Chris, a typical couch potato that won't leave his home without a good enough reason. Each day is the same for him until that day, the day his own FSK capsule arrived. a Virtual reality MMO game that has made the world shriek from excitement for ten years now and even now has millions of fans.

Chris' life lacked in many ways, lack in money, lack a girlfriend, lacking freedom as he's locked in his own morals and beliefs, for him FSK would be the start of his freedom, at least in-game.

As he entered the capsule without a second thought.

-Freedom Seeker Kosmos welcomes you-

A strange mechanical voice rings in his ears a bit loud for his liking.

-In FSK you can create three characters,

please select one of the three worlds to begin-

FSK, Freedom Seeker Kosmos, is three games in one, you can only have three characters one for each world and there are three worlds Allastar,Destros and Altgaia which theme Magic,post apocalyptic and a Sci-fi world.

Three screens popped in front of his him as he was still stuck in the darkness, The first was a strange colorful planet called Allastar. Allastar had seven moons and three different suns traveling with the moons around it, the description said

"Allastar, a world of magic and Adventure a world full of Myths and Legends, a perfect world for any fan of the Fantasy genre"

Chris would have selected Allastar but he wanted to see the what the other two worlds were on about.

Destros looked like a planet covered with dust clouds and a strange space station orbiting around it.

"Destros, a ruined post apocalyptic world without magic, ranging from low technology to science fiction, Ideal for anyone who likes the struggle to survive and scavenging through the endless radioactive deserts"

Well Destros didn't seem so attractive but eventually he would get bored of the fantasy so it was a good alternative.

Last was Altgaia which looked Identical to earth, even the moon orbiting around like it was earth and all.

"Altgaia, a 3D copy of earth, in a science fiction future world, a bit more futuristic world, where the hunters roam, kill or be killed a perfect PK experience"

Chris waves his hand and selects "Allastar"

-Allastar offers a variety of races to select from-

A large list of races was listed, selecting "human" another list appeared called "subspecies" there were many different names but at most they changed a bit the appearance and racial trait, like greater intelligence or strength.

He chose a subspecies that had no visible

downsides called the "valley people"

-gives a 5% bonus to crafting

-gives a 5% bonus to profession learning

-gives a 10% bonus to bartering prices

-Scanning has recognized you as a male, you can change your appearance but your real gender will show if you try evolving in any sexual activity identifying what you are in real life, this measure was created after trial and error, any Inconvenience this might implicate is non of the company's responsibilities-

-you have been warned!-

the last words were louder than the rest well there would surely be many problems in a game that allows gender changing,

Two buttons were now in front of me

-Male- and -Other-

'So the system identifies those that have changed their gender as others, well good to know'

He click -Male- and the voice continues.

-You can now change your appearance, know that your appearance in-game will be affected by by your subspecies and actions in-game -

Chris was a young man with average looks, long dark brown hair, a beard and mustache and wore glaces most of his life. He made little fixes his appearance changing his hair to black and eyes to a reddish color, close to that of blood, although the system didn't allow him to make it a deeper red it still looked like a deep dark red color. After changing himself, he looked like one of the three musketeers, he clicks the -OK- button without regret and moves on.

-Choose your Avatar's name-

"Darknym"

A name he used to use frequently in online games, a name he made up himself.

-Chose a starting location or criteria for a random spawning location-

Darknym clicked Library,temple,training hall and mage tower as the criteria. Those four things were a must for him or so he thought at the moment.

-Would you like a brief tutorial?-

He pressed -Skip-

A flash of light blinded him and he appeared in the center of a rundown town. His first though was maybe there was some battle here or something but there were no evidence of anything pointing like that. Few people moved around and by their appearance, lack of armor and weapon they must have been Npcs going around doing their jobs, not even one player could be seen in sight, well not very surprising as outside the walls He could see the vast mountain ranges all around rising and some even covering the sunlight. It must be some undeveloped mountain town, well at least He will find the facilities he selected.

Asking the guard for the training hall was his first priority.

As advised by the all the best players, the training hall gave a boost to your stats and some even made new skills in there, it's said the greatest skills were made in a training hall.

"Would you be kind enough to show me the way to the training hall?"

he asked the guard with a sincere but low voice

"What did you say?

