Dan found himself in a room full of indistinct people as a notification box floated in front of him.

Congratulations on making it so far through the trials. Your poor skills in math have negatively affected the pool of classes you have access to, though your resilience in the face of pain and ability to keep calm under pressure have lent you access to others. Please choose a class to begin your journey.

Looking up he could see the indistinct people now looked like himself. Raising a hand in the air, the chestnut brown arms did the same. He smiled, this was probably the strangest thing he’d seen so far. Shaking his head their long black hair did the same while the ethereal light reflected from all of their blue eye. Some of these copies of himself were bulky warriors and other, though not too many, were scrawny mages. There were wiry rogues and fat clerics.

“I wonder how I can tell which are the rare classes…” Dan wondered to himself aloud. The majority of the bodies vanished leaving a line of three versions of himself who walked forward. Looking at them he was given more info on the classes. The first was a musclebound, almost beserk looking, hulking man that looked as though Dan had been on steroids since birth.

Pain Paladin. A subclass of Paladins that use lighter armors in order to soak up as much pain as possible before redistributing it as a debuff to enemies. Until the higher levels this pain does no damage it is often sufficient enough to win a fight. They serve the gods and are given buffs or abilities based on how much damage they have taken. They also feel no relief from pain through magical healing and must wait for pain to naturally take its course.

Pain Paladins gain five points of constitution every 3 levels and a characteristic point to spend once per level. Do you want to start the game as a Pain Paladin?

Shuddering Dan quickly willed that image away. While he was not going to shy away from pain, the thought of being such a massive masochist did not appeal to him in the slightest. He couldn’t imagine the kinds of trauma such a class would bring upon a simple office worker such as himself, and hurried to distract himself with the next class. This one was far more interesting and more in line with what he liked.

Aegis Sorcerer. An Aegis Sorcerer is a front line sorcerer who focuses on creating mystical shields in the air in order to protect themselves and their team from enemies as well as being able to give up portions of their mana to shield themselves and their allies. The Sages of this class are said to make entire squadrons of mages into front line fighters when needed while also blocking all but the most powerful of spells and attacks.

Aegis Sorcerers gain one point of intelligence and constitution to every even level and three free characteristic points to use every third level. Do you want to begin as an Aegis Sorcerer?

Very tempting. This seemed to fit him well. He would get bored just focusing on regular warrior and tank skills, but adding in magic and mysticism to the bunch would allow him to mix it up and keep it fresh and interesting. Though it might be hard to balance stats if he needed to invest in three or four different ones at the same time. Before deciding Dan checked out the final rare class he had unlocked.

Necromage. A necromage is a mage who deals in the arts of necromancy. While not a full fledged necromancer there are many paths that a necromage may follow to find the right class for them. From everything to using corpses to heal allies to reanimating flesh to use as a defense, a Necromage is just the first step on the path to power.A sage of Necromany is said to command armies of the undead and use them for both offense and defense. Truly the path of on who wishes to bolster their forces or become an army of one.

Note: A Necromage is not meant to be the final class you end up with. Find a class trainer to unlock further specialized classes of this tree or work hard to find your own path.

Necromages gain one point of wisdom and constitution every even level and four free characteristic points to spend every third level. Do you want to begin as a Necromage.

Danny was nearly drooling as he read through that. It seemed to fit perfectly with his wants and desires. While he was not opposed to a classic mage this seemed to be able to fit his desires for power and usefulness. He wondered how rare healing was if the trials were this difficult. If it was more rare then perhaps he could join up with a group or guild early on to help him level. Though he still hesitated. Necromancers generally had a bad rap in games just due to working with corpses. He wondered if his reputation would be negatively affected thusly due to it.

Finally coming to a decision he decided to say not worry about what others might think of him and selected Necromage as his class. While it might not be the best choice starting out he could only imagine the amount of power he would have later on down the line if he could use such a variety of abilities.

Congratulations! You have accepted the subclass Necromage! Professions unlock at level 5. You have four free characteristic points to spend. Please note, your starting characteristics have been modified due to your real life athletic abilities, trials, and class selection. Please allocate your remaining points now.

