Max resigned himself to being unable to select another race besides human. He might’ve picked that anyway, or kryll. Looking through all of those options would’ve been a waste of time if he hadn’t learned a lot about what he might be facing. These games always had monsters, too, but other players might be these other…

Wait, he thought. Why can’t I change it? And does that mean everyone else in the game is also human? That can’t be, or why bother having thee species on the character creation screen?

This didn’t make any sense. And neither did the logout button being greyed out. Maybe something was screwed up with his account. Nothing like getting started with technical problems. Spending time configuring this character only to delete it and start over might not be smart, but he still hoped to get through this and then logout once past this process.

He moved to the next screen and got a message that his wisdom and morale had both dropped by 1. The last part made him smirk because he was indeed a little deflated by this race restriction. The wisdom dropped amused him because he had to agree that people weren’t wise. Neither was he, really, but knowing you were a little foolish was its own reward. No other stats changed and nothing had affected his body, so he didn’t feel any different. He still couldn’t walk anywhere. Or logout.

Now he saw options for changing his appearance, the character before him on the floating screen. He decided on a slight makeover to his real-life body, but that meant significant updates to his avatar here. He replicated his long, straight blond hair that grew to mid-back. He also kept his blond mustache and goatee, tall height, broad shoulders, slender waist, oval head, arched eyebrows, and straight, slightly large nose. But he improved his jawline, added muscles, tanned his skin a little more, and changed his brown eyes to blue. When he hit the save button, he noticed getting several inches taller as the ground moved slightly farther away from his vision. The rest of the changes he wouldn’t see without a mirror or unless he viewed himself in the character screen as he did now.

Satisfied, he clicked through to the next screen and found a list of classes, most familiar, some not: fighter, knight, paladin, hunter, rogue, bard, healer, druid, wizard, sorcerer, monk, Coiryn rider, winger rider, and warder. He didn’t know what the last three were, but they were listed as heroic classes. Each of them and paladin were inaccessible until higher levels. He also didn’t understand the difference between a wizard and sorcerer, so he checked out each.

Class: Wizard

Summary: The most common type of magic user, wizards are those who must study and practice spells that use some combination of words, gestures, or materials. Species, races, or individuals who lack the discipline and opportunity for education cannot usually become wizards, though it is technically possible. The same spell, if cast more than once by the same wizard, will yield predictable results within a pre-defined range of possibilities as decided by the spell’s inventor (almost always one of the gods). This includes mana cost, duration, range, time to cast, and more.

Class: Sorcerer

Summary: Sorcerers are magic-users who can perform magic by will, without training, discipline, or any predefined words, gestures, or materials. Rarer and more powerful, they are also more dangerous to others and themselves due to unpredictability. The same magic effect done twice by the same sorcerer might yield wildly different results in every way, including mana cost, duration, range, time to cast, and more. With higher levels comes greater control.

Being a sorcerer might’ve been okay if Max was fine with just winging it, but doing strategy went out the window when you couldn’t count on the results at all. What if he tried to do magic, expecting it to affect everyone before him, and hardly anything happened? Or it affected allies? At higher levels, such things could be mitigated, but it sounded too risky at first. He’d also have to watch out when facing a sorcerer. He wouldn’t be able to predict what they were about to do.

He looked over some of the warrior classes and learned that Coiryn Riders were named after the god of courage and were horsemen who were like a cross between cowboys, the Pony Express, or maybe lightweight knights. Any settlement with open plains nearby usually had them for defense, scouting, and heraldry. The Winged Riders were kind of the same thing but riding giant birds of prey.

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And a Warder was an individual who took care of a problem, like a wizard or dangerous beast, that no one else could handle, usually alone and with no expectation of a reward. But in most sovereign powers, they could commandeer whatever they wanted as part of that. They were usually given free room and board or whatever else they wanted. They could be any class. The description reminded Max of superheroes without the superpowers.

The idea appealed to him as something to aspire to, but he’d known from the start what he wanted to be – a bard. They had strong melee, ranged, and magical attacks. And they were musicians. He wondered how much his real-world skill at playing guitar would impact what he could do. He wasn’t a great singer but could hold a tune. And with bards being an all-around class, it might be just what he needed playing alone.

The thought made him frown. These games often had people playing in teams, but Max always played by himself. It put him at a disadvantage and was one of the reasons he quit online RPGs. Maybe he could team up with someone in here, but he doubted he would.

He resumed looking over the bard class, which came with proficiencies in light armor, simple weapons, hand crossbows, longswords, rapiers, and short swords, and he could choose three more now. He would receive a bonus to Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma with each level, and to Agility every other level. The first would help him with archery, playing instruments, and thieving skills like picking locks or disarming traps. Charisma and Intelligence would help him resist mental affects like a charm or illusion spell. The Agility would help him in combat, and while pure fighting classes gained Agility with every level, they didn’t get some of his other bonuses. He could choose three instruments to be proficient in but would hold off until finding some, so as not to waste it on an instrument he didn’t have. He selected the bard class and received another prompt.

Choose your name.

He’d never been one for just using his first name, but he wasn’t adding his last. He also didn’t want to be one of those dorks with something really stupid that they thought was funny but wasn’t…unless you were 12. Having numbers after his name sucked, too. It took a minute to think of something related to music and his class, finally deciding on Maestro Max. The words just appeared by themselves in the textbox, followed by a Save prompt, which he mentally pressed. The display glowed briefly, and a notification appeared.

Congratulations! And welcome again to Llurien Online. Let the adventure begin!

The screen faded away, leaving him standing alone in the wilderness. He took a step just to ensure he could, and it worked.

“Great. One problem solved. Now for another if I can log out.”

But when that thought caused the button to reappear at the corner of his vision, it hadn’t changed. He mentally pushed it several times with no result. He swung his fist at it, not expecting to connect, and while his hand missed, the button depressed again with no resulting logout. Or anything else. Was it broken? That was a heck of a bug. How many other players were stuck in the game? Someone had to figure it out, unless it happened to everyone and no one could communicate with the outside world. That would be interesting.

“Am I really stuck in this game?” he asked aloud, but there was no response. He wasn’t sure if he should expect one, now that the screen was gone. Something akin to claustrophobia lurked at the edge of his mind, this feeling of being trapped, so he tried to keep calm.

What he’d seen so far had piqued his curiosity so that part of him wanted to just keep playing anyway, but he couldn’t help wondering what was going to happen to his physical body. First he’d likely pee himself, so he had that to look forward to. After three days, he’d die of dehydration long before he’d wither away from no food. Surely his parents would find him by then? Maybe he shouldn’t worry about it, but then he noticed something else to worry about. A new element had appeared under the logout button. It read:

Life Counter: 6 Days, 23 Hours, 47 Minutes.

“Life Counter?” he asked aloud. “What does that mean?” But the game didn’t answer. He tried asking several different ways, trying to get the prompt correct, kind of like when he had to say “Alexa” before his Amazon device would do anything. But the game never responded.

As he watched, the minutes dropped by one. What happened when it hit zero? Was his character dead? Did he only get a week to play? Did the counter stop if he did log out? Maybe this another thing not working correctly, but he’d die in the real world before then unless someone hooked him up to an IV or something. And to think he might be getting a sponge bath even now and not realize it. He laughed and shook his head. Something wasn’t right but he couldn’t do anything about it. He might as well choose his proficiencies and spells in the meantime.