Congratulations on wrapping up your trials! I mean, that wasn’t all there is to it, of course, but you made it as far as your willpower carried you, and that’s gotta be worth something, right? While you didn’t make it as far as others, you had a clear goal in mind that has been taken into consideration for the final results!

Based on the results of your trials, new starting classes have been unlocked! Your basic stats will be adjusted based on the results of each test after you choose a class!

“Uh-oh..”, William muttered to himself, already regretting that he did so poorly and didn’t bother to go further with his trials. Even the base stats are determined on how well you do? That wasn’t mentioned anywhere! Of course a basement-dweller like him would end up failing physical tests then! And even though it did make sense, since you were playing as yourself as the player character, William still felt.. cheated.

“Ah well, I can always reroll in a month”, he shrugged off the negative thoughts, since there was really nothing he could do about it now. Plus, he didn’t even know for certain how he had fared in the trials. But considering that his vision blurred out again, he should be about to find out very soon.

Finding himself in a very similar area to the previous one, he wasn’t alone anymore. Countless identical copies of him were lined up around William, each of them in different attires and striking different poses, based on which class they represented. As he was scanning the room to get an idea of what kind of classes were available to him, William also noticed how the clones perfectly mimicked his every move.

And even though that was immensely impressive, it also very much creeped him out to see his face repeated over and over like this. With his short and shaggy dark-blonde hair, inconspicuous grey-green eyes and thin lips usually kept in a slight frown, William was a rather unassuming sight to look at. He didn’t dislike himself, but usually opted for far more extravagant looks for his player characters.

“I wonder if I can customize my appearance in any way..?”, he thoughtlessly spoke out loud, with the game apparently taking this as a query and rewarding his curiosity with a notification.

Permanent customization of your appearance can be achieved through several different methods, some known and some secret, once you fully enter Eternium.

“Well.. at least I’m not gonna spend half a day just perfecting my looks!”, William quipped, folding his arms now as he took in the possible classes available to him. At first glance, the most common ones were those wearing cloth or leather armor, and wielding light weaponry. Basically, the game was offering him several different kinds of rogues and rangers here, which he dismissed immediately.

“Not gonna play another kleptomaniac Stealth Archer, no thank you.”

Walking through the rows of his clones, William took his time to really analyze if the class represented with each iteration of him would be suitable for his needs. And while most of them had very intriguing descriptions, they didn’t seem to be the best fit for a frontliner. Sadly, an actual honest-to-god tank just wasn’t available to him. Those probably had much higher requirements in terms of physical prowess.

William arrived at the somewhat magically looking classes, of which he had unlocked quite a few. Among those, he was offered something called an Earthshaper, clearly a mage specialized in manipulating the Earth and one that promised more defensive oriented skills and spells, which definitely worked better for their plans. It also received a bonus to Constitution, in addition to the usual Wisdom and Intelligence mages usually needed.

Other possible mage classes were enticing to him, mostly because he always played some form of magic user in roleplaying games, and actually being able to fling spells around would be an absolute dream come true.

There was even one mage class that was seemingly tailored specifically to his personal strength as an artist: the Chromamancer. According to its description, this class specialized in spells that required paint or other forms of pigments and using those to buff allies and debuff enemies, as well as offering a lot of utility. Unlike the other options, this class gained Charisma and Perception, as well as Intelligence. And while he absolutely adored the idea of being an “Art Mage”, this class seemed to be the squishiest out of all his options.

No, he didn’t just want it for being a Rare class, shut up!

However, these were all still magic users, and those were notoriously weak in melee combat, which was his intended position. Plus, William wouldn’t hear the end of it from Chelsea if he would also pick a mage, so any of these were out of the question for him. And he could always create a new character after a month and grab this particularly juicy class for himself.

Until then, it seemed he would have to make due with the only class that could even be remotely considered a fighter and potential frontliner, even though it seemed rather underwhelming, especially when compared with the Chromamancer.