The guard asked rather loudly.

"...training hall?"

He asked somewhat uncomfortable.

"speak louder dammit I can't hear you"

Chris didn't know if the guard was mocking him or not but he spoke to him once more. The guard wasn't old to the contrary he seemed younger than Chris but who knows maybe he had some hearing problems.

"I would like to know the direction to the training hall"

he said in a louder tone

"Speak louder and clearer I can't understand a word you said"

Now he was angry and with all his strength he he shouted into the guard's ear

"Where's the training hall!"

The guard jumped from his place and made a look like his ears were hurting him now.

He wanted to hit Chris but a strange aura of Anger and Irritation that surrounded Chris at the moment advised him otherwise, he pointed at a building with two Swords hanging on the outside.

"open Status"

============================================

Race - Human

Subspecies - valley people

Gender - Male

Level - 1

Physical

Hp 100(health)

Sp 100(stamina)

Mp 100(Magic)

Mind

Art - 0

Charm - 0

Morality - Neutral

Soul

Aura Color - Dark Purple

Integrity - Unharmed

Ki - 1000

Detailed stats

Physical

+Strength - 10

+endurance - 0

+constitution - 0

+Agility - 10

+speed - 0

+reflexes - 0

+Intelligence - 10

+wisdom - 0

+leadership - 0

Magic

Inter threshold - 11stones

External control - 0.1 stones

Affinity with gods

- Earth 50mp

Mind

Willpower - Low

Social status - Homeless

Fame title - None

Soul

Daily luck - (default)

Karma - 0

limit break - Astral projection

Skills

None

Traits

-10% bonus exp(race)

-5% bonus to crafting(subspecies)

-5% bonus to profession learning(subspecies)

-10% bonus to bartering prices(subspecies)

====================================================

The huge screen was but one of the four pages of the stats and they went even deeper analyzing how each stat works and some interaction between some stats like speed, agility and reflexes. He only looked at the Important ones at the first page and although it might seem to complex but as you play the game the tutors and teachers will make up for it.

After he checked his Inventory for the starting Items, the ten breads a full canteen of water and 20copper coins, he went inside to the training hall. There were three doors, to the right were the training field, a large gate that led to the training dummies and targets for the target practice, there even were some weights and training weapons.

The Instructor was a young man even younger than him, he was equipped with high grade Items or just well made equipment as he couldn't tell how good or bad they were.

The Instructor greeted him with a single "hello" and sent him to chose a weapon from the piles of wooden swords, axes, spears and other weapon.

Darknym went to the pile and grabbed six wooden daggers, there was a reason behind that but mostly it was cause he had made his own training program.

He begun poking the knives towards the scarecrow experimenting on things like how much pressure has to be applied in order for there to be damage.

Next he tried out moves he saw in games and movies, and failed quite pathetically as non even registered as a valid hit, maybe because of his low strength or because he didn't know how he was supposed to use a knife.

After a few minutes of practice with the knives and doing no damage and wasting no stamina as the system didn't even register his awesome slashes and stabs as attacks, He the begun thinking he was doing something wrong.

The young Instructor seeing his predicament approached him and said with a rather arrogant tone.

"Would you like some pointers of how to use a knife?"

Darknym would normally accept his help but the Instructor's sky blue eyes and blond fine hair made him mad, for some reason his mind traveled back to his past when he was a child. Chris was a half at school and racism in his country was a daily phenomenon, both by the locals and immigrants alike. He was a half and belonged to neither country, he felt as if he had no nationality an endless struggle to find himself, he was bullied a lot but he never gave in he fought back making him an unpopular target for the bullies as he made it his trademark to not go down without doing a little damage as well.

Seeing the instructor's smirk he saw all those that looked down on him those that wanted to make him do their biddings. 'Npc or not, this bastard had thoughts of having fun with his predicament and Chris would not yield, he would never give in to those kind of people'

"No way I was just warming up"

He said smiling back to the young arrogant instructor, he was sure he saw an angry reaction from the Instructor as he moved away dissatisfied.

