The world is a magical and wonderful place. Humans are a species that can achieve a lot if we are persistent. This world is truly amazing, as it is vast, interconnected, and quite beautiful. We probably take for granted how great our world is. Maybe somewhere out there is a place that doesn’t have the great luxuries that we think of as simple little things. No one there can afford a house, there is no money, they can’t afford to waste time to bath, they can’t enjoy playing with animal companions like dogs, cats, or griffons. They can’t go off and explore the world with the help of a team of adventurers or use a simple spell to prepare dinner.
...What? Did you think I was talking about your world? That’s just ridiculous, your world sucks anyways.
As I was saying, there is a world far from yours that is very special. It is filled with many different types of beasts that could probably kill you in many different ways. However, it’s not like humanity was defenseless. Everyone had a level, with “stats” that come along with it. These stats tell the individual how good they are compared to other people, providing a clear metric to compare things like strength, durability, dexterity, etc. By killing the monsters, they could earn exp. which, if they collected enough of, can raise their levels. Leveling up allows one to increase their stats, which helped humanity survive against these beasts that tormented them.
For the longest time, levels seemed to be nothing more than a number, and leveling up was just a way to get better stats. That was changed when a guy named Adam was the first to reach level 100. At that moment, he started glowing and floating up into the sky. As it turned out, getting to level 100 allows you to “rank up” and become God. Well, not God himself, but a god that has power over an aspect of the world. The laws of reality didn’t apply to you anymore, for as a god you could practically do anything you wanted.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
When people learned of this they tried to follow in Adam’s footsteps, only to run into some issues. The amount of experience needed to go from one level to the next increased exponentially with each level up, as the experience needed to go from level 10 to level 11 was twice that needed to get past level 9. The monsters, while threatening at first, were a bit too weak to help most people ascend. Sure they could just keep grinding for days until it worked out, but you had to have an incredible dedication or be talented at exp. farming to get there before you die of simple old age. It was survival of the fittest or most patient I guess, and instead of survival, it’s a rank up. So it was the rank up of the most patient, and only a select number were patient enough to make it up.
Humanity, fearing the power of these gods, decided to worship them and offer them various gifts. The gods responded in kind, creating magic, providing divine protection, and creating various healing items. And now, life here is relatively peaceful. Many people’s lives had mellowed out and the place just became your average fantasy world. Some people still become gods, and many still fail, but compared to when they first came, it’s no big deal now.
It has been many millennia since Adam became the first god, and a young man of 17 has big dreams for his future.