It was a good day for the city, Atlas decided as he bagged another pack of cigarettes for the man across the counter. Today the 'Hero Cop' Jim Gordon was promoted to Commissioner of Gotham police. The man was known for being incorruptible, bringing in fellow cops almost as often as he brought in gang members and drug traffickers. Perhaps with him at the helm, the gloom over the city would become less oppressive.

These were the thoughts of a seventeen year old orphan working part-time at a convenience store. If someone were to walk through the front door they would've described him as having light brown hair, green eyes, average height and average looks. The orphanage had kicked him out when he reached 16 and to fund the rent for his single room apartment and the bills for his food he needed to take up some work. Atlas wasn't a man with many friends -and zero close friends if he were to be honest- but his schedule rarely left time for him to socialize. He worked four hours every day at the dingy convenience store and the rest of his time he spent studying. He was hoping to get into a good college paid fully with scholarships.

*Ding* The sound of a phone notification broke him out of his thoughts for the future. It was from Gotham News , an app pre-installed on his phone. It read "BREAKING: 'Hero Cop' Jim Gordon turned Police Commissioner dies in tragic car crash." He sighed.

It seemed someone had judged that Gordon tipped the balance of Gotham too far in the wrong direction. No good deed truly went unpunished in this city. It was one of the first lessons you had to learn to survive in this city. Gordon was too stubborn to bow down to this rule and in the end, because his convictions were too rigid to bend, he snapped instead.

Atlas took a deep breath in, trying to stop his mind from wandering. It didn't do anyone any good to dwell on these things. At the end of the day, he was just another nameless orphan in Gotham. What could he do about it?

As he woke up in the morning, a bright blue screen glared at him, floating just in front of his face. What? he dumly thought. "Welcome 'Player', to the Game" were the words printed on the blue screen. He blinked and rubbed his eyes but the blue screen still greeted him when he opened his eyes. He moved his hand through it and found that it didn't affect the screen. Is this a hallucination? He thought with confusion. It was pretty alarming, he couldn't afford to visit a doctor or go to a hospital. If the blue screen didn't go away, he wouldn't be able to go to school. And just with that thought the blue screen went away. That only confused him more.

A new screen popped up "Would 'Player' like to receive a tutorial?" Was this thing reading his mind? He thought Yes and then the blue screen was replaced with another. So it was definitely reading his mind. With the early morning grogginess, he didn't truly understand the gravity of the situation.

He took a look at the next screen with equal parts confusion and curiosity.

"Stats: The 'Player' is made up of 8 stats.

Think of "Stats" to open the stats screen.

'Player' gains 5 stat points to spend when they level up."

"Here is a brief description of all the stats
END: How long you can endure physical activity or physical harm. Increase HP by 10 per stat point.

STR: Physical Strength.

VIT: Overall body health. Increase HP REGEN by .1 a minute per stat point.

DEX: Affects hand-eye coordination, limberness and ability to perform complicated physical maneuvers.

AGI: Physical speed.

INT: Speed of thoughts (computing power), memory recall.

MANA: Amount of mana 'Player' has. Increase MANA by 10 per stat point.

M RGN: Amount of MANA REGEN. Increase MANA REGEN by .1 a minute per stat point."

"Notes on stats: The human average for each stat is 20. The human peak is around 40 for most stats.

Unlike regular humans, stats for 'Player' do not atrophy.

Stat points can be increased by working on them, higher levels of stat points become exponentially harder to attain.

If base physical stats become too unbalanced it may have detrimental effects on the 'Players' body. A ratio under 2:1 is recommended.

Once stats reach 100, they increase at an exponential rate of .05% the previous stat level, e.i. a stat level of 500 is more akin to a linear stat level of 735 (at the beginning this is detrimental to stat growth, exponential stat growth breaks even with linear progression at a stat level of 353). "
"Skills: Think of "Skills" to open the skills screen.

A skill slot is opened up every 10 levels.

If 'Player' has a skill for something, the rate at which they learn the skill is greatly increased. Different skills have different tiers. Tier 1 skills require 0 skill prerequisites. Tier 2 skills require 1 skill prerequisite. Tier 3 skills require 2 skill prerequisites etc."

"Notes on skills: Most skills do not have level caps e.i. if "Fire Manipulation" skill is at a sufficient level 'Player' may wrestle control of fire away from a Fire God.

Some skills progress at a linear rate while others progress at an exponential rate.

'Player' is still able to learn a skill without having the Game skill but is not at the same rate having the skill would have and the skill is liable to atrophy (this can be offset by a high INT stat)."

"Perk Points: Every 50 levels, you get one Perk Point.

Perk Points can be used to buy different superpowers or abilities.

Different superpowers/abilities cost different amounts (being able to use the Speed Force costs 10 perk points).

