Nick spent years working on the newest full dive MMORPG game along with a team of 50 other people. In fact, the technology is so new that this game will be the first of its kind. His main job was working on the randomly generated and designed NPCs. For the first time in history, players would be able to actually move, smell, taste, and feel stuff in a game as if it were their own bodies.
As a bonus, so each employee could put a piece of their own ideas into the game each employee got the chance to add something to the game that would make history. Some made small simple yet hard and hidden dungeons. Other’s make unique items that would be very hard to find.
As for Nick he planned and spent months of his own time designing the best loli type NPC he could that would be an overpowered gem. Although not so OP as to break the game but as powerful as the game mechanics would allow him to. Most of that time was designing every detail of the NPC’s body and all of her clothes and possible armor that will have different unique skins when worn on her. Some will just be different in color while others will be completely different.
Another difference is this game follows the usual trope that demi-human beast-kin are better in body type stats but can hardly use if at all use magic. But cute catgirls are his favorite and so are magical girls so he decided to combine the two provided someone is lucky enough to get her as a companion and she doesn’t die off too early.
This game is as realistic as possible and the world changes along with the millions of players’ choices. But as it’s a game they can’t make it too realistic where NPCs don’t respawn at all. So the main dev team and higher-ups decided that if an NPC is killed they will respawn in a week’s time. If it’s a shopkeeping NPC then well players are just shit out of luck till it respawns. As for companion NPCs, so players won’t abuse them and actually be more careful not to put them in life-threatening positions, they respawn after a month’s time along with level resetting back to default and deposition being reduced by half.
Nick sighed with satisfaction as he finally finished looking at his creation he put so much time, effort, and love into. Wearing his developer’s full dive helmet is a naked 12-year-old catgirl with humanoid paws, cyan tail, and cyan waist-long hair, violet-colored eyes, and two pointed cat ears on top of her head. Every so often her stance would change into different positions and at times her ears would twitch and her tail would move from side to side.
He then scrolled through all the clothes till he found her starting clothes. He felt guilty having to put them on her but he didn’t want just anyone to be able to easily get his best creation as a companion. Also, it wouldn’t match her backstory if she were in clean and new-looking clothes.
First was the dirty and torn shirt that had a large hole showing her belly button and half her stomach on one side along with some other rips on the back and sleeves. Her pants also looked just as warn and ragged where one side was loose and somewhat shredded near her ankle and the other side missing an entire section just an inch above her kneecap. Because she was wearing the clothes of someone who is poor and lives in the slums, the avatar auto-updated to show her hair in a mess. Despite how dirty she looked she still looked so adorable and cute while holding her smile and eyes full of hope while Nick added the basket of flowers she held in front of her that she would try to sell to players.
After being satisfied with his creation he then opened the NPC status menu and started filling out all the needed information before sending it off to get approved. With the virtual keyboard that popped up, he started typing away.
Name: Tina (Hidden unless revealed/introduced. Otherwise first title is shown.)
Age: 12
Race: Neko
Titles: Flower Girl, Orphan, Demi-human Mage(Hidden/Locked)
Jobs: Flower girl, Elemental Mage(Hidden/locked), Secret/hidden Questgiver(Title hidden from appraisals by the system, needed for quest system to work and easy quest editing by devs.)
Level: 5
Health: 50 Stamina: 80 Mana: 500
Strength: 6
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Constitution: 5
Dexterity: 8
Intelligence: 25
Perception: 14
Charisma: 20
Skills: Florist, Herbology, Climbing, Claw Slash(Racial talent)
Spells: Firebolt, Airblade, Waterblade, Mud Bullet, Electric Shock,
Creator Notes/Backstory: Tina’s parents escaped with her to the kingdom of Rhapsody to get away from the racial war that the kingdom of Rogalla started and decided to try and enslave all other races. On their way to the bordering town of Rhapsody, Tina’s parents were attacked and killed by bandits who attacked the caravan. Tina spent the next four years picking flowers to sell so she could buy scraps of food and sleeps in a small shack in the slums. Despite her hardships, she always seems to have hope and smiles.
If a player manages to befriend her complete her hidden questline they will be lucky enough to have one of the strongest glass cannon mages in the game if they take care of her and help her level up properly. Of course, it won’t be so easy as just finishing a few quests like 90% of other companion NPCs. Besides having to complete her hidden storyline quest, the player has to have the means to adopt her as well so she can have a home to stay in. Her magic won’t be unlocked till the last mission on her hidden storyline quest.
Just as he finished and hit the save and send button warning alarms started blaring with numerous warning pop-ups filling his eyesight before everything went dark. Because the electrical surge that hit the helmet was so strong the failsafe device blew. Not that it would have mattered as he would have still been wearing the helmet even if he was forcefully logged out.
The next thing he saw when he woke up was a horse standing above him bending over licking his face as he was laying down on the hay. He quickly pushed the horse’s head away and stood up while complaining, “Stop licking me… Wait where am I?... Why is my voice so different?... This has to be some weird dream right?” It didn’t take long for Nick to realize he had a tail, cat ears, smaller hands, shorter body, and all the above realizing he was in the avatar of his best creation to date.
“So does this mean I’m Tina now? No this has to be a dream. Tina is an NPC and the game is still a week away before even being released. The last thing I remember is a bunch of system errors and blacking out… but this feels too real to be a game. Maybe I’m in a coma and my mind has gone crazy from too much dedication and excitement on working on this new game?...” Tina stopped mumbling as she started seeing multiple windows popping up in her face. She fell on her butt as she got dizzy as in one of her eyes was one window while in her other eye was a completely different window.
In her right eye:
Welcome to Tales of Destiny and Magic online
Loading…
(Tip: While in-game you can check and use the game forums.)
…
Loading complete
Checking player’s status…
Error…
Unable to find cause of error forcing player logout…
Unable to find login source…
Checking for viruses…
Virus not found…
Cause of error found…
Mistaken NPC for a player looking for salutations…
Solution found, Adding limited player mechanics to NPC Tina…
In her left eye:
Loading NPC Tina’s status…
Loading NPC quests…
Warning/error system trying to force the logout of NPC…
Searching for Hacker IP, checking for viruses…
Viruses not found…
Cause of error found…
Solution found, Adding limited player mechanics to NPC Tina…
“WHAT IN THE HELL!?!?!”, Tina screamed out startling the horse as she was getting even more confused.
***
Meanwhile, all the devs and officials were having a meeting about the system error report from just starting up the game servers just hours before release. The server’s main ai along with all the NPC AI’s were surprising having no errors with the exception of a few minor ones that the main AI was able to fix. The only major error was with Nick’s created NPC Tina but they concluded that the main system ai took the right call to fix the error and none of the people felt right of having to mess with any of Tina’s coding unless something major happened that would cause the game servers to crash considering Nick died on the job.
First was the case that an NPC wasn’t programmed to use the player functions in the first place. Even if they could it wouldn’t be able to do much outside of its programming. Secondly, they didn’t realize that because of the surge that caused his death that his mind would be sent along and overwrite and take over an NPC.