you.”

I nodded along. Made sense so far.

“Even so, I have knowledge that may be very important to you as you traverse your new world. As such I will be informing you about things relating to Humans and The Human System. A more in depth explanation on the System in general will be by another Goddess after this.”

She summoned a desk with an actual shitty desk chair and I groaned. A lecture. I was in for a lecture.

I sat down and Order talked. And talked. When Chaos had informed me before hand, it had felt casual but important. This felt official and important and that difference was, sigh, night and day.

Some stuff stood out immediately. For starters, all species were their species but also humans, basically. Humans, referred to A. The species and B. anyone with the Human System. So, very very weirdly, an elf was an elf, but also a Human.

I personally hated that but, what were you gonna do? Fine. All races were humans, except monsters. Bah. Maybe it would at least cut down on some of that inevitable racism any world with multiple species and races would have.

Next was Astra and my ears perked up. Astra was very, very important. Order said as much and I hadn’t forgotten what Chaos had said either. All Humans produced 1 astra a day. And once they reached their limit, which every human had, they died. Astra was aging. A human couldn’t survive without at least 1 of it, and they didn’t even age if they stopped gaining it. The more you had, the older you got. But conversely, you were also stronger. Not in a stat way but it just made all of your stats more. So old monsters were 100% a thing, even more than I realized. And I didn’t just mean monsters when I said that.

Next most importantly, were the races themselves. There were, on average, 6 races most worlds had. Though variations and particulars existed, of course. That was apparently a different Goddess I’d see later. Human, elf, dwarf, beast-kin, infernal, and angelic. What shocked me most was that my planet was the weird one out. No magic, but plenty of advanced tech. Only 1 species. Very few futanari and boy, was that weird to learn. As a flat percent, 20% of humans and elves in most worlds were hermaphrodites. Little higher for Dwarves. 1/3rd for beast kin. Half female, no males, and half futa for Angelics (what the hell), and 85% for infernals, no females. What. The hell. The rest of the worlds in the universe were weird. I felt like I was in school. Hell, I was in school. The Gods and Goddesses really wanted me to succeed for some reason. To the point this challenge actually seemed necessary and not a rite of passage or anything.

I asked Order about it and she grew quiet.

“We’re lonely. For the longest time, it was the only the two of us, Chaos and Order. That was it. We made worlds, more beings than the human mind can conceive, but it wasn’t enough. We wanted equals. Beings like us. It was hard. Even with us working together, it was hard. The closest we finally managed to create were Godlings. Those with a spark and potential to become more. But it wasn’t consistent. They showed up at random and sometimes when they died, they’d lose what had made them Godlings in the first place. It took us eons and countless attempts before we finally managed to succeed. We rejoiced. We cried for a trillion years in triumph. But three wasn’t enough either. The God grew even more lonely than we were, quickly. After all, they had people around them for their entire existence that had at least been close. And now, there were only two.“

“We worked together, tried new ideas and over time, we finally found the Key to everything.”

“The Key to everything?”

She nodded.

“Strife and Peace.”

I blinked.

“Chaos and Order.”

“Exactly. To become a God or Goddess, one must be mired in both of us, as we are the forces that originated everything. After countless tinkering, The Challenge was made. It had the highest chance of success and even now, innovations are constantly being tried. We are now attempting to take your planet’s idea and bring Heros and Monsters to other worlds with their memories intact.”

I knew I must have looked like a gaping fish but I couldn’t help it.

“My planet’s?”

“Yes. Time is, non-consistent. There is a reason many of the worlds you find will seem similar to your media, specifically the kind you have personally seen. Your planet though, gave us the idea and we are trying it out. We hope this causes us to have a higher success rate. You will understand if you make it to Godhood. It’s lonely at the top.”

There was genuine sadness in her voice. This whole, situation, took on a new light. I knew they wanted me to succeed but I didn’t really realize that it was like this. I felt like, a child? No, that wasn’t quite right. A hopeful, for sure. They wanted, needed, people to join them. This was just the best current method. How many Gods and Goddesses are there then? Well, even if you had a million of them, that was probably less than a grain of sand compared to how many people were out there. The whole conversation left me melancholic. Even if I did become a God, I’d probably feel that pressure too one day. I might even find myself offering the best advice I could to who knows how many Godlings, hoping they will make it up here in a few thousand years.

I listened closely but honestly, it all just washed over me. I would remember it but my mind was elsewhere.

“It’s lonely at the top.”

I sighed. Well, I’d just have to do my best.