I felt a slight shift in the air, and went by the window to look outside. The ship had set sail and was slowly moving forwards. Well. Slowly as of right now. Even with the maximum speed this vessel could accelerate to, it would still take almost three weeks to cross the void between the rings alone. Plus whatever it took to travel through the rings themselves. So I was looking at a long voyage ahead of me.

What to do next? I had spent a night in my cabin already, writing down notes about my destination and people I would try to recruit in my adventuring party. I needed people to keep me alive after all. Could anyone of value be on the ship with me? I knew I had some low level NPCs in the general area, but it would be very odd for any of them to board the same ship, at the same time with me. It would be worth to take a look around at the very least.

Going back to my bed I sat down, going over and finalizing my notes on and around Dhalk. It was my favourite starter town, which meant plenty of opportunities for grinding up levels and decent loot. The town had a town wizard, - Ashatus - a scheming, power hungry phosphoromancer. A fancy word for light based illusion magic. He had a few pretty good magical items I could try to get by doing minor quests for him, and depending on the version of Ashatus that was in place, I may even try to recruit him.

Then there was also Argosy. An abandoned city in the forest between Olvia and Dhalk. It was guarded by a powerful necromancer with a literal army of skeletons under her command. Necromancy wasn’t illegal in my world, but due to obvious reasons, it was generally frowned upon. No one wanted to see their grandparents walking as zombies. Once I had a solid party behind me, I knew that I had to tackle the place. Not only were the skeletons an excellent source of sin during the early gameplay, they were a type of enemy I wouldn’t have ethical issues in killing. Win win situation all around… For me.

But before I could even move to Dhalk, I would need to gain at least one ally and take down few mobs around Olvia. Enough to gain my first level and unlock my magic stat, since Dhalk didn’t have a herald of their own. I had made the sin gain system to include the party of the person who got the killing blow, so even if it wasn’t me dealing the damage, I would still benefit from the kill. In essence, basic MMO experience sharing feature.

With hindsight it was rather stupid of me to not to place a way to level up in the starting town as far as gameplay was concerned, but in my defense, when I created the world, it didn’t make sense to have a herald there lore-wise. But Olvia was relatively close. I was sure I could manage.

I scanned over my notes, trying to decide which quest path I would embark upon. Nothing too interesting to begin with popped out, which only made sense. All the truly important missions came later and one would have to go through the tutorial before the actual gameplay started.

I blew on the pages to dry the ink faster before putting the notebook in my bag. The ship was already moving fast, and I had a long journey ahead of me. Having already finished all the notes I wanted for the early game, there was no reason to not explore the ship. Checking that I had the key with me, I left the room and locked the door behind me. It was time to go to the bar area.

I navigated through the ship and other passengers, trying to find the best bar I could. Being modeled after real life modern cruisers, there were plenty of restaurants, small inns and on-board shops available. After window shopping a while, I decided that the shops were not worth my time or money. Alcohol, trinkets and other memorabilia were showcased on glass displays, and I really didn’t need any of that. Even the speciality shops that I had access to just sold more expensive versions of the same items. What a ripoff. At least my room was nice enough and people coming on holiday cruises wouldn’t be looking for magical artifacts in the ship.

Finding a suitable saloon, I took a seat and got myself a proper meal. It was time to start my voyage to the second ring.

The three week flight was uneventful to say the least. During the whole journey I barely left my cabin. Food was brought to me by servants, and I had no intentions of making new friends with my creations. At least non named ones.

I also had a lot of time to think about my build. My game system didn’t have classes as traditional games would have, but rather a stat based progression system. Players would level up and allocate points to characteristics, and based on your chosen characteristics, you could emulate the traditional role playing game classes. For example high dexterity and strength with a hint of constitution could make a competent fighter class, while switching dexterity and constitution around would resemble a traditional barbarian.

Then to add to that the players had different skills and skill proficiencies. Let’s take swordsmanship for an easy example. If I were to pick up a sword right now and swing it around, I would have novice level skill in swords. Meaning that I wouldn’t know what to do with it, other than “pointy end goes to the enemy”. As I train with the sword, my skill would increase, going through the ranks of Novice, Beginner, Proficient, Expert and Master. When this was just a tabletop game, each rank would give you a different bonus on your dice roll, so the more skilled you were at something, more likely it was for you to succeed in the thing.

But how did that relate to my current situation? Well, I had mapped out a few possible character builds for my advancement. I didn’t know my current character sheet yet, so I would have to finalize my decisions after I visited a herald, but right now my top three contestants were a Spellblade, Wizard, and a Conjurer.

