Chapter 1: Reincarnation, Transmigration, and the Retarded System
“Luke, you lazy ass, are you not done changing? If you take any longer, I’ll just let you go to the prom naked,” shouted Robert Greyson as he raised his head in the direction of the room upstairs from the driver’s seat. The door for the driver’s seat was wide open, and he shouted so loudly that the windows seemed to vibrate.
After a short while, a voice almost as loud as his shout rang out from the room upstairs. “What the heck?”
Filled with anger, Robert jumped out of the driver’s seat of his F150 and ran into the building.
Next, a series of “thuds” rang out as he ran up the stairs. Finally, there was a loud “bang” as he opened the door.
“Ah, Luke, what happened to you, brat?” Robert’s shout rang out once more, followed by the voice of a woman.
A minute later, Robert could be seen running out of the building with a young man on his back. Following him was a flustered middle-aged woman with a five-year-old boy in tow.
“Catherine, drive your car and come with Joseph. Be careful on the road and don’t rush.” Robert turned around and said a few hasty words before placing the young man on his back in the backseat. After helping the young man lie down, he rushed to the driver’s seat.
He started the car, and the Ford’s engine roared furiously as the car sped off toward the highway and rushed away.
…
One day later, Luke regained consciousness.
He stared blankly at the ceiling above him and only recalled what happened after a short while. The moment he recalled what happened, his heart surged with excitement.
However, he still quickly suppressed the excitement and calmed down. He scanned his surroundings and found that he was in a hospital ward.
Apart from him, Claire was also in the ward. She was currently sleeping soundly on a sofa not far away from him.
The moment he laid his eyes on Claire, he heaved a sigh of relief.
Since his younger sister was here, Robert must have been the one to send him to the hospital.
He continued listening to the sounds around him and found that the place was nearly empty as there were no sounds of human activity at all. From that, he judged that it was probably late at night now. The hospital was enveloped in silence.
Only then did Luke shut his eyes and shout inwardly, with all his emotions poured into it, “Come out, system.”
Next… he received no response.
What damned system was this?
Luke stopped himself from cursing and once again called out with all his emotions, “Come out, system my daddy!”
Next… still no response.
Luke: “…System my son?
“System my grandson?
“System, you having s*x somewhere?”
Fine, still no response.
Luke started cursing inwardly. “System, at the very least, you should show me an interface or something, right? Or a character page or something? What is the meaning of this? Why are you pretending to be dead?”
Right after he said those words in his mind, a string of data appeared in his mind.
This was completely different from the interface or character page that he had been expecting. The data had all appeared directly in his brain. He didn’t need to read some character page.
User: Luke (alias Luke Coulson)
Strength: 12 (physical strength)
Dexterity: 11 (agility, nimbleness)
Mental strength: 12 (mental fortitude)
Level: 0
Experience: 0
Credit: 0
And… nothing else.
Luke was driven mad with anger when he realized that there was nothing else. He felt like grabbing hold of the system to give it a beating. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where the system was located.
As for Luke’s origins, the story started 13 years ago.
On a random day 13 years ago, Luke suddenly woke up and found that he had turned into a Caucasian boy, a five-year-old brat named Luke Coulson.
He wasn’t lost or confused for long before he found out from the system that he hadn’t transmigrated, with his soul taking over a new body. Rather, he was Luke himself.
But for some reason, there was a certain requirement his brain had to meet before the system could be activated. Thus, the system had only activated automatically when he was five years old. On top of that, his memories from his past life returned to him as well.
He thus went on with his daily life in ignorance, and only after he was five years old did he realize that he hadn’t lived his previous life in this same world.
He had been a Chinese in his past life, and had lived an ordinary yet peaceful life until he was 30 years old. Every single day, he would go to his workplace, a certain company, without fail. He had been an administrative worker there, a job which paid enough to put food on his table. He lived by the same schedule and earned enough of a salary to pay his bills. His life had revolved around making a living and waiting for his eventual death. His was a completely ordinary life.
Then, on a certain night, he fell asleep watching some American TV show at home. The episode that had been playing at the time of his death had been about a certain case in a certain village in the United States.
When he saw the beautiful scenery and the vast land on TV, he thought to himself how wonderful it would be if he could live there.
And that was the last memory he had of that world.
It was clear that after he fell asleep that night, he arrived in the United States of this world for some unknown reason, and it was a world different from his past life. He had also transformed into a baby.
He still had the memories of Luke from before he turned five as well. The memories were the same as those of other normal children. What he should remember he still remembered, while the memories from when he was younger, such as during his infancy, had all been forgotten.
