Arlyth awoke in a decrepit looking cemetery, it was dusk and the sun was just now ducking behind the line of buildings, looking around she noticed that she was outside of a city, she vaguely recognized it from her time while playing Exultation Online, except this time was different. Arlyth had been playing the game for many hours with her friends but most of what she could remember she wasn't playing the game, she was on her couch when everything got a little fuzzy. Her memory of the last day or so was tweaked it seemed. Instinctively Arlyth tried to open her heads up display, or HUD but, to her dismay, nothing happened. After the reflexive nature of the games mechanics didn't work she resorted to the backup method of seeing your HUD.

"Show Hud." Arlyth said out loud to the air. Again, nothing happened, instead she heard a quiet groan in her brain. "What was that?" in all her time playing the game, nothing had ever spoken inside her mind before and she was taken aback. After a short moment of pause her hud solidified itself in front of her, this time though, everything was different - all of her stats had been reset to that of a level 1 player. Upon looking at her stats she heard a deep mellow but brash voice read over it for her, as per usual.

Name

Level

Racial Abilities

Arlyth

1 - (1,000 XP to Level 2)

Dark Vision (Passive) - Level 1

Race

Alignment

Class

Sanguine Elf

Neutral

N/A

Attributes

Spells

Physical - 12

Mental - 11

Strength

Intelligence

Skills

Constitution

Wisdom

Dexterity

Perception

Social - 5

Resistances

Luck

Charm - 50%

Charisma

EXO had a stat based attribute system with different races getting different amounts of points per level. It averages out what the abilities would do into one stat. With three main categories that grouped the representative subcategories to one skill level. Physical stats were in one group, with strength, constitution, and dexterity. Mental stats were in another, with intelligence, wisdom and perception. Lastly, there is the social group with charisma & luck. This was made this way to limit the toughness behind stat allocation and simplified the process.

Once Arlyth had a good look at her character sheet she closed it and commented to herself, "I'm back to level 1, I have the same stats as a level 1 with some slight variations to them, assuming that's due to my new race, what is a Sanguine Elf, anyway?" she continued muttering to herself under a thoughtful stare with her finger around her mouth in an odd mustache thinking pose. After a few moments of pondering Arlyth heard another quiet groan in her brain, followed by a prompt.

Wiki Knowledge of Sanguine Elves

Sanguine Elves are a subset of the High Elves, after a civil dispute inside the capital of the High Elves, they were left on divided fronts when their battle ended in a stalemate, deciding on a truce the two groups split while one remained as the Honorable High Elves, the other became the Sanguine Elves - after vowing to never lose again, they found a new home deep in the dark forests and set their sights on victory. To further their means they found themselves obsessed with blood magic and it soon became a part of their very core as a race. The Sanguine Elves became masters of blood magic over many generations, even having developed the racial ability to control people if they ingest their lifeblood. Due to their nature of blood manipulation they are often avoided, and considered monsters. Their physical growth is the same as a humans, adulthood is around the age of 60 but they can live to be more than 1000 years old. They have a natural proficiency with daggers, long swords, short swords, short bows, and longbows, their magical affinities are: Blood, Ice, & Shadow, their racial abilities include: Dark Vision, and Blood Manipulation, Sanguine Elves gain 3 characteristic points per level to distribute and lastly they carry a natural resistance to Charming effects.

"Huh, that's informative." Arlyth said out loud again to herself. But why would I be an elf that specializes in blood magic? I was a human before, is this even a playable race? she thought. At the same moment she finished that thought she tried pulling up her hud again, using the same mental controls the game uses out of habit. She wanted to look at the playable races in the game, there were quite a few so she never memorized them all. After a brief moment of pause she noticed again that her hud wasn't responding to her mental prompting. "This is getting annoying." She muttered aloud. Another groan played through her ears, causing her to do a 360 looking for a source. Her hud appeared but she knew that she had heard that same groan each time she tried to open any of her screens and even after casually wondering what a Sanguine Elf was.

"Okay, who are you and why are you in my brain? And side note, are you controlling my hud?" Arlyth said out loud.

Another groan and Arlyth heard a strangely peculiar voice say, "Whaddya want?"

"Wh-wh-who are you?" Arlyth stuttered.

"I'm one of the fancy Ai's that run this game you humans love to run around and wreck." The Voice responded

"Okay, so why are you in my avatar or brain, actually, where are you?"

The AI sighed at Arlyth's lack of dignity in her questioning, "I technically am you, I was told to run this avatar but when I showed up, you were still here, now we just kind of share the space but you've got all the control and I control the game aspects of this ordeal.”

Taken aback by the nonchalant nature of this voice inside her head Arlyth shot back, "I'm still here?! Where else would I be?! This is MY avatar and I'm the connected soul to it in the real world! And why do you have control of my HUD?!"

"Ah, the big guys have never been so unprofessional." The Voice chuckled. "I was supposed to take over for you, you know, continue your legacy and such, but you had to be all strong willed and stuff to the point that you forced me out of control but since your soul link isn’t what it used to be, your game controls don’t work anymore and so I control the code and show it to you in the way you’re used to."