Wizard was simple enough to understand. Dump all your characteristic points to intelligence and magic stats. Intelligence would allow you to memorize more spells, understand more complicated spells and create your own magical rituals, while magic stat would give you more mana to work with, and the ability to channel more powerful spells. Simple.

Conjurer was a one step further, and in my opinion, the best option I had at the moment. It followed a similar build to wizard, with the added element of throwing Charisma into the mix. The build was based on controlling summoned beings after all, so you needed some heavy duty charisma to make that happen, as some creatures wouldn’t obey you without you meeting the charisma threshold the creature required. The reason I preferred this build was that it completely eliminated my need for other party members. I could just summon my front line fighters to keep me safe, while I threw spells from behind them. And the best part? I could start my build as a Wizard, and when I had good enough magic and intelligence, I could just spend my future points on charisma. Yay multiclassing.

The final option, Spellblade, was there because it was relatively easy. Spellblades in all of fiction were the true jacks of all trade. Well.. next to Bards at least. It was a class that mixed heavy mobility with the ability to augment your physical prowess with spells. If I went for this class… build… Anyway, I could blink around the battlefield, swinging swords and chucking spells to the enemies' backs. It was a solid build with a versatile playstyle, and it was no surprise that so many people favored it so much. But it really wasn’t the best option for me for a few reasons. Firstly, beyond stabbing an opponent, I had no idea how to wield a sword properly. Sure, I could purchase a magical skill tome and instantly jump to Proficient level of skill, but those books were expensive, and I didn’t want to spend my money on something like that… at least just yet.

The other reason why I wouldn’t go for a Spellblade was Jimmy. The man I

had killed on the street, the first night in this world. The look on his face as the light escaped his eyes was so haunting, that I didn’t want to see it again. Call me a wuss if you like, but if I could help it, I wouldn’t take another human’s life. Not even an NPC’s. I wouldn’t stop my potential party members or summoned soldiers from killing, but I wouldn’t be the one who dealt the final blow.

Shaking my head from my thoughts, I collected my few belongings and headed to the deck. The ship had started to slow down, and the Captain had made an announcement that Olvia was just half an hour away.

Joining the river of passengers, I waited for the docking procedure to be over, and followed the group to outside. All in all, the ship had at least two thousand travellers, plus dozens of crewmembers to manage the ship, the kitchens and the shops. So the line was long.

After another hour of waiting, it was finally my time to be checked. A skyport officer was waiting for me behind a desk, ready to check my bags for any contraband. It was a thing that wouldn’t have been present in the game beyond a mention, but when I created a world, I wanted it to operate with some sense. Anyone was free to travel across the rings, but just like in real life, there were people trying to smuggle illegal goods and narcotics across the borders. So there were customs checkpoints in place for that.

I presented my bags, and after the officer emptied it, checked for hidden pouches or contraband, he patted me down. Obviously I carried nothing illegal, so I helped him to pack my belongings and I was cleared to land.

Olvia was a magnificent city. It was constructed almost entirely out of red brick buildings, and cultivated fields beyond the outer wall spanned over miles with an occasional farm house in sight. The buildings were two or three stories high, and were built in modern medieval style with A-frame shingled roofs.

The whole city was uniform in appearance, and it truly was my lovechild. One of them at least. I walked through the open city gate, feeling like a tourist, taking in all the sights and smells the city had to offer.

With the lack of indoor plumbing, the air itself was surprisingly clean, devoid of smells of urine or poop. Sure I had my crap devouring toilet seats, but I didn’t think most of the people living here had access to one. But then again I did enter through one of the larger gates. Not to scare away possible tourists and merchants, they would keep the important portions of the city clean. I did not want to check out what the cheap side had in stores. I had enough of that already when I lived with Onyx’s group. I wonder how they were doing?

It was just past mid day, and the city was bustling with life. Farmers were tending their crops outside the gates, lumberjacks were doing whatever lumberjacks were doing and merchants on smaller stalls were once again showing the strength of their windpipes, trying to get the influx of new people to come and visit them.

I was never any good with resisting too hard when it came to street vendors selling food, so I bought a delicious looking meat skewer that was covered in spicy honey sauce, and continued on my journey towards the central market. I knew that it had a few stores I needed to visit to get my beginner gear, and from the looks of people heading to that direction, and the shouting that came from there, the market square had some kind of event going on. Perhaps an auction!

