CHAPTER ONE: CHARACTER CREATION
What happens when we die?
Humans are afraid of the unknown, and yet irrevocably drawn towards it. When we don’t know something, we hypothesize about it. We speculate, we guess. Some people believe there is an afterlife, where the good are sent to Heaven to live their afterlives in bliss, and the bad are eternally punished in the depths of Hell. Some believe that when we die, our essence is retained and we are reborn in some form or another. Some believe that after death, there is simply nothing - that everything ends when you die.
Well, if I were to pick one of the three, I would say that it’s closest to the third. I was drifting in a void of infinite darkness, unable to see, hear or feel anything. It was around then that I realized I was, in fact, actually dead, and not just unconscious. I just knew it. There was no secret to it, no trick. Just like I knew the sky was blue and grass was green, I knew I was dead.
What came next was the real surprise.
A thought appeared in my mind, projected by some otherworldly source. Puzzled, I attempted to scratch my head - but of course, I didn’t have a body, let alone the hands to do so.
A panel of images appeared inside my mind. I saw a reflection of myself, completely naked, staring off into the distance. I was of average build, average looks, with short black hair and brown eyes. It was definitely a model of me before my parents had left, back when I’d been forced to go outside and exercise for ten minutes a day. Back when I’d been healthy.
I looked to the next image, and the panel moved automatically. There was another humanoid figure, skin as pale as snow, with a longer and more slender figure. If it weren’t for that monstrosity hanging between its legs, it could have been a woman.
Hang on a second. Was that an elf?
I focused on the image, and suddenly I realized I was no longer a floating consciousness. I was inside a body, the very body that was displayed before me upon the panel. I brought a hand to my face and touched it. It felt warm, like real flesh. I touched my ears, and felt the small tips they ended in.
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It was real. That elf standing before me was a reflection of my current self.
I moved on to the next image. I must have spent several thousand years going through all the races, but in this dimension, time had no meaning. I saw all manner of strange and quirky races, from the typical fantasy MMO ones to strange, eldritch abominations beyond human comprehension. At one point I didn’t even know what I was looking at anymore, and I realized that if I selected one of these bodies, I would inevitably have to learn its functions.
It was because of this that I found myself frantically scrolling back, to settle on the familiar
Now let’s be honest here. I’m a (reasonably) healthy adolescent boy. I think most boys would at least take the opportunity to experiment a little, right?
Needless to say, I thoroughly explored my female self and masturbated countless times before selecting the male option. Being a girl was fun, but in my mind I was still a guy.
At this, I frowned. Ordinarily, I’d enter
But this wasn’t a game. I had really died.
And so, I typed in the characters for my real name.
There was only one option left now, and it was to choose which world I wanted to be reborn in. I probably spent another few millennia deciding on this. A vast majority of the worlds were impossible for humans to survive in, lacking the fundamentals like water and a proper atmosphere, or fraught with strange and exotic dangers. The world which I’d come from was greyed out. It hadn’t been the best life, but I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that I’d never be going home again.
It was here, in the last stage of character creation, where I made my biggest mistake. Instead of choosing the ‘Super-happy Erotic Fun-time Cat-girl Harem’ world, my hand slipped and I accidentally selected the ‘Typical Fantasy’ world.
I blacked out in that instant, and was reborn.