"Woah, woah, wait a minute, you were supposed to take over for me?! What do you mean?! Control my body? Be ME?!" Arlyth said in response to the AI, boiling with anger.

"Basically, the big guys wanted to keep you around in the game because you're so valuable to it. They heard your soul was losing its light or something of that sort, anyway, I was going to inhabit your body and run it for the foreseeable future, just to keep you around on Ucha."

Arlyth crumbled into herself. Plopping to the ground and pulling her knees into her chest, a continuous stream of thoughts hit her all at once. Did I die? If I died, how am I here? What's this voice talking about? How would it inhabit my body? But I died?

Her spiral of emotions was abruptly ended when the AI said “Don’t worry kid, you’re still here aren’t you? Now I don’t know the logistics, I was just sent here to control this avatar, it appears you’re no longer recognized as a normal player, though. I have control of your hud and game controls and while I dislike this situation, I’ll help you out, it’ll work like it should from here on, I’m just grumpy about the situation.”

Arlyth blinked a few times and her familiar looking hud materialized in her vision, she saw the green health bar, blue mana bar and green stamina bars, all of which were full. She looked around, noticing it was just after dusk, sighing to herself she got back on her feet. Guess it’s time to try and figure this all out, she thought. The AI said I’m not seen as a player anymore, so am I considered an npc then? Or something in between, somehow? She wasn’t sure what to make of that and had no idea how she would even figure out something of that sort, maybe if she found an old friend in game? She shrugged, dusting off her butt and took another look around.

She knew she was in the graveyard, and the city looked to be Newgarde, this cemetery had seen better days though. Her eyes briefly stopped on something she thought she saw in the distance but quickly moved on. She walked to what looked like a path and tried to head out of the cemetery. The place was massive, covered in overgrown weeping willows with leaves hanging to the ground, gravestones of all sorts, tall ones, short ones, extravagant ones, and even just plain stone placards on the ground. Remembering some of the lore of Newgarde she connected that the bigger, more grandeur ones definitely belonged to someone with a lot of money or were probably royalty, although that was unlikely as the palace had its own graveyard.

Coming up on what looked to be the center of the graveyard she had a sudden moment of pause when she heard a low growling noise coming from beside her. Snapping her head to the noise she saw what looked to be a humanoid shambling towards her, once it got under the low street lights that were lighting the dirt pathways of the graveyard, it let out a slight screech as it retreated into the darkness to avoid the lighted path.

Arlyth took the moment to look for a nameplate, the normal status bar seen in EXO. It showed you the basics of an enemy, its name, level within 10 levels of your own, and health.

Arlyth was startled by the appearance of a monster, especially inside the city. She jumped back, and tried to inspect her inventory for any sort of weapons.

Her HUD materialized in-front of her and she saw a silhouette of a person with spots for gear to go into, all she had on were some plain clothes and nothing else. Her inventory was sadly empty and she wasn’t sure what to do, normally everyone started with some sort of starter weapon and she found nothing.

Looking around she saw that the zombie had come closer in the few seconds she was looking at her HUD. It was moving slowly, so she liked her chances. She was a level 1, but she had real-world gymnastics experience and was extremely nimble on her feet. The PSI pods allowed all of your senses to work in the virtual game with you, and with that her real life movements also followed, although hampered by her stats. She could do the movements but it got smoother and cleaner over time with her growth.

Arlyth took a quick glimpse around her looking for something she could use as a weapon, she found a sharp piece of stone that had come off one of the nearby tombstones, picking it up, she examined it.

[Makeshift Stone Shiv]

Damage: 2-4 Piercing

Quality: Trash

Speed: Fast

Durability: 5/5

Arlyth took an analyzing stare at her opponent, the zombie was about 10 yards away now. She was confident in her abilities, even at level 1. Combat in EXO was unique to other MMOs the world had seen thus far. EXO took critical wound spots to another level, if you hit someone in a major artery or organ it was always a critical. Different monsters boasted their own weak points and it was up to the player to find them. Arlyth assumed that even a zombie would have weak points but didn’t think they’d be the same as humans. She opted to try and stab it in the neck.

Gripping the dagger in her hand with a white knuckled grip, she ran at the zombie, and plunged the shiv into its neck. A yellow six popped up above the zombie’s head. I got a crit! That must be one of its weak points. Arlyth thought to herself. The zombie recoiled, while attempting a low growl at Arlyth but the creature found it hard with a hole in its throat. At the same moment the zombie recoiled Arlyth pulled the shiv out, and rushed back in for another attack. While the zombie was still reeling from the attack, she hit it again two more times in its neck, moving in a swift manner, Arlyth stabbed once again in the front of the zombies neck and then again in the back and two more yellow numbers ascended into the air above the zombie a 6 and then a 8.

Knowing she had done enough damage to defeat her foe, Arlyth turned around to see the zombie turning its head 180° to look at her, a weird smile on its face. A low cackle came from the zombie and it muttered “Interesting-g-g” in a hardly understandable gravelly voice. Arlyth stood there frozen in place, stunned by what she was witnessing.