Roland was starting to freak out. He had no idea how he had gone from dying in an alleyway, to being in a swanky up town apartment, and burning to crisp in the daylight. After a few minutes of panicking Roland started to calm down and think.
"Alright, what do I know so far," Roland thought to himself.
"I apparently died, but I'm now in an unknown place, and somehow alive, but I'm different now."
Suddenly out of nowhere Roland heard a loud chiming/beep noise. And a holographic see through screen appeared infront of his eyes with a message.
"Welcome new player, would you like to begin the tutorial?" (Y/N)
Roland having played games before recognized this as a HUD for a game menu. Despite being startled, and confused he reached his hand out and his finger poked at the (Y) option. The game-like system immediately responded.
"Startup Tutorial initializing... initializing completed, begining tutorial."
"The new player has inherited a system that will help them to become stronger, this system is unique and is the only one in existence. No one else has one, and no one else can see it."
"The system has an advanced A.I. that will activate after completion of the tutorial. Any questions that the player has, they may ask the A.I. if they wish. The A.I. acts as a companion and guide, the A.I has a basic understanding of the world, the inhabitants of the world, and the different languages of the world."
"The A.I. will offer advice to the player if it feels that the player needs it. And is capable of remembering, and learning things for the player. The system can also assimilate information instantly into the system, making the information immediately and permanently known to the player. The system also has an infinite inventory that can hold anything that the player can touch."
"There is also a shop that the player unlocks at level 10, enabling the player to buy gear that can offer both better protections, more damaging weapons, better stats, potions with different effects, and enchantments that can be applied to different gear."
"The origin of the system is unknown, and the reasons for it's existence are also unknown. Any further information can be accessed by the player at a later time through inquiry to the A.I. if the information is known to the A.I."
After this series of messages the screen went blank, until a stats page popped up. At the top of the screen there were different tabs.
Stats - Skills - Spells - Inventory - Shop
"Now this is an interesting development," Roland thought.
"I wonder what all of this means, this system, and me waking up in this place?"
All of a sudden Roland heard another voice answer his question out of nowhere. The voice sounded young, was male, and had a distinctly regal sound to the voice, as if the person was full of confidence and charisma.
"I can tell you what I think happened by going off of your memories, and what I know of the world." The unknown voice answered him.
Roland was startled. He spun around in a full circle, but there was no one around him.
"Who's there!" Roland shouted in surprise.
"Really, you just went through the tutorial that warned you about me and you already forgot?" The voice snarked in reply to his panicked shout.
"Are you the A.I.?" Roland asked skeptical of the idea that this extremely human sounding voice was really a computer. Having been expecting something more similar to the assistant on his phone.
"Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. You've got to be a genius or something right? How could have possibly guessed that?" the voice, now revealed to be the A.I. sarcastically remarked.
Roland not having expected a sarcastic remark from this supposed computer program was surprised. He hadn't expected the A.I. to be so advanced, though he supposed it would make sense, considering how advanced the system is.
"Whatever, now what's going on here, where am I, and what's happened to me." Roland asked after getting over his initial surprise..
"Well my name is Arthur, and what I believe has happened is that you did indeed die. But when you died your soul rather than going to the after life, somehow crossed over the boundaries of space and time into an alternate dimension." The now named Arthur replied to Roland's question.
"And I believe that your soul inhabited the body of your cross dimensional counterpart. Pushing him out and you yourself taking over. And of course he's didn't stick around, because a soul without a container has nothing to bind it to the physical plane. So the other you has "passed on" so to speak" Arthur said.
"Alright, well what are the differences between the old me, and the new me. Do I have any family, I'm guessing I'm rich, what kind of person was my other self." Roland asked trying to get an understanding of what's going on.
"Well you have no family, this version of you's parents died about 10 years ago, when you were 12. Everything your parents owned went into a trust account, including ownership of their business. Your family was, loaded, and now you are. Your parents were multi-millionaires, and had owned a very large corporation."
"The old butler your family employed has raised you since then. You've both been living in your family's uptown apartment building, and you received top-of-the-line schooling from multiple tutors."
