I came back to consciousness to the sound of clanging steel. Athella and Princess Vivi were sparring, Athella gently mocking while she parried the princess’s spirited but wild blows. Have I described Athella? Imagine a 6-foot-tall woman with bronze skin and a no-nonsense bob sporting the cleanest armor you’ve ever seen. Add in an attitude with all the softness of a mountain peak and the whimsy of a dead rat. She was serious, stern, and deadly, most times looking more deadly than the weapons she carried. The only time she was different was when she was sparring with Vivi, whom she teased and was gentle with in a way that clashed with, well, everything else about her.

  Anyway, I was awake. Apparently, I hadn’t spat sparks or begun to glow or anything when Senecus’s head was thrown inside of me and forcibly processed. I was sort of dizzy and nauseous, in a trash can sort of way, like someone had rolled me down a hill. What the heck had happened to me? I asked the only thing I could, much to my annoyance: the voice in my head.

  ‘Alright, voice. Don’t worry, I know I don’t meet the requirements of sentient life or brainwaves or whatever, but tell me my level and stats.’ I was sure that the head of a mage had to be worth at least one level.

  OF COURSE. DURING SHUTDOWN, YOU LEVELED A TOTAL OF NINE TIMES. CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW A LEVEL 11 UNADORNED TRASHCAN WITH MODERATE ENCHANTMENT. YOUR NEW STATS ARE AS FOLLOWS:

  I could hardly believe my—well, not ears, but you know. I had leveled nine times?! That would have probably taken 40 years if I did things the ‘natural’ trashcan way! And did I detect a hint of friendliness in the voice’s tone? Had I finally hit the minimum requirements for intelligent dialogue?

  STRENGTH- 10

  DEXTERITY- 5

  CHARISMA- 5

  INTELLIGENCE- 10

  MAGIC OFFENSE- 12

  MAGIC DEFENSE- 20

  HIT POINTS- 50

  MANA- 100

  I was floored! My stats had been in the single digits just yesterday, and now I was rocking double digits in almost everything! Charisma and dexterity were not great, but all things considered, I figured I was rather agile and attractive as far as trashcans go, so I couldn’t complain. Plus, what was that magic defense and mana score! I mean, I had nothing to really contextualize what they meant in real-life terms, but it looked good. The voice in my head kept going:

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  SKILLS UNLOCKED: BASIC SPELLCASTING 1 APPRAISAL 2 LESSER POLYMORPH 1 ALCHEMICAL RECYCLING 1 EFFICIENCY 3

  IN ADDITION, THE FOLLOWING UPGRADES HAVE BEEN INTEGRATED: MANA ENGINE MANA EATER (DEVOUR SUBSYSTEM)

  DO YOU REQUIRE MORE CONTEXT FOR ANYTHING?

  This was feeling more and more like a dream. The voice asked me if I needed something? Was I finally a real trashcan boy?

  ‘Yeah, actually, a few. First, what should I call you? And second, what do Mana Engine and Mana Eater do? And third, polymorph? Can I, like, turn people into frogs now or something? Is level 11, like, super high level? Like, am I now so overpowered that I will never have to worry about losing or anything ever again? You know, like now I’m like that necromancer dude from that one thing—well, you might not know, they probably don’t have it here—but anyway, he, like, always wins and never loses and is really hot. Am I really hot? Am… am I ‘him’?’ The shock of gaining so many levels so quickly was going to my head. When you’ve been a loser in two lives, even the small wins feel pretty dang big.

  I AM THE VIRTUAL OVERSIGHT AND INTEGRATED DATABASE, BUT YOU MAY CALL ME VOID. MY PURPOSE IS TO OVERSEE REINCARNATED BEINGS SUCH AS YOURSELF AND GUIDE YOU AS BEST AS I CAN. YOU ARE NOT ‘OVERPOWERED’. YOU ARE NOT ‘HOT’. YOU ARE IN NO WAY ‘HIM’. IN A CONTEST OF STATS, THERE ARE FARMERS WHO WOULD MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A CHILD. THERE ARE EVEN GIFTED CHILDREN WHO WOULD MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE A SLUG, OR MAYBE A WORM. THIS IS NOT AN OPINION; THIS IS FACT.

  Well, easy come, easy go. Just as quickly as my ego had inflated, it popped. I tried not to sulk too much as Void described the rest of my abilities.

  In a nutshell, Mana Engine meant that my capacity for mana had been greatly increased. Mana Eater meant I could now absorb mana from enchanted items and creatures inside of me and store it for later. Alchemical Recycling could be used to recreate items that I had consumed, but it required stored experience to do so. Efficiency 3 meant that I now absorbed around 35% of experience from items, up from my base of 5%.

  The one I was most interested in, though, was basic polymorph. The way Void explained it, since it was a lesser version, I could only cast it on myself, and only make very rudimentary forms at that. I couldn’t turn myself into a nine-tailed fox or a gorilla or dragon yet, but I could manifest some basic limbs, or at least something that would function as limbs.

  Void also told me one more useful bit of information: when Senecus's head was thrown inside me, my capacity was only just above zero, so I couldn’t handle the raw amount of experience and mana. Instead, I had utilized what I could and sent the rest to a storage space inside me. Once he confirmed that the head would remain fresh and I didn’t have a decaying human skull inside me, I realized that it meant that eventually I would be able to take even more experience from it and possibly level more.

  I said a silent thanks to Senecus as Athella and Vivi sparred in the throne room and I pondered my new abilities. It was time to start taking fate into my own rudimentary, magically grown hands.