But let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Just having a fancy tattoo on my stomach doesn't one hundred percent mean that it's a Falna. It's a reasonably safe assumption, though. I mean, the shape of it is fairly strange. A ring shape with the outlines of the continents from my old Earth on the ring part itself, small writing that provides the texture for the water between the continents and nothing but empty space in the center of the ring. Ordinarily, a Falna takes the shape of the emblem of the god that provided the blessing, along with some miscellaneous writing describing the stats themselves. For example, Loki's emblem is a caricature of a jester and Hestia's emblem is a hearth. They both allude to the nature of the god in question.

In contrast, the shape of the continents from Earth would suggest that this Falna was provided by some kind of planetary god analogue from my home world. But what would be the point of sending a highly unremarkable guy from one world to another, only known to him via work of fiction, without so much as a peep and stuff him in an underage female body?

I guess I could pull some contrived explanations for some of those questions, and for my peace of mind, I think I should do that. It would be a tad more productive than blowing my top from the unfairness of it all.

Question one, what could the symbology of the Falna on me mean?

Looking at the image itself, my only guess would be Gaia. Personification of Earth, a titan in greek mythology, mother nature, etc. It's also possible that the planet I'm currently on has the same shape as my Earth, but judging from the little I know of the geography of danmachi, I doubt it.

There is too little information available, so in the meantime, I'll just assume that it was my old home's Gaia that sent me here to accomplish some task. At least this way I have a singular target for my ire in the future. 'Fuck you Gaia!' is much easier to say when pissed off than 'Fuck you mysterious entity of unknown nature and unclear goals!' anyway.

About the empty central space part of the Falna, I can only think of it as a dig at me. 'There is an entire world around you for you to find meaning in life, and yet, you are empty inside.' Well, fuck you too Gaia! Hah, it didn't take long for that sentence to come in handy.

Question two, why me?

This remains in the category of 'who the fuck knows'. It is literally impossible that I was the best person for the job, whatever that might turn out to be. Maybe it was a balancing act between components of this transference event. If I use a generic point-buy character creation system from an RPG as an analogue, then it might make some sense.

If you put more points into the ability to specify who will be chosen for the transfer, then you will have fewer points to put into extra abilities or better starting circumstances.

Judging from the fact I started out very much peacefully, with some money and a self-defense weapon on me and close to possible shelters, it would stand to reason Gaia didn't cheap out on the starting circumstances options. I suppose I should be thankful for that. It would have been a shit way to begin my new life if she went with the ever popular slave or prisoner approach.

This may also explain my starting race, age, and gender. Being young is a detriment from many standpoints, but it can also be an advantage in the long run. Perhaps a Falna works better with the combination of a developing child's body. If we take the Sword Princess, Aiz Wallenstein, as an example of it, then the idea might have some merit. She was seven years old when she received a Falna and it only took her about a year to reach level two.

Of course, a big part of her quick rise in rank should be attributed to her single-minded obsession with getting stronger, but nonetheless, the theory is still plausible.

My new race of pallum is also a minus overall, not just because they are smaller and weaker than other races, but their current place in society.

Before the gods descended a thousand years ago, most pallums believed in a goddess called Fiona. However, after the gods started arriving to the lower world, it quickly became apparent that Fiona was never real to begin with. Due to that revelation, the fairly devout pallum race started declining. Here, this shows itself as a general lack of pallum adventurers, and even most of those with a Falna only become supporters, whose job is to carry stuff for the party and dig for magic stones inside monster corpses. Not the most glamorous role one could imagine.

Being female might have been a detriment if this world was closer to the actual middle ages, but with the presence of numerous goddesses and high level female adventurers, not even mentioning a whole country of amazons, where men are second class citizens, it's fairly even regarding gender equality.

In light of that, I have two possible reasons for Gaia to give me a female body. One, the fact that my gender has changed was enough of a detriment to provide more bonus points to spend elsewhere. Or two, since Gaia is portrayed as female, perhaps creating a female body was easier, or cheaper, or more powerful than the alternative.

