“Gulp”

Mark stood rooted to the ground, terrified to even make a sound. He messed up, he messed up big time. Under the stress, he spilled all the beans, and now the secret of him coming back in time will be discovered. The pressure Shes was emitting was still suffocating him, pressing him down as if it wants to squeeze him. The pressure seemed as if it will last forever, not ending until he breathes his last. However, when all was grim and dark, the pressure was suddenly lifted.

Mark was surprised for a moment, he slowly raised his head to look at Shes in the eyes reluctantly for he was afraid of him. Surprisingly, the angry look and dead eyes were no longer to be seen, as they regained their blue hue and playfulness.

“I understand, little Mark. You don’t have to worry, and don’t have to say anything else. You see, I’m regularly monitored, so there is some information I should not have possession of. This is one of them. You see, I’m only required to report information of which I am 100% certain, the other stuff is in way too big volume and no one in his right mind would check it. For this case, there are other possibilities than what we both know is true, and I plan to keep it that way. Anyways, there are many things which need my consult and surveillance at the time, so I’ll leave shortly. But before that, I want to say something.” Shes paused for a second and hopped close to Mark. Then, with the most child-like innocent smile, he said “I hope we can meet again, Mark. There are so many things I want to talk to you about.”

As if he was a mirage, Shes disappeared from Mark’s view, as the white dome slowly dissipated and gave way to the darkness of space surrounding it, illuminated only by the stars shimmering in the distance.

Due to the overwhelming stress caused by his meeting with Shes, Mark was sitting on the ground, trying to catch his breath. He kept sitting in the same place for a couple of minutes, trying to make head or tail of the situation, to no avail. It was only after 10 minutes went by that he was able to regain control of his shaking hands, and not have his mind eaten only by thoughts surrounding the enigma of Shes.

Mark finally stood up and took notice of his surrounding, only to notice that he was back in the space-like place of the character creation phase. He turned around to find that Gabriel was waiting for him.

“I have gotten a brief overview of the situation. You will receive the discovery bonus for bones and muscles, meridians and Ki paths, mana paths, shadow nodes, and soul cores. The total bonus is +13 to all stats. The bonus for being the first to find four hidden bodily systems is +5 to all stats, which brings you to a grand total of +18 to all stats.”

Mark was given a big shock. The addition of 18 points to all his stats is equivalent to him gaining 18 levels. One has to understand that it wasn’t easy to reach higher levels in Ashes of Gods. In his past life, it took 3 days for the first person to reach level 10 and 2 weeks to reach level 20. Him getting this much stats basically gives him more than a week head starts over everyone. It’s true that there are many other things that a level 18 has and Mark doesn’t, such as equipment, good allocation of stats, proficiency, skills, and stuff of the sort, but one cannot undermine the advantage that he received.

“You can now continue changing whatever of the four structure you discovered, you choose. You still have 16% adjustment rate.”

Hearing her reminder, Mark focused back on his avatar. He, once again, fleshed out the green Ki paths and his meridians. As per his plan, he changed the structure of his meridians so that rather than absorbing Ki using a normal push and pull mechanism, it absorbs and circulate it using a rotational movement, giving the Ki more momentum. He also changed his Ki paths, so that they encompass purification circles that would upgrade the quality of his Ki at every stage of his personal Ki gathering technique. This change made him more compatible with the best Ki gathering technique in Ashes of Gods to his knowledge and thus made its effectiveness multiply by two to three times.

These changes may not seem like much, but Mark regarded them as more important than even the +18 to all stats bonus he already got. The stat bonus might seem very good at the early stage of the game and is definitely not negligible even at the mid-game, but the late game relied mostly on how good is your gathering technique, how solid is your foundation, and how versatile are your battle techniques. Stats wouldn’t play much of a role because everyone will be at around the same stage anyways. If the best Ki gathering techniques of his past life were 2 times or even 3 times more effective on him, then he would be that much stronger than even the most top tier of his opponents. This is an opportunity that every gamer would never want to miss.

After the adjustments, Mark was left with 6% left. With this much adjustment rate left, he couldn’t change his other hidden bodily structure to anything good even if he wanted, as that would take at least 10% adjustment rate. Thus, he chose the second best option of changing his muscle density and tendon flexibility.

To ensure that he could handle his power without tiring his muscles, he made the tendons at the joint of his limbs more flexible, he strengthened his heel’s bone and made his Achilles tendons more flexible. He added muscle density to his thighs and soleus and gastrocnemius while keeping them flexible. He then changed the muscular structure of his arms to have a burst type muscles and strengthened his back muscles so that they can support him and boost his endurance.

