Chapter 3: Building Character

“Okay. So, this is the start of my new life?”

Once again, Diegi has awakened in a new room. Since it’s the second time in a single day, he skips the whole mental-breakdown stage and simply inspects his surroundings. It looks like he’s finally been properly incarnated into the world of his favorite MMORPG MYTH Infinite Fantasy. As a superfan, he’s somewhat excited to experience it in real life. Still, given that he was pretty much trapped and forced to do so, it doesn’t feel like anything to celebrate about.

“Well, it’s fine. I’ll learn Automod’s little life lessons, and I’ll abide by the rules, and eventually I’ll get out of this new world. Let’s play MYTH, but not as a troll— this time, as an ordinary guy.”

With that said, he begins to properly process external information. He’s no longer in an infinite blue void. Now, he’s in a hut. The walls, floor, ceiling, and floor are all made of damp wood, and the most notable features are the bookshelves lined with what looks like hundreds of old weathered books. The chair he’s sitting on is a rocking chair, also made of wood. It’s a rather strange looking hut, all things considered. Still, Diegi recognizes it- the infamous Starter’s Hut.

“Heh, this again. Seen it too many times to count— the birthplace of so many new accounts once my old ones got banned.”

Instead of having character creation take place in a two-dimensional blank screen, MYTH Infinite Fantasy decided to let the player walk around a physical space as they determine their starting build. Already, a variety of menu screens are popping up around the hut. It looks like Diegi will have to get up and walk around to interact with them all, so that’s exactly what he does. He mumbles to himself as he begins to walk:

“Man, this place looks even more impressive when I see it with my own eyes. I mean, the graphics in MYTH are cutting-edge, but I was using a monitor instead of VR so I couldn’t really appreciate it.”

Though, Diegi is pretty damn sure that the level of realism and detail he’s taking in with his vision dwarfs even the VR and Full-Dive methods of playing.

As Diegi inspects the menus from closer up, he can see that they’re just holographic floating rectangles. They seem to be entirely two-dimensional and just hang there, suspended in the air, glowing blue and displaying text. A couple of them have floating keyboard panels nearby as well, presumably so he can type in information.

[

-Overview-

Name: ENTER

Species: ENTER

Class: ENTER

Job: NONE

Level: 0

-Attributes-

Strength: 0

Agility: 0

Toughness: 0

Dexterity: 0

Wisdom: 0

Charisma: 0

-Stats-

Max Health: 10

Max Mana: 10

Max Stamina: 10

-Skills-

None

-Spells-

None

]

Damn, this avatar sucks. Is this what the default is programmed to be like before players go through character creation and make their starter builds?

While interesting to look at, the prospect of having no talent in anything whatsoever is not one Diegi relishes, so he quickly begins to look through the character creation menus.

The character builder in MYTH is vast, consisting of well over ten screens. Now that he’s in a physical space and not looking in from a computer screen, Diegi can’t even see all the menus at once from his current vantage point. Having to economize somehow, he focuses on the four screens that are the closest to him: Overview, Attributes, Stats, and Skills.

First, the overview. He has to choose his name, species, and class. From what he remembers, jobs can only be taken after completing the tutorial— and, yes, it’s just as he expected.

“Well, I usually played jobless anyway. Not really a problem.”

Turning to the other three overview criteria, he fills out the name slot with his gamertag, Trolegi. But, before he hits confirm, he stops to think about his choice.

“Wait— Automod said that I’m going to be living in the game, right? Maybe I should choose an actual name then? Or, wait— maybe choosing a stupid name’ll piss it off! Yeah, that’ll show it!”

No, wait… that’ll do more harm than good for me though. Yeah, gotta get my priorities in order.

“But… I don’t want people to go around calling me by my gamertag all the time. Kinda awkward.”

Diegi deletes what he’d previously entered in the name slot and replaces it with the full name “Diegi Trolegi” as a sort of compromise. His real last name is Martinez, but he figures that no one but his teachers ever calls him that anyways.

“And now, to choose my species… it seems to be defaulting to Human right now.”

Diegi takes a brief look down at his body and confirms that he is indeed in the same familiar body he knows and loves. He then looks back up and surveys the options.

“This’ll decide how my auto-placed Attributes and Stats grow, right? And affect what kinds of attacks I can learn, too. Better choose well— wait, aren't there a few missing?”

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MYTH is pretty well known for having a lot of playable species, but it seems like his choices have been limited to the most humanoid ones. Human, Orc, Elf, Giant, Dwarf, a couple others, and— fittingly— Troll. Still a good amount, but nowhere near the usual grand total of 21 playable species.

I guess it makes sense— who knows if I would be able to adapt to life as an Arachnikin. They get 6 more arms to work with! Ugh… how do VR players even handle that?

