- 10 - Reborn in a Magical World -
The great continent Lisaria spread out below them. One major continent stretching across both horizons.
Drew was still reeling from his experience with the quorum and itching to view his status card to study the new abilities he had received. The extreme height and lack of floor was not healing him calm down.
How many stat points did I get anyways? Agusta said that 1000 was good. Did I even get 200? And that psycho elf has a good point, but he’s got to be wrong. There has to be a way to level without massacring the ecosystem.
Drew hovered closer to where the wisp and Agusta were pouring over some screens that hovered in the air.
That wisp has my stat card, when do I get a look at it?
The small wisp snapped its ghostly tendril at him to get his attention.
“I won’t repeat myself again, Ressian.” It said.
The wisp had been there when Agusta and Drew materialized out of the beam of green light high above Lisaria. It was clearly a history fanatic, because it had been going into extreme detail on the political relationships between the 5 Kingdoms below them.
“Sorry, I was listening.” Drew said quickly, recalling what had just been said.
“There was a demon lord from the southern desert kingdom Solakim. Apparently there were a ton of ancient cities buried in the sands, many of them holding the secrets to dark magic. It had been 350 years since the last demon lord was defeated and scholars don’t expect another one for at least 700 years. Did I miss anything?” Drew recited rapidly.
“Borealis, thank you for that brief history.” Agusta interjected.
“Drew, what you need to know is that there are 5 kingdoms that are generally at peace right now. Eesayum is that heavily forested area just above the heart of the continent, if you want to be an elf wielding magic then we can start there. Rodokk is the kingdom in the northern Mountains, if you want to be a dwarf and live underground then we can get you started up there.” Agusta was interrupted in her quick summary by the wisp Borealis.
“The elves of Eesayum and the Dwarves of Rodokk were at war for thousands of years!” Borealis blurted out. “It’s not uncommon to see a dwarf or elf dueling in the streets when the weather is warm.”
“Thank you Borealis,” Agusta said with an exasperated look before continuing.
“Ressellia is the kingdom of rolling grasslands and is home to most of the Ressians in Lisaria. You will recognize them as human. They tend to be merchants and soldiers, there are also scholarly magic societies and adventuring guilds.”
“Solakim is a giant desert full of nomadic tribes and you shouldn’t start there. And lastly, Callapeia is the seaside kingdom, they are all pirates of any race, including the dark ones, and their kingdom doesn’t have a king, it has a few barons. They govern their own Islands.” Agusta looked down at a prompt on her tablet.
“The pirates of Callapeia elect the strongest baron as their king. King Platheus died at sea last year and they will remain Kingless until the next challenge can take place.” Borealis raced through the explanation without taking a breath.
“Borealis will be helping us quickly select a starting kingdom, region and city for you.” Agusta turned to look directly at the wisp. “With relevant facts only when absolutely necessary, please.”
- 11 -
Borealis pulled up a large screen that showed a list of nations and their capitals. He used several filters to bring up a comprehensive list of all the races available by location. Agusta quickly changed a bunch of the filters and the list narrowed down to about a hundred cities.
“Okay Andrew Bonsen, what race would you like to be? Elf, Dwarf, Ressian? Or you could be a gnome, or some of the lesser ‘sentient’ races like merfolk or beastkin. Once you decide, we can select a few starting cities to look at.” He made little ghostly air quotes when he said sentient.
“Oh call me Drew. And I hadn’t thought about that.” He said.
“I can change your name easily, one moment.” Borealis said.
Drew turned to Agusta and she flicked her eyes up from her screen.
“Couldn’t I be a human anywhere?” Drew asked.
The wisp made a couple selections on the screen and simple as that, Drew’s name was ‘Drew’.
“Now, yes you could start anywhere but it might cost more of your creation points. Borealis, can you pull up Drew’s character panel?” She said.
Agusta looked down at her tablet and made a couple notes.
“We will be looking for planned births for the race you choose. Each pregnancy is sorted by the race of the parents and then we identify if there is a new soul for the birth already. If that family is the one you pick then we will swap out your soul for the one assigned to them and you get born instead.” Borealis said.
“Oh, that seems…complicated. Can’t I just start as an adult somewhere? I don’t want to steal someone else’s life right?”
Drew watched the wisp set up a human shaped avatar with features similar to Drew’s, and nearly all of his available points went towards the race’s base traits. The wisp was going into the settings and sliders to make the generic human body and face look like Drew.
