The Talent/Attribute panel is something innate to this world, as most of the actual knowledge about the period before the monsters invaded was blocked by the government. Luke wasn't sure when this panel appeared, maybe it even existed before the invasion but still, anyone born in this era had this panel since birth.
Except for the fact that the talent listed in the panel needed to be awakened with the help of a special solution that was controlled by the government and the rest of the 'noble' families.
The world after the monster disaster quickly fragmented into various small communities, and the first people to awaken their talent created the society as it is today. Like in any society, everyone quickly settled in different communities inside cities, all cities were primarily divided into two layers by a giant stone wall, the inner city, and the outer city. That wall divided the society into 'commoners' and 'noble' families.
Anyway, the spirit was the most important stat by which society was divided in this world. Unlike money though, the spirit stat was fixed on birth, each monster that dies leaves its soul behind which could then be absorbed by the one who killed it.
The soul of the monster could provide either an enhancement to its wielder or it could be transformed into a weapon that the user could use to fight. The problem and the dividing line come from the soul stat, since everyone's soul stats were fixed at birth and even though some rare monster souls did enhance the soul their percentage increase wouldn't help if the soul stat was already too low.
Common monster souls that dropped from one of the weaker monsters needed a soul stat of 1-5 to keep it from going haywire and messing with your sense of reality by taking over you.
An Uncommon monster soul similarly needs a soul value of 5-10. The numbers keep scaling up as the higher level soul took a lot of your mental ability to keep them in check if you wanted to use them in battle.
Luke wasn't sure if he was born with these stats, but after he came out of his coma and checked his stats, he was quickly granted a 'commoner' status by the family and shipped to its branch outside the main city. He would have been more upset if not for the memories of a 28-year-old 'Marcus' swimming in his brain from time to time.
It wasn't all bad, he had quite a bit of money to spend and he got into one of the better military universities by virtue of his surname. But after hearing about the types of realms available in this new game, and the amount of importance placed on it by the main branch he knew something was up.
'Qi was the energy of heaven and earth in those cultivation novels, but how does it connect to a damn video game?' Luke thought.
"What happened why did you stop," Bradley asked as he almost collided with Luke, he was looking at his watch going through the forums.
"Nothing..." Luke said, he looked at Bradley's puzzled face and continued, "I'll go back and shower, the game servers open in around four hours right, I'll call you and we can team up like always."
"Alright man, see ya soon, I dunno what was wrong with the headquarters mind, exchanging resources with in-game coins..." Bradley muttered as he walked away.
Luke looked at his cousin for a moment before he shook his head, it wasn't yet time to inform him. First, he needed to go back and check what was up with this new game.
The training rooms were not that far from his dorm, being a Sullivan granted him some perks and one of them was the fact that he had a single room all for himself. There was a bathroom attached to the room and after a quick shower, Luke sat down on his computer in just a towel and quickly logged into the LINK.
The LINK was this world's internet, except that it could connect with this world's deep-dive technology and connect directly to a store giving a whole new meaning to the term window shopping.
Luke went through the simple screen exploration mode. The forum for the game Another World was buzzing with messages as many threads had thousands of replies. Luke quickly navigated to the 'About' section and started going through the information about the game that the internet lurkers had unveiled till now.
'''...Another World is speculated to have 100% immersion, but the game has more in-depth mechanics than we thought. According to the popular beta testers, the developers not only assured them that the actual game would not resemble the small isolated area they played in. But the World would be 10 times the size of our planet...'''
'''...This revolutionary game seemed to work through a single server that is controlled by a quantum computer. According to the developers, it could handle the whole population of the world logging in simultaneously and it doesn't need to divide the world into different regions to stop the lag and break immersion...'''
There were various articles that looked like paid ads to Luke that gushed about the technology used in this game. What he was interested in was the setting of the world.
'''...According to one beta tester, the world is a cultivation world. It is divided into 3 major forces and the players can choose their own route along what they desire. Similarly to a fantasy game, there are demonic cultivators that if someone wanted to go through the evil route. But hidden in the subtext is a warning indicating that the evil route would be punished by the laws of the world itself...'''
...
'''...the world is far crueler than almost any game, I personally don't think its craze would last long because once someone dies all their progress is reset and they reincarnate into the world again, not only that they lose the Innate spiritual stats for every death making the difficulty harder...'''
...
...
Countless reviews filled the whole screen and Luke could feel the hype this game had generated, while the Hype was all good what interested Luke was all the information from the game.
He closed his right eye and stared at his stats again. The PHY stat was a result of endless hours in the gym. He couldn't afford the gene solutions as all the contributions he had collected had been used to activate his talent.
It was a gamble that he had regretted for years now but looking at the world he was about to enter a feeling of anticipation filled him.
He opened his LINK watch that was connected to his account and opened the latest mission assigned by the main branch once again.
{###**3132: Account ID- 237835894, Pass: Biometrics. Read through the document before diving, ETA: 3:32:17}
The document detailed all the things that he already knew along with registering an account before the timeline arrived. He clicked on the link and then sent it to his computer with a swipe.
'Alright it took me to a site about the game, my account is already registered by the main branch...' Luke thought as leaned forward. A laser scanner was attached to the webcam which quickly scanned through his retina.
{Registration Succesful}
{Enter through a DD device to generate your character}
After successfully completing the tutorial Luke went to his bed and laid down on it. The normal bed went out of fashion when the Deep Dive technology became accessible to everyone.
The Deep Dive technology completely removed the need for a bed because it could simulate REM sleep reducing the amount of time one needs to sleep. He closed the lid and pressed the button to enter into LINK.
Everything backed out as he felt like he was falling for a second before his senses returned. He was floating in what was an accurate representation of their galaxy. This was a customizable area that was different depending on your personal choice.
Seeing the distant stars shining in the sky calmed Luke down so he has always had this one. He opened the list of applications with a thought and then swiped into the games section.
'''Borken Island'''
'''Gun Game'''
'''Monster Paradise'''
...
'''Another World'''
Luke scrolled through the plethora of games that were still added to his LINK account. He clicked on 'Another World' and after a second, his vision backed out and he stumbled as gravity returned.
...
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AN- Getting there!