"c'mon, c'mon, compile faster… just let me try it before the shut down" the man was saying in a hurrying manner as he was watching a completion bar fill up slowly with a bunch of scripts running below it.
He was Viktor, a game developer working for the famous company that launched Yggdrasil. He did not work during the development of Yggdrasil but was hired a year after its launch
He worked as a bug tester and worked with the team in charge of the balance of the game.
Making sure things were not "too broken" or just too trash was the part of his team's job, fixing bugs that came when coding such thing was his.
But after 11 years of "ensuring the game balance" his work was about to change. No, he was not fired, it was just that Yggdrasil was going to close its servers.
The community has been dwindling for the last years, at this moment not even 10,000 players would connect monthly.
What Viktor was doing was not part of his job, he was on vacations until the next game project of the company launched… maybe Yggdrasil II?
What he is compiling is the most stupid thing he could think of, but he had to try it right?
That day was the end of Yggdrasil so why not break it? He was making the most unbalanced, game breaking character he could think of.
A dragonoid? An overlord lich? Greater doppelganger? Nah. Why limit to only one race, or a couple of classes. Viktor was just putting all of them together removing the negative traits and leaving only the positive one.
Level limit? "Bah that's for chumps" just make the level what is required to have every race and all the job classes.
"Shit, will I be able to use it?" the time was nearing 12:00 midnight and the completion bar was at 99.8%. 'Maybe I spent too much time giving myself a ludicrous amount of shop items.'
'Whatever men, what's done is done, now if this thing would just end then I can have my test drive'.
Finally, the bar filled, but just then, the transparent screen with the game blurred as background became pitch black. It happened as the server clock ticked on the 12:00 midnight mark.
Seconds later he found himself looking at a blue background. He decided to look at the server clock to check the time and it was past 12 midnight:
00:00:15
00:00:16
00:00:17
.
.
.
Immediately Viktor had a gut sinking feeling. 'The server was supposed to close that night, so something was going on.'
The Feeling of grass on his back, the fresh air slowly made way to his consciousness.
'…hmm? Fresh air??? What the frick,' There was not supposed to be any connection to those senses in the gear used to play Yggdrasil.
Tact, smell and taste were not used on the dive gears because scientists found that using these senses for virtual reality made the people feel disoriented about what's reality and what isn't.
The governments quickly regulated which senses could be used in dive gear, which were sight and hearing.
'Ohhh boy, this is bad, really bad, or is it?' looking around hastily Viktor found himself in a seemingly endless grass clearing with what looked like a forest at the other side.
He ran to the trees to take a closer look and the textures looked real… too real.
When he went to have a feel of the tree bark, he noticed something he should not have missed.
His skin, it was white, but not like normal white skin it was white as the white on a screen, a white so white that it seemed to glow.
No veins or hair could be seen on the surface, no nails could be identified on his fingers and he had no clothing.
This could be very weird, but the lack of any defining features was weirder. No reproductive organs on his groin and no nose or eyes on his face.
He could feel he had a mouth, but his lips did not have any volume, the same with the ears where he has something on the side of his head, but it was just the outline of his ears.
"lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub" he was fricking out until a green aura seemed to lift around his body and his emotions felt calm as a lake.
'Hmmm? What is going on? Just now I was about to have a panic attack of some sort and some light cleared it… wait, maybe.'
[Status] He whispered thinking 'so am I still in the game… or is this reality?'
A transparent window popped up with what was supposed to be his stats but weird seemed to be the order of the day as what was written could puzzle any gamer.
To the side of his avatar image (a white form with an overly large smile and no other feature whatsoever) the following stats came up.
Status
Name: □□□□□□
Title: The Truth, Origin Being, Enigma
Job: "Developer" [Creator god].
Residence: □□□□□□
Alignment: ???