"When you turned 18 everything in your
trust became available to you. You have managed to in the last four years acquire a master's degree in both business, and finance. This was one of the requirements to step into the CEO position of your companies.
You have then spent most of your time trying to expand your cooperation, and it has successfully expanded into the Billion dollar range. As has your bank account, due to you not spending hardly any of the money your making."
"The previous inhabitant of this body was well known for being cold and detached from others, but is also known for always following through on what he says he will do." Arthur said giving him basically the life story of his new life.
"Okay Arthur, how do you know all of this?" Roland asked, rather interested in how the system has this information.
"I know because I went through the memories of this body. When you pushed his soul out, his memories stayed behind. The reason you can't remember them is because I'm blocking them off so as to not overload your brain, and cause you to pass out, or die again." Roland stated matter-of-factly.
Roland told Arthur to start slowly releasing the memories into his mind so he would have access to them. Roland then walked into the bathroom and saw himself in the mirror.
"Apperantly my other half worked out a lot." Roland mused to himself. His body was like it had been cut from marble, he wasn't bulging like a body builder, but he didn't have hardly any body fat.
Roland is a fairly tall guy, he's 6' 6", and 180 lbs of solid muscle, but he's not very broad shouldered. He's kind of lanky, not to the point of looking awkwardly tall and thin, but just enough that he's not overly intimidating with his stature. He has black hair, blue eyes, and, is fair skinned. Then he thought about what happened when he opened the curtains.
"Arthur, what happened to me when I opened the curtains earlier?" Roland asked, in confusion.
"Well it would seem that your family is descended from a line of pure blooded vampires in this world." Arthur replied very evenly.
Arthur then told Roland about the world before he could start freaking out. He explained that through an unexpected advancement of technology around 80 years ago, humans figured out how to travel to other world's.
Rather than using space ships they have learned to make portals. These portals allow them to travel across the galaxy to other planets hundreds of light years away, instantly.
On these planets they have discovered new life forms, and even other intelligent races of aliens. And most of these alien civilizations had more advanced technology than the humans had ever even fantasized about.
While on other planets they have discovered world's that were overflowing with civilizations capable of using magic. These worlds had learned to harness magic instead of building technology. And consequently had a terrifying power, equal to or possibly greater than the advanced alien civilizations.
The humans learned as much as they could of magic, and advanced technology from these new civilizations. The humans then learned how to use the two in tandem to terrifying effect. On all of the other worlds there were aliens, which are refered to as beasts. All unintelligent creatures of other races are refered to as such.
These beasts are incredibly hard to kill, and without the magic and advanced technology of the other civilizations, humans would have no hope of killing these beasts.
This is where vampires come into play. In this world there have always been vampires, witches, mummies, werewolves, and most everything else that goes bump in the night, like ghosts. They just aren't quite as described in legend, they have hidden themselves so well over the years that humans have passed them off as myth.
These mythical existences have all been capable of using magic for a long time, and all have different ways of using magic.
Witches are normal humans that have learned to use magic but have hidden it.
Werewolves are humans that were the result of a failed magic experiment by a witch many years ago. In an attempt to meld a human, and wolf with magic, to improve the human race. They instead created a new race, later dubbed as "Werewolves".
Vampires on the other hand, are a special case. The first vampire was a human that made a pact with a demon. In return for power granted to him, the demon wanted 10,000 souls, and the way the souls were extracted was by drinking their blood. And so the curse of the vampire was created.
The later vampires were either created by the first vampire, or were his offspring with a female vampire whom he turned. There are still not many vampires in the world today. This is due to the secretiveness of the vampire society. And they as well as the other races have retained the secret of their existence despite the evolution of the world.
Vampires are incredibly powerful, having an innate ability to use magic. As well as incredible speed, strength, and regeneration.
They also have many innate magical abilities as well. They have the ability to control the minds of others who's mind's are weaker than theirs, this includes other vampires if they're strong enough.
They can turn into, and control fog, allowing them to travel quickly and inconspicuously. They can ignore/resist gravity, allowing them to walk on walls and ceilings as if it were the actual ground.
Vampires have many more abilities but this was just a brief explanation of their powers.