It indeed was an auction. The kind that made me not want to attend. On top of a wooden platform there were two rows of… not humans, but… creatures, heads bowed, wearing simple loincloths and shackles, while the auctioneer was screaming the benefits of the “specimen” next to him. It was a slave auction.

From the looks of it, the current slave being sold was a goblin. I had never seen an actual goblin, so I couldn’t be entirely sure, but it sure did fit the description. Grey skin, large bat wing-like ears, black eyes and rather small build sure did sound like a goblin. I was fascinated by the creature enough to be distracted from what was going on. It was one thing to draw little goblins and write notes next to the drawings, but to see one with your own two eyes. It was interesting to say the least.

Slavery was legal within limits in my world. Well… depending on the region. First two rings allowed slavery, as long as the slave was not from a race that belonged to unified empire. A political alliance between humans, dwarves, elves, gnomes and goliaths. So basically owning a demihuman was allowed. There were laws in place to regulate the treatment of and capture of slaves, but most of the time it wasn’t properly enforced. Killing a slave without a crime fitting the penalty was a criminal offense, but in reality when a slave grew out of its usefulness, it was killed like an old pet, but without the love. So slaughtered like an animal? Yes.

I walked closer to the slave stand, and heard the people bidding on the goblin. The prices were ridiculously low, current one being only eleven silvers. Why was it so low? Goblins were difficult to capture, and they were super fun creatures! But then I looked at the faces of the people around me, and I knew that this particular goblin was going to have a bad time with anyone who bought him. You see, Goblins are not native to this ring. This wouldn’t normally be an issue, as many other races that currently lived in the second ring migrated from somewhere else. Goliaths for example were from the flying islands that orbited the fourth ring. But goblins were from the third ring, and they were a common hazard with the people living in edge villages, due to their constant raiding. And to add to the hate, goblins were notorious slavers on their own, capturing everyone and everything they could to be worked to death in their mines.

It was safe to say that a similar fate would await this current goblin. I quickly scanned over the remaining creatures to be auctioned. Most of them were indeed simple goblins. I counted two dozen of them. Remains of a raider party perhaps? Among them I spotted two larger creatures. The facial features were similar, but their build was more akin to humans. So hobgoblins then? Rare subrace of goblins.

I was thinking of the situation a bit too long and heard the auctioneer selling the goblin for seventeen and a half silvers, and passing the chains to a stage assistant who walked the goblin to its new owner. An idea started to form in my head. I needed allies that would help me to level up, and if indeed these goblins were a part of a raid group, they would be decent warriors. At least five or six levels ahead of me, and strong enough to pose a serious challenge to new players, especially if they picked goblin raids as their first mission.

And with a slave collar, I wouldn’t have to worry about them turning on me. Yup. I decided to act as the next goblin was brought to the front and the auctioneer started shouting the prices. This one seemed to be more of a stronger variant, and if the man’s descriptions were to be believed, had killed two human guards on his own. The price started at five silvers and I decided to throw my metaphorical hat in.

I waited for the price to go up a bit, gauging how much people bid at once. It seemed to be five to ten coppers at once. Truly disgustingly low bids. Soon enough the bidding was starting to slow down, once it had crossed fifteen silver threshold. The auctioneer, trying to make people make last second bids began to count down and I stepped in.

“Sixteen” I raised my hand as I shouted my bid, and the auctioneer noticed.

“We have a sixteen from the young master! Does anyone have sixteen and a ten? Sixteen and a ten anybody?”

And so it went on. Raising my bid five or ten coppers at the time, we passed the last price soon enough.

“Do we have a twenty? Anybody! Twenty silvers and this little sucker may come home with you? It doesn’t speak common too well, but I’m sure it can make up for it with scrubbing latreens” The auctioneer gave a small kick at the goblin and for some reason I felt a sudden spike of anger crossing me. I couldn’t explain it, but even if the being was just an NPC, the pitiful look of the creature just didn’t sit well with me.

“Twenty five silvers!” I shouted, apparently making the highest bid anybody had made in a goblin auction in a long time.

The auctioneer was looking at me, glee in his eyes. “There we have it everybody! Twenty five silvers! Does anybody want to raise? Twenty five and a ten? Going once.. Going twice!” Nobody raised. It wasn’t worth it. They could get cheaper slaves later, and nobody wanted to drive up the price to the point of ending up with an overpriced goblin. “Sold to the young gentleman in the middle! Come to the side and collect your new servant!”