Racial Level: ××^$#!&
Job Level: ××^$#!&
HP: ××^$#!&MP:
PHY. ATK: ××^$#!&
PHY. DEF: ××^$#!&
Agility: ××^$#!&
MAG. ATK: ××^$#!&
MAG. DEF: ××^$#!&
RESIST: ××^$#!&
SPECIAL: ××^$#!&
'So, I do have a stat window which means I am still in a game avatar and my avatar image is right there, damn, it looks so creepy.
But the stats doe, is that a glitch?' Viktor thought for a couple of seconds until he remembered the character he was creating.
'Wait, maybe I am in the character I was creating but since I did not give it a name or appearance that's what came out.
Then the stats could be the result of having so many levels… yep that should be, but then the question becomes'.
'[MENU]' The previous window disappeared, and in its place a new window appeared. This one however was almost empty.
The [Log Out] button was not there neither the [Waypoints] [Skills], [Spells], [Store] or most of the buttons.
However, some were left. The [Gacha] button, and a button not available to most people in Yggdrasil was there as well [Dev. Options].
The lack of [Log Out] was a bit troubling since that meant that he seemed to be stuck where he was confirming his suspicions.
To test the options available easily he pressed the [Gacha] button which popped three more options [Common], [Rare], [Legendary].
This was the normal thing but the number to the side of the available pulls appeared to be glitched as well.
[××^$#!&] 'these symbols again, what do they even mean? Whatever…' he thought before clicking on the [Common] button.
Instead of the usual animation for a gacha pull, on his mind played a scene of a door opening showing a huge amount of white light and after that a [Resurrection Wand] came out.
The item did not appear on his hand however but some kind of "connection" happened inside his head. Then the image of the [Resurrection Wand] disappeared.
Scratching the back of his head Viktor tried to grasp the feeling he just had and what came up in his mind was the image of his [Inventory]
As a game develop for Yggdrasil, he had an infinite storage and a lot of items. He even had items which were not released on the game.
In the day of the end of the game he added even more using his admin privileges. Because why not… no one will say a thing if he did so.
He could picture the mountains of items he had in the [Inventory] but he could also locate everything in it. Something weird considering the massive amount of stuff in there.
He located the [Resurrection Wand] he just pulled out on the gacha and tried to take it out. This made the wand appear on his hand immediately.
Trying to place it back on the [Inventory] he pictured getting his hand inside which created a "small tear in reality" where he left the wand.
'Hmmm some commands seem to be able to perform mentally, maybe…' He tried logging out mentally and traveling to a waypoint but neither of those worked.
'Well, I am stuck here for now, and "here" doesn't seems to be Yggdrasil, unless the waypoints got deleted, probably I should start by finding a city to check ask where I am… but first I need to test some other things'.
He went to touch the bark of the tree again and, besides it feeling totally real. He discovered something. The area near his hand on the tree was having a multitude of transformations.
It was flicking from frozen, to burned, to getting dissolved, back to its original form and a lot of other processes were happening at one after the other.
After getting amused by those effects he thought 'Some of these look like the touch effect of some of the Yggdrasil races.'
Thinking of turning off the touch effects a flash of knowledge appeared on his mind.
The description, effects and al the information of every touch skill appeared on his mind.
Hundreds of skills like [Dead Touch], [Withering Touch], [Scalding Touch], [Freezing Touch], [Healing Touch]and so on appeared on his mind.
He mentally toggled all of them off and went back to touch the tree, this time nothing happened.
After a couple of seconds, he decided to turn off the aura effects as well. Effects like [Aura of fear], [Aura of holiness], [Glazier aura] and others were turned off.
'Oooffff I might have dodge a bullet there.'
Turning around Viktor decided to test some of his magic, which brought the knowledge of all the spells available in Yggdrasil to his mind…
Apparently he is able to cast any of them, form the thousands of spells available, he choose a simple one.
[Magic Arrow], normally this spell would create a small green bolt of magic energy which dealt a minuscule amount of physical damage.
Leaving a small dent on weak armor or chipping away a small number of rocks from the surface of a boulder.
