"Let's fix your current state." Emotions flooded out of her in a moment and she felt the soothing warmth of comfort and familial love replace it. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that her family was safe and that she was about to make them safer. Then even those emotions left her and the clarity of a dozen cups of coffee cleansed her mind. She knew she should hate The System but she couldn't muster the emotion for it right now.
"Emotions recalibrated. Time to review your options! Note that although your reward was to be a defensive one it has been identified that you believe that your ability to protect your family lies in your ability to kill whatever threatens them. Thus, offensive options have been included due to the unique way your psyche has defined 'defensive.'"
"This option is due to your experience with weaponry and your demonstrated proficiency in wielding edged and projectile weapons during times of peril to protect those around you. You have used your attacks to defend others as often as you have to slay an enemy, therefore:"
Name: Weapons Mastery
Type: Combat Skill
Level: 1
Description: This skill enhances your proficiency with edged and projectile weapons, allowing you to wield them with unparalleled accuracy and efficiency. Whether it's a razor-sharp blade or a deadly projectile, you can strike with precision and power, maximizing the effectiveness of each attack. Sometimes the best way to protect someone is to kill everything that's coming for them.
"Due to your unwavering determination to defend your family and your quick reflexes displayed in dire situations:"
Name: Guardian's Instinct
Type: Defensive Skill
Level: 1
Description: This skill heightens your reflexes and awareness in combat, enabling you to anticipate and react to threats with lightning-fast speed. Whether it's deflecting incoming attacks or evading danger, your instincts will guide you to protect yourself and those around you.
"Due to your remarkable resilience in the face of fear and your ability to maintain composure under extreme pressure:"
Name: Fearless Resolve
Type: Utility Skill
Level: 1
Description: This skill grants you the ability to suppress fear and maintain clarity of mind in the most dire situations. By channeling your inner strength, you can overcome paralyzing fear and focus on the task at hand, ensuring that nothing will deter you from achieving your goals.
"Due to your protective nature and your desire to keep your family from sustaining injury:"
Name: Vital Restoration
Type: Healing Skill
Level: 1
Description: This skill enhances your ability to provide basic medical aid and accelerate natural healing processes. Whether it's treating wounds, mending fractures, or alleviating pain, you can administer effective healing to yourself and others, ensuring swift recovery and continued combat readiness. Administration of first aid will cause the recipient to recover from up to severe damage at an accelerated rate.
"Due to your experiences facing venomous creatures and your understanding of the need for resilience against toxic threats:"
Name: Venomous Resilience
Type: Defensive Skill
Level: 1
Description: This skill provides you with enhanced resistance to toxins and poisons, allowing you to withstand their effects and maintain your combat effectiveness. Whether it's venomous bites or toxic fumes, your body's natural defenses will neutralize harmful substances, ensuring your continued survival in hazardous situations.
Tess reviewed the options, immediately discarding Venomous Resilience and Fearless Resolve. Weapons Mastery and Guardian's Instinct were both very interesting and two sides of the same coin. Vital Restoration seemed like the one she should pick. It had 'motherly instinct' written all over it. She tried to convince herself to take it, obligation fighting hard against what she really wanted.
"Hey System, or AI, or… what do I call you?"
"System is just fine!" the cheerful voice responded.
"The options that I don't pick, will there be other opportunities to choose them again in the future?"
"Except for in the instances of special boons or rewards like this one, you will not get to choose your skills. Your actions will be analyzed constantly and, when you have reached the thresholds for level advancement and skill obtainment, you will be assigned skills that are the most synergistic. In addition, the skills you have already chosen will gain in strength and scope the more you use them. In fact, the best way to level up skills will be to find creative uses for them or to use them often!"
"So this may be my only opportunity to choose a skill myself?"
"That is correct! Although I can tell by looking at you that you are a shining star and will create many more opportunities to"
Tess waved her hand in irritation and the voice stopped. "Then in that case, why was Vital Restoration given to me? I understand the others. They all are direct results of my fighting style, the situations I chose to put myself in, or the types of creatures I fought. Vital Restoration doesn't apply to anything I've done."
The voice paused for a few moments before responding. "Review of the data confirms that you are correct; that choice was not given to you for previous actions. Instead, it was based on our analysis of your culture. Mothers on your world make up the majority of caregivers, and the females of your species populate caregiving careers at a far greater rate than the males. Review of your media and entertainment also reflects your nurturing and selfless natures, indicating that the ones most likely to heal others, even at the sacrifice of other skills or levels, would best be served performing these functions."
"Did you offer this skill to Zavier? Will you offer it to Cass? What about that Mason guy?"
"I'm sorry, I cannot discuss the options and decisions made by other persons."
"Fine. Just a couple more questions then: will the options that I don't choose be assigned to me later if I don't choose them now? And how do I increase my odds of getting assigned the skills that I would want instead of ones that The System decided I should have because of my gender?"
"In answer to your first question," the voice said cheerfully, "all skills are available to all people! Needless to say, the odds of you getting a skill that is completely incongruous with your skills and actions is incredibly low, but that doesn't mean any skills are off the table. The fact that you were offered these skills means that you have been behaving in a way that made these the most compatible options. Your second question is a continuation of your first in that you increase your odds of getting the skills you want by doing the things that would attract those skills. Using your skills as examples, your frequent and successful uses of edged weapons and firearms have prompted you to get those two options as the highest suggestions. Fearless Resolve is next because you have demonstrated repeated resistance to fear. Venomous Resilience is the lowest option because it barely passed the threshold to be a synergistic skill and because the previous creatures you faced didn't have any attacks that posed as much of a danger as those."
"You skipped Vital Restoration." Tess's voice was cold with irritation.
"Yes," the voice seemed hesitant. "I can see now that the choice to include that was a mistake. It was predicated on generalizations with your species and not on you personally. Would you like me to remove it from all future possibilities?"
"You can do that?"
"I can!" the voice regained its exuberance.
Tess sat back again and thought. "No, don't do that. I like the skill and I think it's useful. I want to have the option to try to gain it if I deem it necessary. But I don't want it forced on me just because I'm a woman. Is that clear?"
"Crystal!" the voice said. "So, have you chosen then?"
Tess's mouth slid up in a feral grin and her eyes narrowed. "I have," she said before making her choice.