When Aurus reappeared, he expectedly felt extremely nauseous. He took a few minutes to catch his breath before looking around the room, “The same style I guess” he noted when he saw that he was in a white room again.
The only things within the room were four pedestals holding items and four doors, one behind each pedestal.
The first pedestal held a simple wooden wand. The woodwork was extremely crude and some cracks covered the wand, making it seem like it could break apart at any moment.
Atop of the second pedestal was a staff. It was two meters long and was in a similar state compared to the wand. It seemed to be made out of a long tree branch and had a cracked white crystal at the top. The third pedestal held an orb. It was yellow and even though it seemed to be in a slightly better shape compared to the crystal atop of the staff, cracks still reached very far into the object. As for the final pedestal, it was empty entirely, not having anything atop of it.
When Aurus managed to have a good look at each of them, a translucent game screen appeared in front of him “Hello player! You will be brought into five different rooms giving you a variety of choices. We will not give any direction as to what criteria you should use to answer. This test will be used to give us a rough estimate of your personality and style allowing us to set up the most optimal tutorials for you. Good luck!”
Unlike Gaia and the other lady Aurus saw earlier, the system wasn’t something he could talk to or ask questions. He made sure to read the text it gave multiple times to make sure he didn’t miss anything before finally quitting out of it and sitting down for a moment, thinking.
The beta testers never mentioned anything that happened thus far. In their cases, they just had to enter one of the four basic classes and then they would be transported to the main game. Everyone already knew the beta testers were heavily restricted, after all they were restricted to a certain region within the game, but to think there were such long tutorials involved was a surprise.
He looked at the five options given before him and after thinking for a bit, he made some movements with his hand causing the game forum to appear in front of him. As expected, the front posts had changed entirely, now actually discussing players’ experiences since the game launched.
The first three posts were surprisingly negative, each of them talked about extreme nausea causing them to have been unwell for the entirety of the game thus far. Apparently, some people have had to puke constantly thus far, having been unable to get anything done at all.
The fourth post was full of praise though, it talked about Gaia, the first NPC that appeared in the game, a lot of people talked about how pretty she was and how realistic she seemed. There were a few racists who spoiled the positive mood of the post but they quickly got banned from the forum and subsequently, the game.
There were also some posts talking about the talents as well, it was here that Aurus realized how freakishly his choice had been. The talent points were only given to the mages but luckily, the mages were some of those more active on the forum thus far. They sent some pictures you could take using the forum and showed the choices they had. On average, a person had about twenty choices in total. Ten of which were super common, five common, three uncommon, and two rare. There was currently one person that revealed he had a super rare talent available. It was called ‘Extreme Fisherman’ though and since it cost a hundred points he didn’t go for it.
Having had three super rare talents available, all of which sounded useful and cost fifty points or less and an ultra-rare one that seemed even more useful, Aurus was extremely satisfied. He wondered whether it was because of his random ‘corroded soul’ event or if he simply got lucky there. Seeing as how there were no concrete posts on the choice rooms yet, Aurus backed out of the forum and decided to just go ahead and make his choices.
The system message of earlier didn’t really reveal anything. It didn’t discourage or encourage people to overthink or anything of the like.
Aurus immediately decided to ignore the staff and the crystal ball. The staff was hard to carry around and would weigh him down, causing movements to be difficult, the crystal ball seemed very fragile since it was entirely made out of a material that seemed like glass and was close to shattering, it didn’t seem like a good option. This left the wand and the empty pedestal.
As Aurus was thinking though, a second system notification popped up “P.S. thinking out loud is heavily suggested and encouraged.”
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Aurus clicked out of it as he smiled slightly, It made sense the game wanted you to speak your mind if it was a way to decide what you’d like and your personality.
So, the crystal ball is too fragile, the staff is too large leaving behind only the wand and empty pedestal. The empty one either means you wish to perform magic without tools or you’re a perfectionist who doesn’t want to use shabby tools.” Aurus thought out loud before thinking of something.
“Now, I would like to be able to use magic wandless but then again if a wand simply empowers it, I see no reason not to take it with me, additionally, even if it looks shabby, the material may be expensive and sellable… same goes with the crystal ball really.