This time however the information on his mind showed a huge AOE 'maybe the AOE is wrong?' With that in mind he casted the spell.
The bolt was dazzling red and upon impact with the ground an explosion the size of a small house was created. A hole about 5 meters in diameter was left after all the shrapnel and dust settled down.
A tier 1 spell had the effect of a spell that could be of about tier 6, and it was one of the weakest tier 1 spells. His mind went blank but after what seem like 5 seconds of booting up, he went to the woods.
While he was not someone overly cautious, it was probably better if the locals first impression of him was not of a backyard bomber, besides, he has not yet solved the issue of his appearance.
While there was a probability that the beings of this place looked just like him, he was not yet sure and so he preferred to watch them first from afar and transform to a similar appearance.
After all, even the most rational beings preferred to socialize with other beings that looked like them.
Inside the woods he thought for a couple of minutes how could he solve the issue of his spells being OP, 'It's probably the buffs of all the classes and job levels, they all have merged together and stack.'
'Ahhh maybe I took this OP character build too far… nahhhh, there should be a way, maybe if I limit the output… but the magic system of Yggdrasil is too stiff, the MP consumption is fixed'
'Wait, maybe I can…'
His mind went back to the developer's options button. Without further ado he clicked the button.
The feeling of a hydrogen bomb exploding on his mind was what he got instead of being greeted by the usual developers' options.
His mind became an Infinite white space in which he could feel that as if anything he wanted to create, would come true.
To test this if the feeling was according to reality. Viktor tried to create a supplementary magic. One not as strict as the tier system.
One in which he could decide how much mana he wanted to spend, and the type of action he wanted to happen and the action would take place with an intensity according to the amount of mana spent.
When he finished thinking the intricacies of the magic system, his was "expulsed" of the white mind-space. Back in the woods Viktor felt all sort of things in his being.
The first thing he felt was a deeper connection with his mana. He also felt he could create things with just a thought. He felt immense power and an endless expanse inside him.
He felt like he could think all, see all, create everything or destroy anything with just a whim. The feeling was intoxicating, as if he was a higher being.
Forcefully he tried to settled down, and after he did, he decided to test what he just created, his new magic system.
It worked as intended. The first test was a "[Magic arrow]", however this time he put only 1/10 of the mana required for a the previous [Magic arrow].
This was a partial success, instead of a small house size bomb, the impact created a grenade size explosion.
After testing his new magic system until satisfied. His mind went back to the [Developer's Option] button. After inspecting the menu, it has disappeared.
But he felt that the feelings he got were probably a fusing of the [Developer's Option] with his body.
'Damn this is too broken… I guess that's why I've acquired the job Creator. Now I only need to find some civilization to identify where I am.'
While he could technically travel at tremendous speeds given his stats. And he could also fly or teleport he had lost any sense of urgency.
If the feelings he had were of any indication he was now an Immortal of the highest tier. Not only was he immune to aging and diseases, he was probably immune to physical and magical damage.
So he leisurely walked through the woods, when the night fell, he found another exit.
There was another grass clearing in which he could identify a small village about 3km away, but it was already night and therefore, he chose to wait near the woods and go to the village after the sun comes out.
Sun rays filtered through the canopies of the trees woke Viktor up. 'This body is able to sleep if I wanted to, that's good to know... Well, I can observe how the locals look like now.'
Getting closer to the village he observed that they look like. Humans… they were probably humans.
While thinking what appearance to wear when using [Polymorph], Viktor had another of those weird feelings. This time it was as if he had small bugs under his "skin".
Instead of activating [Polymorph], he concentrated on that felling. The surface of Viktor body started to change like a slime becoming similar to the human he had thought.
Since he didn't give much thought at the beginning he turned into a deformed human without one eye and a hunched back.
'Damn, I think this appearance will scare them more than the my original avatar.'
Drafting his new appearance on his mind he stopped for a second to also think of what kind of story will he tell these people.
'Yosh, I got it'