The Aspirant. Acting as the most basic of the base melee classes, an Aspirant has chosen the first step in a very long journey towards mastering the art of combat. This uncommon class welcomes only those who, for whatever reason, aren’t allowed into more powerful fighter classes, yet still harbour the wish to walk the path of a warrior. Unburdened by pre-determinate combat disciplines, an Aspirant has the greatest potential for growth through rigorous training and more than often evolves their own unique fighting style with enough effort and determination.

This class isn’t provided any initial benefits or skills for combat and needs to learn everything other classes come prepared with from the ground up. However, this is off-set by an initially increased speed to learning these skills. The Aspirant gains two characteristic points to spend per three levels and one point of Constitution on every even level. They gain no free skill points to spend per level due to their inherent increase to naturally learned skill levels. Strength, Dexterity and Constitution are the suggested characteristics for this class. Do you want to start the ‘game’ as an Aspirant?

Since the actual mechanics of the game have been kept a secret even until the official release, William had no idea if this class was a good choice or if he would seriously cripple his progress.

Assuming that characteristic points are the usual ones like Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence, this class was definitely one of the worst, only netting him two freely allocatable points every three levels. And while he had no idea what could be considered a lot, this still felt like it wasn’t much, especially when other classes usually got three points to spend.

Even worse was the fact he wouldn’t get any skill points upon levelling up - none at all! The other classes got at least two of those, some of them even three. And he would not even complain if there was at least one skill point in there for him, but none? Sure, he could learn the skills some other way, that much was clear from the class description, but what would that even entail? In other games, you mostly just learned them from a class trainer.

If the game had allowed it, he would be tearing his hair out over this problem right now. Should he really take such a lackluster class, when there was a legitimate “Art Mage” class waiting for him? Maybe he could just lie to the others, tell them he did so poorly on the trials that the game didn’t even consider him for a fighter class. He did screw up pretty badly, so it wasn’t even too far from the truth.

No, he couldn’t do that to Robert and Chelsea. They all promised to go for the archetypes they decided on, and going back on that wouldn’t be fair. And while he might be able to use one of the more rogue-ish classes to play a “dodge tank”, most of them were more focussed on stealth, range or assassination. This Aspirant class was his best shot.

“Here goes nothing..”, William muttered to himself and, without giving himself a chance to step back from his decision, confirmed his class selection. But instead of just a simple text message informing him of his choice and the next steps, there was a gentle chime in his ear, and a different notification appeared over it.

Despite your personal short-comings and in the face of more enticing offers, you try your best to keep a promise and fight for those you hold dear. Stick with this conviction, and you will find yourself more powerful with friends at your side.

Title unlocked: ‘You’ve Got a Friend In Me!’ 10% increased effective Strength, Dexterity and Constitution when in a party with those you consider Friends, Allies or Extended Family.

Please note that all title effects are active at the same time, but the title you have equipped will be the only one that others can see without analysis abilities. The maximum number of titles you can have at any given time is ten.

Since this is your first encounter with reputation gains, please note that there are many distinct levels of reputation. From lowest to highest: Blood Feud, Loathed, Hated, Hostile, Cautious, Neutral, Reluctantly Friendly, Friendly, Friend, Ally, Extended Family.

Did he really just gain a boon like that for no other reason than to keep a promise? The game knew that much about him? William was in awe at the intricacies that even this tutorial offered, and if the actual game was only half as good as this, it would be worth every single cent he had to save over the last year.

Then again, he also didn’t know how much more 10% of his physical stats were. Also, it was a situational effect that didn’t apply when he played on his own, so he should definitely ensure to always party up with Robert or Chelsea.

There was also a whole lot of additional information on other mechanics here that he should really take his time and parse in a quiet moment, and since every text message appeared in the chatlog he could pull up at any time, he could hopefully revisit the notification when he finally left the tutorial.

When William swiped away the notification about the title, the other one regarding his class choice had already scrolled on and was left hanging in the air, waiting to be read.