As for their weaknesses, young vampires can die if they are out in the sun for too long. They can't die from being staked in the heart, but they can be killed if their heads are cut off. Garlic, and crosses are useless, they have no effect what so ever. But many Vampires let this rumor circulate so as to give themselves an advantage if need be.
Silver however does effect them, it won't kill them unless you cut their head off with a weapon made out of it, but it does hurt, and slow their healing severely if they're stabbed, cut, or burned with it. And obviously magic can kill them as well, through the various magical effects, and spells that there are.
Vampires do not have to sleep in a coffin, or in a place filled with the dirt of their birth place, this is fictitious. Some vampires do sleep in coffins though, because there is no chance of light getting into it and and waking them up. Or possibly burning them to a crisp. Plus coffins are admittedly comfortable.
Now onto the aforementioned Beasts. The bodies of the these Beasts can yield various things when killed. And everything that they drop has incredible effects, be it leather, bone, or blood. But the one thing that all of them have in common are called Beast Cores.
Beast Cores could have a variety of effects when used, but the most common use is that they are crafted into weapons or armor, or put into pre-existing weapons and armor as augments. They can also be used as a currency among people for trading. There are different tiers of cores, the higher the tier, the more it's worth, and the higher quality the stuff crafted from it is.
The Cores increase in quality by color, and the colors increase in strength following the color spectrum. They increase as such - Red - Orange - Yellow - Green - Cyan - Blue - Violet - Purple - White.
The Cores are all glassy decahedrons slightly smaller than golf balls. The cloudier the Core, the weaker it is, the clearer the Core, the stronger it is.
Once Alfred finished his explanation Roland sat there for a while absorbing all that he learned. Then he asked Alfred about the system.
"The system is much more straight forward, there are five tabs, Stats, Skills, Spells, Inventory, and Shop. The shop tab is only available when you reach level 10, but you can buy weapons, armor, potions, and a bunch of other stuff when it's unlocked."
"The inventory tab is your inventory, you can store just about anything in it, as long as it's not alive. Your inventory can hold an infinite amount of items. And all you have to do to store something, is just think about putting it in your inventory."
"The skills section is a little bit different. Skills are abilities that you can learn that can do special effects. For instance, if you were to learn the multistrike skill, and use it while using a sword; for every one attack you make, your enemy will take a number of extra attacks depending on the level of the skill."
"Or if you were to learn the stealth skill, depending on the level of the skill, you could be harder to detect, or even impossible to detect even if someone was looking right at you. You would be almost invisible, and while there are spells that can make you invisible, these skills don't cost Mana to use."
"Next up is the Spells tab, the spells tab is where all of your spells or spell-like abilities are listed, along with a description, and all of its stats. All spells, spell-like abilities, and skills can be used just by thinking of using them."
"And finally the stats page, the stats page is where you can check, and increase all of your stats. It's tells you your Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Constitution, and Charisma. These are your stats which all of your abilities work off of."
"Every point put into a stat has a noticeable increase in power. The average adult human has a 5 in all stats, this does vary though. The max for a standard human in peak physical shape is 10 points. For a human to exceed this limit they would need something to boost their stats. Like a magic spell, or magical gear that increases their stats when wearing it, or high tech armor."
"Vampires have a much higher stat average. Vampires have a base of 20 in all stats. In the vampire hierarchy there are different ranks, and privileges that come with these ranks. Ranks are not given out, but determined by strength."
"The ranks are Youngling, Vampire, Vampire Noble, Vampire Elder, Vampire Lord, and Vampire King. You are only a Youngling, whose stats have a range of 20-39, Once your stats all reach 40 you have entered the Vampire realm. Vampires have a stat range of 40-59, Once you reach 60 you are a Vampire Noble, and the stats continue like this until the Vampire King rank. Vampire kings have no upper stat range, they have reached the peak of vampire society and have no rivals asides from other Kings."
"But very rarely do Vampire Kings ever fight one another, the fallout from such a thing would be terrifying."
"The difference between you and any other vampire, is that other vampires grow more powerful the older they get, and with the more magic they learn. You have the system, which allows your power to increase far faster, and to learn things faster by assimilating it into the system."
"You have the potential to become the most powerful vampire ever," Arthur finished his very long winded explanation.