Jim’s POV

Jim was grinning ear to ear as his vision fully came online. Just a quick look around gave him a feeling of nostalgia. He had done it! Right in front of him was the brightly painted red barn. His gaze wandered over the landscape and he couldn't help but be impressed. Looking around he noticed the familiar yet different farm. The layout was the same but the visuals were completely different. He could see the windmill turning in the distance, the grass moving in rhythmic patterns with the wind. Watching the animals moving around it seemed almost lifelike. He never really saw cows or chickens before so he really had nothing to judge them by. But they looked just like the ones on TV! It worked! He was a friggin genius! Feeling smugly satisfied with himself he inhaled deeply. And then he started coughing and hacking uncontrollably.

What the hell was this smell? The only comparison that he could make was when a sewage line broke. Was he smelling crap? He couldn't believe the immense oder that was around him. Is this what a real farm smelled like? How could anyone live with that stench! Luckily Jim made a few additions to the game before letting his program go at it. Hell his program made a whole real life looking world from boxy 2D colorful little squares. Adding some extra features was a cakewalk compared to that. He pulled up one of those hidden features and it had five bars that ranged from zero to one hundred percent. Currently they were all at one hundred percent. They were labeled touch, taste, smell, hearing and sight. Using his hand he tapped on the slider bar next to the one labeled smell and dragged the bar down to zero. Taking another breath Jim was relieved when the horrible smell was no longer present. There was now no sense of smell at all.

Jim wanted to create a realistic world but maybe he should have considered not adding a few things. It was really downing his enthusiasm that the instant he loaded in something like this happened. He heard that farms smelled terrible but it was not a fact that he thought about when making his game. Looking at the panel in the top right corner of his vision he was surprised this addon came in handy already. The original purpose for the addition was that he wanted the whole "being in pain" thing to be optional. Getting stabbed by an evil little goblin in the gut did not sound like something he wanted to fully experience. It would really suck having to feel your character get hurt or even die. That was something he did not intend to tolerate in his super fun game. Jim really liked his idea of adding an extra panel to disable pain because it would not interfere with how the game was created. It was a simple and small solution to a big problem.

Jim already knew all the places where the information his senses was being fed to, so it was really easy to add a game interface to change those settings. Touch was the main sense that he was concerned with, so he could negate any pain. But it was fairly easy to add the other four, so he added them on a whim. Lucky for him it worked out. He gazed at the one labeled sight with irritation. Why would he ever want to turn down his sight? If he really wanted to blind himself that much he could put something over his eyes. It just annoyed him because it seemed to have no purpose. He thought the same thing about smell a few minutes ago. Randomly his mind wandered to the time he saw his grandparents getting intimate. If only he had this feature back then. But the damage was already done years ago. Maybe there was some way he could edit that childhood memory out? That could be a fun new project.

He tried to recover the feeling of awe while looking around at the landscape and he just couldn't do it. It was a dirty and smelly farm. This was not the epic start to an adventure he was expecting. His first attempt at creating the best version of FF3 ever had him standing near a pile of manure. It was hard to get excited over a farming simulator. Jim had known a number of people who played farming simulator games on social media. He wondered what they would think if they could smell this place. But at least he had his other toys. Jim made three main modifications to his character. First was his five senses menu that he had just used.

The next little modification was to his starter character type. Each character has stats like strength, magic, and agility. Normally the highest stats you can have as a player are maxed out at two hundred and fifty five. But some non player characters or NPCs didn’t have that limitation. They were mostly boss characters or special harder monsters. So he just changed the character classification so his growth wouldnt have that artificial limitation. So hopefully his character should be able to grow infinitely. Most people would say it was cheating, and they wouldn't be wrong. But he wanted to view the world he built, and it would be too damn slow doing that the right and proper way. Maybe when he had more time he would play it without the training wheels.

Jim navigated through the menus with a smile. This still looked almost exactly the same as it was in the real game. It was actually really damn cool. The blue menu screen showed up as a window that hovered in mid air in front of him. As he looked around he could see the little cursor was following where he was looking. He could actually manipulate where the screen was if he held out his finger and tapped the top bar to drag the menu. Tapping the lower right hand corner he could even enlarge or shrink it. It worked just like a window on a computer! Looking at the screen brought back fond memories. There was a facial picture of himself with his stats on the top left. Jim grinned as he saw the stupid smile on the dorky looking portrait of himself. He never smiled like that in his life. He scanned around and on the top where the location normally was it said “Farm near Alextria.”