The next hour he spend poking the knife into the scarecrows and really fast pushing it from the handle inwards, well it's not as lethal as it sounds but it will guarantee a lot of pain to the victim of the attack and did a little damage to the scarecrow. He also tried to throw the knives at the scarecrow a few times but It didn't go so well. He did hit the scarecrow but it's pointless if you hit it with the hilt of the knife as it makes circles in the air. As for throwing multiple knives, he thanked god there was no one else in the training hall but the training instructor.

- stamina went up by one point-

He opened his status once again

============================================

Race - Human

Subspecies - valley people

Gender - Male

Level - 1

Physical

Hp 100(health)

Sp 101(stamina)

Mp 100(Magic)

Mind

Art - 0

Charm - 0

Morality - Neutral

Soul

Aura Color - Dark Purple

Integrity - Unharmed

Ki - 1000

Detailed stats

Physical

+Strength - 10

+endurance - 0

+constitution - 0

+Agility - 10

+speed - 0

+reflexes - 0

+Intelligence - 10

+wisdom - 0

+leadership - 0

Magic

Inter threshold - 11stones

External control - 0.1 stones

Affinity with gods

- Earth 50mp

Mind

Willpower - Low

Social status - Homeless

Fame title - None

Soul

Daily luck - (default)

Karma - 0

limit break - Astral projection

Skills

None

Traits

-10% bonus exp(race)

-5% bonus to crafting(subspecies)

-5% bonus to profession learning(subspecies)

-10% bonus to bartering prices(subspecies)

====================================================

In FSK when stats like health,stamina and magic are raise by enough points you gain some stat from the main stats.

10 health point means the raise is one point in either Strength,endurance or constitution

(depends on method).

10 stamina points raised a single point in either Agility, speed or reflexes

(depends on method).

10 magic points gave a single point in Intelligence, wisdom or leadership

(depends on book or info).

Art was a stat that helped in crafting and all players had it of course it was only useful to the craftsmen and other artistic professions.

100 points of Art raised the willpower of the player but it was hard to earn even by craftsmen, not that willpower helped a lot.

Charm was a strange stat as it only worked with Npcs and it would be the equal of fame in some other games, charm made it easier to interact with Npcs.

Morality is a double edged blade, as it can change according to your actions, it goes from lawful to chaotic and it has mostly downfalls as lawful can't interact with chaotic Npcs and chaotic will be shot on sight by lawful Npcs, thus making PKing in FSK almost non existing, as it only occurs near chaotic cities(monster towns), like the Orkish or undead cities.

Soul was only useful for monks or any Mastered profession. It was not that he hadn't to care about it but not yet at least.

After another hour or so in the training hall, exhausted he just rest near the walls of the training grounds, the Instructor had long since begun Ignoring him and went on his own thing, doing some training patterns with a wooden sword.

In FSK the stats can reach godly proportions but you will have to grind them for ages. If you ask why, well is goes like so

0-10 stats need 10 to raise.

10-20 stats need 20 to raise.

20-50 stats need 50 to raise.

50-100 stats need 100 to raise.

100-1000 stats need 1,000 to raise.

1000-up stats need 1,000,000 to raise.

Darknym was confident of reaching the 50s in all stats like the forums stated it was the main reason why the best players started from there, it was easier that reaching 100s although there were players devoted enough to grind stats to the 100s those became living in-game legends.

As each level gave 5points to allocate it was harder to do so after you leveled up a little so most players didn't allocate points until they reached their target stat values(easier to count).

Rumors in the forums said that there were only three players who had reached the 100s by training in the halls.

the rumored top 3 players

1.TOBO the human dragon knight

2.Loki the death elf Archmage

3.DKing the Ork Warchief

By the way his stamina was now up by another three points and his Hp by one point.

Darknym would have loved to stay for longer but he had another matter to attend to, "Magic".

He could see the mage tower in the distance it was an odd spiral shaped tower that had a large crystal ball on it's top, the forum said it was a portal for the Magic academy that anyone could attend. Darknym had no intention of becoming a wizard whatsoever but in Allastar every high class warrior knew a little magic and it was better to learn it early on in the game.

The entrance of the tower was guarded by two summoned monsters, they were griffins half eagles half lions, a dangerous enemy to fight but also a great ally to have. Inside there was a small waiting room and a desk where an old man with a white beard and a pointy hat was sitting reading an old dusty tome. All the light in the room came from the walls themselves as no candles or lamps were used.

