The custom race editor wasn’t what Shepherd had expected, instead of a tab akin to a custom character creation tab he’d blacked out and was brought to a vast expanse of nothingness. He’d stayed in the expanse for what felt like an eternity until structures finally began forming around him.

<-Custom Race Editor- has been opened, due to integrating a -divine- rank treasure all options have become available, you have an increased number of base stat points at your disposal>

A woman’s voice echoed through the expanse, it was different to Benevolent’s stiff androgynous voice and left a calming and mysterious impression in Shepherd’s mind. Could it be a Goddess’ voice? Shoving his thoughts aside he led his consciousness into the innumerable structures around him and a virtually infinite amount of information assaulted his mind!

Custom Race Editor

Imput:

none

“So that experience of nothingness was me lacking any racial characteristics essentially… Let’s see how to interface with this.”

Peering his mind into one of the clusters of information he metaphorically gasped. This was all the genetic and species specific information of a creature! In particular, this creature was one he’d become somewhat familiar with in the past day or so, it was a member of the rat kin.

As he viewed the information a highly detailed model of the rat kin species came into view!

In the moment he lacked eyes, instead he could observe the specimen down to the cellular level, even the internal organs and vascular system couldn’t escape his ‘gaze’.

Rat Kin Race

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

Juvenile

Str: 8

Con: 10

Dex: 7

Agi: 11

+Night vision

+Class progression

Adult

Str: 12

Con: 13

Dex: 10

Agi: 15

+Acute Smell Sense

+Class progression

Elder

Str: 11

Con: 12

Dex: 11

Agi: 14

EnF: 15

EnC: 15

+Rat sense

+Class progression

+EnC

+EnF

Seeing the tab which appeared beside the rat kin model Shepherd gave an ethereal squint and observed the three life cycles of the race. When he peered into the juvenile category the model remained the same, but when he passed his consciousness to the adult tag the model changed. The rat kin in front of him was now larger by a foot and had darker brown fur, its nose also seemed to be larger in proportion to its body and now had a black tint to it as opposed to the pink colour of the juvenile.

After inspecting the bodies of the different stages of the rat kin life cycle Shepherds understanding of the stats finally clicked.

Strength only determined the muscular development of the body, it didn’t affect anything else not even the muscles’ tendon strength. That along with the general endurance of the body were determined by the second stat Constitution. The higher the Constitution stat was the less one was subject to most types of damage, not only would you take less damage your health would also raise by a certain amount based on your species slash race (for instance the rat kin juveniles only gained plus eight Hp per Con point above 10 as opposed to the humans gaining ten, at the same time the base health of a rat kin was 80 whereas humans had a base 100 Hp). This meant that too high of a Str stat without an adequate Con stat one could damage themselves of over exertion.

Another peculiarity was that unlike humans a member of the rat kin race wouldn’t have access to Energy Flow and Energy Capacity until they reached the stage of elder. What EnF and EnC were was essentially magical aptitude, the more EnF one had the more easily and powerfully they could execute spells, as for EnC it determined the amount of mana one had and high levels of the stat would allow one to learn mana retention and mana regeneration skills more easily. A key hint that the race description gave Shepherd though, was that not all races were made equal! Not in the racist kind of sense but you know…

Shepherd quickly scanned a different cluster of information and he found another race of the rat kin!

Arcane Rat Kin Race

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

Juvenile

Str: 7

Con:9

Dex: 10

Agi: 10

EnF/EnC: 11

+Mana vision

+Class progression

Adult

Str: 8

Con: 10

Dex: 10

Agi: 11

EnF: 13

EnC: 13

Cha: 10

+Spell progression

+Class progression

+Cha

Elder

Str: 10

Con: 12

Dex: 12

Agi: 12

EnF: 17

EnC: 16

Cha: 12

+Spell progression

+Class progression

Indeed, even in the same species different races would gain different perks and stats in their different life stages. There was naturally a trade-off though, the regular rat kin race was definitely inferior to their arcane brethren but at the same time their rate of reproduction was higher by about a third. Which is to say, an average rat kin female gave birth to 4-6 offspring per pregnancy while the arcane rat kin female would only give birth to 3-4. This meant that although a village of arcane rat kin could easily wipe out a village of regular ones that was of the same size such a situation would rarely occur naturally.

Gathering the insights of the rat kin Shepherd pondered, quantity or quality?

The thought that he was creating a race that would probably outlive him was quite interesting but also a terrifying thought. Did he have the right to play God? Would this be considered blasphemy by his parents who were religious? Shepherd could only snort coldly at the thought, he himself wasn’t religious in the slightest and saw his parents as people who lacked the self-honesty to look at their defects and complexes objectively, and instead they chose believing in a higher power to mend their insecurities and fears.

Why would he take their likely thoughts into account if they didn’t amount to anything in reality? Throwing any bitterness on the subject out of his heart he continued absorbing the information around him, one thing was clear, he wanted quality over all else! Maybe it would take longer for his race to establish itself, but so what? Power was power, and with no real great powers likely forming around him for the time being, there was nothing to lose.

Before he’d get to the juice of it though, he’d have to probe this endless expanse of knowledge for information, he needed to see how far in power a race could go in the first place. A thought passed in his mind and he smirked.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“System, give me the list of the fourteen most common species slash races of the world I inhabit in a hundred mile radius!”

List of Races

Human

Demon Kin

Elf

Troll

Goblin

Orc

-Ant-

Wasp

Squirrel

Domestic Cat

Dire Dog

Domestic Dog

-Lizard-

Rat kin

Amusing himself with the thought of what a dire dog was he inspected it for a description.

Dire Dog

Life cycle

Base stat progression

Perk progression

Juvenile

Str: 14

Con:12

Agi: 13

+ Pack mentality

+ -Gruesome bite-

+ -blood vision-

+ -blood smell-

Adult

Str: 18

Con:14

Agi: 16

Cha: 10

+ -Gruesome charge-

+ Leader mentality

+ -Dire Howl-

“So even dogs have changed huh, all the pet lovers out there getting the Summoner class hah!”

As he analysed the various species his interest was finally piqued when he got to the Ant category, there were plenty of species but he decided to look into the Formica variety for various reasons. After he saw the variations between ants of different function, mainly the difference between the queen and worker ants Shepherd had a spark of inspiration. What if instead of a life cycle, his race had specializations instead? This would lead to a more rigid hierarchy if there ever came to be one but it also meant that the purpose and function of each individual would be more easily determined, leading to a more stable societal structure.

With such thoughts in mind he scanned the various races, and ended up bringing up another list of 14 species.

“This should take a while… So be it! System, for now set the base template of the race I’m creating to human, we’ll go from there”

He scanned and made sure to remember all the perks and stats of the races in his vicinity and beyond, not only would this allow him to make the best choice for the custom race he was making but it would also give him invaluable information for the world outside.

“The demon kin have a natural charisma stat… No need for that, System, give me a list of all the hidden stats available!”