Feeling bemused at my own actions, I logged into Vast Martial World. My screen went black, and after a few seconds, a countdown appeared on the screen. 2 minutes and 5 seconds. Sighing, I got up out of my chair and got myself a glass of water, and then came back to my computer.

I watched the numbers tick down.

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1….

The screen once again went black. After a slight delay, a message appeared.

Welcome to Vast Martial World! In this game, you take the role of a wounded ancestor, attempting to guide your descendents through to prominence as a powerful and influential sect! Your primary job is threefold. First, you will allocate resources between the disciples of the sect. As the sect grows, this will become increasingly difficult to do with specificity, so you will be forced to create scaffolding that will accomplish that for you. Your second job is to guide your disciples by assisting in their creation of techniques, through naming and by setting the nomological phrasings that form their power base. The final job is to assist your disciples in earning you Face, which can be used to send your disciples to powerful hidden dimensions, tournaments, or ancient tombs so they might gain good fortune!

I scratched my head. Sect? Resources? Nomological phrasings….?

At least face seemed straightforward as a resource, although the naming was a bit…

Another notification popped up.

We have detected this is your first time playing. Play with tips on?

Although it was painful to do it, I selected yes. Immediately the screen shifted, showing a small valley next to a mountain. A huge waterfall careened off a cliff and crashed into one side of the valley, where a pool formed. Otherwise, there were a few trees and bushes, but nothing too impressive.

The graphics were surprisingly decent, if a bit stylized for my taste. The view was zoomed out, but I couldn’t seem to scroll to look anywhere else around me. The edges of my vision ended sharply, the known world a square than encompassed the valley. I couldn’t really even see where the waterfall came from, that part was cut off too.

‘Oh, I can zoom in,’ I thought, suddenly noticing. Once zoomed in, I could scroll around, looking at my valley with a more discerning eye. The waterfall came from the west, and it and the pool took up the western third.The central area was mostly forest, but to the north the ground sloped up, leading upwards into what I assumed would be a mountain range. To the east, the river that flowed from the pool meandered for a bit among more forest. Not too much interesting.

A menu popped up, asking me what I wanted my starting race to be. My friend had explained that humans had the most talent with techniques, but had weak bodies. Demons had rapid cultivation, but didn’t have the patience to develop techniques. And animals had powerful bodies, but were very slow at cultivation.

My friend had recommended that I go for animals, because the powerful bodies made them more durable early, making it more noob friendly. I selected animals, but an even more daunting list appeared before me. I scrolled slowly through, but by the time I reached the D’s I was already bored. There was a surprising amount of specificity here, naming almost to the individual species. Also interesting was there was some definitely unrealistic animals listed like the “Goblin-faced Boar”, or “Demon Bat”.

Luckily, there was a small golden button on the bottom left that said “Lottery”. After a slight hesitation I clicked it.

Selecting lottery will randomly choose an animal race. An additional nomological phrase associated with your sect will be allowed. Additional, higher ranked options will be included. However, there is a chance that the species will not match your chosen Biome. Proceed anyway?

I shrugged. Who cares. If it was bad, I could quit.

A huge wheel appeared and began to spin. Names flashed past, faster than I could see. After about 10 seconds, it began to slow, but it slowed slowly, so the names that I passed could be seen, adding a perverse sort of agony to waiting.

‘Acid Ant’

‘Hippogriff’

‘Dire Koala’

‘Lamia’

The slowing continued. Almost against my will, my eyes were bulging as I saw, in the far part of the wheel. Appear a new, very impressive sounding name: Dragon Eagle.

Turning, the needle approached it.

It was barely moving now, dragging itself through the Four-Armed Sloth, into the space occupied by Dragon Eagle

Stop.

Please stop.

Oh great game, have mercy on this noob. I have never played, and I need an extra edge to compete.

I will never again doubt the superiority of simulation games based on chinese web novels…!

STOP.

…..

Congratulations! Your sect shall be the “Red-eyed Turtle Sect”.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.