Darknym didn't want to obstruct the old man from reading but he couldn't wait forever, he stood in front of the desk and said a simple "hello".

All hell broke louse as the mage jumped up from his armchair and cast some spell, seemingly a fireball from his magic staff towards the ceiling.

"Holly shit man, don't scare me like that"

His voice was nothing like his age implied, he must be a player that has altered his appearance to seem like an old man.

"Sorry about that I would like to inquire about magic, I read in forums that this is the right place to do so"

"well if it's only that, do you strive for warrior or mage?"

"Warrior"

the fake old man pointed at a shelf and a book came flying towards them.

"This is the basic book for magic after you finish this come back for the next book"

He might have sounded pleasant but the smirk in his face and the sound of his voice gave him away, there was some catch in this or it was strange but whatever at least he had the book.

Darknym read the book in the waiting room, the book was full of shit.

About how there is internal and external magical powers and how the system worked.

In a few words Internal power was the life force of the creature while external was the one used by mages, If you have not enough magic power for a spell you will use up your life force or incur some other negative effect that might be temporary or permanent, loss of exp, loss of stats and even loss of skills are among those side effects.

There are ten ways a mage can increase his magic capacity.

1.special meditation 1mp, with talent bonus 2 or 11mp, per second, eats up a lot of magic to do, children will only do it for a few minutes while adults will mostly survive it for an hour. This is not set in stone but the most usual.

2.mp usage, each time the mage uses mp his his max mp goes up by 1mp or 2mp and 11mp with talents but it's hard to do if you don't have much external mp.

3.Spell mastery, by mastering a spell you gain a bonus in your max mp worth the spells' worth, no bonus for talents.

4.Study, well it's not like reading about anything will raise mp but things about the links of magic and the world and deeper understanding into magic can raise ones max magic, depending on one's intelligence . All such books have a max value of mp they can give.

5.Magic storage devices or mp recovery objects are almost the same as raising your max capacity, only that you don't.

6.Godly negotiations, mages can try raising their mp by making favorable arrangements with a god. Most gods will demand loyalty and the soul of the mage when he dies so they he can serve them after death. drains more power from that god's realm of influence

7.element mastery, when you master an element you gain a large bonus of max mp,no talent bonuses.

8.Masterclass magic, there are some powerful spells which raise ones max mp by a lot, but they are even harder to find than cast.

9.demon contracts, contracts with demons are like priest spells, only use your own mp to cast.

10.Dragon fusion, makes the two into one being, the mage gains the Dragon's max mp plus his own. The dragon has the same mp as the mage so it nay be a bit problematic if the dragon uses too much mp for no particular reason.

Talents are the main reason many players delete their characters, Talent is the unfairness of this world.

"Ordinary" people have no boost to their mp boosting practice

"Average" people have no boost to their mp boosting practice

"Talented" ones have a small 1mp boost to their mp boosting practice

"Genius" ones have a bonus of 10mp in their mp boosting practice

So if you don't have a talented character you can forget about becoming a mage unless you are some magical race that has high magic capacity, for humans it's impossible to overcome the "ordinary" talent's status and becoming a mage.

I might have forgotten to mention but in FSK magic is measured in stones, one stone is 1000mp so even the weakest spell would take at least 1000mp to cast making mages a bit unpopular, as you can be a magic warrior whenever you like, as there are no penalties in magic while wearing a heavy armor or wielding an axe. After ending the book I had gained the meditation skill and four Magic points. He tried to do the meditation skill and it raised his mp by 2 per sec for the duration of 10sec before his mp went out gaining a 20mp boost and 2 wisdom.

Wisdom was what made a wizard what he was, Intelligence made professions advance faster, while leadership advance how many people one can lead in combat.

He was lucky he stopped the meditation in time as his mp had dried up in secs, but the most spectacular thing was his character was a "talent" in magic he gained a +1 mp boost in meditation, well it was good to know he could become a mage if he wanted to. He went to the fake old man and asked for the next book and was given a smaller book that looked like a manual, called three principles of magic. The book unlocked the Control, Focus and augmentation stats in the status but it was useless to him as they could only be raised by mages and the likes of them.

