5. The First Transfer

"...and finally, your WCA smart device. This device is specially designed to always teleport into your palm, pocket, or bag when it's more than fifty meters away, is completely indestructible by the means of anyone who can't break out of this multiverse, and has a nifty little unique invention we picked up from one set of universes, the Somebody Else's Problem field. Basically, people can see the device, but unless you choose to do something that 'makes it their problem', they won't really remember or pay attention to the device or you using it. Which is good, because this is the only way you can keep in contact with the WCA and make purchases in world."

The armorer finally finishes going through handing over and explaining the usage of all of Cassandra's equipment. Most of it is related to survival; clothes, shelter, hygiene, food, water, medicine, all incredibly inexpensive. One self-inflating raft. A few guns, only useful in the weakest of worlds, unfortunately. There are technology weapons that certainly still mean something in high order worlds, but for now, they're well beyond Cassandra's budget. Everything is stored in a semi-magic, semi-technology ring; a 'classic' spatial storage ring with a five by five by five meter space inside, bound to and only usable by Cassandra. While the first world to set down in should be a peaceful, modern world, it would be tragic to land in a desert with no survival supplies, or an ocean with no raft.

Knowing that she's going to what the WCA classes as a 'Tier 1' world, there's a limit on how much she could spend on equipment. Because of the peculiarities of the WCA's transfer system and internal 'sportsmanship' rules, there's a limit on how much can be taken. Only items made by a special method can properly transfer. These items are relatively very few, so to prevent monopolization by the rich, the WCA awards an internal currency to be used for WCA equipment and 'perks'. Essentially, go to this world? X number of points. Go to this stronger world? XX number of points. Do a mission? Capture a waifu? Defeat a 'PVP' opponent? X, Y, Z number of points. If you want to be more powerful, you have to engage in the WCA system as much as possible.

So, with this in mind, she bought the aforementioned survival kit, but also spent the rest of her currency on a few 'perks'; a demi-plane apartment, significantly improved immune system and metabolic functions, and a couple of buffs to her mental, physical, and social aptitudes.

Satisfied with her purchases, Cassandra returns to her allotted apartment. She has a few hours to spend before her scheduled transfer, so she decides to lounge around in her apartment, trying to focus her mind and decide on her plan for this upcoming adventure. Despite the fact that she was only resurrected a scant eight hours ago, quite a lot has already happened. Of course, given the constructed body works perfectly and she didn't remember any suffering or trauma, it was more like simply waking up to a new, if somewhat odd, day for Cassandra.

Thinking about the destination world, she quickly starts to devise a 'plan of attack'. The world she picked was not what referred to as a 'media world'; it's a mostly generic variant of earth. The primary difference between this earth and hers, other than the geography and nations being a bit different, is the presence of magic. The caveat of this is that the mana of this world was dormant for longer than humanity has been around, only very recently coming active again, so magic sensitive people are rare and only 'basic' magics have been devised so far. It would be nice to have some more information, but that was all there was about this world. Further, it was hardly the only 'generic' template to be so brief in description. However, it was the only option within the so-called 'Tier 1' worlds that world give Cassandra a chance to start practicing the mana-attuned manipulative powers called magic throughout the multiverse.

And soon, a rough sketch comes together. As a free gift from the WCA, a universal translation chip, specially designed to attach to and fuse with the soul instead of the body, was given to Cassandra. No matter where she winds up, she would sound like a natural speaker in any language. So the first few goals were as simplistic as they get, but Cassandra is fully aware that without further, more specific information, this is the maximum meaningful extent she could go to without days or weeks of effort.

'0. Find humans if there are no humans nearby.

1. Get to a leading country if not already in a leading country.
2. Prove guaranteed aptitude in magic.
3. Do whatever is necessary to become the top in magic.'

Admittedly, starting a list with '0' might not be what everyone does, but Cassandra was a pretty big geek in her last life. No, if she's being honest with herself, she was a shut-in syndrome nerd, hopelessly crippled in any social aspects. Typing online was fine, but the closest she could get to speaking with someone was very occasionally speaking on the phone, if absolutely necessary. She wasn't sure why, though, but ever since becoming female she felt she had become outgoing, easily able to carry on conversations without the crippling social anxiety she used to have. Maybe it had something to do with the soul reconstruction? Whatever the cause, it was ultimately a positive, so she decided to just consider it a win and leave things there. After all, if she ever wants to go back to being a shut-in, nothing's stopping her. But why waste the opportunity to experience new things?

