Bab 1: Character Creation

Finch was born during the corporate age. He grew up under the American branch of Tesla Incorporated Umbrella company. They educated him and brought him to where he was today, exactly where his father had been. In fact, they literally replaced his father with Finch during his retirement.

Tesla had perfectly planned for this switch from father to son since the moment he was born. Finch felt that he had no choice in the matter and had accepted that this was just the way things were. His friends talked about this all the time while they attended Tesla Academy.

They would also replace their fathers and mothers with themselves as they graduated.

It had been 25 years since that memory, and Finch couldn't handle this depressing life anymore. The mega cooperations had completely ruined the earth long ago and the cities were filled with smog, and poisonous gasses, and nearly all plant life and animal life had freely perished.

Finch had always been entranced by photos of the old earth. The old photographs of blooming pastures, dense jungles, and natural waterfalls. The world back then looked like a paradise in his eyes.

"If only I had been born then" He sighed as he held the VRMMO helmet. He rolled it back and forth. The sound of the poisonous rain pattered against his apartment walls.

He once again looked back to his computer screen at his desk. An image of the newly released roleplaying game called Yggdrasil was displayed. It claimed that it had the best roleplaying experience out there and promised deep customizable lore, individual developer interaction, and deep combat mechanics.

But none of that truly attracted his attention. The screenshots in-game truly made him excited. They had full caverns filled with dense colored chrome crystals, dark green jungles filled with birds and beasts, tall mountains with snow flowers, and mysterious plants abound.

Finch wanted to end his life. He didn't want to live anymore. All his family had already passed away in the last cooperate war. He had worked alone for 10 years, trying to deal with his depression. But it kept getting worse, his feeling of enjoyment and interest dwindled down till his eyes were like a dead fish. He rarely had a drive for something and he wasn't even eating well. This is what made his interest in the game of Yggrasil special for him. He felt a small sliver of interest in the game and to him, that was a lot. He had grown numb to not being interested in anything anymore, but then all of a sudden he fell interested in something. So, he decided to follow that interest entirely. He wanted to experience something other than his grey and toxic homeworld.

Finch placed the helmet on his head, before lying on his bed. He took out a syringe and injected himself with a slow-acting suicide solution that he got a hold of 2 weeks ago.

He was prepared to end his life today. He had planned this for months. But the decision to try out Yggrasil was a spur-of-the-moment thing. He saw an Ad for Yggdrasil as he took the subway home 3 days ago and he figured he would try it out. The game's release date coincided with his planned suicide and it just aligned.

He liquidated all his assets, his inheritance, his pension, his everything and bought a game helmet and in-game funds. He figured he could have fun with what he had left during the initial release. The developers were planning to release a cash shop and some of the items were special for the first few days.

He silently placed the now empty syringe next to his desk and started the VRMMO headset.

His vision went black before he appeared floating in front of a huge tree made of starlight. Its branches are connected up into 9 different-looking leaves. Each leaf he focused on would display an option for him to select as his starting realm for his character. Screenshot images of the realms would play like a slideshow across the leaves, showing him their terrain, landscape, and other beautiful landmarks.

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Welcome to Yggdrasil!

You are one of our first hundred players!!

We, and all of us back in the studio, thank you for your interest and devotion.

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The screen faded after Finch finished reading it and another one took its place.

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Select a realm to start from.

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It prompted him to refocus back on the 9 different leaves that appeared on the tree of starlight in front of him. Each time he focused on one of them a short prompt of text would appear to form him to read the lore and descriptions behind each one. But he ignored them, he felt that he had already seen which realm he wanted to go to from the images.

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You have selected: [Vanaheim]

[Description]: Vanaheim is seen to be densely wooded with little evidence of heavy-industrialization of any race. While its people tend to live in camps and small villages, rather than large cities...

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The prompt closed and a new one reopened quickly.

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[Create your character]:

Race Choices:

-- Humanoid

-- Demi-human

-- Hetermorph

-- (**Limited Shop Special**)[Limit: 1]: World Item [Heteremorph Race Creation Toolkit]

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Finch's eyes moved tiredly down over the options provided. He didn't really care about this too much as he planned to be dead in a few hours. He focused on the Limited edition shop special until it expanded with a description menu.

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[Heteremorph Race Creation Toolkit]

[Item Tier]: World Item

[Use/Description]: An immensely powerful item formed from a part of the leaf-eating monster, which devoured the leaves of the Realm Tree Yggdrasil. Use to create a new racial monster class.

[Comments]:

Developer assistance is needed. Add something we haven't thought of.

Race creation tool.

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Finch scratched his head and looked at the price of the item.

[Heteremorph Race Creation Toolkit]: 249,999$

Finch's eyebrows raised in slight surprise. They are selling this virtual item for 250k? Are the developers okay? No, this must be rare for them. The description mentions it is limited time and perhaps just an easter egg for early players.

