When I came to, I came to realize that I no longer had a visible body and that my consciousness was hovering high in the sky. Looking down, I saw the outlines of unfamiliar coastlines.
What a disgraceful display I had put on during the preceding intervals, blubbering and begging. I am maddened just thinking about the humiliation and embarrassment. Most of all though, never again do I want to experience such excessive amounts of pain. I shudder at the thought. I’d do almost anything to prevent having to suffer through unendurable pain once again. Even Caesar had said that it was harder to find one man willing to endure pain than one hundred men willing to die for a cause. But my negativity would be cut short because suddenly, a window popped up and I heard an accompanying voice:
Welcome to Hwantasy!
“The System will now aide you in the incorporation process.”
The voice then continued, “Please select the relevant options to complete the setup.”
A menu then popped up in front of me, which I found to be adjustable apart from some settings which had already been set to a default:
Name:
Class: Dark Lord (Epic, F)
Age: 28
Height:196cm ± Race option
Gender: Male
Mentality: Thunderstruck
Disposition: Neutral, Neutral
Race:
Skills:
Titles: Dungeon Manager (Common, F-), Immortal Beloved (Supreme, SSS+++, Exclusive)
First off, I decided to find out more about the presets:
Dark Lord (Epic, F)
The undisputed and sovereign monarch over all denizens of Darkness and Chaos. Demons, Monsters, Brutes, Beasts, as well as certain humanoid races are all but mere subjects to your throne. Or rather, the above would be the case, except that there are quite a few dark lords already in existence. Regardless, Dark Lords have the potential to grow into some of the most powerful beings, are able to engage telepathically with any darkspawn or chaos spawn, and are unable to be hurt by their natural subordinates. Dark Lords do not expire naturally, having no need for food drink or sleep, and are thus immortal to old age.
Current Status: Newly Crowned Upstart
Man, Dark Lords sure seem OP from the information I can see here, but then what about the likes of Porcus Minorus? How were weak pushovers like him ever conceived? I was getting a little antsy about the possibility of turning out to be a weakling.
In any case I read on:
Dungeon Manager (Common, F-)
The caretaker of a dungeon. Simply being a Dungeon Manager accords full control over the domain of the dungeon. The size and number of rooms and floors, available types and number of loot, traps, furnishings, functions and monsters all depend on the Rank and Grade of the title as well as the title itself. A Dungeon Manager is connected spiritually to their dungeon.
Current Status: Weakest of Pipsqueaks
Weakest of Pipsqueaks? Seriously?
If the System wants to start a fight... there’s not much I can do.
Except the Rank and Grade of the title was a big disappointment.
From what I was taught, there were Ranking Tiers for titles, skills, classes, items and the like, as well as Gradations for the tiers.
The tiers were as follows from best to worst:
The God Tier: Supreme, Ultimate, Absolute
The Heroic Tier: Legendary, Mythical, Epic
The Realm Tier: Superb, Elite, Limited
The Community Tier: Rare, Uncommon, Common
The gradations were as follows from lowest to highest:
F- < F < F+ <<
E- < E < E+ <<
D- < D < D+<<
C- < C < C+ <<
B- < B < B+ <<
A- < A < A+ <<<
S < S+ <<< SS < SS+ <<< SSS << SSS+ << SSS++ << SSS+++,
and so forth.
Immortal Beloved (Supreme, SSS+++, Exclusive)
The One who has received the eternal profession of love from the Goddess.
Upon death, physical death, True Death, or any kind of death, the Beloved will be auto-resurrected within the Garden of the Goddess.
An earnest prayer to the goddess may be heard. In actuality, the prayer will most likely be heard since the Beloved is being constantly monitored by the Goddess or her adjutants, but an earnest prayer may actually be answered.
Current Status: One True Love of the Goddess
So, she was indeed a goddess. It’s a pity I forgot to ask the goddess for her name. The System clearly shows that she loves me. While it doesn't feel real, I'm also one who takes giant leaps of faith in my thinking. I can already imagine several scenarios why this might be the case... if it is indeed genuine.
Ah, I must also mention about qualifiers to Ranking Tiers and Grades.
There are certain special cases where there is an extra attribute coalesced to a tier and grade. Apparently, the ‘Exclusive’ qualifier on my Immortal Beloved title indicated that I was the sole proprietor of this designation.
The Thunderstruck status in my Mentality field meant that I was dazed and confused, as well as retaining a hidden pain and hurt within my heart.
The Neutral statuses indicated that I was in the middle of the spectrum on both the scales of Good vs. Evil and Order vs. Chaos
With that done, I decided to now complete the currently blank fields.
Hmm, name, there is actually a style to adhere to for dark lords.