Finding various ways of wasting time, including an intimate exploration of her new female body, the time finally comes for her to return to the WCA hub. Putting on her shoes, and ensuring everything is in her storage ring, Cassandra leaves her apartment in the WCA Hub tower for the working floors. Within a short ten minutes, she finds herself already at her destination and is guided to the 'transfer room'.

The room is cast in a near omnipresent 'white future alloy' walls that happen to make up the walls of just about everything in this tower, other than personal quarters. The only things out of place in this otherwise featureless cube of white are the Technician, the control panel, and the transfer alchemy array itself.

Transfer arrays are quite difficult and expensive to build even for the planar hegemon, so despite the size of this WCA hub, there is only one transfer room. The bright side is that most transfers last decades at least in the destination world, so despite the 1:10 time scale of this pseudo-space to the universes, each agent rarely needs to use a transfer point more often than once every few years.

Once in the room, the technician introduces the process to Cassandra before looking at his panel for a little bit in silence while frowning. His frown slowly deepens for a few minutes, as he interacts with the panel, before finally asking her a question with an annoyed sigh.

"It seems your process has been rushed, and the worker who did so skipped a step, so now I have to ask: How would you like to transfer? There are four options.

"One: Drop-in, as is. Basically walk through a portal and show up in the world as is.

"Two: Become an extra. We'll manipulate the past of the world to create one more person than there should have been. This person will be you, so there is no morality question about stealing someone's life and body. The you in this world will grow up with a pseudo-soul, forged from a sliver of your soul, that no one in world can distinguish from a real soul. At the thirteenth birthday, which will happen to line up time-wise with exactly when you transfer, your soul will fuse with the sliver of your soul in the new body, and your real memories and personality will take over. Of course, since this is a body that's always had a part of your soul as its soul, you will have access to the memories up until then, as if they're your own, and the ability to easily and perfectly emulate the pseudo-soul's personality, so that you are not 'caught out' after the transfer.

"Since these options weren't explained, I'll err on the side of caution and assume you have not received the most important warning related to our business. The WCA has a VERY strict no minors in sexual situations policy. That goes by OUR definition of anyone younger than 18 cycles of 365 days each, or 18 local cycles, whichever is a LONGER period of time. This also bares you from engaging in such activities with any species that is technically old enough, but still physically immature. For any violations of this rule, no matter how minor, we will impose a very harsh penalty and yank you from the world. This applies even when you are a minor by these rules. As such, if you prefer to take over at eighteen cycles old, or minimum adult age if you're incarnating as a non-human race, we will do that. The extra five years is meant for 'building a better foundation', and not pursuing 'young love'." He has a clear look of disgust on his face while speaking of the last few sentences, like someone had shit in his coffee.

"Three: Substitute. You'll simply take over the body of someone in world that was always meant to exist. You will either take the body of someone whose soul has dissipated, or the person whose body you're taking will have their soul return to Samsara and be rewarded with great karmic merit for their reincarnation as compensation for you taking over their life. It's up to you if you want to avenge their grievances, but if you do so, you will be rewarded with some points for purchases by the WCA.

"Four: Possession. Oh, wait, looks like you can't afford this one, but I'll explain it for the future, anyways. This one is a combination of Drop-in and Substitute. At the same cost as taking a copy of a person in the waifu or husbando clone databases, you can instead directly put your soul into their body and drop-in to the world. Usually comes with a copy of their abilities, but is expensive and, if they have certain pre-existing problems, defects, or afflictions that affect their soul, you may damage your soul or change your personality. Most clones that have had such an effect before have a warning, along with statistics about the effect, but this doesn't mean that unmarked clones are automatically safe. They just aren't known to be unsafe for Possession, yet.

"So which will it be? Hurry up and choose, there are people waiting."

"Umm... Ummm... Ummm... Ah...." Cassandra panics as she tries to quickly make a decision. "I... I pick the extra option! The normal setting is fine, I understand the warning and won't violate it."

"Okay, understood," says the technician, much calmer than Cassandra and laughing in the back of his mind at her fluster. "Please stand in the middle of the alchemy array, on the only triangle near the middle."

Looking at the shallow channels carved into the ground with some sort of fluid flowing through them, Cassandra assumes this to be a formation. It looks 'magic-circle-y', so it's probably the alchemy array? Finding the large triangle in the center, she stands in the middle of it, the space wide enough that she's not even close to touching the channels of the triangle. With some final adjustments and a flip of a shielded switch on his panel, the technician activates the array and the fluid in the channels all suddenly begin to rapidly change colors, each more vibrant than the last, getting brighter and brighter, until a rainbow of colors drowned out everything else that could be seen in the room. Before Cassandra realizes, she's ****.