The reincarnation of Mitchel Cohen

There was a squeezing feeling, and suddenly, Mitchel Cohen was standing in an office. It was a spacious room, and absolutely filled with papers and binders and folders. A computer monitor was crammed between stacks of paperwork and almost buried in sticky notes, and a landline phone was covered by a half-dozen manila folders.

Sitting in an office chair, nursing a steaming cup of coffee, was a young, black-haired woman with vaguely Asian features, and tired, dark brown eyes. A white scrunchie held her hair - which would reach down to the bottom of her shoulder-blades - in a loose, messy ponytail, and a lanyard hanging from her neck identified her as...

Wait, why can't I read that? Mitchel wondered. I can't even make out the letters!

"I'm sure you have enough questions to keep us here until the heat of your universe, but I'm busy enough as it is, so we're just going to skip to the important parts." the woman said in her faux-professional tone. Mitchel tried to interrupt, but found he couldn't even make the motions to speak, nor gesture for her to stop. And he was oddly, disturbingly unworried about it. "Now, personally, I handle magic. For the rest of your new life stuff - though, I'll admit I have no idea how that'll work when you're still alive - you'll have to talk to my companions." She waved dismissively. "Don't worry, they're just as professional and skilled as I am."

Somehow, that's not a comfort, Mitchel thought.

"Now, let's get started," the woman continued, pulling a folder labeled 'Mitchel Cohen' out of thin air and paging through the papers within. "It says here you have a 15 in mana density, a 15 in mana generation, a 15 in mana throughput, a 15 in - wait, are these all 15s?" She glared at the paperwork, then at Mitchel, then back at the papers. "That's weird." She glared again at Mitchel. "You're weird. Usually there's some variation. Maybe it's because of the world you're from...?" A binder popped into existence, floating right in front of her face, and opened itself. "No, that can't be right, it says here that Earth is... completely void of magic? What sort of heresy against me is that? Whatever, it's definitely not an Earth thing, they've got an average of 0.2s, with a standard deviation of 0.1. And it varies normally across subjects." The binder snapped out of existence and a new folder appeared in its place, opening for the woman. Similar to her lanyard, Mitchel couldn't read the label on the folder. "See this one here? She's got a Mana generation of 0.35, and a Channeling of 0.15. That's how it normally is!" The folder disappeared with a popping sound, and the woman sighed. "Well, whatever. You've got a Magnitude of 15. Just keep that in mind, I guess." She gave Mitchel another accusatory look. "Weirdo. Anyway, you'll want to keep that number as high as you can get away with, since it'll affect all your spellcasting and such. Now, normally, this would all be different things, but basically, by default, it means that you can cast spells fifteen times as far, fifteen times as strongly for the same mana cost, dump in fifteen times as much mana into a spell, cast at 'touch range' at fifteen meters distant, can put fifteen mana into a spell each second, can cast spells with a cost of fifteen or less for free, so on and so forth. Basically, when it comes to magic, you're a flat fifteen times better... assuming, of course, that the specific spell doesn't scale better." She waved dismissively again. "But we'll get into that later."

"First up, we have Mana Generation." She glanced up at Mitchel and saw his lost look. "You know? Mana? The divine nectar? The essence of creation? The fundamental power? The juice that powers the abilities that make the bad guys fall down?" At Mitchel's continued askance expression, she sighed. "It's the good stuff. You need to have a way to recover it, and that's what this section is for. You'll get to pick one, so make sure you pick well! Now, let's see what your options - wait, what is this bullshit? Where's the normal stuff like Overnight Recovery or Ambient Energy Processing? Why are you so weird?"

It occurred to Mitchel that the only time this woman seemed at all engaged was when she was pissed off at his 'weirdness.'

"Ugh, whatever. Anyway, keep in mind, that you have the same number for basically everything - [Mana Generation], [Mana Throughput], so on and so forth, all of that's equal to your final Magnitude... assuming your Boons later on don't change that, but don't worry about that for now.

"Oh, by the way, this is just what you're going to be reborn with. Or... reawaken with?" She squinted at him again, then shook her head. "However it ends up turning out for you. You can increase it over time at a rate of..." A new sheet of paper appeared before her, and she squinted at it for a moment. "...um. Hm. Okay, yeah, I have no idea." The paper shredded itself into oblivion. "You're so weird that even prediction algorithms and divinations can't give us any information; I think you're just straight up immune to those with how weird you are. As a wild guess, I'd say you can probably double your current Magnitude within a decade, but I can't even begin to give you better details than that"

She paused, thinking for a moment. "For what it's worth, most people have a logarithmic growth, but I'm pretty sure your growth rate is at least linear, and probably exponential. Guess your weirdness pays off, huh?" she smirked, and with a flourish of her hand, sent three tall cards to float out of Mitchel's folder and float in front of him. "Take a look at your options and let me know if any strike your fancy. Keep in mind, you can only pick one, at least for right now."

Mitchel looked at the three options, his eyes widening more and more as he read the descriptions.