Today was the day. The day the Embryo reset. All of the students brought their SAVEs with them to class. Short for Simulated Audio Visual Environment, the acronym for the devices used to access the game was probably some developers idea of a joke.
Everyone except for Fiona had balaclava style SAVEs. Instead she had a motorcycle helmet style SAVE. In the beginning, the helmet style was popular since the balaclava style was expensive. As technology improved, the cost of the balaclava style went down and nowadays, nobody bothered with the heavier, clunkier, helmets. Unless they wanted to save money like Fiona did.
“Alright, we’ve been over the procedure. Make sure that you register your character with the academy after creating it. Then you’re free for the rest of the day.”
With nods of understanding, the students put on their SAVEs. Fiona buckled the strap and toggled the power button along her jaw. In mere moments she was no longer looking through the tinted visor but at sheer nothingness.
Then she was standing in the middle of a room. A tiny fitting room with a curtain and floor length mirror like the one Amy had in their room. Fiona studied her reflection in the mirror, awed by how realistic it looked. She reached out a hand. Even the glass felt real.
Options for changing her features appeared all around her. She couldn’t change her gender. She couldn’t change her size much either. But just about everything else was available for her to customize. Fiona settled for the same change she always made when creating characters and changed her hair and eye color to sky blue. She and Isaac always did this as a joke since their last name was ‘sky’lar.
Well. That looks more bizarre than I thought it would. Fiona confirmed the changes and moved on to the part of character creation she had most prepared for.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Every character in The World Beyond had seven attributes: stamina, resilience, endurance, strength, speed, recovery, and attunement. They also had a class which affected what types of equipment they could use and professions they could take.
Most strategists did the same thing. They took the explorer class which had the highest base move speed and only put points into speed and endurance. After all, all they would be doing was running from place to place giving orders or brainstorming and wouldn’t be doing things like gaining skills from leveling up.
Among heroes the most popular classes were pilot and bounty hunter, pilot because they got bonuses to flying spaceships, and bounty hunter because they were cool.
Fiona only cared about beating James. Judging from his personality, he would probably be playing one of the meta classes. The ones deemed to be the strongest by most players. In all likelihood, she should pick bounty hunter and then specialize assassin since they were one of the strongest duelists. But, she had a different build that she wanted to try for kicks.
Fiona selected explorer and put all her points in speed. Now all that was left was to select her name and empire bonus. All hero players selected the ruins bonus which increased item drop rates slightly. Out of the myriad bonuses available, Fiona settled on boosting the construction speed of buildings.
Now all she had left to do was choose a nickname and register her character with the academy. After assigning “Ra” as her nickname, she logged out of the game.
-|-
Judging from the number of people still in the room, Fiona had taken an average amount of time for her character creation. She went up to the front and gave the teachers her character details before heading back to her room and logging in again.
The fitting room returned. In here, I’m Ra. The thought still felt weird to Fiona but before she could consider it too deeply a loud knock caused her to poke her head through the curtain curiously.
A man in a maroon uniform bowed to her. “Are you ready to go ma’am?”