Characteristic: Raw Score (Modifier)

Strength: 14 (1.12)

Dexterity: 10 (1.00)

Constitution: 17 (1.17)

Intelligence: 9 (1.13)

Wisdom: 15 (1.15)

Charisma: 4 (0.04)

Perception: 17 (1.15)

Luck: 12 (1.12)

Karmic Luck: -3

The stats seemed pretty self explanatory from the prompt he was given. Strength increased how much he could carry as well as weapon damage. Dexterity allowed him to move and dodge more easily while also moving faster. Constitution was how much health and stamina he had while also giving him bonuses to physical resistances. Intelligence was how much mana he had as well as his general ability to understand complicated concepts. Wisdom increased his mana regeneration as well as magical resistances. It would also somehow let him make wiser decisions which seemed strange. Perhaps he would get help prompts more often or something.

Charisma determined social interactions in the game as well as how much NPCs and others would like him. Perception allowed him to spot details easier as well as what he experienced with the world. There was a warning tag that increasing this would also increase pain though. Luck as per usual in games affected every stat to an unknown amount and would give him bonuses to his skills in some ways. None of it is explained in any detail of course but that was par for the course in any game.

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Finally Karmic luck didn’t have much of a description but Dan knew he wanted that to be a positive score on an instinctual level. Perhaps messing with corpses would lead to further negative scores. He would need to keep an eye on that. On top of this all it seems that the numbers inside the parenthesis indicated how that stat would compare to that of an average human.

Please note that your class focuses on constitution and wisdom at the start as you will not only be using mana to power spells but your own health. Necromages start with a passive that converts part of their Mana Regeneration into Health Regeneration.

Deciding quickly Dan put two points into his abysmal charisma score (was this the game telling him to get out of the house more?) and two into his intelligence. As much as Mana Regen mattered he knew he would need to have a large mana pool and having that over the amount of a regular person would be important. He could worry about his charisma later.

Growth in Eternium is difficult when you are doing nothing! Unlike other systems, each day will be a struggle to survive, especially at the start of your journey. Because of the difficulty, the rewards will certainly be worth your effort! Since this system is somewhat unorthodox, please note that a modifier of ‘one’ is considered a normal, healthy, adult human. Each point allocated will increase your modifier by one one-hundredth of a point. An exception to this is when you gain your first ten points in any category. At this point, your score will increase to ‘one point one’ in that category. Moving forward, each time a category increases to the next multiple of fifty, the base score will increase by ‘one’. At fifty points, your modifier will be plus ‘two’. At one hundred points, the modifier will be plus ‘three’. For example, a character with forty-nine points in a category will have a modifier of 1.49, which is forty-nine percent stronger than an average human! Then if they reach fifty points in the category, they will jump to a modifier of 2.0! The discrepancy in strength is intended to push you to develop as fast as possible. Skill in the areas you focus on will quickly allow you to reach higher than others of the same level, even if you have similar stats! You can earn skill points and characteristic points through your actions, so work hard! You will need to be as powerful as possible when the first major update comes into effect. That is… if you want to survive!

With that ominous message out of the way the world around him shifted, for what he hoped would be the final time that day, into a massive sprawling city. Looking around he was enraptured by everything. He spun in a slow circle drinking in all the sights like a tourist as someone tapped his shoulder. A short red haired lady stood behind him and started talking with a light southern accent.

“Why hello there, sonny. I noticed y’all standing there all confused and turning like some possessed frog. Would ya happen to be one of ‘em travellers that I been hearing so much about?”

“Ah! Y-Yes ma’am!” Dan stumbled over his words still enraptured by the city. He hesitated as he was about to ask where he could find training for a necromage but stopped himself before he could reveal who he was beforehand. “Would you be able to point me in the direction of a place to train up mages?”

“A real mage in the flesh, now? That be a rare sight in these parts, though more common now that you Travelers have been interacting with those stuffy noble mages. Well if you follow this road east you should see a massive tower that flashes a different color every few seconds. It will cost you a pretty penny to sign up though.”

“Thank you! Where would I find a weapons shop for cheaper starting gear?” As Dan asked this the Lady frowned slightly as if he had insulted her.

“Well no need for words like that, youngin. If ya want cheap weapons head to the Fifth Core Smith down the road. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ll get going.” Dan had no idea what had offended her. Playing back the conversation in his mind he didn’t say anything that could be misconstrued… at least he didn’t think so. He would have to be more careful in the future though.

Walking down the street towards the smithy he leaned against the wall before going in to look at some notifications that had started cluttering his view.