“Oh, but wait! I wonder what happens if I try some other species for a sec…”

Curious, Diegi briefly hovers his finger over the “Troll” button, to find that his body suddenly feels much heavier. Looking down at himself, he finds his normally smooth light-brown skin replaced by a warty green texture. His limbs are thicker, his belly is larger, and he feels like he’s lost a few inches. On the plus side, he also feels a rush of invigorating power flow through his limbs.

“Whoa. So this is what it’s like to be an actual troll, huh? I feel super strong, but slow… maybe I could fix some of that in the rest of character creation, but nah. Nope, the troll life is not for me.”

He moves his finger back to the “Human” button and pushes it against the floating panel to confirm his choice. While it isn’t necessarily the optimal class for stat and attribute growth, he doesn’t want to deal with the feelings of any unfamiliar bodies.

“Now to choose my starter class and get some useful skills. Ugh… feels like it’s been a while and I’m only like 2% done with this entire process. Why couldn’t stupid Automod just set me up with my current account’s build?”

“AAAH!!”

Upon hearing the abrupt return of the disembodied voice— Automoderator’s, to be exact— Diegi jumps and begins running in small circles, flapping his arms like a chicken trying to achieve liftoff.

“G- get away! Bawk bawk bawk!”

Diegi, still keeping up the frightened-chicken act, begins hopping up and down as he sprints as fast as he can towards the door of the hut.

“Bawk bawk!”

Ignoring how Automod’s pleas grow from stern to panicked, Diegi bursts through the Starter Hut’s rotten wooden door into the great outdoors. As soon as he runs out, all the floating panels in the hut begin to pixelate, becoming garbled jumbles of their original selves. Instead of disappearing entirely like they’re supposed to after the player finishes creating their avatar, they keep hanging in the air, seemingly broken.

The frustrated voice of Automoderator rings throughout the hut one last time, before his presence simply vanishes and the echoes are abruptly cut off.

----------------------------------------

#

“Haahhh, hahhhhh…”

Standing on a rough dirt path in the middle of a lush green plain, Diegi breathes heavily with his hands on his knees. The sun beams down on his tilted back— it’s almost midday. Thanks to his pure adrenaline, he’s put a decent distance between himself and the Starter’s Hut, but now he’s entirely tuckered out.

“Man, I’m beat. I thought I was a pretty good runner… maybe I’m out of shape? Hahhh… At least that voice hasn’t bothered me since I escaped the Starter’s Hut.”

Maybe that Automod thing can only speak like that in game-regulated spaces like the Hut? If that’s the case, never going back there for sure.

After catching his breath for a few more minutes, Diegi stands up and claps his hands together.

“I know where I am. I started as a human, so my Starter’s Hut is located in… the Paxdom Fields, right? In that case…”

Even when in a panic, all the knowledge of MYTH Infinite Fantasy’s open world hasn’t left Diegi’s mind. Every time he’d had to start a new account and chose Human as his species, the tutorial had led him upon this very path. As a result, he’d semi-consciously chosen to run along the “tutorial path” that led from the Starter’s Hut to the first Human major city, Paxdom.

“I guess Paxdom’s as good a place to start my new life as any… might as well keep walking there.”

Resigning himself to his fate, Diegi continues to walk towards Paxdom. The journey didn’t take that long in-game, but unlike when Diegi had simply been controlling an avatar through a screen, he had his physical health and well-being to worry about. No more running the entire way without getting tired. If only he was playing MYTH behind a computer, he could use exploits to expedite the process even without running— but he feels like using glitches to speed up his journey might be risky in this physical form. Besides, he wants to at least try and listen to Automod’s ranted instructions about changing his ways… maybe the AI would throw him a bone and let him out of the game early.

Diegi surveys the landscape as he walks. It’s a never ending view of green leafy shrubs and white swaying trees with golden leaves and yellow fruit. Every so often, a tutorial prompt would pop up in the form of a blue game notification screen— [ Pick up this stick! ], [ Jump over this rock! ], [ Take the money from this chest! ], etc— and Diegi would complete them with ease.

“I guess it’s a lot easier to learn the controls when the controls are… performing basic human movements…”

It’s not like Diegi had a choice on where to go, given that the tutorial herds players in one specific direction, but he was quickly getting bored with his current surroundings. The Paxdom Fields that surrounded their titular city were known for being one of the most boring locations in MYTH’s entire map. As the name suggested, they were almost entirely peaceful and filled with low-level mobs. The only ones that were even passingly notable were the giant orange man-eater bananas, but those didn’t move and you could see them from a mile away.

Oh, there was also that one easter egg quest… but Diegi shakes his head and laughs at himself for even considering it. There’d be no point in trying it at level 0.

“No people anywhere… Well, I guess in the original MYTH you don’t get to see other players online until you reach Paxdom and beat the tutorial. But still, not even a single NPC?”

The uneventful walk continues for a while, until a certain important circumstance becomes too pressing for Diegi to ignore.

