The afterlife wasn’t quite what Cole had been led to believe it would be like.
There was no choir of angels welcoming him to his new home. No devilish judge condemning him for his sins.
Instead, there was a soft breeze blowing against his face. Soft chanting was coming from somewhere above, and he could feel grass and hard packed earth at his back.
Cole opened his eyes, taking in the sights of heaven, and was struck with awe.
The sky was a starry expanse. Growing up in the city, all he’d ever known was smog and the occasional hint of the moon. But here, where there was no light pollution, he could see all the stars, bright white sparks that dotted the sky. He’d thought they only existed in movies and video games.
The second thing he noticed was the moon. It was enormous, stretching over Cole’s entire field of vision. It was incredibly dark, and ringed with an intense white light. It was eldritch and horrifying. It was like nothing he’d seen before. It was beautiful.
Cole stretched his hands up, out towards the sky. He tested, bending each finger before clenching them into a fist. The chanting in the background grew louder.
No pain
He let them drop, pushing his palms into the grass and sitting himself upright. All around him, Cole could see people getting up, each one wearing the same shocked expression on their faces.
He rose to his feet, unsure of what his next move would be. His mind raced with possibilities. Were the other people fellow victims of an untimely death? Cole could see some kids around him. Was this the afterlife? Was it purgatory?
What would happen next?
Would anything happen next? Or had he been doomed to wander in these plains for eternity? How long had he been sitting here? Where was he?
The chanting was growing even louder, a brutal crescendo that made him want to run away in fear and cry with tears of happiness, all at the same time.
Suddenly, the music cut out. An unnatural silence fell over the grassy plain. The white ring around the moon hanging in the sky began to glow, more and more intensely until Cole could barely see anything. There was a loud rushing noise, wind blasting into him.
He began to see flashes, images being superimposed over his vision. His understanding was being changed, of what he had no clue, but it felt like his brain was being stretched into the fourth dimension, being forced to work in a way it simply couldn’t have before.
He was thinking in a language he didn’t even know existed, he had a whole new alphabet of characters in his mind that he intuitively knew how to read and form into words.
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Cole’s whole body hurt, worse than it had ever hurt before, even worse than when he’d lay on the construction site, his nerves like thorns that were slicing up his insides. Cole was screaming, he knew it, but he couldn’t hear anything. He couldn’t see anything.
Nothing except for blurry, scattered shapes hanging in front of him.
He blinked with eyelids that didn’t exist, forcing eyes that weren’t there to come into focus.
As his surroundings came clear, Cole could see words floating in front of him. Some had coalesced out of thin air, while at the same time others were fading away.
Cole felt that if he closed his eyes for just a few seconds, he’d be looking at a completely different set of words.
They weren’t from Earth that was for sure, made of up runes that were incredibly alien, yet also familiar. Cole could understand each one as if it was written in English.
The ones he naturally focused on, drawn by an unknown force seemed to almost solidify, hanging in place
Better yet, he recognised some of them.
Runic Berserker
Vagabond
Longshot Archer
Wayward Scholar
Spatial Mage
Those runes hanging in the air, they were all linked. All part of a class system. One that he knew intimately.
It was the class system of Vestria Online.
Cole had come across all those classes, and more, but the last one.
The Spatial Mage
That was him.
He began to get excited. With that class he had a clear path to power. Even if this wasn’t the exact same world as that of Vestria Online, the names of the classes indicated that the system was at least the same. And Cole knew how to exploit the system to his own gain. He could once again become the Magus Supreme. For real this time.
He focused on the Spatial Mage runes, and his vision began to tunnel out. The other classes began to fade out, and he could feel something, maybe his soul, reaching out to connect with the runes.
Then, of course, it all went wrong.
The runes vanished, and Cole’s body was wracked a pain that was similar, but not quite the same as his old nerve damage.
What?! Where did it go?
The other classes had returned, swirling and popping in and out of existence once more. But the Spatial Mage class was nowhere to be seen.
Cole panicked. Surely it couldn’t be gone, could it? He frantically scanned the void, non-existent eyes reading over every class, faster than he’d ever read before.
But sure enough, it was gone. He mentally cursed his luck, becoming apathetic.
Damn it! Damn it all! Why couldn’t I just have this?
He wasn’t sure how long he stayed in that state, but Cole soon realised that he was still floating in this endless void, classes spinning around him.
He knew intrinsically that he wouldn’t be able to leave unless he made a choice.
He mentally reviewed his options,
Runic Berserker
Vagabond
Longshot Archer
Wayward Scholar
Spatial Mage
Cole kept searching, adding a few more classes that he both recognised, and didn’t. He also cut a few from his list that he knew wouldn’t mesh with his intended fighting style. After a while, he had a nice shortlist.
Runic Berserker
Vagabond
Songweaver
Hallowed Knight
Duskborn Recusant
The Runic Berserker was a simple, but powerful class. It focused around using rage to empower physical strength, while also using simple runes tattooed on the body to enhance this power to a superhuman level using mana.
The Vagabond drew inspiration from an old manga series, and was reminiscent of the idea of a ronin, a masterless Samurai. It used an alternate energy system called ki, which enabled the katana of the Vagabond to cut through almost anything. It was a true glass cannon, able to output huge amounts of damage, but almost defenseless. It relied on speed to dodge attacks.
The Songweaver was… weird. Cole had only ever met one player who used it. It was hard to develop and didn’t seem to have an immediate combat use. It relied on using music to empower both the Songweaver and their allies. The one Cole had met treated every fight as a dance, striking his enemies to the rhythm of the beat to multiply the damage his attacks would do.
Cole wasn’t familiar with the Hallowed Knight, but the general impression he got when focusing on the class rune was that of an ancient soldier who used holy magic to smite enemies. He had gotten flashes of a figure in armor rising from a grave. Definitely something interesting to explore.
The Duskborn Recusant was only there for insurance. Cole couldn’t be too sure about how dangerous the world was going to be. If he found himself coming into conflict with the people he’d been in the field with, the Duskborn Recusant would be his safest bet. A true PvP class family, Recusants leeched power from their foes to empower their magic. Duskborn Recusants used the power of night and shadows to do so.
Cole knew he had to make a choice.