Eric Smith sat silently at his desk in math class. He had already finished the pop quiz the teacher had handed out and was idly doodling on some scrap paper. A crudely drawn wizard whom Eric had named Stormrider shot lightning out of his fingers towards what was supposed to be a goblin. It wasn’t easy to recognize, due to Eric’s lackluster drawing capabilities. Outside of the classroom window, dark clouds were building up to a stormy sky.

I wish I could be a wizard like Stormrider, Eric thought. He started drawing lightning bolts along Stormrider’s wizard robe and hat.

The math quiz had been easy, as always. Just matching some trigonometric functions with their inverses. Eric had memorized these the moment he’d read them in the textbook. He sighed quietly. He’d learned the hard way not to draw the attention of his classmates who were still struggling to complete the quiz. He looked at his chicken scratch of a drawing.

I wish art was as easy as math. Distant thunder rumbled from the rainclouds in the distance.

A desk scraped loudly against the floor as one of Eric’s classmates adjusted their position. The teacher looked up from her book, War and Peace, and glared at the students. Eric kept his head down as if he was still working on the pop quiz.

Gaining her attention was even worse than when his classmates saw him breeze through math class. Luckily her gaze passed right over Eric without stopping. She went back to her book.

An eraser hit Eric in the back of the head.

“Ow,” Eric said. He rubbed his head and turned to look around at whoever had thrown it. All of his classmates were examining their own papers as studiously as they could.

“Eric Smith!” the teacher said. She closed her book and slammed it onto her desk. The book’s dust cover slipped off as she slammed it, but she didn’t notice. She was standing now, and pointed an accusatory finger at Eric. “You’ve been sharing the answers with other students again, haven’t you?”

“No ma’am,” Eric said quietly. “I didn’t show anyone my work. I never have!”

“Bring me your quiz,” the teacher said. Eric knew better than to argue, and he was finished with the quiz anyway so turning it in early wouldn’t hurt anything. He stood up from his desk and brought the quiz paper to the front of the classroom.

The teacher looked it over for a moment. Eric glanced down at the book the teacher had been reading. Beneath the War and Peace dust cover he could see the actual book: The Teacher Who Tamed the Incredibly Handsome Werewolf. He tried to stop himself from laughing at the picture on the cover of a wolf-man with six-pack abs, but ended up just making a strange choking sound instead.

The teacher set down Eric’s paper and glared at him. “Something funny, Eric?” She noticed his gaze and her eyes widened. She quickly put the War and Peace cover back over the book. “Go sit down. If I ever catch you cheating again I’ll see to it that you fail this course no matter how good your quiz results are.”

“Yes ma’am,” Eric said. He walked back to his seat, dragging his feet along the way. Rain pelted against the window as the thunderstorm arrived. He sat down and saw that someone had drawn over his comic while the teacher had been distracted. The wizard, Stormrider, now had a speech bubble drawn in pen that said Eat my super loser dork magic!

Eric heard someone snickering behind him, but didn’t turn around. The teacher’s gaze was still on him. His eyes felt tight as tears started to well up.

I wish I was somewhere else! Eric thought.

The room exploded as a lightning bolt struck directly through the window, engulfing Eric in a flash of blinding pain and heat.

---

Pain.

All Eric knew was pain.

Every nerve of his body felt like it was on fire.

Eric’s world was consumed by darkness, and the pain faded away. He didn’t know how long he existed in a state of nothingness.He could not feel his heart beat, nor any sense of the passing of time. None of his senses worked anymore, other than a vague sense of existence that he had never realized he’d had until now.

A light gradually emerged. His sense of sight returned, but nothing else. No hearing, no touch, no taste, no smell. His consciousness became aware of what was around him. He wasn’t in a hospital bed like he had at first assumed he’d be. Instead he just seemed to be in an infinite dark blue void.

Nothing but the same color of blue all around him. Depth was irrelevant, as there was nothing else but this same color. He couldn’t look down to see his body, and as far as he could tell he couldn’t turn his head at all.

Words appeared in the space before him.

[Welcome, Hero.]

[You have been summoned to enroll in the Royal Academy of Astraeus.]

[Before we begin, please enter your preferred first name.]

A keyboard became visible below the words, and a blinking cursor appeared on the line below it like could be seen on a word processor. Eric tried to focus, but his mind still felt so fuzzy from having just woken up from whatever sleep he had been in.

Hero? Summoned? Did I just die?

He stared at the keyboard, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. It wants me to type in my name? Still feeling groggy, his focus happened to hone in on the letter A. An A appeared on the line for his name.

Wait, Eric thought, feeling slightly more capable of rational thought. I didn’t mean to type that. Undo. Delete. Backspace.

The only keys on the keyboard were the letters of the alphabet. He couldn’t see a way to delete it. The thought of the pop quiz about trigonometric functions and their inverses came to mind. In his slightly muddled state of mind, however, he couldn't think of any way that information would be relevant.

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He didn’t know how much time he spent trying to figure out how to undo his mistake, but in the end he decided to just go with it. He focused on letters one by one to type out his name.

AERIC

[Thank you, Aeric. Please enter your preferred last name.]

A new line appeared for him to enter his last name. He focused on the letter S and it appeared. He was about to type Smith, but hesitated. What is going on?

He was finally conscious enough to question what was happening. Where was he? Why couldn’t he speak? He would have screamed, but he found that he found that he had no mouth with which to do so. He remembered the math quiz, getting in trouble with the teacher, seeing his artwork vandalized, and being struck by lightning. But what happened after that? How did he get to this strange blue world with nothing but text silently floating in front of his face? Did he even have a face? He tried to look around, but none of his muscles worked, if he even had muscles.

