Ashes of Gods was region based, meaning that each region had its own set of servers that it could access and couldn’t interact with other regions until the player base reached a certain level where cross server regions were available.

The reason why Dream Inc. went with this model is another cool feature AOG has, which is time dilatation. By controlling the latency of brain signals and through mathematic equations involving the time it takes a signal to reach a part of your body, the distance between neurons, and the time it takes to activate said neurons, Dream Inc. found the perfect formula to change the rate of time dilatation to a theoretical limit of 10 times normal speed.

They used this technology in an innovative way and made it such as time dilatation was normal in the morning and afternoon, but multiplied by 4 at night. They also changed the day and night cycle such as it was daytime in the game when it was night in real life and vice versa. The reason for these features was to help the working class enjoy the game after their 9 to 5 shift to the fullest extent.

Once the alarm Mark set to signal him that the game was live rang, he laid inside the capsule and activated it. His senses were quickly cut off the outside world and he saw himself materializing on a green valley. From the canyon, a 15 meters long flame dragon soared to the sky breathing hell upon the thousands of griffins that dared trespass his territory. After wreaking havoc in its wake, the dragon dived down towards Mark where it gave an intimidating shout with its mouth wide open. Mark felt the wind threatening to make him fly off the ground, and his eardrums close to bursting out from the loud shout. The scene paused and he was teleported into deep space, where a beautiful four-winged angle descended gracefully and said.

“Hello Adventurer, welcome to Ashes of Gods. I am the messenger angel, Gabriel.” With a swipe of her left hand, an avatar that looked the same as Mark, albeit naked, appeared in front of him. “You can adjust your appearance to a limit of 20%. You can see the percentage of adjustment of any part of your body if you focus on said part.”

Mark already knew all the mechanisms behind the character creation, and it was for this reason that he knew that it was a treasure trove. For example, a hidden mechanic that wasn’t discovered until years later was that the color of your hair, and eyes were pre-requisites for certain early game hidden and unique quests.

Mark liked to keep track of these pieces of information in his past life because they were interesting stories he can use whenever he was interviewed, and the metaphors he drew from them instantly made him a fan-favorite. He would never have expected that knowledge he stored for the sole purpose of gathering some internet points would come in handy one day. From the list of unique and hidden quests he collected, most had golden eyes and hair as pre-requisite.

The reason for the dominance of the golden hairstyle was because it was a sign of nobility. Having a golden hair meant you were a noble, or at least of noble descent, and having golden eyes meant you, or your ancestors were high nobles, which is a status only few can dream of having, as even a decade after the release of Ashes of Gods, the number of high nobles was very small.

Mark instantly adjusted his hair and eyes to be golden, both didn’t take more than 3% adjustment rate. He used another 3% in cleaning the hair on his chest, arms and legs and to take out any blemish he has on his skin. The adjustment rate wasn’t heavy on things such as skin and color, what took a heavy toll on them was adjusting muscles, tendons, and bones. Adjusting muscles and tendons came with a clear benefit, as stronger muscles and more flexible tendons can let you swing and maneuver faster, so it was a clear upgrade to one’s fighting prowess. Bones were more of a long-term investment, as stronger bones can support stronger muscles, high-level movement speed boost, they can also resist strong attacks without breaking and leave you in a crippled state.

However, while these options were very good, and frankly very advanced for the current timeline, Mark wasn’t most interested in them. What Mark was most excited about was making modifications to another body structure found only in the virtual avatar: meridians.

It was possible to change the way meridians functioned to a certain extent, add new ones, and connect and add multiple ki paths. In the previous timeline, this was discovered in the 4th year after Ashes of Gods went life, or 1 year after the ki gathering techniques became public. However, at that time it couldn’t be utilized as randomly changing meridians or ki pathways only lead to a defectuous character. Later on, at the time of Shesmu's rebirth, it would have been possible to change the complete structure of the meridians, in game, even after the creation of the character. One would have been able to completely change his bodily structure using some other creature's. This massively eased the process of upgrading one's bodily structure as you don't need to fully understand them to transmit them to your body. However, this matter is for the future and Shesmu just kept it at the back of his mind.

This only changed two years later, after many guilds spent countless hours and recourses before being able to change the chi pathways for the better. At that time, Mark was still active in the quest to reaching ultimate power that most experts were part of, he still wasn’t that big on the competitive scene.

Thus, using the compiled theories of what works and what doesn’t, he led with a couple other swordsman experts a project to create the most perfected ki path and meridians structure possible under 20% adjustments.

The result was surprising as they were able to invent an adjustment that was many folds more effective than any publicly known one for under 10% rate of adjustment. Further adjustments showed diminishing returns, with a qualitative change only theoretically happening at around 30%.

Thus, the team Mark was leading submitted the project to the upper management of the guild they were under “Dawn’s Resonance”, a super guild that dominated the Pliyx Stal kingdom, one of the major powers on the Echar Continent. The guild went on to perfect the formula to reach a qualitative change before the 20% limit, but as far as Mark knew, they kept hovering at around 24-25% after many major breakthroughs.

Returning his focus towards the avatar in front of him, Mark suddenly thought of a problem. If he were to just randomly change his meridians, it would be hard to explain how he acquired this knowledge. He can just say that he just thought about it and acted on his thoughts, but so can they ban him, think up of some random reason for the ban and be done with the case. In fact, he won’t be the only one getting banned, the team that designed the meridian system might be fired too for breach of NDA (non-disclosure agreement). Some might argue that he can present his case to the court, but they are underestimating the power that Dream Inc. has over all the government run agencies. The board of the company consists of high ranking members of all the departments of the world government, so just having some random player getting banned and a couple of engineers fired is as easy for them as flipping their hands.

After thinking for a little bit, Mark remembered that in one of the interviews James Wilson, co-owner of Dream Inc., said that your virtual character will feel even more real than your real life body. This may seem as an over the top exaggeration, and it is, but in some weird sense, it can also mean that your body is perfect and more, meaning that there is added part to the body. Keeping that thought in mind, Mark turned towards Gabriel and asked.

“Hey Gabriel, is it possible to change my bone structure and muscles, and will doing so have any effect on my body’s performance?”

Gabriel looked surprised for a moment, she didn’t expect that someone would cache on this hidden mechanic so early on, the first day, first hour, and first minutes of the beta test.

“Interesting conjecture. Indeed, you can change your bone and muscle structure, and indeed it will have an effect on your body’s performance. However, I’m sorry to say that I cannot describe what each change will result in what added or diminished performance, the only thing that I can say is that the character’s body respects human anatomy in this regard to a certain extent. At least, to the extent of if you were to mess something up badly, it will result in you having a crippled character. However, worry not, as we made sure that even if you give yourself an anatomy that would kill anyone in real life, the most you can be is crippled in the game.”

After catching her breath, Gabriel continued “To change your bone structure and muscle density, focus on the body part you’re interested in changing.”

After hearing her explanation, Mark focused on the muscle and bone structure of multiple parts of his body randomly. After making sure that a long enough time passed, he focused on his Ki paths. After making sure that they became fleshed out, Mark turned to Gabriel to ask her about their existence, when he saw her face in complete shock. The look of surprise on her eyes was close to that of terror, it’s as if the Yama king reigning over the underworld appeared in front of her.