The timing of my arrival can also be explained this way. I don't exactly know how many years it is currently before the main story, but I would guess three to five. I'm famously shitty at trying to guess ages, but Syr looked at most fifteen years old. That would mean T minus at least three years, since she was eighteen at the start of the story. Normally, three years would mean reaching Level 2 or 3. I very much hope to buck convention on that one.

So, in conclusion, Gaia probably skimped a lot on the 'being able to choose who gets selected' option and decided to have faith in the luck of the draw. I guess she came up snake eyes in the end. It must be fairly frustrating to set all this stuff up, and at the end of the day, only getting me for her troubles.

If these theories of mine have some relation to the truth, then I can expect to be the owner of a fairly powerful blessing. All that speculation I just did was also a way of putting off checking my Falna. But why do I delay checking it if it's so important? Exactly because it's so important. This one thing could make or break my hopes of rising above mediocrity in this new world. I'm not the type of shounen protagonist that can overcome any adversity by working really hard. I need every possible advantage if I want to amount to something, and the parameters of this Falna might be the single most important of them all. I think it's somewhat understandable to feel some trepidation over it.

Fuck this shit, let's get this over quickly. I need to cut down on being wishy-washy like this, or the dungeon will indubitably fuck my shit up, as they say.

My first try of activating the Falna did not pan out. Of course, I didn't expect it to do so, but simply touching it and concentrating on opening it didn't accomplish anything. I guess I'll have to produce some blood and try that way. If it doesn't open with that, then I'm in fairly deep shit. Since I can't update my Falna, I can't get stronger beside the ordinary mortal way of gaining strength. I'll cross that bridge when, and if, it comes to that.

The usual depictions of updating a Falna in the story all had the goddesses cut their finger and smear blood on the back of the adventurer in question, but since I'm not monumentally stupid, I will draw some blood from somewhere not jam-packed full of nerve endings.

I took my nice and sharp dagger and pricked the back of my forearm a bit, so that a small amount of blood trickled out and used that to try and open my Falna. In contrast to my first attempt, it did activate this time, allowing me to let out a huge sigh in relief. Dodged a bullet on that one.

Activating the Falna meant that now there was a glowing ball of light between my hands and in front of my stomach. Without any other recourse available, I put my hands inside the ball, hoping it will allow me to read the contents somehow. This was pretty much uncharted territory, since normally only gods could interact with a blessing this way.

Plunging my hands in resulted in getting a weird feeling in the back of my head, which slowly turned into a kind of awareness of the Falna. If I had to liken it to something, then I would say it's like connecting to an external device via USB. I guess I somehow have the software drivers to do that. Probably Gaia's doing again.

Digging deeper into the Falna made my body feel kind of strange. It was like small tendrils of the Falna were burrowed deep in all over my body and sometimes they bumped into my nervous system, which produced that strange feeling. This may have been some kind of feedback reaction due to the fact that I was manipulating my own Falna.

Finally, I was able to piece together the data for the conventional stat page from the light novel and manga. It was something like this.

Name: ? Lvl. 1

Strength: 0 I

Endurance: 0 I

Dexterity: 0 I

Agility: 0 I

Magic: 0 I

Skills: Invictus

That reminded me of a very important fact. I didn't even fucking introduce myself to Mama Mia or Syr. Shit.

Not that I would've been able to provide a name anyway, since my old name wasn't a unisex one, and even if it was, I wouldn't want to keep it for this life. I want to separate my new self from my old as much as I can.

I always agonized a fair long before naming my characters in MMOs, but this time a rather good one came to me pretty fast. Of course, that could also be because I don't need to discard all the names that were taken.

Lo and behold my new name: Avrora.

There aren't really any special reasons for me choosing that name, it's simply one I liked.

Now, back to my Status. It's a perfectly normal beginner Status, aside from the Skill of course. And what a doozy it is. If I understand correctly, this Invictus skill will be everything I dreamt of, and possibly more. There is only a short description for it, but it hints at so much.

Somewhat stunned, I lay down on the bedding I got from Syr and contemplated this latest revelation.

'I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. - Allows the use of the Developmental Ability and Magic named Absolute Territory.'

In essence, I got an ability that is a Skill, a Developmental Ability and Magic at the same time. No wonder Gaia had to min-max a bunch for me to get this.

