Currently, in front of Talia was something she was strongly familiar with, it was the very game menu belonging to ‘Dawn of the Corrupted’ the MMORPG game which changed Talia’s life entirely.

She felt a wave of nostalgia as she stared at the game screen floating ahead of her.

‘This is where it all began’ She thought, as she stared at the assortment of options available at character creation.

Scrolling through she found that everything was the same as she remembered in the game making her think, ‘Wait, could it be that waking up within the body of a Princess, was just all a dream?’

But, upon looking to see if there was logging off button, she found it was completely blank where it was supposed to be, in fact, all of the game settings which determines, ‘Pain sensitivity’, ‘Character configuration’, and so forth had disappeared entirely, making her cross out that option.

‘Could I have reincarnated again?’ Reflected Talia after considering a plausible option towards her predicament.

‘Ah, well, not worth standing around here doing nothing, I may as well treat this seriously, otherwise, what if I’m stuck with a trash character build for the rest of my life if I’m stuck here?’

She shuddered at the thought, before flicking through the screen at the character choices.

At ‘character model’ she saw a 3D model of female, humanoid figure before it labelled a name in bold, golden lettering ‘Talia Equirrion’.

A hint of familiarity hit her as soon as she saw the last name, the last name displayed on the ‘model’ was not the surname she had on her life in Earth but it belonged to the body of the Princess she had seemingly possessed.

Inspecting the character model, she found that it was identical in looks to Princess Talia Equirrion, in fact, she the Princess already looked eerily familiar to her former appearance in Earth, the only major difference was that she had light blue eyes and hair, instead of her previous black hair. But, if a person saw them both side by side, they would definitely be convinced that they were sisters.

‘Does this mean I am still in the body of the Princess? And none of that was a dream?’ She thought, rapidly thinking about the newly discovered revelation before her.

‘I should continue, but if this is linked somehow to the Princess…’

Believing that making any changes to the character model was foolish, she moved down to the next option which was ‘Class Selection.’

Abruptly a myriad of different classes materialised before her, after looking over the options available and confirming it was similar to the game, after thinking it over, she had finally decided to pick a class which if a person who had played ‘Dawn of the Corrupted’ were present had found what she has chosen, then they’d likely be dumbfounded by the result and would be treating her like a moron.

This is because she had come to the choice of the class known as ‘Beast Soul-master’. A class that was the most widely debated and disputed on the game. The description of the class had originally lured over plenty of players upon looking at the explanation of the class because it sounded like such an awesome and awe-inspiring class.

The reason why was because the class allowed you to contain the soul and bloodline of a Magical Beast, and would allow you to perfectly retain its power as you shifted into its form.

It sounded like such an overpowered class on paper, but it failed to explain that the magical beast in question would start among the most basic, common ones in the game and that it would require a great amount of effort to even advance the beast to one which is even remotely fearsome.

At the same time, unlike the other classes which specialise in specific attributes, the Beast Soul-Master, perfectly distributes its character points among the different attributes, which makes it not weak in a specific attribute, but compared to the other classes it made them hilariously weak in comparison.

Even if you get the bonus stats of the beast, which gets added towards your attributes once you shift into a beast form, this ‘small’ advantage only lasts for a few levels, before the other classes overtake you in attributes and this gap only gets wider.

So why did she choose such a class? It was because it was of its high potential, back on Earth a player had stuck with the infamous ‘Beat Soul-master’ class and had managed to progress it to a level none thought possible. Although the player, in the end, was still only considered a top player, and not one of the upper echelons, or experts at the peak of the game. He was still considered pretty good and had also demonstrated the great potential the class can have if it was advanced to the peak. That was because the player had progressed his beast soul to the point in which he could actually battle players of opposite classes which were higher levelled at him, which was considered a staggering achievement for a class known as the ‘trashiest’ in the game.

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However, had too many glaring weak points for the other players to even consider trying to do so, firstly its class advancements are far more difficult, and expensive than other classes. This can be explained in how the Beast Soul Class works, you start with a low levelled Magic Beast, however, every fifty levels you are allowed to evolve this beast into a more advanced form. But, to do so you must improve the bloodline of the beast to its peak, by consuming potions, or rare medicines available which can impact a beasts bloodline. At the start, this is fairly easy, as any medicine refined from a beast with a higher bloodline, will greatly contribute towards advancing this beast, nonetheless as the class progresses, and the evolution of the beast gets higher and higher, it becomes far more troublesome to raise the beasts bloodline.