But he was well aware that this United States wasn’t the same United States from his previous life.
That was because his memory of his previous life stopped at the year 2018, but here, he had been born in 1985.
Even bigger proof that this was a different world was the fact that the current president of the United States was a woman of Latino descent, the 57-year-old Michelle Borg.
Although Luke never did pay much attention to the presidents of the United States in his past life, he still knew that in his previous life, there had never been a female president or a president of Latino descent, and certainly never a female president of Latino descent.
Thus, it was clear that he hadn’t transmigrated to over 20 years ago. Rather, he had arrived in a parallel world.
Luke had extremely complicated feelings about all of this.
He had once hoped that this was the same world from his previous life. If so, he would be able to once again see his parents and his siblings. However, he had no idea if his parents and siblings would accept that they now had a Caucasian son and brother.
But the harsh reality was that he could no longer return to them.
In his past life, however, he had been a jaded and unambitious youth. Thus, he soon forgot those complicated emotions, which were completely pointless.
Firstly, he couldn’t think of a way to return anyway. Secondly, his siblings would take care of his parents. He only hoped that his disappearance wouldn’t sadden them too much, although that was a bit too hopeful.
After living in this world for more than 10 years, Luke finally shed the longing for his previous world, and became an American born and bred here through and through.
Truthfully, he also had a lot of complaints about his living environment.
Why was it that when other people transmigrated, they would either end up the son of some financial group owner, or in a metropolis like New York, yet when he transmigrated, he wound up in some rural countryside out in the middle of nowhere?
Since his awakening at five, he had been living in the state of Texas, or to be precise, in Knox City, or to be even more precise, in a tiny town outside Knox City.
There were only about 2,000 residents in this tiny town, which was equivalent to the population of a village in China in his previous life.
Different to China in his previous life, this place was incredibly vast and widespread, and after leaving town, one could drive for a long time without seeing a single soul.
The only reason he had lived in such a rural area for 13 years, and had even survived until his graduation from senior high school, was because… he was a man with a system.
Since he was five, he knew he had a system.
But this system had never given him any sort of response. Like a stone, it stayed there and didn’t move, but for some reason, he was able to sense that this system did indeed exist.
But he couldn’t accurately pinpoint where.
He had never mentioned this to anyone else as that would only cause Robert and Catherine to think that he was mental.
In any case, the system had transmitted one thing to him, which was that it would only be fully activated once he became an adult.
Thus, Luke had no choice but to soldier on.
The system insisted on pretending like it was dead. What else could he do about it?
It wasn’t the first time he had tried calling the system various names such as dad, granddaddy, and so on. He would usually start calling the system other names such as grandson, grandkid, and so on after being ignored. Even so, the system had remained silent all these years.
When he read about main characters in novels, their systems possessed either intelligence or artificial intelligence, and had different personalities: they could be aloof, proud, cold, outwardly kind but inwardly evil, adorable, talkative, or even despicable. When the main characters had nothing to do, they could chat up their systems.
But this system he had obtained was no artificial intelligence. In fact, this was a retarded machine. Otherwise, there really was no other explanation for the lack of response from this system.
And just like that, Luke grew up uneventfully, studying until he finally reached the day of his senior high school graduation prom. That was also the day he turned 18 years old.
Just as he was suiting up in his room upstairs, preparing for the prom, the system suddenly sent him a message: The host has been detected as having reached adulthood. The system is formally activated, and synchronization will begin in 10 seconds.
“What the heck?” Luke was able to cry out.
After that, before he could think of anything else, intense pain assailed his brain. His eyes instantly darkened as his body’s self-defense mechanism kicked in from the intense pain, causing him to pass out.
The first thing Robert saw after he arrived upstairs was Luke lying unconscious on the ground.
Next, Robert sent him to the hospital, and after one day in a coma, Luke woke up.
Currently, only his sister, Claire, was here, and she was sound asleep. This was the right time for him to unveil his “prize.”
The so-called prize was the system.
All these years, he had felt like someone who found out that he had inherited immense wealth, but couldn’t touch it until many years later.
Yes, in a way, that was how he felt.
This system was akin to a legacy his previous life had left him.
During those 13 long years, Luke had been waiting for this one thing.
And after he woke up, he finally understood why the system would only activate once he became an adult.
That was because the system needed to synchronize with his soul to bind them both together. Prior to adulthood, his body, or to be precise, his brain wouldn’t be able to bear the shock from the synchronization – it could easily kill him.
