I lay in my bed, feeling sorry for myself. Today I had been feeling terrible, I liked to kid myself into thinking that I wasn't ill at all but couldn't keep up the visage once I stood. So, I avoided standing and lay in my bed with the curtains of the room closed and music playing in the background.
The music stopped.
"Hello Ross."
I sat up with a start, my head instantly feeling like it was about to burst. "What the..." I started, looking around for the source of the voice that had just called my name.
"Hello." I caught sight of the source, it was my speaker, glowing as it spoke. "I suppose you should brace yourself for what comes next."
"What's going on?" I asked the speaker, getting up from bed, I still felt a little queesy but I was pushing past that. "Is this a joke?" I walked to my door to open it.
"Good luck. Arcanum." Said the speaker.
I opened the door. Normally I would've seen the hallway of my apartment, that is not what I saw right now.
"Jesus." I muttered as I looked out of my room to a field of grass and houses thousands of feet below. "The hell is this?"
Tentatively, I poked my foot out of the threshold, instantly I was thrust from my room by the foot, flung out into the open air. I spun, trying to reach for the door but my room wasn't there, nothing but blue sky as I started to descend. "Aaaaaaaa!" I screamed as I fell, too panicked to register my clothes evaporating, too terrified to see the grand city in the distance, too worried to notice that my illness had gone. I passed out.
--
I awoke to the smell of straw and urine. "Oh god, that stinks." I opened my eyes and finally noticed that my hands were bound with thick ropes and I was sat in a stone cell with wooden bars separating my from the other prison cells. There was no one else in the other cells something strange floated in front of my face. A green screen like what you would seen in a video game.
NAME - N/A
RACE - N/A
LVL - 1
HP - 100
HP/s - +0.01
MP - 80
MP/s - +0.4
JOB - N/A
INDIVIDUAL SKILL - GENESIS/DESOLATION
STR - 10
AGI - 10
CON - 10
INT - 15
FTH - 2
ABILITY POINTS (15)
'What is this?' I asked myself, I'd seen things like this before, in videogames and manga. It was without a doubt a status screen. If I was someone else I would probably have freaked out or assumed it was all a dream, and yet I didn't, I knew from the bottom of my heart that this was reality.
'I wonder why the name and race are blank?' I reached towards the name section, the word glowing brightly before another window and a keyboard appeared in mid air.
CREATE NAME... ... ...
'I guess this thing wants me to make a name.' I had realised my situation pretty quickly, I had fallen from the sky into a fantasy world and was locked up because they didn't know what I was, I was even dressed in Skyrim esc prison clothes.
YOLEN ARCANUM
CONFIRM NAME? Y/N
I pressed the Y and was brought back to the main stat screen. I felt like something had changed, but my name was still Yolen.
"What the..." Something big had changed. I no longer held any attachment to the name Ross, infact when I thought of myself the name that I had just written popped up in my head.
"I guess it really is real."
I pressed the race button, my finger not actually touching anything but the screen still lit and another window opened.
RACE WILL GIVE EXTRA BONUSES AND SKILLS TO -YOLEN- LIST IS AS FOLLOWS. PLEASE NOTE THE CHOICE WILL CHANGE THE COMPOSITION OF -YOLEN-
HUMAN
ELF
DWARF
HALFLING
GNOME
DRAGONBORN
UNDEAD
DEMON
CELESTIAL
SLIME
GOBLINOID
BEASTKIN
ELEMENTAL
GIANT
ORC
There sure were a lot to choose from. I hovered a finger over celestial and a separate window opened again.
CELESTIAL
A HEAVENLY BEING, DIVINE IN NATURE AND AWE INSPIRING TO THOSE WHO LOOK UPON IT.
+5 TO INTELLIGENCE AND FAITH. +2 TO STRENGTH.
GAIN SKILLS CELESTIAL FORTITUDE AND CALMING PRESENCE.
It hadn't made me instantly choose the race which I was glad about. But the presence of skills jogged my memory on something on the main screen. I directed my attention towards the main screen, the other windows faded a bit and spun to my peripherals. I pressed on the individual skill with genesis/desolation next to it and another window opened up.