Control enables a mage to control how much magic to put into a spell.

Focus makes the chance to cast the right spell higher.

Augmentation is about making the spell bigger or creating an absolutely different spell.

Those three disciplines were needed to become a successful mage, as magic warriors didn't care about the principle and just spammed the spell enough times to master it to become 100% successful and even stronger.

'believe me it's better to spam a spell 100 times than spend a year at the magic "school"'

The next book was about the fourteen gods of Allastar who are the source of all magic,

they are -

1.Threa - Earth

2.Refi - Fire

3.Teraw - Water

4.Ria - Air

5.Thlig - Light

6.Krad - Darkness

7.Feli - Life

8.Thaed - Death

9.Deerg - Greed

10.Redor - Order

11.Althea - Health

12.Tanemis - Misfortune

13.Desa - Destruction

14.Torc - Creation

Some of the gods have strange magic that doesn't make much sense, like the god of greed who has mind reading abilities and other esp powers. Misfortune is the goddess of curses and as for order, he is more like the god of science than order.

The last book was an empty spellbook and with this the fake mage stood up and gave it to him saying

"Congratulation on becoming a mage"

With a ping Darknym gained a new profession, In Allastar one can have as many as ten unmastered professions, the drawbacks were that only the first profession could get 100% of the training you did for it, the next got a 90% and it went down to 0. the worst was that once you gained a profession there was no way to lose it, well it was a bit misfortune that his first was mage the most lengthy and the only unmastered profession in the whole Allastar.

Mastering the mage profession was Impossible so the fake mage had fucked him up good time, Well at least he could select his second profession more wisely.

Professions in Allastar gave a skill tree but unless you become of some rank in the profession you need a teacher in order to acquire new skills from the profession's skill tree. Normally a profession is gained by interacting with an Npc who will become your teacher but high rank players can teach others gaining some exp for doing so but they can also fuck up noobs for these exp and not become their teachers after giving them the profession.

Darknym didn't want to be a mage, so he just left the Mage tower without a word taking the spellbook with him as loot, he could hear from outside the Idiotic laughter from the fake Old mage.

The sky outside had begun to darken, Allastar has 14 instead of 24 hours making day and night in-game to only last 7 hours instead of 12. While time passed in a 1:1 ratio in other world an hour in-game and an hour outside is the same Allastar had an asynchronic timetable, no one knew what time he will appear in the game.

A good smell directed him towards a building, that looked like a tavern or a bar. Although he knew he probably wouldn't be able to buy anything, he still went Inside. The place was as deserted as it looked in the outside, the only decoration of the place could be called the beautiful elven woman sitting behind the counter. Darknym came closer to the counter, his eyes struck on her long blond hair and deep green eyes.

"Welcome to the Broken hide Inn can I do anything for you?"

she said with a melodic voice befitting the elven race and outlining her beautiful features.

"Good afternoon, I'm Darknym and I was wondering If there was any way I could be of help to a beauty like yourself"

'Suck at flirting I know, but it is worth the humiliation'

The elven maiden throwned and sat down again

"And here I thought I could make some profit, whatever I do have a task need doing but I highly doubt you will agree to it, it's hard work"

"I would do anything for you my lady"

she smirked with the most beautiful smile he had ever seen, he was in love or not as he had experienced what love was but that didn't stop him from saying what he thought.

"Alright, I'm Theofano, call me Theo"

She nodded him to follow her

She led him to a small closet and took out a broom and gave it to him.

"From today onwards you will be cleaning up the Inn, your pay will be 1copper per hour and a free meal on the house"

Darknym smiled back and grabbed the broom starting to clean the dusty looking Inn without a question or complain.

In FSK there are no quest windows but you are given a quest log, like that of the D&D games, where you can read past dialogs.

Cleaning the store was hard but he didn't cared, every now and then he eyed the beautiful elf. Her fair skin had a feint golden color making it apparent that she was an "Amber elf"

Amber elves are more akin to building cities and are more into the civilized ways of humanity, their skin color is an aftereffect of them living in cities made of fortified Amber.