Congratulations! You have accepted the subclass Aspirant. Professions unlock at level five. You have two characteristic points to spend. Please note, your starting characteristics have already been modified due to your trials, real-life capabilities, and class selection. Please allocate your remaining points now.

Dismissing this notification as well, it gave him the option to open his stat sheet right away, but also informed him that simply calling for it out loud or giving a command by thought would open it up at any time. Honestly, the intuitive design of this game was a blessing he appreciated more and more.

His good mood lasted about as long as it took for the stat sheet to appear in front of him and put him face to face with the ugly truth: he did absolutely abysmal in the trials.

Characteristic: Raw score (Modifier)

Strength: 3 (0,03)

Dexterity: 14 (1,14)

Constitution: 4 (0,04)

Intelligence: 13 (1,13)

Wisdom: 11 (1,11)

Charisma: 11 (1,11)

Perception: 18 (1,18)

Luck: 7 (0,07)

Karmic Luck: 0

Strength and Constitution at a lower single digit value could not bode well for his future career as a frontline fighter, especially when his other stats were much more solid in comparison. If only this had the option to reallocate just a few of the excess points in Perception, sitting at a whopping eighteen points, then he would fare much better.

And his wish became even more earnest when he read through the warning right below the Perception stat, informing him that an increase in this stat would also increase the amount of pain he would feel inside the game, and generally enhance his senses to sometimes unpleasant levels. Well, the handbook did warn players about sensory feedback like this, but not to such an extent!

At least he knew which stat to avoid as much as possible.

Reading through the tool tips of the other stats, it was pretty clear that Eternium worked with the same classical stat system that experienced players already knew by heart. However, some of these had rather cryptic phrasing in them that made it seem like stats had more far-reaching consequences beyond determining one's fighting capabilities. But there was really only one way to find out, and that was actually playing the game.

Almost as if the system was impatient with him, the next notification popped up.

Growth in Eternium is difficult when you are doing nothing! Unlike other systems, each day will be a struggle to survive, especially at the start of your journey. Because of the difficulty, the rewards will certainly be worth your effort! Since this system is somewhat unorthodox, please note that a modifier of ‘one’ is considered a normal, healthy, adult human. Your real-life capabilities and performance in your trials have negatively impacted your strength and constitution to a high degree, while positively impacting your dexterity and perception!

Each point allocated will increase your modifier by one one-hundredth of a point. An exception to this is when you gain your first ten points in any category. At this point, your score will increase to ‘one point one’ in that category. Moving forward, each time a category increases to the next multiple of fifty, the base score will increase by ‘one’. At fifty points, your modifier will be plus ‘two’. At one hundred points, the modifier will be plus ‘three’. For example, a character with forty-nine points in a category will have a modifier of 1,49, which is forty-nine percent stronger than an average human! Then if they reach fifty points in the category, they will jump to a modifier of 2,0!

The discrepancy in strength is intended to push you to develop as fast as possible. Skill in the areas you focus on will quickly allow you to reach higher than others of the same level, even if you have similar stats! You can earn skill points and characteristic points through your actions, so work hard! You will need to be as powerful as possible when the major update comes into effect. That is… if you want to survive!

Again with the ominous foreshadowing, the developers really had a knack for flavour. However, William mostly took two important lessons from this explanation.

For one, he royally screwed himself over with his botched performance in the trials, and by extent his rather inactive lifestyle. If he was only at 4% strength and constitution of the average human male, he would be utterly useless as a frontline. Also, William was now even more convinced that the game had taken pity on him with that title.

On the other hand, he would have an advantage when learning skills, which the system seemed to deem just as important as characteristics, due to his class. However, he still didn’t know about the full extent of those class abilities.

The game didn’t leave him too much to ponder any of this either, since an almost impatiently flashing notification prompted him to name his character. Originally, he wanted to go for something fitting his class, but that was under the assumption he could have multiple characters. Since this wasn’t possible in Eternium, it would have to be something that he could live with being called for the foreseeable future.

