The Leveling of Humanity - Prologue

On an unexpected Tuesday, hundreds of spaceships entered orbit around the Earth in the blink of an eye. There was no preamble nor any warning of their arrival. They were just there, and all radiowaves, television broadcasts, and any device with a monitor capable of streaming and projection came to life with one consistent message.

"01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100000 01001000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001 00101100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100111 01100001 01101100 01100001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01100011 00100000 01110111 01100101 01101100 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01101001 01110100 01110100 01100101 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001000 01110101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100101 01101100 01101001 01100111 01101001 01100010 01101100 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110110 01100101 01101100 00100000 01110101 01110000 00101110 00100000 01000111 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100001"

Naturally, most people don't know binary, but a quick translation software input revealed what no one could have anticipated.

"Hello, Humanity. This is the galactic welcoming committee. Humanity is eligible to level up. Good luck!" Immediately following this message was a soft humming sound, and the lightest blue of a bubble shield surrounded Earth. Dozens of alien ships positioned themselves over remote regions of land and sea. First, these alien ships attached themselves to the shield, then a beam of light projected down to the space below them. Inexplicably animals would not touch these light beams above or below the sea. Every human worldwide experienced the same thing simultaneously as their stats projected in front of them. An outline of their physique, status, physical, mental, and magical stats was displayed in a floating window. A scrambling binary would slowly change into a common localized language within minutes and manifest into an easily understood overlay. A large arrow would close the display, and a mental nudge towards it would suffice to close the display window. The world went silent in shock and anticipation of what would happen next.

News broadcasts began streaming, covering this worldwide event and speculating what would happen next. Communications were then sent to the alien ships, in many forms and fashions, but without any response. Children aged ten and older all inherited this phenomenon; however, anyone under ten was unaffected. The age of ten was the threshold age to begin leveling up. Those physically fit found higher base physical stats. Those that focused on academics had higher mental stats. Singers and songwriters found that they had higher base magic stats. Stay-at-home parents to politicians all found themselves to be under these same effects. For seven days, no one could determine what to do. No one could physically approach the beams of light from the alien ships. No one could communicate with the alien ships. No one could find a way to increase their base stats or find more information regarding the status screen.

After seven days had passed, the first change happened. Most of the lights from the alien craft shut off, and the remaining ones started unleashing orbs of light. Many different colored lights poured outnumbering in the thousands and spread out over large distances from those beams. The multi-colored light orbs were quickly crushed, swatted, or otherwise broken. Once humans had destroyed ten of these, they would hear a crisp dinging sound, and a level-up pop-up would occur. There was no added benefit from breaking more, as the now apparent experience bar would not increase when more orbs got destroyed. The pop-up itself was not intrusive; it would open if anyone focused their thoughts on it.

"Congratulations, Humanity. You have leveled up to level 2."

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I hope you're enjoying my story The Leveling of Humanity, if you are please continue reading in the next chapter: https://vocal.media/fiction/the-leveling-of-humanity-ch-1