“It’s not really feasible to create a brand new body from scratch.” The Wisp replied. “And you didn’t bring one with you for recycling. It’s too expensive, and would get you into weird situations in your starting town.”
“Why would that cause problems don’t people travel to new cities.” Drew asked.
“For one, everyone would be very suspicious of you, being an adult at level 0.” Borealis said.
Agusta looked up from her device. “And you wouldn’t have any points left to boost your stats or customize your skills. You would be a generic blank guy, or gal, that just popped up out of nowhere. They’d think you were some kind of illusion, or something worse.” Agusta looked to the wisp apologetically. “No offense.”
Borealis shrugged it off. “My race has a bad reputation as tricksters. People are always saying we steal babies.”
Drew stared silently at the wisp.
“What?”
“Do you steal babies?” Drew couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“No, we just borrow them. If they escape then we bring them back.” Borealis turned the two windows towards Drew and Agusta.
“Something is going on here. It won’t let him pre-select Ressian. Who is this guy?” Borealis asked.
“He’s getting reincarnated, he was not Ressian before, he was human.” Agusta said tersely.
“Well then he won’t be inheriting his base stats and traits along with the Ressian race.” Borealis said.“
“Just buy them with his points.” Agusta said. “He needs to make it to Rank 1 and start doing favors for the Mage and Crafter.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“So are we choosing Ressian then? Even without the customized features. The only reason he can even afford it is because of the seasonal discount.” He said.
Seasonal discount? How many points am I spending to get a discount human model?
“What seasonal discount?” Drew asked.
“They just had their springtime fertility festival so there are tons of babies to choose from but they are all from wealthy families so it will cost you a lot of points.” Borealis said.
The wisp scrolled through a list of babies and locations that were all highlighted in red.
“Actually you don’t have enough points for any of these wealthy families.” Borealis said.
“Well wait, let's just wait a moment,” Drew said, pushing the screens away trying to get some space. “What if I don’t want to replace some kid’s soul? It just doesn’t seem right.”
Agusta gave him a sad look and Borealis threw its little spectral jelly hands up in the air.
“You don’t need to worry, Ressian. This is how we do things all the time. The other soul isn’t awake yet and won’t even know they got recycled.” Borealis said quickly
Agusta grimaced.
“Yeah. See I knew it! I’m not recycling some new soul back into lemonade so I can get wealthy parents. Thank you for the truth Borealis, Agusta let’s look at other options.”
“What’s lemonade?”
- 12 -
Agusta moved the screen closer for Drew to see.
“Okay Borealis, reset the creation everything. Lets take it from the top. Your situation is not ideal. You got 5, 10, 11, and 200 points from the Quorum. That is a measly 226 points.” She said.
“I’m looking into it but Valerius seems to have some leverage over the other representatives. He played his cards to force you to have a harder start.” She said.
“You won't get to choose the offering of nobility or master crafters, you can't afford to inherit their traits and blessings by default.” Borealis said.
“What I’m saying is you are not going to be able to join a family line with high base stats or strong traits.” Agusta said.
“He can’t afford to be anybody with these points. I could look for orphans and feral children and we might be able to make some cuts to their stats.” He said.
“No no no. I’m not killing orphans. There’s got to be something I can do with my points.” Drew said.
I’ll have to do this on my own.
“Any points that you use for selecting your race and starting stats are subtracted from your total. Then once you get to rank one you can spend the remaining points to buy attribute points or upgrade skills.” Said the wisp.
Yeah this is getting really complicated.
Borealis popped up between the screens to remove a few of the settings Agusta had loaded, revealing a few other racial options.
“Some races, like goblins, rank up sooner than others and also cost less points at creation. There’s actually strategies for selecting a cheaper race, and then using the remaining points to become uniquely powerful at Rank one.” The wisp said.
“Wait, goblin is a selectable race? Aren’t they monsters?” Drew asked.
“Well technically they are not monsters.” Borealis replied. “But they are considered a dark race and have the negative racial trait Feral from when they joined the demon lord’s army.”
“What that means is they act like monsters unless they are part of a tribe that paid the points to remove the racial trait.” Agusta said.
“Umm actually, the concept of race is misleading. All creatures have a race, and have racial traits. We get the social construct of ‘Race’ from the ancient elvish definition.” Borealis said.
Drew turned excitedly to his creation screen.