“I’m so fuckin’ hungry.”

Even when he’d been in the real world, the night before he was summoned, Diegi had skipped dinner so he could play more MYTH. Yes, he was addicted.

“The fruit on those trees is looking real nice right now… I’ve never stopped to get any in-game, but it might not be a bad idea today!”

Stepping off of the path, Diegi spots one of the white trees not too far away. Tantalizing fruit hangs from its branches— higher than he can reach. Still, it shouldn’t be too hard to climb. The tree’s bark is rough, and Diegi’s a pretty good climber.

Yes! Looks like I’ll be having a fruit salad for lunch today!

Hardly able to contain his excitement, Diegi rushes over to the tree and wraps his arms around it, copying the stereotypical appearance of the treehugger to a T. Overwhelmed with joy and hunger (mostly hunger), he nuzzles the tree’s rough bark happily as you would a favorite pet. He then promptly opens a gash in his cheek from the friction.

“Oh, dear tree, finally, some food— OW! What the hell?”

*bing*

As Diegi rubs his bleeding cheek and wonders how stupid he has to be to nuzzle a tree, a notification suddenly pops up in front of him. Not metaphorically, literally— it’s similar in appearance to one of the floating game screens from the hut.

[ Achievement: First Blood! ]

[ Description: Deal or receive damage for the first time. ]

[ Reward: None. ]

Oh, yeah, forgot about that in-game achievement. Wait, no— Seriously!? I can take actual damage from A SCRATCH!?

A shocked Diegi looks for the damage bar to see just how much his health had dropped by, only to realize:

“Where the hell is the overlay? Or even the main menu? Please tell me I get a main menu…”

Normally, important information like Health and Mana would be displayed on screen as he played the game, but now that he was looking at the game through his own eyes they were nowhere to be seen. Even worse, he had no idea how to open his menu. Dropped in a foreign world, starting out with absolutely nothing, he deserved an all-purpose quality of life tool. Besides, how else would he check things like his Profile or Stats or Equipment or Inventory or—

“Well, if I can’t see it, it can’t be too important! Out of sight, out of mind, as they say… heh heh…”

Purposefully misusing the common saying, Diegi sighs and pushes the matter out of his mind. He’s starting to get anxious, but food is still the most important thing to think about right now.

“Okay, no more nuzzles. Let’s just climb the tree and get this fruit!”

He digs his nails into the tree's bark and grabs hold with his feet as well, then begins to scramble up the tree trunk. He’s not doing too bad, making a fair bit of progress. In only a few seconds, he’s about halfway up the ten-meter tree. But once he reaches out to find another handhold—

“Ugh!”

—he suddenly loses his grip and falls flat on his back.

“Oh, come on, not even I’m that clumsy. I swear I didn’t do anything wrong, so what gives?”

Rubbing his head in abject confusion after failing to climb the tree, Diegi’s about to get up when he hears another voice ring out. Not Automoderator, thankfully.

“Hey, you there! Are you all right?”

At least someone cares about my problems. Hey, hold on, there’s another person around? Hey, hold on, part 2— I know this voice!

Lying down with the grass tickling his nose, Diegi scours his memories. Yes, he remembers— not an actual person, but a pixelated face he’s seen countless times through a screen on his playthroughs.

Tilting his head backwards to look at the path, he sees a large wooden cart carrying all sorts of grains and baked produce. All of the food on the cart looks delicious, and his stomach rumbles at the thought of eating it… But more important than the cart, he sees a person next to it. From upside-down, he sees a girl with mixed brown-and-blonde hair dressed in plain sepia-toned layered clothing. She has quite a concerned look on her face.

That’s the first NPC you meet on the path when you play as a human… yeah, Gloria, right? And right after you meet her in the tutorial…

Diegi leisurely gets to his feet and gives her a word of warning:

“Hey, you might wanna watch out.”

Blinking, the girl— Gloria— widens her eyes with an “E- excuse me?” and a gasp. She’s surprised by something, but not scared— yet. Which makes sense, because she can’t see what he can, given that she’s facing the wrong direction. But maybe that’s a good thing.

Because right behind her, is an ape-like figure with red glowing eyes and a dark substance constantly dripping off its body. Quite the stereotypically menacing appearance, but that’s probably the point. Above its head floats a game notification: [ Defeat the monster using basic attacks! ]

Once again Diegi points and says:

“Like I said, Gloria, you gotta watch out— the tutorial monster’s right behind you. Man, is it really time for the forced mob encounter already? I haven’t even had lunch yet.”

All of this, he announces in a flat and even tone. Like he’s discussing the weather or his favorite color rather than a threat to human life. But then Diegi’s stomach grumbles once again as he speaks, reminding him how hungry he is. This realization gets a deep groan of forlorn pain out of him.

…

Yes, a certain someone definitely has his priorities out of order.