Luke was rendered completely speechless as he cursed inwardly. “Can’t you tell me earlier if you’re going to synchronize with me? Like maybe give me a one-day notice?” The system had actually given him a simple countdown of 10 seconds before directly starting the synchronization.
And thus, not only was he hospitalized, his graduation prom was ruined as well.
Even worse was the fact that his current girlfriend, Jimena, had wanted to dance with him. After leaving her in the lurch, he wondered if that fierce kitten would scratch him to death.
Nevertheless, that was something for him to worry about later. For now, his focus was still on the system.
But the system’s stupidity surpassed even his expectations. After the formal activation, even after the synchronization, the system still pretended like it didn’t exist!
The data he had received from the system didn’t have so much as a character page, a panel, or a window – it was just pure data that could be seen, with no other tips or hints for him.
Luke couldn’t help but mumble in his heart, “System, you should have a name at the very least, right?”
Suddenly, the system gave a reaction.
Super Brave Detective System!
To be abbreviated as: Super Detective System!
And… nothing else.
Luke couldn’t even be bothered to be angry at the system anymore.
He calmed down and started studying the system.
Although he had been cursing the system for being so useless and for not even having a user interface and so on, there was still something useful about it.
Logically speaking, one could deduce that since the system had given him some numbers, it was plausible that those numbers could be increased.
From the three main attributes – strength, dexterity, and mental strength – Luke could judge that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the parameters the system used to measure a human.
And the system had also tacitly agreed that for an ordinary person, the average value for all three attributes was 10. As for Luke, he had a strength of 12, dexterity of 11, and mental strength of 12.
In other words, he was slightly above average. But that was probably because the majority of the people here worked as manual labor while the students here enjoyed exercising.
Luke himself had also joined the fad and would occasionally follow the bodybuilding addicts from his class to the gym.
Of course, for those people, bodybuilding was a passion. For him, he was only playing around. Thus, his strength was only 12, a number only slightly above average.
As for a dexterity of 11, that was likely because he hadn’t gone through any specialized training. Thus, he was only 1 point above an ordinary person.
As for a mental strength of 12, he had some inkling of what that meant. “Mental” would definitely be related to his brain, or to be precise, to the speed at which his brain operated.
None of the three main attributes was much higher than the other two, yet none was particularly weaker as well. He was left wondering if the system could help improve these attributes.
Next on the list was level, experience, and credit, all three at zero.
That indicated that he had a level, and he could obtain experience and credit points.
As for how many experience points would be required for him to level up, and what to do with the credit points, he could slowly figure that out in the future. At the very least, he now knew that the system wasn’t completely worthless.
After spending half a day researching it, Luke started experimenting with the system.
“Master System, can you give me a reaction? Answer me, how can I level up?
“Experience? Of course I know it’s through experience! How am I supposed to get experience?
“Mission? Where is the mission?
“Dang! You’re only showing me the mission after I asked for it?”
Luke’s repeated experiments finally garnered a response from the system, and he finally received additional information from it. Of course, there was still no user interface or anything similar.
Mission: Officially become a policeman
Time limit: One month
Rewards: 10 experience points, 10 credit points
When Luke received the mission, he felt incredibly touched, so much so that he almost teared up. “Thank you, system!”
Indeed, this system wasn’t useless!
Indeed, he could earn experience and credit points!
But after a short while, the excited Luke sank into thought.
He had read a lot of novels, many of them related to main characters with systems.
Putting specifics aside, systems generally could be separated into a few types.
The first type of system was the mysterious kind, where users would be supplied with magic skills, martial arts, immortal cultivation manuals, or even superpowers.
The second type of system was the technological kind, where users would be supplied with weapons, gadgets, genetic strengthening, interstellar battleships, and so on.
The third type was a real world system, which involved books that required the main characters to become superstars, scientists, criminals, heroes of justice, and so on.
The third type would occasionally be mixed up with the first and second types, but the main focus would still be on the real world.
What Luke wanted the most was the first type.
The rewards he stood to gain from the first type would always be the most enticing.
His second choice would be the second type, where he could obtain technological rewards. After all, when technology reached a high enough level, it might not be weaker than the rewards one could gain from the first type of system.
And the third type… was his last choice.
And if he had no choice but to take the third type, he didn’t mind getting a system which required him to be a superstar, a super author, a super screenwriter, or a super schemer. All these were acceptable choices.
Or to be a scientist, amassing wealth from his inventions. That would be a good option as well.
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