Either simply a common name, or a common name with a matching qualified name. In either case this is followed with a label unique to the dark lord.
After thinking over what to name myself for a while, I came up with:
Deprofundis Reprobate ‘Once Loved’.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Satisfied, I moved on to the next item.
Hmm, I’ll leave Race for last, let’s decide on Skills right now.
I came to understand that I would be allowed to choose one skill. The tier and grade as well as the particular skill itself would be chosen randomly once I selected a category. I was sincerely heartened at this because the skills list was literally thousands of pages long. Of course, I didn’t want to leave something as important as this to simple chance so I took a gamble and offered up a prayer.
“My Goddess, one who is alive and who loves me, I beseech you, please heed my prayer. I ask for your guidance in the selection of a skill. A skill that could examine, identify, and appraise people and objects alike. I ask to be granted such a skill, if it favors you to do so.”
A few moments after I finished the prayer, a notification popped up:
The Goddess has chosen a skill for you. Will you accept?
I’ll be honest and say that I was slightly conflicted, wondering whether the goddess could be mean-spirited enough to give me a joke skill, but in the end I decided to trust her and accepted the proposal.
There was a blinding flash, followed by intense waves of disorientation.
I was secretly worrying about whether or not this would turn into pain, but after a couple of minutes everything settled down.
Mirror of Truth & Judgement (Ultimate, A+, Exclusive)
The Mirror of Yeomra, Overseer of Purgatory.
Allows the perusal of information in various degrees of detail of anything and everything. Not only the present state of the existence being examined may be perused, but the past and future can also be known.
I was completely overjoyed at acquiring such an OP skill and an exclusive one at that. I offered up my heartfelt thanks to the goddess with a big smile on my face.
Finally, it is time to determine my Race.
This should be interesting. Dang, there are a lot of different races, too many to list them all. In this case, I’ll go with the best amongst my aesthetic preferences. I’ve always been a stickler for history or visual appeal, going so far as to purposefully select a handicapped and disadvantageous class or race in mmorpgs simply because I enjoyed their looks or backstories. And one thing that I did in every single game was to create or select either a human, human variant, or mostly human in appearance character.
“System, narrow down the available selections for race to Human variant or Human appearance, please,” I said.
The list immediately shrunk.
Human, High Human; What’s this, Ascended High Human!
Let’s take a look:
Ascended High Human
A High Human who has achieved Sagehood.
Although High Humans already have long lifespans reaching millennia, attaining the Ascended Status allows for Mana replenishment to replace consumption of food and drink, as well as the necessity for sleep.
The incredible aptitude for Jack-of-all-trades from the Humans to the King-of-all-trades of the High Humans has now been advanced into Ace-of-all-trades.
Greatly increased Maximum Stats and Stat Growth from regular High Humans.
…
Heck yeah! There was no need to look at anything else, “System, I select Ascended High Human as my race,” I said excitedly.
Access Denied
“Ascended High Human is incompatible with your Class: Dark Lord,” the system’s monotone voice rang out.
My enthusiasm was immediately dampened.
“Ah…” I sighed and metaphorically made some stretches.
I couldn’t be bothered to go through the rest of the narrowed Race list.
So I tried a different tact.
“System, narrow down the current Race selection to those that are compatible and bring up some recommendations please,” I uttered.
“There is one recommendation,” the system voice alerted me.
Udumori
A Transcendent Being of Hwan heritage who was once a mere Human.
Udumori literally means Head of The Bull, signifying the Highest Leader.
There can only be one singular Udumori who legitimately belongs to a specified point in time.Limit Break on every single parameter – both qualitative and quantitative.
There was once a man with grand ambitions, he had a burning desire to see the betterment of humankind fulfilled.
However…
Outcast, Heretic, Lunatic…
Such were the descriptions of scorn and stigma heaped upon the man who lived a life in keeping with those terms.
He was tormented. He was oppressed. He was miserable.
And for a long while he did nothing of worth.
But one day, salvation came to him in the form of love.
He stood at a crossroads, having to choose either something or ‘all or nothing’.
…
I almost teared up. It was like this race was made for me.
I selected Udumori as my race.
Although I thought that I was done, apparently there was one final selection left:
The location of my dungeon.
Continent Difficulty Other Dark Lords Extra Gold/Mana Hondon Walk in the Park Overflow 0/0 Waklands Easy~Med Numerous 50/50 Teavis Med Few 75/50 Gundarion Med Very Few 75/75 So-Limia MedHi Numerous 100/100 Hwasten Med~Hi Numerous 200/150 Centralia MedLo~VeryHi Numerous 300/200 Uun Med~Suicidal Few 500/500