Name: Danny_The_Miller

Class: Necromage

Profession: Locked

Level: 1 Exp: 0 Exp to next level: 1000

Hit Points: 130/130 (60 + 10 per point of Constitution)

Mana: 137.5 (125 + 12.5 per point of Intelligence)

Mana regen: 3.75 (2.5 + .25 per point of Wisdom)

Stamina: 185 (50 + 5 per point of Strength + 5 per point of Constitution)

Note that all added values are calculated when above 10 points in the stat.

Congratulations on taking the first step into your future. As a Necromage you automatically gain access to your mana bar as well as an ability and passive.

Necromantic Resurrection (Novice I): Select a nearby creature corpse to revive. You may revive a creature with a core level equal to trash rank for 60+n seconds, where n = skill level. Cost: 100 mana 100 health. 3 second cast time as well as hand gestures required to cast.

Defiled Regeneration (Novice I): For every 1 point of mana regenerated you will regenerate .5+.n points of health, where n = skill level. Passive, no cost.

Satisfied with where he started he began to make his way inside the smithy. There was a bored looking man behind the counter and the faint sounds of metal being hammered farther back in a door behind him. When the bored man saw Dan he said in a monotone voice, “Welcome to Fifth Core Smith. Starter gear is in the barrels on the right. Don’t bother trying to steal any of it since the guards are right outside.” After his speech was over he went right back to staring off into space, bored.

Dan looked through the barrels and decided on a small two handed round shield with several spikes placed on the front of it, presumably for poking enemies with. While his class was considered mage at the moment, he still planned to become a tank down the line, so this suited him well. Walking up the counter the bored man looked at the shield and intoned, “Fifty silver for the shield.” Dan began to pat around his body realizing he had no idea where the game put the starting money he had put into it at.

“Uh, does there happen to be a bank somewhere around here?” Asked, Danny.

“Down the street and to the left.” The man agreed to hold onto the shield until he came back as Dan ran down the street. With his higher dexterity he found it just a tad bit easier to run than in real life. After waiting ten minutes in line he came up to a banker who scoffed at his ragged clothes.

“Good day, sir. I was wondering if I had any money in my account? If I do, may I withdraw 50 silver coins?” Dan got a grumpy look and the person behind him muttered something about rude travelers, and the banker all but shoved the silver at him before he was pushed out of line. He had no idea if he was breaking some custom by being polite and somehow being rude but it seems no one liked him so far. Perhaps it was an effect of his low charisma?

Deciding to skip the mages college until tomorrow Dan decided to head out of town as one of the Guards told him about killing rabbits for exp. Easy enough of a starter ‘quest’ he supposed. Though he had no quest notification as of yet. Maybe this game worked on a word of mouth type system. He knew a few hardcore games like that.

As he walked out of the gates he could see groups of travelers walking past the rabbits to what looked like foxes in the distance. Dan decided that he didn’t need a group for a simple rabbit so holding up the shield he walked up to a rabbit got in place behind and shoved the spikes right down on its head. He got a damage number saying ‘1’ and the rabbit turned around looking pissed. Dan meanwhile was blinded as he got a bunch of combat and other notifications at once and didn’t notice as the rabbit attacked him.

A blinding pain, roared up in his leg as the rabbit headbutted him and he lost ‘5’ health just from the one attack. Backpedaling and trying to avoid the angry hare he tripped over another rabbit causing him to fall ontop of a third. Soon his body was wracked with pain as the rabbits began to tear into him with their teeth or headbutt him to death. Within a pain-filled minute he was greeted with a message.

You have died. Calculating: Tried to fight rabbits with no training and died from falling over several rabbits. Maximum respawn time of twelve hours. You have no experience so you have lost none.

Dan stood in absolute shock. He died to a… rabbit? Surely that’s impossible. He’s never played an MMO where the first mob in a game was actually able to kill the player. Their damage was supposed to be so low that you would just regen your health faster then they could kill you. And 12 hours? He hadn’t really even managed to do anything in the game and he can’t even play until tomorrow? That was a load of feces.

Angrily Dan tore off his headset, not even bothering to read the remaining notifications, and threw himself into his bed, ignoring the disorientation as he fell into a fitful sleep full of magma spitting rabbits and bankers trying to poke him with shields.