Thus, this had led to many people who had chosen the ‘Beast Soul-master’ to stagnate at advancement barriers, whereas the other classes zoomed past, making them green with envy and feel a great deal of frustration at the unfairness of the class. At the beginning of the game, ‘Dawn of the Corrupted’ already created a record at the sheer amount of players which have had to delete and to restart their accounts upon discovering how annoying and much of a scam the Beat Soul-master class is.

But, in the end, Talia had decided to go with this class. Why? Mainly because one of the biggest factors has been removed entirely, which are the players themselves.

Before, the ‘Beast Soul-master’ class struggled so much simply because their class levelled so slow in comparison to the other classes, and at the same time they were shunned away from parties, and so forth because their class offered no advantages compared to the others.

For instance, why would anyone want a ‘Beast Soul-master’ to be a tank or a damage dealer when there are other options who are way more effective than they are available, as any other class, a Warrior, Mage or Rogue would do a better job than them at those roles, so it made them a pointless addition to be added to a party. And even if they did, for instance, form a group of themselves, or joined with other players, they were still less effective in dealing with monsters, and quests which still made them level more slowly.

The game also had a fixed amount of resources, and one-time high rewarding quests, which were also taken by other players before the slow ‘Beast Soul-master’ can even advance so far, making the class even more irritating for players who have chosen it. Therefore, if she was given the option to select a class-based on competing with others, she would have likely chosen a different class, no matter how much potential this one has, but this wasn’t such a decision, so she decided to go with choice which if raised properly would, in the end, emerge as the most powerful one!

If this was anything similar to ‘Dawn of the Corrupted’ there were plenty of locations she had in mind to help the class gets past its most difficult advancements, so she was not as worried about its difficulty.

A reason why the ‘Beast Soul-master’ class was highly valued was that the beast you select will start with the average attributes of that levelled beast, these attributes will then be combined with your base character selection when you shifted into the beast, this was a powerful ability but as a result of the weak starting point of the beast, the bonus attributes are not worth mentioning in a specialised class.

Within the game, attributes are automatically distributed based on class instead of the player allocating them, for instance, if there are 10 attribute points per level, a Warrior Receives, 4 in Strength, 4 in Vitality and 2 in Dexterity. Whereas, a Beast Soul-master receives 2 in Strength, 2 in Vitality, 2 in Dexterity, 2 in Intelligence and 2 in Willpower.

This doesn’t seem a big difference at first but by the time a Warrior hits level 10 they already have 20 more strength than a Beast-Soul Master, so even if they merge with their best for an additional 10 or more strength they are still weaker. At the same time, a Warrior has equipment bonuses which are redundant on a Beast-Soul Master so it can be seen why they are not viewed highly. A frustratingly difficult class to level up, which also consumes a tonne of resources, it is no wonder why barely anyone chose the class or even when the game had been out for years could become one of the most powerful players whilst using it.

Even so, Talia still firmly selected the class without any hesitation, as was always the type to make risky choices, with a potentially high return, additionally she also felt a stirring inside seemingly drawing her into picking the class.

‘I hope this pays off’ She thought, as she looked at the last few sections of the character selection menu.

These were just options to choose her faction and so forth, Talia chose a similar one in her previous life, ‘Light’ faction which consisted of the more light attuned races such as Humans and the Dwarves, unlike the ‘Dark’ faction which is dark attuned, which includes the Devils, Undead and so forth. There is also a neutral faction which holds the Elves, which also includes Dwarves which are more focused on smithing, than waring with ‘Dark’ faction races. And finally, the ‘Monster’ faction, which was already a no-go for Talia as they were practically enemies with everyone, barring her from most starting cities. This decision was easy for her, as she knew that the ‘Light’ faction starting point had the best quests available at the beginning of the game.

Finally, there was a brief description of her character background, which she took note of incase it would be important, after all, she had no idea what was going to happen next, so it was better to be prepared.

After going over her options until she was satisfied, she clicked the ‘confirm’ option on her choices.

Suddenly, the menu dispersed leaving into numerous particles of light as it scattered around the room as more and more particles of light seem to gather in the room, her vision was filled with a bright light as she felt her mind go blank for a brief moment.

Awakening out of her stupor, she immediately discovered that she was currently standing in front off a bustling village.

Looking above she found that the sky was bright, indicating that the day had just started.

*Cluck, Cluck, Cluck*

A few hens wandered around her as they searched for food, poking their heads down at the soil.

Talia felt a warm breeze blowing gently against her skin, taking a deep breath, she felt the feeling of fresh air filling her lungs.

The vivid sensation from every nerve in her body reminded her that this was real, this was a real-world, not some game, even if VR realism has grown greatly, a difference could be made between it and the real world.

This lead to Talia growing to a sudden realisation, she found herself in a real-world, one which perfectly resembled ‘Dawn of the Corrupted’.