Kragathor found himself in a generic humanoid form that looked not too dissimilar from the featureless gray form of a Doppelganger. In front of him stood a rather bland looking human male.

When Kragathor focused on any single part of the human’s body, a small pane of information would pop up with various sliders and options, allowing him to modify it as he saw fit.

“What is this?”

Interesting, Kragathor thought, noting that the strange voice that wasn’t a voice could answer questions.

“What are you?”

What else can you tell me, System?”

“Can I create a character other than a human?”

“Hmm, that’s a shame. Well, I suppose it would be interesting to play as a human.” Kragathor turned his attention back to the motionless human before him, and began to tweak and modify it. If he was going to play as a human, he was going to make his avatar the most humanly human he could. As he worked, he decided to keep asking questions. “So, what information can you provide me on classes?”

“Do you think you could tone that down? It’s like you’ve been shouting in my head this whole time.”

Kragathor continued to shape his avatar into the very image of humanity. A veritable avatar of mankind. “How does one attain a class?”

“What is a class?”

“What is this perk that I will be granted?”

Kragathor took a step back, eyed his work critically, then nodded. “Alright, it looks like I am ready to move on to the next step of character creation.”

The next screen was rather simple. Kragathor’s avatar stood to one side, and a pane of information appeared, prompting him to input his name and select a perk. The name was rather easy, he just picked the most human sounding name he could think of, which just left selecting a perk. At this point, he considered his options with deliberate care, as there were a wide array of perks in the list. Some offered faster skill gain for certain subsets of skills, while others offered flat bonuses to certain types of actions, while others were less concretely defined. He wanted to choose something that would lead to a path far different from the path he had already taken, that of overwhelming power in offense and defense. In the end, he was torn between two options:

Supreme Precision

Your consistency is remarkable, in both your successes and failures. It is nearly effortless for you to achieve the same results repeatedly. If you fail at a task, miss a target, or mistime a strike, you will continue to do so until you correct your mistake intentionally. Conversely, success will be similar repeated until conditions change.

Vulnerability Exploit

It is easier for you to exploit flaws and vulnerabilities that you have found. 10% increase in effect when targeting a vulnerability. This modifier stacks freely with other modifiers.

The other perks he scrolled through either made no sense to him, or just did not appeal. He did not desire overwhelming offense or defense, and the idea of succeeding purely through skill sounded rather refreshing. Finally, he accepted his choice.

Please choose a name for your character:

Bob

Perk (choose one):

Supreme Precision

Kragathor confirmed and accepted the final details, and finally managed to enter the game.

Well, maybe not the game, proper, but the tutorial at the least. Kragathor’s avatar materialized in a room with dozens of other humans that were either milling about in confusion or running about. All the humans that Kragathor —now inhabiting his avatar named Bob— could see were dressed in the same uniform of white shirt with short sleeves, blue pants and white shoes. He felt mildly annoyed at what he saw. Many of these humans had obviously maxed out their height sliders during character creation, as if that would somehow make them less puny. In fact, all of them also had toned muscles and well-proportioned limbs.

Several of the nearby avatars were turning to stare at Bob, now. In comparison to the healthy and muscular giants, his avatar was short, barely five feet tall. His limbs were frail and sickly looking, and beady brown eyes peered out from under a mop of unruly brown hair. The diminutive runt looked around and shook his head sadly. It was such a shame to see all these mortals striving to compensate for their own frail and puny bodies with such a ridiculous display. Especially because they blocked his line of sight, so he couldn’t see what everyone was doing beyond the crowd in front of him.

He walked around the group of idle people, and saw several humanoids that looked to be made of metal. Each one had a numeral made of light floating over their head, as if indicating the order in which you should speak to them. There were several people crowded around each one.

He approached the humanoid with a 1 floating above his head. The world around him grayed out and the creature seemed to focus on him. “Greetings, Traveler! I am a quest NPC! That means that I am not a real person! NPC stands for Non-Person Character. There are two types of friendly NPCs, quest NPCs like myself, and normal NPCs. All NPCs can be killed, but quest NPCs will reappear within minutes of their death. Quest NPCs will typically give you quests, like so!”

Bob heard a distinct chime sound before the NPC continued speaking. “Speak to quest NPC number two to continue the quest and learn how to access the menus.”

The next several minutes were both informative and gruelingly boring as the quest NPCs taught him the basics of accessing and using his interface. He could bring up each menu by stating its title out loud. For example, saying “Status” brought up the following:

Name: Bob

Overall Level: 1

Classes:

Race: Human

HP: 100/100

Perk: Supreme Precision

Stamina: 100/100

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 10

Agility: 10

Recovery: 10

Toughness: 10

Power: 0

Links: 0

Deviation: 0/0

The status screen was a summation of all his character’s vital information. After completing the quest of talking to the five quest NPCs, he received a notification that he’d received 100 credits, bringing him to a grand total of 100 credits in his inventory. Apparently, credits were some sort of non-physical version of a gold coin. Why someone would want a gold coin that they couldn’t actually hold was beyond him.

The only thing to do after speaking to the quest NPCs was to take a turn in the combat simulator before he would be unleashed on the game world in full.

When Bob entered the combat simulator, he noticed a distinct imbalance in weapon types. There were a handful of melee weapons available to try, but there were dozens upon dozens of weapons in various shapes and sizes all with handles and triggers reminiscent of a crossbow’s. Some could easily be held in one hand, while others probably could not be operated except from a prone position. Bob decided to start with one of the small ones and work his way up. The one he picked up was small and easy to move around. Surmising that the rather large hole in the end of the device was the business end, he pointed it toward what could only be a target and pulled the trigger.

*BOOM*

The shock of the unexpected noise and extreme recoil caused him to fling the weapon toward the ceiling. Lucky for his draconic pride, nobody else was in the simulator to see that. He retrieved the weapon and looked intently at it, and said the trigger word, “Identify.”

.45 Holdout Pistol

This large caliber holdout pistol is meant as a sidearm of last resort to finish off an enemy up close and personal. This single-shot pistol has exceptional recoil and a short barrel, so it is unsuitable for distant targets. Must be manually reloaded after each shot.

Kragathor recognized most of the words in the description, but appeared to be lacking in contextual knowledge, as he still had no idea what the hell just happened.