And what better way to capitalize on this, than to use his alias ‘GerBill’, the name he wanted to be known under as an artist. Perhaps it even would double as an advertisement and getting people to read his webcomic! Or probably not, since they would be too busy playing Eternium. It was still a better choice than other edgy wannabe usernames people went with.

After confirming his choice two times, the game automatically opened his full character sheet, providing him with all the detailed information he could ever want and need. And after quickly allocating one characteristic point each to Strength and Constitution, William took a long, hard look at what he had earned so far.

Name: GerBill (You’ve Got a Friend In Me) Class: Aspirant

Profession: Locked

Level: 1 Exp: 0 Exp to next level: 1000

Health Points: 50 (50+(0)*)

Mana: Locked

Mana Regen: Locked

Stamina: 50/50 (50+(0)**+(0)***)

*10 points for each point in Constitution, once it has increased above 10.

**5 points for each point in Strength, once it has increased above 10.

***5 points for each point in Constitution, once it has increased above 10.

Characteristic: Raw score (Modifier)

Strength: 4 (0,04)

Dexterity: 14 (1,14)

Constitution: 5 (0,05)

Intelligence: 13 (1,13)

Wisdom: 11 (1,11)

Charisma: 11 (1,11)

Perception: 18 (1,18)

Luck: 7 (0,07)

Karmic Luck: 0

Class skills and spells

Weapon Drill Training: able to learn any weapon-related skill 100% faster. Decreases by 10% per skill level in each individual weapon-related skill. Passive, no cost. Lost upon class change.

Armor Drill Training: able to learn any armor-related skill 100% faster. Decreases by 10% per skill level in each individual armor-related skill. Passive, no cost. Lost upon class change.

Drawing (Apprentice 0) [earned due to proven aptitude*]: Effect: +1% easier and faster to create accurate artwork per level. Doubled effect when only drawing sketches.

There were a few things that immediately stuck out to him. For one, he didn’t have any mana and according to the character sheet, it was even locked. Not only did that mean that all his future abilities necessarily have to use stamina, or ideally no resources at all, and also that he wasn’t even locked out of using spells!

However, it was also pretty clear that to be a frontline fighter, he would have to get really creative. Even though he didn’t know the game's balance yet, starting with unmodified base health points of fifty was just.. sad. Hopefully he could earn enough exp through basic quests to at least squeeze out one or two levels.

Looking over his skills now, he was very pleased with his choice of the Aspirant class. If he understood this correctly, every skill he didn’t already know could be learned 100% faster, and with every level in this skill, that bonus would be reduced by 10%. But that only counted for this one skill, and every other new skill he could learn still started with that 100% increased learning speed, right? At least William hoped so, otherwise this would turn out to be even more underwhelming than expected.

One last noteworthy discovery was a third skill that immediately lifted his spirits again: Drawing. It would seem that the game has recognized his actual IRL capabilities and provided him with an appropriate skill inside the game! At least that’s what the tool tip for the skill told him, as well as how the skill ranks worked. Starting with Novice, the ranks went through Beginner, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, Master, Grandmaster, and finally Sage.

Considering that he was immediately placed into the third rank, the Apprentice rank, that provided him with quite a substantial boost to the skills effect, and a substantial boost to his ego, knowing that a multi-billion dollar AI recognized his painstakingly grown capabilities.

Clearly, these were still not the most impressive stats for a first start, but who really knew what mattered in this game? This was the perfect opportunity to be a pioneer in completely unchartered territory, and William had no intention of treating this like the typical, grindy online games that were a dime a dozen. It was a world he could fully immerse himself in and live through the struggles of a complete fresh spawn new, like anyone else who took their first steps in an MMO.

With a deep breath and a content sigh, he confirmed his choices so far, finalizing his character in the process. The world around him slowly faded away, glistening in a flood of silvery, sparkling lights that gave way to the scenery of a bustling city.

William had finally arrived in Eternium.