Gii was suddenly back at the character select screen, except this time there was not his elven form but a devil like form with 2 large horns and goat-like legs. This form had pitch black eyes and dark red skin with a sharp spiked tail and fit the description of a devil entity far too well. Gii did not adjust much in this form and simply left mostly the default appearance. When he confirmed the selection he was met with a notification window.

Your Race has been changed to Lesser Devil (Demon)

You gain the following:

Racial Skills: Soul Contract, Change Form (Humanoid only)

Resistance: Poison (20%), Dark (10%), Fire (20%)

Vulnerability: Radiant (100%)

-Reputation with all good aligned churches has become irredeemable

Gii really wanted to look over his transformation but after he selected his form he was brought back to the room of laughing devils. Balaam looked him over once and gave a satisfied nod.

"You really did make a fine devil, I wasn't sure it would work as not every mortal has the ability to withstand the transformation."

I guess it would have failed if I didn't meet the right conditions?

"Regardless it looks like things have turned out fine. Now tell me, newly born devil, what is it you wish to accomplish with your newfound power?"

It's here!

Gii had been waiting for this moment since he started playing Listonia again. Up until now he had been following the path that someone in his previous life had followed. They were a roleplaying character that started playing about 5 years after Listonia had launched. At the time the Good align player guilds had not taken complete control of the Continent yet and so there was still a sizable portion of the player base that were inclined towards Evil playstyles, which allowed this player to flourish.

They had gone around and defiled the different altars, with the help of other players, until eventually they had built up a large amount of negative karma and hatred with the church of Crassius. However because they were with other players and focused on roleplaying, they never leveled up. When they finally depleted all of their soul energy and were sent to hell they had been given the same choices as Gii and chose to change their race change. However this dialogue option also gave the player an opportunity to obtain a unique class! Gii calmed himself and re-enacted the dialogue the player had used at that time.

"I WANT REVENGE! I dont care if i'm ripped limb from limb, I want to be able to enact retribution on those false gods that look down on me!"

There was a chuckle from Balaam as he nodded in approval

"I can sense the determination in your words! Then I shall hereby grant you such power! Nurture it well HAHAHA!"

He reached out his hand and touched on Gii's forehead and there was a flash of deep crimson light as a notification popped up in front of him.

Archdevil Balaam Has chosen to grant you a Unique class

Change Class to Berserker of Reckoning?

Accept?

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Gii immediately accepted without hesitation and was met with another notification.

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Class has been changed to Berserker of Reckoning

You gain the following skills:

-Retribution of Strength

-Retribution of Intelligence

-Retribution of Chance

-Retribution of Agility

-Blood Whip

Gii felt the excitement of the moment now that he was at the point where he could finally start playing the game for real! He looked up at Balaam and followed up with a question.

"Great Balaam, I would like to go back to the mortal world so that I may enact my revenge on the repulsive followers of those who wronged me!"

Ballam looked at him in curiosity and then spoke

"This is indeed possible, but first you must contribute sufficiently before you will be given the privilege of returning to the mortal world."

As expected, I can't get out of the tedious quests to rebuild soul energy.

Balaam motioned him to one of the side exits and spoke for a final time.

"Go visit the Hall of Souls to find out how you can contribute and earn your right to return to the mortal world."

Gii exited through the door and eventually made his way outside. The best way to describe this place was like a small encampment on the side of a giant crater and there were only a handful of buildings that were visible. As Gii already knew the location of the Hall of Souls, he ignored his task at the moment so he could verify the information for his new class and race.

There were quite a few reasons why Gii was after this particular race and class combination and the first of which were the 2 racial skills he gained. Even though his true form was a Lesser devil, otherwise referred to as a demon, one of his racial abilities allowed him to transform into a humanoid form. This was a key for an evil character as they would need to hide their nature from NPC's and also players as it was common for players in his previous life to attack monstrous race players on sight. Although it only allowed him to change his form to a human and he could still be detected by spells or people sensitive to his evil nature, it offered him a chance to interact with NPC's who otherwise might avoid him.