On the right hand side there were several different options: Items, equipment, spells, status and log out. Normally it would have said save instead of logout but it looks like the game updated that. He completely forgot about the idea of making sure he could exit the game, but it looks like that gaming database had him covered. Genius at work baby! Moving his eyes over to inventory he mentally clicked on it.

He grinned as he saw the full list of items he had in his inventory. This was the last little modification he made. For his first run through the game he wanted it to be quick and easy so he could be a tourist and not have to play the game the long and proper way. The gil system must have taken some tips from later games. It seemed it was using the one hundred coppers equals one silver, one hundred silver equals one gold system. He maxed out the gil count and it showed that he had one less than a billion gil. That was a lot of nines. When he tried taking it out of his inventory he was prompted to select the number in gil. Taking out one gil he rubbed the small copper coin between his fingers. Putting it away and trying one hundred gil now a shiny silver coin was in his palm. Time for gold he mentally thought. Typing in ten thousand and mentally hitting the okay button a large gold coin appeared in his hand. Satisfied he transferred the gold coin back into his inventory. It was a little ridiculous but he figured why not max out the gil count. Considering he wasn't classified as human anymore in game he probably could have given himself more. Technically because his character was not classified as normal he should have been able to give his character anything without any limit. But he wasn't totally sure it would work so he played it safe and kept the numbers at the max normally possible.

Looking at the long list of goodies he had stacked away made him smile. He had ninety nine of everything in the game. The cool thing about FF3 was the fact that there were all sorts of different gear with different stats. Of course there was still a number of armors and weapons that were considered the best in the game but that didn't mean they were always the best for every situation. And beyond that he wanted to see how all the different stuff looked eventually. There were so many different types of armor and weapons to play around with. Afterall what was the point of being a total badass if you couldn't look cool while doing it?

Absently Jim noticed that something seemed to be hitting his shoulder. Glancing at it he saw little white specks on it. He irritably looked up and saw a few birds perched on the barn overhead. Little pricks were bombing him. Annoyed he moved a distance away from the farm while continuing to look at his loot.

He had ninety nine elixirs and ninety nine greater sources. Jim double checked to make sure nothing changed, and he smiled as he verified that they still did the same thing.

Elixir - Fully recovers all Health (HP) and Mana (MP). Also cures all status effects.

Greater Source - Gives the user twenty five additional stat points to everything

Elixirs were generally beyond rare in the game, only being rewarded when doing some side quests or found in really obscure locations. To have ninety nine of them at the start of the game was beyond broken. But even more broken than that was having ninety nine greater sources. A greater source was one the the rewards for beating the hardest boss in the game, which was not the final boss. That was one thing that was cool about Final Fantastic 3. There were bosses around even stronger than the final boss, but your party needed to be powerful and use good tactics to beat them. Getting just one of them was extremely desirable considering the max stats were two hundred and fifty five. This item was one of the few ways to actually get your stats that high, and there was only three of them in the entire game. He had almost a hundred, and he wasn't limited by a measly cap anymore! Jim decided it was time to start celebrating and drank one. They actually tasted fantastic! Soon he found himself drinking one after another but eventually his stomach became really sick. His vision blurred and he got a massive headache. The last thing he remembered was falling to his knees.

.

When Jim woke up everything seemed to hurt. He closed his eyes trying to focus. Even just putting his hand on his forehead felt like a chore. Things he didn't even know he had hurt, it was terrible. Slowly opening his eyes he tried to navigate to his five senses menu so he could turn this horrible feeling off. After opening his eyes he received a jolt of pain. The light was blinding! It was like staring into a spotlight. He figured just waiting a couple minutes would fix the problem as his eyes adjusted, but the lightning pain behind his eyes did not go away.

After his failure he closed his eyes again and groaned. Jim wished the five senses interface were all mental commands. He tried drunkenly to stab at the right place where the icon would be if his eyes were open. After a few minutes eventually he must have gotten it right because the pain died away. Now he just needed to fiddle with his sight so he could actually see something. Continuing the process of randomly jamming his finger around the general area where the sense menu should be he eventually got it down. Opening his eyes he could see that he bumped his sight down to five percent? He mentally gave himself a high five, it wasn't useless after all! He was a friggin genius!

It was really odd though. Why could he see perfectly fine when his sight was at five percent. Curiously he slowly dragged the bar upward and watched as everything became much more detailed. Jim could see insects on the far away cows. He could count individual blades of grass. And then the splitting headache came. Quickly turning it back down to five percent he reflected on the experience. He now had his own built in binoculars! That was cool as hell.

Thoroughly satisfied Jim decided he was ready to head out. There was a whole world to explore!