As the game world faded into view, Sera realized that it was the same glade with a waterfall that Kyle had described to her. It felt odd to her to smell the light mist of spray from the waterfall, and the slight smell of flowers on the wind. Concentrating, she zoomed out so she could spin the image and watch the little swirling sphere in the center for a moment. Just as she expected, there was a message floating above the sphere which read, “SEX: Male, Female, None, Hermaphroditic.”
“Female Elf,” she said confidently, and immediately the text floating above the image now read, “Sub-Race: Forest, High, Moon, Night, Se…” Confused, she let the text rotate through the entire list a few times, but the option for “Alter” never showed up as a sub-race.
“Well that’s weird,” she muttered to herself. “I’m certain that’s what Kyle said he’d chose.” For several long moments, she debated logging out and going over to Kyle’s to ask him about the “Alter” sub-race, but she decided not to. If she could, she wanted to surprise him later in game. Letting him know she was playing now would just ruin the surprise.
“Forest,” she finally said after a moment, and a basic stat screen appeared as the floating sphere took on the shape of a female forest elf. Several windows to customize appearance popped up around her, but she simply ignored them. “Continue, I’m done,” she told the game.
The text then changed once again above the floating figure. “Class: Alchemist, Archer, Armorer, Artist, …” Kyle hadn’t described anything like this either! Sera let the list scroll and counted; there was over a hundred different classes which a person could choose to play in the game, along with “None”. Perplexed, she chose “None” and then a set of stats appeared and replaced the class selection window.
“Points Available: 20
“STRENGTH : 20
“AGILITY : 25
“ENDURANCE : 20
“MYSTICISM : 20
“SPIRITUALISM : 25
“KNOWLEDGE : 20
“WILL : 20
“PRESENSE : 15
“LUCK : 15”
“Weird!” Sera couldn’t help but feel like something was completely different from what Kyle had told her! That wasn’t anywhere near 1,000 points! She only had twenty that she could spend in her stats!
“Start over!” Bewildered, Sera went through the process a second time, and this time chose the Moon elf as the sub-race. Alter still wasn’t in her list at all, and she was beginning if it might be something that only people who started on the first day could access. Bonus content or something similar. Frowning under her helmet, she went on through the process and selected “None” as a class again. The stats that she got wasn’t much different than what she’d seen before.
“Points Available: 20
“STRENGTH : 15
“AGILITY : 20
“ENDURANCE : 20
“MYSTICISM : 25
“SPIRITUALISM : 20
“KNOWLEDGE : 25
“WILL : 20
“PRESENSE : 15
“LUCK : 20”
Apparently Moon Elves were slightly more mystical and knowledgeable then the Forest elves, but had less strength and spiritualism. Still, the total points were much less that what Kyle had spent on his character. Even if she dumped all her points into mysticism, Sera could only start with a forty-five, compared to Kyle’s one hundred in mysticism!
“Start over,” she demanded once again. Whatever was going on, she definitely wasn’t getting the same starting experience that Kyle had described and complained over to her about!
“Female,” she declared for sex. This time she took her time and looked over the list of races before choosing “Human”. Other races might have different advantages, but Sera really didn’t know too much about the different stereotypes since she didn’t play games very often, and she certainly didn’t want to play a race which might be ordered to help kill the runaway elven princess which was Kyle!
Checking the options for sub-race, she chose “Wildlander” simply because she liked the sound of it the most. Wild and free to roam the lands wherever she wanted to hunt down Kyle, that was her!
For class she chose “None” once more. There had to be some advantage to not choosing a class starting out, and even if she wasn’t certain exactly what it might be, she felt it had to be something worthwhile to make up for the initial handicap which you started with. Once again, she skipped over the look customization. That really wasn’t something she normally cared about, and her stats finally popped up.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Points Available: 30
“STRENGTH : 20
“AGILITY : 20
“ENDURANCE : 20
“MYSTICISM : 20
“SPIRITUALISM : 20
“KNOWLEDGE : 20
“WILL : 20
“PRESENSE : 20
“LUCK : 20”
Humans started with a perfect twenty in all stats, but they got an extra ten points to spend however they wanted, which was nice. It ended up giving her a little more flexibility to adjust her stats if she wanted. Thinking about what to become so she could adventure with Kyle easier, Sera decided to place her points evenly into Strength, Endurance, and Agility.
“Points Available: 0
“STRENGTH : 30
“AGILITY : 30
“ENDURANCE : 30
“MYSTICISM : 20
“SPIRITUALISM : 20
“KNOWLEDGE : 20
“WILL : 20
“PRESENSE : 20
“LUCK : 20”
Thinking for a few moments before continuing, Sera tried to take away as many points as she could from Mysticism. Kyle was going to play the magic person; she’d play Mrs. Brute! Mysticism dropped all the way to a ten, but she only got five points for the decrease. It cost two points to drop a stat, and she only got half the number back in return! For a while, Sera debated on if it was something she really wanted to do, but then she finally said, “To hell with it!” She dropped Mysticism, Spiritualism, and Knowledge all as low as she could take them, and put those extra points into her Will, Presence, and Luck.
“Points Available: 0
“STRENGTH : 30
“AGILITY : 30
“ENDURANCE : 30
“MYSTICISM : 10
“SPIRITUALISM : 10
“KNOWLEDGE : 10
“WILL : 25
“PRESENSE : 25
“LUCK : 25”
Finally satisfied, she told the game to continue and the stat window closed and a new set of windows popped up. She now had a hundred points to spend, and a whole list of skills and talents that she could choose from, for starting out. Staring down the list, she started selecting a few as she carefully watched her points drop.
“Acid Resilience (1)
“Cold Resilience (1)
“Disease Resilience (1)
“Fighting – Greataxe (1)
“Fighting – Long Sword (1)
“Fighting – Two-handed Sword (1)
“Fire Resilience (1)
“Hunting (1)
“Lightning Resilience (1)
“Magical Resilience (1)
“Physical Resilience (1)
“Poison Resilience (1)
“Rapid Healing (1)
“Survival – Forest (1)
“Survival – Mountains (1)
“Taunt (1)
“Tracking (1)
“War Cry (1)
After spending all her points down, Sera was left with a prompt to continue. Thinking for a few moments, she laughed and told it to “Start Over” once more. This time she went through the exact same process as before, but she took time to change her sex to “Male”. If Kyle was going to be the helpless princess, she was going to be the Wildman of the Mountains! When she had the chance to customize her appearance, she made her avatar as tall, massive, and mean looking as she possibly could. She added scars across the face and chest, made him as hairy as possible with a full unkempt beard and wildly messy hair, with dark bronze, rough skin.
Giggling to herself, she went on through the character creation process and made her mountain brute exactly as before. This time when she got to the continue prompt, she had happily yelled “Yes! Let’s go!” The skills and talents disappeared, and another prompt popped up with read, “Name?”
Thinking for just a moment, Sera declared, “Seran Darkbringer”! The window changed to “Name: Seran Darkbringer…. Is this correct?”
“Yes!” She yelled at the game in excitement, and the character creation slowly faded away and a mountainous region began to appear around him. Looking down, Sera was now a massive man wearing nothing but what looked like a large wolf pelt around his waist. Curious, she lifted it up and tittered at the large piece of man flesh dangling there between her legs.
“Oh, this is gonna be fun!” He yelled in a rough deep masculine voice, as he started to look around the world around him for the first time.