After saying this, Aurus quickly went ahead and grabbed the wand, when he did he suddenly realized he was wearing a shabby robe “Huh, was this here before? Nevermind that.” Aurus mumbled as he put the wand inside of one of the four inner pockets the shabby robe had.
After this, he didn’t go through the door but went towards the staff instead, he grabbed it, sneakily took a look around because he knew what he was doing was sketchy, and snapped it in half near the top. A loud sizzle sounded out but Aurus ignored it as most of the staff fell to the ground, leaving only the crystal and the bit of wood around it. If he could, Aurus would’ve pried off the wood as well but he was afraid to destroy the crystal which he assumed held the magical power and could be sold.
After this, he went over to the yellow orb, it was too big to go into the inner pockets so Aurus thought for a moment, he then thought of something and grabbed the orb, putting it into the empty hood of the robe he was wearing. Since he wasn’t wearing the hood, he may as well use it as storage!
Seeing that all that was left was most of the stick that once formed a staff, Aurus nodded contently and went through the door behind the pedestal that didn’t hold anything.
When he got to the second room another system notification popped up “Player ‘Aurus’ selected method 347 causing great progress to the selection of the second tutorial.”
Aurus clicked out of it before looking at the new room he was in. This one only had two pedestals. The left pedestal had a knife on top and the right one had a pen.
“Hmm, it seems this time an actual choice is required. The door I go through should be pretty important.” Aurus said, thinking out loud as the system had requested. “I would like to take the knife since it may take a little bit to learn magic but I’m not sure what kind of pen this is. If it’s a normal pen, I’d go through the knife door without question but if it’s some sort of enchanting pen, that may be the door for me.”
As Aurus finished his monologue, he picked up the pen and studied it. It looked like a normal pen, there wasn’t a surface nearby he could test it on though. He ended up putting the pen in the same pocket the wand was in, filling it up. He then grabbed the knife, storing it into the one-to-last pocket before finally moving through the knife door.
“Player ‘Aurus’ selected path 97, progressing the selection of tutorial 1 and 2.”
Ignoring this message, Aurus looked at the choices the third room gave. Once more, there were only two pedestals. To the left was a black bow tie without any patterns on it. To the right was a bright red tie with small black dots on it.
“Hmm, what odd choices,” Aurus said, stroking his chin “I don’t exactly like either of them, I never wore a bow tie and I’m not wearing a suit so a tie seems ill-fitting” he finished, not giving the options too much thought, he ended up going through the door behind the bow tie without actually taking the object this time.
“Player ‘Aurus’ selected path 15, progressing the selection of tutorial 2.”
Now within the one-to-last room, Aurus once more ignored the system message as he looked at the three options presented. To the left was a painting of a white rabbit. It was extremely pretty, the rabbit seemed soft and cuddly while the background showed a vibrant forest.
The second painting was abstract, it had a black background and lines of various sizes and colors around it. Aurus didn’t quite get this kind of art so he ignored it.
The third painting was of a bloody battlefield. Mages with staffs in hand could be seen walking over the bodies of fallen warriors, they seemed rather powerful.
“I don’t care about the second artwork. The first is pretty but doesn’t matter much to me. The third one shows a battle scene, it probably talks about a certain battle fought where mages saved the day in some way. It also shows battlemages using staffs, making me think it may be the most popular or powerful tool for them.” Having said this, Aurus took out his knife and cut out each painting rolling them up and putting them in his last pocket. He also vocally mentioned the first two were for sale while he may hang the third one in his room. Finally, he also went through the third door since he preferred the artwork over the others.
“Player ‘Aurus’ selected path 168, progressing the selection of tutorial 1 and 2.”
Entering the final room, Aurus ignored the system notification as he looked at the choices presented for a final time.
“Ah!” Aurus exclaimed, surprised by the lack of pedestals. There were two doors, one on each side of the room. Next to each of them was a window. The window to the left looked out onto the clouds while the one on the right looked out onto the sea.
Seeing this, Aurus’s heart began beating quicker. “This… is this a choice between a sky-city and an underwater one?” he wondered, trying to think of what this one could be about.
“Urgh, how can I know which is rarer, or has better things? Screw it, I’ll just go to sea.” he finally decided as he promptly walked through the door next to the window that looked out onto the sea.