Leon found himself in a white room. A few meters in front of him was a floating screen, with a mannequin of him behind it. The screen lets him customize his appearance, adding wings or changing skin and eye color. The sky's the limit kind of customization but depending on your features you may be discriminated against if you meet NPCs that dislike 'Races' with them.
Black hair, red eyes, pale complexion, and everything else normal. That is what he chose and confirmed. The window changed and asked for him to select his starting class.
Eternal Universe had a large selection of classes, each of which could level all the way to level 100, and you could have up to ten classes. To balance things, the higher your overall level, the higher the experience cost to level up, so you had to choose between leveling a group of classes and having utility or leveling a single class to completion before starting a second or third.
The class Leon chose was…
+++
Captain
Skills: Leadership 1, Management 1, Broker 1, Gambling 1, Marksman 1
HP: 10 per level
+++
Next, he had to choose a starting Talent, and he chose Gambler. It fell in with his plans for the first day.
+++
Gambler
Increases the chance to win a bet and increases the amount you can win (non-active Gambling). Gambling +2 levels. This can break the limit for the skill.
+++
After that, he had to choose his stats.
+++
STR: 12 DEX: 14 CON: 14
INT: 15 WIS: 15 CHA: 17
+++
Having completed the character creation process, he input his name as Starlight and selected the Vidu System as his starting system.
There was a stream of light and he found himself standing in a small park surrounded by appearing players. He immediately left, heading in the direction of the Logo Track. The Logo Track was one of three gambling locations on the planet, and it was a non-active gambling location. With Gambling 3, he should be able to win more than he loses on this starter planet.
The track appeared in front of Starlight, and he entered, heading straight for the betting desk. He looked over the bets for the next race and saw one that had good odds, winning would give him 20 times the money. He made a bet of 10 credits out of the 100 he started with. He found himself a seat in the stands and waited for the race to begin.
The race was touch and go for a bit, but he won his bet, so he went back claimed his money, and made a new bet, 100 credits on a chance to increase his funds by 40 times. Again, he won, and again he went to bet, 1000 on 25 times the money. He lost this bet, but he wasn't discouraged and made another bet with similar odds and the same amount of money. He won this time, so he continued gambling.
After half day of gambling, he had earned himself 1 million credits. This was the limit he could earn today as the betting desk had limits to how big a bet he could place. Still, this amount wasn't enough for what he had planned.
The time inside the game was three times the time outside, so he had been playing for a little less than 4 hours since it's only been 12 hours in-game. The next part would be a little more challenging. Leon went to a starship merchant and looked around, and after not seeing what he was looking for, he went to another, then another, before finally finding what he wanted at the fourth merchant. There was a man playing cards with a holographic display, so Leon approached.
"You looking for a challenge?" Leon asked.
The man looked up from his cards and smiled.
"You got the money to lose?" the man asked, a predator gleaming in his eye.
Leon nodded his head and sat down. He took out a betting chip and put half a million credits in it, then set it on the table. Money was all digitally stored in the game, so betting chips let you gamble by giving you a pool of money to bet with and letting the others know how much you had to lose.
The man nodded at the amount, then he filled his own betting chip with the same amount. They played a couple of hands and money shifted slightly towards the merchant. They chatted with each other, mostly nonsense stories, trying to feel each other out. Soon, Leon's cards glowed, indicating that he had a winning hand. This effect appeared when you had level 3 Gambling or higher and was a good opportunity to earn big if you knew how to use it.
He pushed his bet by 100k, then leaned back, an indicator he had been purposely showing that he was bluffing. The merchant bought it, but got greedy, increasing the bet by another 100k.
"Oh, yeah? Do you think you're confident? Then all in," Leon said, furrowing his brow like he wasn't confident as he made himself out to be and wanted to win the pot easily.
"Oh, I don't know, I think I could win this one. If you are so confident, maybe we should put forward a bigger pot. You surely have more money, right?" the merchant gave a smile like he wanted to make Leon falter.
"I have 500k more, but I need that for other expenses."
Leon looked bothered by the costs that this bet was looking to be.
The merchant smiled, "Well, how about I put a Y-300 Guarded Long-Hauler in the pot, and you put the 500k. My side of the bet would be much bigger, but if you don't feel confident you could just fold and walk away."
The merchant then took a coded coin and placed it on the table, above it showed a nice spaceship, worth more than 10 million credits, and marked with Bet. It wasn't his best ship, but it was enough to 'draw' a greedy person to make a foolish bet.
Leon seemed to struggle then nodded and added 500k to his Betting Chip. The cards were laid down, and the Merchant's smile faltered, he had been had. The coded coin transferred the ship to Leon's ownership and Leon took most of the money from his Betting Chip.
His communicator asked him to name his ship. Last Hope.
The merchant seemed to get over his loss and he smiled amiably at Leon.
"That was a good game, and that last hand, you were playing that one from the start, haha. Names Ruthgar," the merchant held out his hand.
Leon took it and replied, "Starlight, nice to meet you Ruthgar."
"Your new ship has space for 500 tons of cargo and can carry 300 passengers outside of the crew. For the crew, you need a pilot, engineer, navigator, medic, and steward at the minimum. This will allow you to make full use of the ship."
Starlight looked through the equipment on the ship then asked an important question.
"Ruthgar, how much would it cost to add a fuel refiner and extractor to the ship?"
Ruthgar stroked the thin beard on his chin, seemingly to decide something.
"I can get them both added to the ship for 200k. It will take 100 tons of cargo space from the ship to hold them. But I have a condition."
He swiped his hand and a contract appeared in front of Leon. The Refiner and Extractor were both very high grade, worth 400k each, and the requirement to get a good deal, was to hire a girl named Lin as his Engineer for a minimum of 3 years with her earning 5% of the money the ship makes or a minimum of 50k every 3 months if the ship doesn't make that much. It also stipulated that he had to treat her with respect.
These things were interesting. Leon thought that this might be a daughter or niece of Ruthgar's. Seeing no problem with the contract, he signed it.
"Good, I can have the equipment installed in two days. Lin will join you at the spaceport then, so you should find the other crew while you wait. If you need help let me know. I happen to know a steward and a navigator as well."
"How much are they willing to work for, having seen the contract you sent last time, I feel you wouldn't push someone that might do a bad job, so I'm willing to hire a couple more from you."
Ruthgar smiled wide. Two more contracts appeared in front of Leon. One for a man named June, the steward, and one for a woman named Yuko, the navigator. They both wanted the same conditions as Lin, except it indicated they would share a crew cabin if hired together. Leon signed the contracts.
"Thanks, Ruthgar. You saved me days of work most likely. If I have need of more ships for my fleet, I will come to you."
"Fleet? You have a fleet?"
Leon laughed, "Not yet I don't."
He gave Ruthgar a wink and went to find a hotel, he had been on for 8 hours real-time and needed to eat and take care of his body.
Coming back to his real body, he got up and chowed down on some of the quick food he had gotten before. He then checked the forums to see how far others had gotten. There were a few people who had been hired to man starships, but he was positive he was the first to own one. When he took off from the planet, the game would announce his achievement.
There were people complaining that the amount of money that players started with was too small and that it would take forever to earn enough to buy a starship. There was also a short video recorded by a third party of several players trying to steal a starship from a dock, and the guards killing them like swatting flies.