After 4 hours of cleaning he was free to walk the streets once more. He was given 4copper and a cheap meal, but it was all he needed anyway.

In FSK's Allastar you only need to eat when your stamina drops too low and that's after every battle or activity as the stamina regeneration is very low, not even a 1 per sec, something along a 0.01 per sec or so.(100sec = 1stamina point)

Outside It was pitch black, there were only a few faint lights coming from the homes making the Inn the most bright building in the town. He would have stayed Inside but he had a few more things to do before he could relax.

Darknym walked silently like a cat in real life, making the strange reaction of the people jumping up without noticing justified. But that ability of his was nowhere near the stealth abilities offered inside the game to thieves,assassins and hunters. He needed to find a teacher for one of these classes.

Hunter was the most common of them as it gave both stealth and stealth detection techniques but offered little in attack and damage, while thief could detect and hide but had useless abilities as most worked only on Npcs. Assassin had stealth but lacked in the stealth detection area but had deadly skills. There was also the "Scout" profession but it was a military based profession and lacked in stealth and damage, focusing mostly in detecting stealthy units.

Military based profession were part of a pack of four professions, called soldier,archer,scout and Knight. the problem was that you were trained only in the basics and then left to your fate to find a teacher by yourself or join the army to be given advanced training.

Darknym roamed the city looking for a thieves guild or something but there was nothing of the sort

'At least not in plain sight'

After an hour of walking he gained another stamina point, he did another ten sec meditation and gained another 20mp and 2 wisdom points. His Mp regeneration was slow as hell but 7 hours were enough to fill it up.

It was the Dawn of his second day in Allastar, he called up "status"

====================================================

Race - Human

Subspecies - valley people

Gender - Male

Level - 1

Physical

Hp 101(health)

Sp 105(stamina)

Mp 144(Magic)

Mind

Art - 0

Charm - 0

Morality - Neutral

Soul

Aura Color - Dark Purple

Integrity - Unharmed

Ki - 1000

Detailed stats

Physical

+Strength - 10

+endurance - 0

+constitution - 0

+Agility - 10

+speed - 0

+reflexes - 0

+Intelligence - 10

+wisdom - 4

+leadership - 0

Magic

control - 0

Focus - 0

Augmentation - 0

Affinity with gods

- Wind 50mp

Mind

Willpower - Low

Social status - Homeless

Fame title - None

Soul

Daily luck - (default)

Karma - 0

limit break - Astral projection

Skills

Meditation - N/A

Cleaning - beginner 1

Soft walk - beginner 2

Professions

1.Mage - Unwanted Novice (0/1.000 skillpoints)

==================================================================

Although he didn't know when he gained the two skills Cleaning and soft walk

Cleaning - beginner 1

Junk Passive skill

You are a beginner at cleaning, you cut too many corners but with this skill your work can become faster and better. makes cleaning 1%faster.

Soft walk - beginner 2

Rare Passive skill

You walk like a ghost although not a thief or an assassin your steps are too soft to hear, thus you are rewarded with this skill. Silences sound made by your feet by 4%

(beginner doesn't apply to light and heavy metallic shoes and greaves)

Skills in FSK are arranged by rarity.

skill rarity goes from;

-Junk-

Common but unimportant skills that

give minor boosts or just weak skills.

-Common-

Normal balanced skills that are the

base for all skills.

-Rare-

Rare to find, but not awe-inspiring

these skills are balanced and could

be considered common if not for them

being difficult to find.

-High-

A notch better than common skills they

aren't much different than common and

aren't rare to find.

-Valuable-

Are not rare but can only be bought or

stolen these skills are very good and

much better than both common and high.

-Legendary-

Skills that rival the gods or at least

the minor deities, they are extremely

rare and overpowered by all means.

-Unique-

These skills are special there can be

only one of each kind in the whole

world making them unique and unteachable.

Normally skills are gained with a profession but some skill can be gained due to habits or real world knowledge. Martial artists can use their skills in-game and by some time they will be awarded skills. Of course their in-game skills are limited to their level but there are many advantages to having a skill of your own from the start of the game.

Only problem are the weapon masteries as you need to gain a profession to gain them or being a pro in real life.

(Highly doubtable as guns rule in real life)