So, what's so amazing about this ability for me to go all gaga over this? The first and most important part of it is ... drumroll ... telekinesis. Not that impressive? If your problem doesn't go away by a liberal application of telekinesis, then you are not using enough of it. The ability to project force freely within this 'Absolute Territory' makes this the single most versatile ability I could think of in the danmachi world.

Of course, it won't be able to do everything I can think of right off the bat, but since it's also a Developmental Ability and a Magic, its capabilities will scale with my Magic stat and its limits will loosen by raising its rank as a Developmental Ability.

In the next few minutes, a feeling suffused my body that I only experienced previously when I was finally finished with an exam period at the university, or when a schedule changed so I didn't have to interact with strangers. It was a feeling akin to contentment. Others might call it complacency, but fuck them. I want to enjoy any positive feelings as much as I can in this situation.

As I was laying there on the bedding, totally relaxed, I became aware of something that was very similar to the way I was interacting with the Falna. I half expected a windows notification sound to ring out, alerting me to the fact that a new device is now ready to use. At least that was how I felt when I recognized the presence of my new ability, Absolute Territory. I think I'll call it an ability since it's a Developmental Ability and Magic 'Spell' at the same time. It doesn't have a chant or activation phrase either, I can just directly manipulate it however I want.

The first thing I noticed about the ability itself is that I can freely expand or contract it centered on myself. Stretching it allows me to 'sense' things in a way, in a much larger volume, but in much less detail than I can when it's condensed to a smaller area. This sense currently resembles touch the most, but perhaps later it will be able to emulate other senses too.

With the Developmental Ability aspect's current rank of 'I' and a Magic stat of zero, it's a far cry from being Absolute, as it says on the cover, but I still have a range of about five meters if I stretch it to a limit. However, that only allows me a very rudimentary sense of where things are in relation to me. Still, that will certainly come in handy when I need to track where monsters are around me down in the Dungeon.

The second important part is the telekinesis aspect itself. It basically enables me to define a starting point and a vector of force. I can permanently deploy those force vectors for example to create a shield, or use them for only an instant to shoot something at high velocity. These uses are something I can determine just by feeling out my ability, but I can already think of a bunch of other ways to utilize something like this.

Nonetheless, I will have to make do with those two ways of applications until I get accustomed to using my ability more.

I was getting sleepier and sleepier by the minute, but there was no way I was going to bed before trying out my new ability. For that purpose, I chose a single coin of Valis to test it with. I fished out a five hundred Valis coin and put it in front of me while sitting cross-legged. Then, I made sure that my Territory covered it with room to spare. Covering the coin like that allowed me to construct a wireframe-like representation of it in my mind, which made it possible for me to accurately define the force vectors needed to raise it into the air.

After I triple-checked everything I allowed the prepared force vectors to manifest in the real world.

Nothing happened.

No need to panic, no need to panic. I simply defined the force vectors to exert a minimal amount of force, so this outcome was something I anticipated.

Thus, I spent the next few minutes slowly doubling the force applied to the coin. In the end, the coin started bouncing in place. At first, I didn't know what I've done wrong, but then I realized that the vectors were rooted in place in space, regardless of the position of the coin itself, so all they did was giving it a little kick upwards, then doing it again when it fell back due to gravity. So, bouncy coin.

This made me learn the importance of anchoring force vectors to the objects themselves.

The second test went better, only, the coin started levitating with a constant acceleration until it left the edge of my Territory, which caused it to plummet to the ground again.

This made me learn the importance of adjusting the force vectors, depending on the velocity and position of the object in question.

Wow, the variables that need tracking are piling up with an impressive speed. My Magic stat can't rise fast enough.

There is another observation I've made while experimenting like this. It's a hell of a lot of fun!

I've only snapped out of my experimentation when I noticed I started blankly staring in front of me more and more, and that the adventurer crowd downstairs let out a loud cheer for something. I realized after a minute, that I was getting closer to a Mind Down, similar to out of mana state. If a caster uses up their Mind entirely casting spells, then they will simply faint. It's basically working your brain to exhaustion. It was then I decided that enough is enough, I'll be able to continue experimenting with my ability after I had a good night sleep. Thus, I took off my coat, gloves, and boots, then hid under the blanket and hit the road to dreamland.