"Whatever" Finch sighed and spends 250,000 without hesitation. His voice was dull. It was as if he had simply picked up a few synthetic cabbages and tossed them aside without looking. His in-game balance had dropped from 415k to 165k.

Immediately after he made the purchase he was brought to a developer-controlled virtual room. There was a man sitting behind a desk. All around him were multiple monitors of what looked like different players and places in the game. He was poking the air quickly as if he was dragging things around on a screen.

"Yes? Yes?!" The man turned the monitors transparent and looked at Finch from behind the desk.

"How did you get here? This is a developer room for developer interactions." The man stumbled up from his chair and ran over to greet Finch quickly.

"I was brought here after I bought the [Heteremorph Race Creation Toolkit]," Finch answered plainly. He had not expected to be brought here. He started to regret buying that 'special addition' they sold him. He doesn't have much time before the serum kicks in.

"Yes? Wait wait... You WHAT?" The man's eyes bulged in surprise.

"What you actually bought that thing? That was not supposed to happen. It was an easter egg. You actually spent 250k on an in-game virtual item?" The man looked fearfully at Finch.

Finch sighed internally. He hated dealing with people.

"Yes, now can we hurry this up. I am busy." Finch said impatiently.

The developer gulped audibly.

"Right okay, let me take the tool kit and unlock it... okay here." The developer swished his hand and sent over a developer creation menu with developer tools access.

Finch looked at the giant menu filled with tabs for lore, evolution paths, racial skills... there was too much for him to deal with right now. He sighed.

"Listen, can I come back here later? Or finish this later? I don't have much time to design a whole racial system here. " Finch negotiated calmly after closing the menu.

"Uhh, I can't let you do that. We need to keep the game balanced and we don't want to ruin a game by letting people design whatever they want. I need to sign off on your designs." The developer explained firmly.

"Fine. Whatever." Finch's dead fish eyes looked over the menu again and he started designing a race.

He made the base to be a plant being that was different than others. It was a living plant called a Worsap. A sentient sapling and offspring of the world tree. It was the only one of its kind and was a sibling of the world tree. He designed it to be half plant and half starlight. Its shape was humanoid, but it wasn't a human. You could tell from the third branch that came from the shoulders and sprouted like a canopy of leaves above its head. It had 2 arms, 2 legs, and skin made of dark green bark. Glowing black and silver starlight hummed from in between the bark veins.

He took inspiration from the giant tree of starlight he had just seen, and he was too lazy to change it. As for the name... He just took World tree and made it WorldSap then removed some letters.

As for the abilities and racial traits he added. He added [Starlight Affinity] [Nature Affinity] [World Shelter] [Green Thumb]. He added high magic defense and physical defense along with high magic affinity. He even added something called [Nature Mana] which would allow a higher quality of spells cast for nature magic.

He wrote in the roleplaying description notes that the Worsap race were expert cultivators of forests. They can raise any plants without fail and have natural communication with them. They also can communicate with the stars in the sky and absorb starlight. They can gather the starlight of the stars and forge entirely new worlds if they have enough time.

The developer nodded slightly when he saw the abilities, but then he sighed.

"Some of these are too much to gain earlier on, I will change some things around so that you can unlock them as you gain racial levels. It is an interesting idea, but it's not at the World Item level yet. Your World trait of [World Shelter] seems like such a waste of a World Item. I suggest you add another special World Item level racial trait." He gave his thoughts.

Finch thought a bit before adding another World Trait.

[World Mutation]: Worsap can direct plant evolutions through mutation and through synthesis. Can break limiting of plant/herb ranks.

The developer held his head with a slight headache. "I know I just encouraged you, but that is difficult to... ah whatever. Sure that works, with this and World Shelter, your World Race has innate abilities. I will connect to the AI to determine the new effects of the plants you create through mutation. It can handle things in a balanced manner. "

The developer pulled over the menu Finch was working on and finalized a few things. He was dragging the racial talents around left and right.

"Okay! It's passed the review. You have technically two 'World talents' but one is just incredibly weak. [World Shelter] just hides your information from all forms of detection... the dev team was fine with that. And your stats are fine for PVP so the balance isn't tilted too far in your favor." The developer finalized the menu and smiled.

"Enjoy the game." He spoke as Finch faded from the developer interaction room and appeared inside Vanaheim next to tall redwood trees. A dense forest air permeated the atmosphere and Finch was slightly taken aback at it all.

He looked up at the dense and tall redwood next to him. Unknown to him, a slight smile spread on his face.

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Welcome to Vanaheim

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Finch glanced at the prompt in front of him before his eyes widened in surprise. He wasn't surprised at the game menu, no. He saw his reflection from the menu like a mirror. He noticed he was smiling.

He touched his slight smile lightly with a stunned expression.

"Am I... smiling?"