Prologue

Alara felt the shivering winds brush against her face, and she pushed hard as she continued climbing the mountain.

Taking in a deep breath, she maintained her ascent. She was exhausted; she had been climbing all day, and the weather had been atrocious.

Alara is an extreme sports enthusiast, and climbing is one of her major hobbies. The weather was critical during such climbs, yet the forecast was ridiculously wrong in these circumstances, making her climb even more dangerous by manifold.

It was then that an accident happened. Her death was quick and painless. One moment she ascended, the next her path completely gave way, collapsing, sending her sliding down the mountain like a rockslide. It was then that a relatively large rock violently hit her head, crushing her skull, and she died instantly.

As she regained her awareness, she found herself in a plain, white room that was spotless except for a desk with a man sitting behind it.

The desk had multiple monitors, and the man appeared middle-aged with classical European features.

“Welcome. Reincarnation is usually relatively simple, but you have done much good in your life and have impacted enough people to accumulate positive Karma to the point that you will have input in your next reincarnation. Any questions?” The man said quickly, pausing for a period before seeming to remember something as he continued, “Oh! I have taken the opportunity to suppress your useless emotions. Mortals are fragile beings; the concept of life after death makes them incoherent.”

Realising the reason behind her emotionless frame of mind, she tentatively said, “Reincarnation? What do you mean by Good Karma?”

The man seemed bored as he flicked a few things on his screens, and indicated her name, “Alara Woods. Self-made philanthropist, you have put your money to multiple good causes, not only this, but you have actively helped others throughout your life. Your life is imperfect, but you have done far more than most people, generating a surplus of Good Karma. Okay, that's out of the way; let's move on. You can either remain on your planet, or I will assign your soul to another in my regions of influence.”

With her emotions dulled, her curiosity got the better of her. Without any fear of the unknown, Alara was naturally curious about other worlds.

“Other worlds? Like what?” she asked.

The man scrolled through options as she asked, showing the options on one of his monitors: “There are worlds technologically beyond yours with advanced interplanetary space travel, ones with high essence saturation, thereby allowing many things your world believes to be pure fantasy to be brought to reality…”

Alara's eyes lit up at the thought, yet as she was thinking of the possibilities, the room suddenly turned red as an alarm went off.

‘What the?’ she thought.

The man seemed to panic at the sight as he hurriedly left the room without even speaking to her. The wall seemed to slide up and reveal a way out, closing as he went.

‘What now?’ she thought, looking at the white wall that replaced the exit the man left from.

Yet as she looked over at the monitors, curiosity overwhelmed her. Looking at the scenes, she was surprised she could understand the language despite it appearing alien to her eyes.

Feeling confident and bolder, she sat down in the man's vacant chair to examine the screens and delved into her current profile. It did not take long to figure out the mechanics, as the mysterious device was intuitive.

Her reincarnation status was displayed, and her race is currently listed as unselected.

Exploring the race options, she found she could become almost anything, though sections of it were restricted, reporting insufficient access. She figured each desk might have different restrictions, and those with more Good Karma would be assigned a different desk with fewer restrictions.

Looking at the race options, she found Human, under which were other Humanoid race options, including Beast-kin, Dwarves, a myriad of fantasy faces, some of which she had never seen before.

After some thought, Alara decided to choose an elven species. She thought adapting to one of the more non-humanoid races may take some time, and their communities seemed harsher. She fancied the longevity of the Elves, believing she could live a longer, eventful life.

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Alara found the High Elf race restricted. It seemed this was a more advanced option, yet the Wood Elf was not, and after looking over the talents and skills of that particular race, she felt it called out to her.

Wood Elves lived and thrived in nature, and were adventurous by nature; she felt it fit her well.

After selecting race, she explored the interface further, realising no further options were left in this section. There were some more advanced options, but these again were restricted; things such as appearance would be down to chance.