Some superpowers/abilities can be built towards, e.i. Increased Regeneration costs two Perk Points but if you have Regeneration it costs 1 Perk Point."

"XP: Experience will be awarded upon completing quests and defeating enemies.

Quests are given when 'Player' is responding to a situation, the higher the level the 'Player' is, the increasingly difficult the quests will become."

After reading through the tirade of messages from the blue screens he was stunned. It was hard to believe the blue screens were hallucinations when they were so precise in their info. It wasn't until recently the world had become stranger than fiction. Just twenty years ago superpowers and aliens still firmly belonged in books. The only thing that surprised him was that he would ever become intimate with the crazy of the world.

He wanted to test whether this was actually real or not so he thought Stats. As promised, the screen appeared.

"Lv: 1 (0%)

HP: 170 (1.9/min)

MP: 100 (1.0 /min)

END: 17

STR: 15
VIT: 19
DEX:13

AGI: 18

INT: 31

MANA: 10
M RGN: 10"

Slowly, it was solidifying in his mind that this was real. He had access to a tool that allowed him to surpass most of his fellow humans. A tool that could set him apart from the crowd. Let him be remembered as something other than just another Gotham orphan. And if he didn't grab this new opportunity by his two hands and run with it then his name wasn't Atlas.

It was still hard to believe he somehow gained some sort of "superpower" and that was exacerbated by the fact that he couldn't determine any reason why he got it. But he wasn't going to worry too deeply about it. It wasn't uncommon that he daydreamed about having some sort of superpower, sometimes it was superspeed, sometimes it was super strength, sometimes he was flying, sometimes he wasn't. But in the end, this was practically a dream come true. He grew up with orphans joining gangs out of desperation, having nowhere else to turn to after getting kicked out of the orphanage. He had more than once heard of a friend or acquaintance being killed in some shootout, not even making it to 17. This to him felt like security. Assurance that his path could be different. Would be different.

He stopped reminiscing and turned back to his stats. To be honest his physical stats were fair. While he did walk around a lot to get to school and work, he was never the most active person. He certainly wasn't involved in any school sports. The only way those would ever be time well spent for him is if he could get a scholarship based on it, and competing against people who had parents to spend money to send them to little leagues wasn't the most judicious idea he had thought of. On the other hand, he was both surprised and impressed by his own INT stat. He was well above average, and while he could have already told you that based on his results in school, it was gratifying to see his own beliefs confirmed.

A new screen broke him out of his reverie.

"New Quest: Complete your school Day

Reward: 10 XP"

He checked the time on his phone and his eyes bugged out. He should've left ten minutes ago. He grabbed a few oatmeal bars and an orange, chucked them into his bag before making a run for it to school.

To his great disappointment, running to school did not net him an agility point. He spent the rest of the day ignoring his teachers and instead scrolled through the lists of skills and abilities that popped up when he took a look at their respective screens. It was particularly interesting to look at the higher tier skills. He found a skill called Space Manipulation that he found interesting, but it required so many prerequisite skills that he thought it probably wasn't logical to build towards it first. First, he needed Mana Control, then Earth, Air, Water and Lightning Manipulation, then he could get Matter Manipulation from those skills and then he could finally get Space Manipulation after having all of those skills. A tier 7 skill. After looking at the description he could think of some pretty interesting uses for the skill. He could bend space around him to divert bullets, create gravity wells and even wormholes to travel incredible distances. But still, illogical, and there were so many other interesting skills and abilities that 6 skills for just that one made it a stupid decision. The lower tier skills were still useful though weren't they though? At this point, he was going in circles.

There were so many interesting skills that he could build convincing arguments for any of them. Maybe he should devote more time to this later. He wasn't anywhere close to level 10 -he was in fact still a lowly level 1- and he should probably worry over getting to level 10 instead. He didn't even know how hard it was to level up and for all he knew getting to level 50 could take years.

He decided that he needed to figure out how to do two things first. How to manually upgrade his stats and how to get XP to gain levels.

For the first, intelligence he could probably start by actually paying attention to class instead of playing with the Skills and Perk Points screens. Agility he could probably get by starting to do some track and field. For strength, he could probably start doing some callisthenics like pushups and situps. Dexterity he could probably train by doing stretches and sports of some type. He wasn't too sure about endurance and vitality, but those would probably come along as he trained the other physical stats. Now to get the interesting stuff. Mana and mana regen. He currently couldn't figure out how to access it. He had tried "searching inside" himself to find if he felt any different, but he hadn't. No obvious signs that he could start throwing around fireballs. Maybe meditation was the key? He had read plenty of fantasy books in his youth where the mages and wizards had to meditate for hours to be able to begin training their magical powers. He would try it out later tonight.