Mark was then left with 1% adjustment rate left, so he just dumped it on increasing the number of alveoli (gas sacks in your lungs) in his lungs to a value closer to the 300 million mark. This, of course, resulted in increasing his endurance.

These changes, if they were to be compared to stats increase will look like this.

+3 Agility.

+2 strength

+1 Vitality

However, the actual value is much higher, as the change of bone, muscle and tendon structure, helps his future development much more than just dumping a couple of stat points. Putting points into an attribute, slowly but surely optimize the bone and muscle structure for that particular attribute, which makes inputting points into an attribute when your body is not optimized for it inefficient. However, by making sure that his body is optimized for agility, strength, and vitality, each point he puts in them is worth a little bit more than if someone else was to put that point.

Of course, the effect isn’t noticeable at first, but it adds up to become a non-negligible facet once the game reaches the middle stages.

After making sure that everything was the way it should be Mark then proceeded to the next phase of the character creation.

“Mark, please input the name of your character.”

Gabriel no longer seemed as surprised as she had been for the whole duration of the character creation. She seemed to have grown numb to anything Mark did at this point, so she didn’t even comment on what Mark did with his available adjustment rates.

Hearing demand, Mark didn’t hesitate for one second before replying

“Shesmu.”

It was the same character name as the one he used in his past life. The name didn’t come from his experience in Ashes of Gods but actually came from the earliest days of his gaming career. One day, he wanted to play a popular MMO at the time called Wars Eternal but just couldn’t find a name. Thus, he just searched for the most random god names, and found Shesmu, he thought it was a cool name so he took it, and it stuck with him for his whole life becoming sort of a brand. Now it transcended just sticking with him through a lifetime and became his go-to name in his second life as well.

After choosing his character ID, Gabriel then said

“Here are the 4 basic classes” As she finished saying that, his avatar was separated into 4 clones, each wearing a different outfit. “This is the Swordsman,” Gabriel said as she was pointing to the clone holding the sword and emanating a green aura full of ferocity. “This is the mage” The mage clone was holding a staff and wearing a robe that was fluttering due to a non-existing wind. The mage had a blue and calming aura and his eyes were deep, showing his unending wisdom. “This is the assassin.” The assassin was wearing a cloak that seemed to be merging with the shadows, half of his face was masked and a black aura complementing his attire was emanating from him. He was holding a sharp dagger that screamed the word danger from miles away. “This is the priest” The priest was holding a book on his hands, presumably a holy one. He was wearing a white full-length cape with golden ornaments on his shoulders, sleeves and on his chest. He was emanating a holy aura that was complimented by his golden hair and eyes. His whole figure was screaming “I am holier than thou”.

Mark had this close to impossible to resist the urge to play the assassin class. It looked so damn cool, that he couldn’t believe how his past-self could choose to play swordsman rather than it. But he was barely able to hold it in and listen to the voice of reason. The fact that he should have chosen assassin ten years ago is a thesis that can easily convince any jury with minimum effort, however, the reality of the situation is that he did choose to play Swordsman, and put in 10 years of unrelenting effort to master it. He cannot just throw that decade of training out of the window and not abuse the hell out of it in this lifetime. So, in the end, Shesmu (from now on, I’m going to call him Shesmu in-game, Mark irl) chose to play Swordsman.

“I choose Swordsman”

“Okay. Now, for the final phase of the character creation, you need to choose your birthplace.”

After Gabriel finished talking, a 3d map of Ashes of God was shown in front of Mark. He acted as if he was looking through the map for a couple of minutes before saying

“I choose the Pliyx Stal Kingdom, Stal capital city.”

The kingdom was the same, the city was different. One of the regrets that Mark had in his past life was not starting in the capital city but in a rural one. The amount of hidden quests, treasure chests, labyrinth and good exp spawns in the capital city far outnumbered the ones in other cities. In fact, even if you add all the hidden quests spread through the other cities, they will still fall short to those available in the capital. However, because of these same benefits, multiple big companies and first-rate guilds chose to make the capital their base. These hegemons would not leave any good exp areas for someone not from their guilds. In fact, many of them would go as far as making your life hell on earth if you dare to oppose them. Truly, as the saying goes, fortune and risks coexisted.

“Okay, dear Adventurer Shesmu, I hope for an exciting journey awaiting you in Ashes of Gods.”