However, there was a section that indicated ageing expectation. The Elves have a higher maximum limit, but it seemed possible for some to live longer due to genetic factors, sliding to the maximum of 1500 years of prospective life. She moved on.

Finally, she seemed to get to the interesting part: as a display of abilities, traits, and affinities for skills.

Usually, she would be assigned abilities based on the Karmic accumulator, but with the man's absence, she had more leeway.

Each ability, talent, and trait costs points, and the limit of her points is shown at the centre of the screen.

Looking over her shoulder, she was surprised she still saw no one on sight as she found she could manually adjust her available points, though she found a limit.

“Restricted? It seems there's a maximum capacity of points allocated to this panel, yet it's still far higher than what I had originally...” Alara mumbled as she moved on hurriedly, consciously aware that someone could walk in at any moment.

Bringing up the list of options, she found a massive list. Feeling pressed for time, she selected things that appeared interesting.

Maxing out her points from their original ten to thirty, she selected the following.

13 points, Apex Druid

7 points, Vast Essence Core

7 points, Major Regeneration

3 points, Wood Shaping

Finalising her selections, she was satisfied with them. Most of them were self-explanatory, and Apex Druid functioned as an ability that maximised the potential of a well-regarded pathway in Elven society. Alara wanted a long, peaceful life, and Druids were often regarded well in fantasy books. The other magic-related abilities were self-explanatory; after all, it was the ability to use magic.

Regeneration guaranteed she could recover from practically any possible ailments, illnesses, or significant injuries. The ability even allows her to recover from losing a limb if she has a suitable amount of nutrition or essence, which she would have in abundance with a large essence core.

The next screen was for traits similar to abilities but non-magical. Alara found that the Wood Elves' natural traits appear, such as ‘Elven Beauty’ and ‘Keen Senses’, with further characteristics that make them naturally have high potential in physical attributes, especially agility. Alara found the traits had tiers she could enhance, so she decided to max out all available ones. Finding no further options, she decided to move on.

The next screen selected affinities and talents. Currently having five points available for this one, she maximised it to twenty and selected the following.

Ten points, Divine Nature Affinity

5 points, High Healing Affinity

2 points, Gifted Botanist

2 points, Gifted Alchemist

1 point, Skilled Cook

Each of the following boosted her respective talent with the magic type or skill. She would pick up things from any of the following far faster and be more efficient, stronger with the magics.

Having an idea in her mind, she would become the perfect Elf. Having talents in nature, healing magics, botany, and alchemy would allow her to be very useful in providing a very essential need for others as a healer, whether with magical or natural remedies.

That would secure her a comfortable means of helping people and providing a valuable skill that would be an everlasting source of income.

Satisfied with her current choices, she moved on further. Progressing to the next stage of her reincarnation, she observed the default world for Wood Elves.

Observing it, she found a fantasy world with numerous different civilisations. The planet was prosperous with vibrant life and wonders, many dungeons, fantastical creatures, beautiful mythical lands, but it became overwhelming.

There were billions upon billions of beings on the planet, tens of billions, seeming hundreds of times larger than the human population on Earth; the planet was ginormous. And as the world was summarised, she saw a multitude of dangers and threats that made her fear for her life in that world.

Yet, as she was beginning to doubt, the room started to show changes, and in a blind panic, she clicked the Enter button, completing her reincarnation.

She wanted to find out more, but she had no choice.

The final options described where she would spawn. There were multiple options, with Wood Elves having settlements in varied places. After going through them, she selected the most stable-looking one: a large settlement of Wood Elves at the bottom of the Tree of Life, a prized and valuable resource to the Elven Society.

Skipping through most of the information describing the area, and so forth, she confirmed. A few errors popped up asking if she was sure, yet as she dismissed them, the screen stopped blinking, and she found her body fading alongside her consciousness.

When she awoke, her mind was fuzzy. It took her a while to realise she had been reborn as a baby in a womb. It turned out she had to relive another childhood, maybe it was too much to hope she would be reborn as an adult.