That left how to get XP. He had gotten a quest this morning to complete his school days, but he doubted that would last long. The tutorial had mentioned that quests would become increasingly difficult as his level would increase. And maybe to a level 1 a school day might be difficult, but it became increasingly hard to make the same argument the higher level he got. He would probably get quests to do well on tests and other school projects for longer, maybe even completing shifts at work, but it wouldn't continue forever. And in a world where heroes and villains were the kings of news headlines, it wasn't surprising that his mind went to vigilantism. He could probably get quests to do vigilantism and at the same time he would also be "defeating enemies". Killing two birds with one stone.

It was 8:30 and Atlas had just made it home from work. The room that greeted him was the same one for the last year. A tiny room with creaky wooden floorboards and the white paint on his walls was chipped in too many places to count. In one corner of his room, there was a mattress laying down on the floor and in the other, there was a rickety old desk that he had found on the curb a few months ago.

What he'd usually do at this point would be to eat and then study for the next three hours. He wasn't joking when he said that his schedule rarely left time for socializing. But today was different. Before he had come across this power, the only way he knew how to make something out of himself was through severe studying. His initial plan was to study computer science, make some program or app to sell to people, get rich and get the fuck out of Gotham. But today would be the start of a new life. His real life.

Now with the power of the "Game", he could do so much more than that. Become so much more than that. And it'd be stupid to keep the same schedule as though it would give him the best results for his new future.

He might've talked big game earlier about vigilantism, but he wasn't about to dive headfirst into it. The majority of his physical stats were below average and he wanted to try and get as close as possible to a "peak human" as possible before that. He also wanted to try and see if he could do anything with his mana. If he could attack from a range that would give him a lot of extra safety. But first he was going to start with physical training.

Atlas wasn't known for half-assing things though, and he wasn't about to start. He had used his four during work to come up with a comprehensive exercise plan complete with stretches for before and after the workout.

It was forty-five minutes later and Atlas was lying down on the floor face down. Sweat was pouring down his face and drenching his clothes while his muscles felt like they were about to collapse on him. Even trying to move his hand in front of him felt like a monstrously difficult task. He had zealously overestimated his level of fitness. When he hit level 2 he was going to invest all of his five stat points into endurance. He knew that right now it was as easy as it was gonna get for gaining stat points, but having extra endurance would let him work out for longer meaning that he could gain physical stats more quickly, and right now he felt that was justified. He had only gained two stat points in the last forty-five minutes. One for endurance and one for strength. And while he was proud of himself, it also felt like a pitifully small amount.

Finally, he decided he spent enough time on the floor. He got up and grabbed a cup that was in one of the drawers of his desk and headed to the community kitchen to get some water. Tomorrow he'd buy a water bottle as was proper when working out but for today the cup would do.

Five minutes later he was back in his room. He was sitting cross legged on his mattress about to try meditating to see if it could help him find his magic.

Mediation was a definitively new experience. It always felt like he had something queued up to do. That if he wasn't moving, then he was falling backwards. And meditation was almost on the opposite end of that pole. He was just sitting there, trying to find peace. It was definitely hard at first, whenever felt like he had cleared his mind of all distractions and thoughts, it only took a moment or two before his mind was whispering thoughts to him. And it's not like his brain ever just announced that it was having thoughts again, it was like it slowly crept up on him and ten seconds later he would realize that he was thinking again.

It took him half an hour before he noticed the whispers of something deep inside of him. He followed them until he found something that almost felt like a ball of fire sitting directly in his sternum. Except describing it as fire would be wrong. It was some sort of esoteric energy, you could almost get the distinct sense that it was something more than what he was. There was energy, even the energy of life, and mana was one step above both. He had the distinct feeling that it was something more than reality, that if he could harness it properly, it could do more than just send ripples across reality, it could take reality in its hands and shape it into what it wanted to be.

When he tried to draw on his mana, it felt almost like he was trying to grab water. Like trying to move it in the way he wanted was akin to standing in the middle of a river, holding his hands out and trying to change the direction of the flow.

He tried for another half hour, but the results didn't really change. He felt as though it moved slightly when he tried, but that could've been a trick of his mind. This was enough for today though. Before he felt physically exhausted, but for some reason trying to coax his mana into doing what he wanted was mentally exhausting.

When he crawled into bed, despite his fatigue, he had a smile on his smile. While what he accomplished today might not have been much, it felt like he was beginning to walk down the proper road. As though before he was driving down the wrong lane and today he had finally switched to the right one.

AN:

I'm still unsure of what "build" Atlas will take. I have an idea in mind, but if there are some interesting suggestions I might divert to those instead.

If you guys notice any grammatical errors or mistakes lmk.
If you guys see any places where you think I can improve lmk (I've written a fic before but I felt like the characters lacked emotion and pacing was to slow, as an example)

Anyways, hope you guys enjoyed!