After struggling silently against the nothingness, Eric finally decided to just accept what lay before him. Why be Eric Smith when this could possibly be a chance to start a new life. A life like Stormrider the wizard he had been doodling just before this all happened. He looked at the letter S on the input line and made up his mind.

STORMRIDER

[Welcome, Aeric Stormrider.]

I guess I’m Aeric Stormrider now, Aeric thought.

[Character Customization]

[You will now choose a new body.]

[Note: Your body customization will be permanent.]

[Healing spells will naturally align your body back to how you set it now.]

[Please start by selecting your age.]

[Note: Your age customization will be permanent.]

[Your body will not age, nor will you feel the effects of senescence.]

Healing spells?

A screen became visible with a sliding option. He could choose between seventeen years old up to twenty-one.

I’ll just pick right in the middle.

He set the slider to nineteen years old. He figured it was a good compromise.

The age selection dissipated and a new screen became visible. He could see a featureless male body standing in a T-pose, wearing a form fitting white t-shirt and shorts. To the side of the screen were controls with labels and sliders, allowing him to customize the way he looked.

The first thing he tried was just dragging sliders around to their maximum and minimum values. He gave himself a large gut, then slid the setting back down to the minimum and watched as his stomach became flat and skinny. He slid the abdominal muscles from minimum to maximum and watched as well defined abs formed underneath the tight white shirt.

Even with the sliders up to maximum he still looked passably normal. No going full bodybuilder here. He put most of the sliders for his torso back towards the middle, made a few more adjustments, then moved on to his legs.

He adjusted the shape and muscle tone of his calves and thighs. He found sliders that adjusted his hips, waist, and the areas covered by his shorts. He played around with the settings for a while until he settled on what he thought they should be. He continued with setting his ankles, feet, and toes.

Overall he went for a thin, athletic look. More like a soccer player than a football linebacker. He continued with his arms, hands, and fingers.

He was going to move on to his face when he noticed that he could toggle between male base body and female base body. Curiosity won him over and he flipped the switch.

Aeric watched as the image of the body adjusted to a female frame. The girl’s waist came in while her hips widened slightly. Her torso adjusted its shape as well. She was wearing the same white outfit as the male model had been wearing, though it maintained the same flexibility as before to fit her body appropriately.

A few of the settings disappeared from the menu and new ones took their place. As before, Aeric immediately went about trying them from minimum to maximum to see what looked best.

He increased the girl’s stomach size to maximum, then decreased it to be flat just to see the range he had to work with. He changed the muscle tone as before, making the image once again have well chiseled abs. Aeric noticed that the muscles were slightly less defined than when the model had been displaying a male body, even if he set them to their maximum values.

Aeric found the section that made adjustments related to the model’s upper torso. He continued experimenting with minimums and maximums, seeing how the different sliders affected the way the model appeared. Aeric set the model to appear as what he considered to be the perfect form, leaving certain sliders at their maximum values. He continued on with the sliders that adjusted the model’s waist, hips, legs, and lower body, making an overall hourglass body shape.

Finally Aeric loaded the settings for the model’s face. He gave her flowing hair with large curls and a ruby red color that could only come from a bottle. The deep curls reached most of the way down her back. Aeric made her lips a little fuller and shrank her nose a little. He adjusted the shape and color of her cheeks, gave her teardrop eyebrows, and changed her eye shape. He gave her deep green eyes. Overall he thought her face had a very kindhearted impression to it.

Aeric looked at what he had decided must be the perfect female form. His cheeks would have flushed at the sight if he still had a physical body.

It seems such a shame to not give life to something so beautiful, he thought. He looked around at the settings and found something that made his heart leap. He pushed the button.

[Saving Customization Preset…]

[Please enter a name for your Preset]

Aeric entered the first female name that came to his mind.

[Preset: Elsie Stormrider has been saved.]

Feeling satisfied, Aeric toggled back from female to male. Several settings disappeared from the options, and he watched as the feminine shape changed back to a more masculine baseline.

He spent the next half an hour getting himself back to the body shape he was thinking of as a fit soccer player again. He spent extra time on his face, squaring out his jaw and trying to get things just right. He gave himself dark blue hair, and matched the same green eye color that he had saved on the Elsie preset. When he was finished he saved the male preset.

[Preset: Aeric Stormrider has been saved.]

He loaded the Elsie Stormrider preset and watched as the body morphed to what he had designed. Then he toggled back to Aeric Stormrider and watched everything go back to the athlete. He changed back and forth a few more times, finding it amusing to watch his body change shape so drastically.

Finally he bade farewell to Elsie Stormrider, and loaded the Aeric preset.

[Confirm Body Customization?]

[Yes / No]

He mentally selected “Yes”. His vision faded to black then slowly came back to normal.

He was immediately beset by his other senses returning as well. He could feel the leather armor that he now found himself wearing, the boots on his feet, and the stone ground beneath him. He could smell and slightly taste the dusty room he found himself sitting in. He could hear the scrape of the ground as he pushed his boots forward.

A blue screen appeared in front of him, floating in the air. It was the same color as the infinite void he had just left. Text appeared on it.

[Quest: Class Selection Trial]

[Objective: Survive for as long as possible.]

[Secondary Objective: Slay as many monsters as possible.]

[Time Survived: 0 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds]

[Monsters Slain: 0]

[Class Ranks Available: Common]

[Note: Softcore Death Penalty is active in this area.]

A stone grinding sounded through the room as two sections of the walls around him slid up into the ceiling. To his left a rack of weapons in a large wooden cabinet was mounted in a recess that was now exposed. To his right he could see down a dimly lit hallway. Further down the hallway stood a dark, prowling shape moved in the shadows. A low snarl emanated from the hallway, and the hairs on Aeric’s arm stood on end.