Agusta typed something out on her tablet quickly and Borealis drifted closer to her screen to take a peek.
“Okay so what is the full list of available races? Let’s find one that’s cheap but has cool benefits. And I could save my points for rank 1. I wouldn’t mind being some rare type of flying humanoid beast with cool magic powers.”
Borealis opened up a long list of names, the wisp scrolled through them so fast that Drew did not get a chance to recognize any of them.
“Again, all beasts could become sentient, and many individual monsters do achieve higher intelligence at their highest ranks.” Borealis said.
“The demon lord’s Feral trait is very expensive to remove, you couldn’t afford it in your lifetime. So let's remove those races from the list.”
Half of the races dropped off the list.
“And if we consider how few points you have there are many races that would be too expensive for you to upgrade on your own. Most fish for example wouldn't be intelligent or organized enough to assist you.”
Nearly all of the remaining races dropped off the list.
“These 10 races would be cost effective enough for you to start out and still be intelligent.”
“Wait I could end up stupid? No way. I need to be at least as smart as a human.” Drew said.
Agusta looked through the list. “There aren’t that many appealing options here. Which ones are the closest to human intelligence levels?”
An image came up on the screen. It was a fat juicy slug, the color of a ripe banana with leopard spots. With three eyes, two short horns on its forehead like a rhinoceros, and rows of teeth like a shark.
“The closest would be these two. The glurmak are a race of cave invertebrates underneath the northern mountains that would need their base intelligence raised by 5 points to qualify for Sentience, and their charisma raised by 200. But that might prove difficult since all of your fellow glurmak are going to be super aggressive.”
Drew paled at the thought of being a slug surrounded by other extremely aggressive slugs.
“And the Dwarves consider them a delicacy so they are hunted during their major holidays.” Borealis said.
“Let’s see the next one.” Drew said.
The image changed to a sleek black bird with a hooked beak, intelligent eyes, and a metallic sheen to its feathers.
It’s like those cars you would see downtown that change color as they pass you.
“The other option is the skurr. They are known as gallow birds all over Lisaria. They are organized, have social and communication skills and are generally not considered edible due to their reputation for eating corpses.” Borealis could read the look on Drew’s face.
These look just like the crows on earth. If Batman redesigned them.
“But they are omnivorous, and eat most anything, they are unique in that they are immune to the Undead curse that other races get from consuming cursed corpse meat.”
Am I going to be eating corpses?
“Furthermore, as a race, they only need 120 more points to qualify for Sentience. With their high base intelligence it would take all of your points to get things started. You could spend those last points elsewhere, like constitution or strength.” Borealis paused his gatling gun monologue to look at Drew who was almost completely lost at this point.
“Can they use tools like crows?” Drew asked.
Borealis looked to Agusta for confirmation. “Crows are birds from earth, they actually are remarkably similar, only much smaller and more docile.”
“Ground birds? These birds fly and roost in trees and on rooftops.” Borealis said. “They are ingenious and learn to do all sorts of things, causing mischief for the other sentient races.”
Andalla gave the wisp a hurry up hand gesture and he continued on topic.
“They aren’t evil right?” Drew asked.
“Actually there aren’t any evil races. That’s another concept sentient races get from ancient elvish sentimentalities. Individuals of any of the races can do evil things.”
Agusta jumped in. “Are you really considering this Drew? It would mean a lot of paperwork for me, and it would take several years before any of these birds would be smart enough to help you.” Agusta said.
“Once you are there, you would be the smartest Skurr around due to your base stats.” Borealis said. “You should be able to get the other Skurr to start helping out by contributing their points towards the race upgrade in time for the paperwork to be done.” Honestly this is bad ass. Skurr look like someone had mixed an eagle with a crow. I can work with that, striking the fear of the gallows into criminals as a giant Crow.
“Let's do it.” Drew said as he selected Skurr as his starting race.
“Ok, I’ll get those 12 Intelligence points and 10 constitution points for you so you don’t die from the first thing that hits you. After the costs of your race, and base stat modifications you’ve still got 3 points left to spend at Rank 1.” Borealis quickly made the selections on Drew’s character creation sheet.
“Do you want to be the normal black? We could make you another color, like blue or red if you trade in some of these leftover points.” The wisp suggested.
“No, I think black is a great color.” Drew was thinking back to the crows he saw a lifetime ago.
What is it going to be like being part of the flock?
“Great, let's go find you a starting town.”