This also fed into his second skill, Soul Contract. This skill was a major draw for him. Just like its name suggests, its a skill that allows the user to sign a contract with a mortal in exchange for their soul. These contracts could take on many forms but it essentially boiled down to "Selling your soul to the devil". He could gain the right to claim an NPC's soul when they died and bless them with unnatural power and abilities. After making a soul contract, it also gave him some semblance of control over those NPC and would turn them into minions who could do his bidding. He had to be careful however, as if the NPC was much more powerful than him, they would be able to break out of the binding of the contract.

One of the key points to advancing tiers down the "Good" or "Evil" routes required the players to accumulate astronomical amounts of negative or positive karma. For good players this was relatively easier to do by donating to charities and assisting those in need, and although they had a similar skill to the soul contract, they were not able to exert any control over the NPC. The downside for them was usually that the accumulation of Karma was very slow but would be much easier to obtain.

Evil players could gain alot of negative karma very quickly but they would usually accumulate many enemies and eventually doing things like killing an innocent person wouldn't even put a dent in the amount of karma needed to advance tiers. For example, in order to achieve tier 4 a player would need to accumulate hundreds of millions of Karma! Many players ended up avoiding these routes in his past life because of this extra requirement on top of everything else. However this karma system is one of the things Gii felt was essential to advancing to the fabled tier 5.

The benefit for Gii's Soul Contract skill was twofold. First of all, those he had a contract with could contribute to his own karma. Meaning any deeds they did, good or evil, would be added to his karma score. It would be easy to think that he should make a contract with evil characters and let them run amok but the other factor was that when the character died, their soul would be given a karma score. If Gii could get a binding contract with someone who had a pure soul and then corrupt them to become evil, it would exponentially increase the Karma amount when they died!

The good aligned players in his previous life were the first ones to discover this pseudo exploit and used it to band the playerbase together and advance to tier 4 first. Many people ended up going down the "redemption" route as it would be called. Now Gii was looking to take advantage of this at the earliest levels, but using the reverse version of the "corruption" route!

The reason why he was particular about the class "Berserker of Reckoning" had to do with the way stats were affected by your class. All classes had a "Soft cap" to your stat points, which meant that as you added more characteristic points to a stat, it became more expensive to raise. Every class would have different caps and players would usually determine the value of a class based on these caps. In his previous life the class with the best soft cap he had heard of was this exact class "Berserker of Reckoning''. This is because there was no cap on vitality and every characteristic point he spent in vitality would give 10 additional health instead of the normal 1 that every other class would get! The downside was that the other stats had a very harsh soft cap and it would take 5 characteristic points to gain even a single point in any other stat.

However he was not worried about this because of the class skills he gained. The retribution series of skills he gained were a powerful series of buffs that required him to take damage. However while the skill was active, a percentage of the damage taken would be converted into pure stats. Even though these stats would be temporary, they were not effected by the caps and could give him stats on par or even above other top tier classes while he was in combat! Since he could buff pretty much any stat he wanted, it allowed his damage output and playstyle to be incredibly versatile.

Gii knew that the more he changed how he played from the past the more he would effect events in this timeline. Eventually he would start to run into scenarios that were different from what he remembered happening. Not to mention he would be playing during a period of time where he didnt in his past life. The likelihood of him running into situations he wasn't prepared for was highly likely. Having the ability to change up his playstyle to fit his needs was very beneficial for his current situation and in addition to that it allowed him to be the type of player who would be able to fill any need in a group or dungeon raiding party.

Stats were very important to the strength of the class but that wouldnt matter if it didn't also have a strong set of skills. Right now there was only the most basic skills and buffs, but as he advanced through the tiers Gii knew that his new class would have some incredibly strong skills at least up until tier 3.

It's a shame that they never got past tier 3 in my previous life...

Because that player had started playing Listonia too late, they were never given enough time to completely fulfill the class. Even though he didn't know exactly what kind of skills and abilities the class would gain after tier 3, there wasn't a single case of a class that was strong at tier 3 but suddenly got weaker after advancing. Gii was confident that he had made the right choice, especially now that he had gotten a chance to look at the class first hand. He made his way towards the Hall of Souls in giddy excitement and anticipation of getting out of the afterlife as soon as possible