GENESIS/DESOLATION - LVL 1
INDIVIDUAL SKILL POSSESSED BY -YOLEN- IT IS THE VERY ESSENCE OF CREATION AND ITS COUNTERPART DESTRUCTION -YOLEN- CAN CREATE MATTER FROM HIS IMAGINATION AND DESTROY MATTER HE TOUCHES AT WILL. CAPABILITIES OF THIS SKILL GO UP WITH THE SKILL LEVEL.
MANA COST - 0
The skill level was only at one but it had a lot of potential. "Alright, let's give it a try." Focusing on the ropes binding my hands I tried to make an exact copy, just not binding me.
Small, dully glowing dots of blue light popped into existence, coming together in clumps, slowly changing colour and texture to make the rope.
"Wow." I muttered to myself in amazement, dropping the rope to the floor, now I focused on the ropes around my hands and tried to destroy them. Black lines spread across the rope like veins, draining the colour from it before it crumbled to dust and disappeared. "That's useful." But I didn't want to rush anything so I picked up the rope I had made, destroying it and making a copy on my wrists, once again binding myself.
Turning my attention back to the race screen I pondered my choices, checking a couple of others.
In the end I narrowed it down to celestial, demon(fallen), elemental(Lightening) or undead(ghost).
"Honestly got no clue, I'll flip a coin, celestial and demon or elemental and undead. Heads or tails." A coin appeared in my hand, I flipped it.
"Heads." So, celestial or demon.
The coin went up again.
"Demon it is." I hovered a finger over the demon and read it's description.
DEMON
SUBRACE - FALLEN
A CELESTIAL, FALLEN FROM GRACE AND CORRUPTED BY SIN.
+5 TO STRENGTH AND CONSTITUTION. +1 TO INTELLIGENCE AND AGILITY.
GAIN SKILLS HELLISH FORTITUDE AND CORRUPTING INFLUENCE.
FALLEN SKILLS - GAIN DEEP TRAVERSAL
'Alright, let's do this.' I confirmed my race choice.
RACE CHOSEN, -YOLEN- ENTERING TRANSMUTION STATE.
'What?' I thought, before passing out.
--
I awoke, looking over my body for changes, there were several. My skin was almost ashen it was so grey, my previously weak and unnoticeable muscles were now larger and defined, more of an agile build. No wings though. Not sure if I was glad or disappointed at that fact. I reviewed my stats, expanding the skill windows.
NAME - YOLEN ARCANUM
RACE - FALLEN
LVL - 1
HP - 420
HP/s - +4.2
MP - 224
MP/s - +1.1
JOB - N/A
INDIVIDUAL SKILL - GENESIS/DESOLATION
STR - 15
AGI - 11
CON - 15
INT - 16
FTH - 2
ABILITY POINTS (15)
GENESIS/DESOLATION - LVL 1
DEEP TRAVERSAL - LVL 1
HELLISH FORTITUDE - LVL MAX
CORRUPTING INFLUENCE - LVL 1
My HP regen had gone up greatly, and my stats had improved. Checking the screen I also noticed the unused points. I pressed on them to check.
ABILITY POINTS
MAY BE USED TO INCREASE A STAT BY 1 PER POINT USED.
I had no idea when I would get anymore of these so I thought long and hard on what I would upgrade, in the end I decided to check the jobs first.
JOB
-YOLEN- MUST CHOOSE A JOB TO PERSUE, JOBS GIVE -YOLEN- EXTRA SKILLS AND ABILITIES, SUCH AS SPELL CASTING OR MARTIAL ARTS. THE JOB LIST IS AS FOLLOWS.
NECROMANCER
WIZARD
WITCH
WARLOCK
SORCERER
TRANSMUTER
ELEMENTALIST
ENCHANTER
ILLUSIONIST
ARTIFICER
SMITH
COOK
MERCHANT
APOTHECARY
ALCHEMIST
BUILDER
RANGER
DRUID
SHAMAN
WITCH DOCTOR
TAMER
THIEF
ASSASSIN
ACROBAT
DUALIST
SCOUT
FIGHTER
BARBARIAN
SHIELD KNIGHT
DARK KNIGHT
SAMURAI
SWORD MASTER
CAVALIER
CLERIC
PALADIN
PRIEST
SPIRITUALIST
SHRINE MAIDEN
MONK
WITH THE OPTIONAL CHOICE OF.
MANA WEAVER