The next morning passed in a blur, I brushed my teeth, got dressed, stumbled out the door and fell into the company car outside my apartment. As the car drove to destination unknown, I browsed through the internet some more, apart from at a stop where the only thing my phone was useful for was was watching the minutes slowly pass by. Wasted time, wasted time. It took about an hour to get to our destination, a unofficial building for Unlimited Horizons. I climbed out of the car in an urban zone in front of an unassuming building. I was lead past huge server rooms and arrived in a room filled with people, some of which I recognized from the meeting. This time, no one was talking; people were just looking around with a wary eye. Just when someone was about to stand up and leave, the same woman as before came in.
“Hello, once again. I’m so glad so many people want to come explore the new world with me. Oh yes, I forget to introduce myself. I am the Mother, goddess of the new world.”
With those words, she vanished into swirling pixels. A hologram! Excited by the new turn of events, everyone settled down again. We were lead into a large room, filled with what looked like normal dive capsules. The young man who led us there uncomfortably straightened his suit and reluctantly started talking.
“Welcome everyone, uh, these are the capsules, which you are going to use to upload, I mean, if you want to. There are enough for everyone, so everyone can participate. Um, some attendants will help you get connected, you will have three days in game… before you have to decide whether or not you want to stay, but you can do it earlier if you wish. Also, you will automatically be uploaded if you start dying, so no worries there. If you don’t want to leave right away, we have helmets that will automatically upload you when you die. Anyway, for now, you can learn the rules and choose your character. However, before you go in, you must sign a few documents.”
A few? By the time I had finished signing, my arm was aching and I had emptied a pen. Maybe I exaggerate a bit. But anyway. I was strapped in by a young man, in the prime of his life, who was probably going to live another 80 years… Anyway.
I found myself in a nondescript place, so nondescript in fact that I couldn’t even see the ground, for some reason.
“Hello,” said a voice. I spun around, looking to see from whom it came. I saw an ordinary person, no extra features. “Hello,” it repeated. “Do you want to start your tutorial?”
“What tutorial?” I asked, confused.
“That will be explained in the tutorial.” Was it… teasing me? No, it couldn’t be. Its voice was perfectly bland.
“Sure, will it take long?”
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“You may judge that by the end of the tutorial.” Now I wasn’t sure.
“What else can I do?”
“That is explained in the tutorial.” Definitely teasing.
“Ok, let’s begin the tutorial.”
The tutorial showed me how the interface worked; it also explained an interesting skill level system. Skills had eight ranks, Neophyte, Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Adept, Master and Grandmaster, with 10 levels in each. A few other skills had only eight levels, one for each rank. To level up a skill, you must complete the Practice and Knowledge bars. Practice was increased by, you guessed it, practice, and Knowledge was increased by understanding the corresponding techniques, and knowing how to improve. In some skills, it required an Intelligence stat high enough in order in increase Knowledge beyond a certain stage. The rest was rather common place. Ten stats: Intelligence, Wisdom, Stamina, Strength, Constitution, Willpower, Agility, Dexterity, Charisma and Luck. There was no specialization; you had to carve your own path. For magic, there were many types: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Light, Dark, Life, Death, Summoning, Enchanting, Scrying... There were many kinds of magic, and magic types could even be created and/or discovered, but they had yet to become widespread. Evidently, the Mother AI had limited there growth in most areas to make it more interesting when players appeared. Spells were created with runes. Runes were the script of the ancient language of magic, but again, more could be created. With that in mind, I had to choose my race and I could also change slightly my features.
After checking the dozens of races, I chose a dragon-kin human. Dragon-kin were the descendants of a humanoid blessed by a dragon. They could switch between human and a dragon like form, and they lived for a long time. As they grew older, their dragon form started to resemble more a real dragon. They were very gifted with magic, and all stats had a good boost. They may have seemed a bit OP, but in fact all races gave large bonuses, and some had even better but they didn’t have what I wanted. Human was because it had also general stat boosts, which were lessened by the dragon-kin part, but I didn’t take pure human because of a low affinity with magic. Pretty much every species was available, I even saw ghost! You couldn’t become, however, for example a dragon or a tiger, but some species came pretty close. Anyway. Once I choose my race, I got to edit my human self, and my dragon self. The human self I left pretty much the same, changed the face a bit but nothing much, then spent the rest of the alteration on increasing by size. I didn’t both with adding muscle, increasing strength would do that, but there was nothing I know of with increased size. When you add in how dragon-kin were naturally taller, I became 2 meters. I then moved onto my dragon form. It took me much longer because I wasn’t sure what a dragon should look like, so I changed a few things and again, made it bigger. One interesting thing was that apparently dragons can change their colouring at will, and it even carried over slightly into human form.
The next step involved choosing where I wanted to spawn. Just when I started studying a map, a notification appeared.
Attention! Before you can continue on, you must have your consciousness uploaded. Do you wish to upload? Y/N?
Why put it off? I thought yes, and it sufficed.