Alain informed the team of his new "God Given Name" after he gave them a rundown of his experience. It turns out, every time he refers to himself as Alain, he feels gross. It feels like a part of his organs shifted out of position or something, but after searching his system menu, he found the culprit.
Pebble felt another part of him die. His identity has changed so fast, just an hour ago, he was Alain. Now, it turns out, even if he tries to hide the name from himself it will still incur the penalty. "You guys didn't even have to experience any torture, and I can't even think of myself as Alain anymore. I'm, like actually, officially Pebble now." He looked at his own hands as if they were alien.
Pebble looked around the room and Bard was still smiling ear to ear, not listening. Fred was standing in place, but his eyes were glazed over and twitchy. Pebble assumed he was accessing his menu. He looked over at Phil and well, he looked downright distraught. Phil looked back at his tail as it trailed about 3 feet (.9 meter) behind him. Phil quickly turned back, his head was darting left and right between where his legs were supposed to be.
"Well, now that I think about it..." Pebble walked over to Phil and put his hand on his shoulder. "I'd rather experience the torture again than live my new life as a snake. I'm so sorry, Phil."
Fred tapped his staff on the ground and a floating mini violin appeared. He pointed at Phil the Snake and made a very sad face. The violin nodded in response and began playing some objectively sad music.
"GUY'S, I HAVE NO LEGS!" Phil pointed with both hands at the absence of his beloved limbs. He was finally starting to see the problem.
Fred took off his hat so that the others could see his gold eyes. He proceeded to look seriously into Phil's yellow reptilian eyes and said, "If you're missing your legs… what else are you missing?"
Phil's eyes went wide.
Bard walked over to Phil and looked at Fred, "Yo, I'm supposed to be the humorous musical one, get your own thing!" He looked back to Phil. "Don't be too upset, open your menu and check your skill tree. You said you get to transform later, maybe there's a path for you to unlock the ability to turn into a human again!"
Phil brightened up, "That's a fantastic point!" His eyes then glazed over and started twitching, the same way Fred's eyes twitched earlier. He stayed like this for a while so the others continued sorting out their own affairs.
Soon enough, it looked like they were all bugging out as everyone was standing in place with twitchy eyes, accessing their own individual system menus. The occasional "ooo" or "oh that would work nicely" could be heard as everyone explored their skill trees and prepped build paths.
"Does anyone else have 10 free skill points?" Bard asked.
"You have 10 skill points?!" Fred replied, "I only started with 1!"
"Yeah bro, it gave me 1 skill point as well and I put it into a racial skill called 'Oil Gland,'" said Phil.
Pebble was still staring his this least favorite menu item.
But he quickly switched over to his skill menu and didn't know what to say. It was in the familiar pattern. The skill tree looked exactly like the pattern in the ceiling tiles in the reception room when he was creating his character.
Thousands of littles stars burst into view, each one with stats and descriptions. Some stars offered new skills and others offered augmentations of existing skills. Pebble was thrilled as he was reading through the options, but suddenly, a good majority of the stars started to supernova and disappear. The ones that weren't exploding were now locked and he was unable to read their descriptions.
"It looks like it gave me one as well." Pebble informed the team.
He scrolled all the way back to the center which was now a black hole. There was a sticky note icon attached to the black hole. Pebble focused on the sticky note and a message appeared.
"Hello Mr. Pebble, I'm extremely thrilled to have won your sponsor position! It's not ideal that I have to share it with the Throne Holder, but we will make this work. The Forest Path that I have bestowed upon you will provide you with many unique quests and challenges along your way. A little something that I've devised is a way to trick the system into accepting a gift as a penalty. As a result, you'll have noticed that your first reward is that 70% of your skill tree has vanished. You're welcome."
Artia
"What?" Pebble was confused. How was blowing up 70% of my potential a gift? He thought back to the first time he played a "hack and slash" game when he was a young kid and couldn't beat act three because monsters got too strong for his build to continue. Maybe she got rid of nodes that were traps, skills that seemed good in theory and bad in practice? He chose to believe this.
Artia was pretty and he trusted her.
He paused. 'Wait, do I really feel this way, or… is selecting 5 intelligence going to come around to bite me in the ass?' He thought. He sincerely couldn't tell.
'Whatever, back to the skill tree.' Pebble took a look at the five options laid out before him. They each seemed to branch into their own path, but he wasn't able to read the abilities hidden behind them. This was a part of his "Challenge Mode" apparently. This was a daunting realization as normally, in video games, try-hards like him are supposed to spend a lot of time on their builds, planning ahead so they know what they're going to put their skill points into before they even get them. However, he was very pleased to see that the first skills were actually skills you'd expect to see on a barbarian.
Pebble decided to save his skill point for now, choosing to look at more menu options for now. He backed out of the skill tree and looked at the main menu.
<
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It looked like his inventory and the store options were locked out for now, so he clicked on equipment.
<"Show Some Decency Robe" - Equipped>
<+1 Defense>
<+5 Unpleasant Draught>
Pebble realized that the robe had spawned with him instead of being given to him by a god. He couldn't loot any equipment that wasn't rewarded to him from his system. Did that mean he couldn't wear normal clothes too? He backed out of the equipment menu and selected the challenge mode menu.
'Whoa' Pebble thought. This menu had quite a bit. It had a menu for challenge mode items, a menu for Divine Favor that was currently locked out, and a menu for challenge mode skills. There were several blank boxes floating under them, as if to indicate the possibility for future additions.
Pebble looked around the room again and it looked like everyone was still totally lost in their own world, doing their own deep dives as well. Seeing that he wasn't alone, he dove deeper into the challenge mode item menu.
Pebble was immediately confronted with a choice and he wasn't able to back out of the menu, he had to pick now. He knew nothing about swordsmanship in real life, so he didn't feel like that would be a wise option. Hammers were a good option since it was pretty straight forward, just drop the thing on their head, right? Ultimately, when Pebble thought about his ideal barbarian, he was wielding an axe.
He chose the axe.
A big two handed, double headed axe appeared out of thin air. Pebble caught the axe as gravity started to take it. The handle was made out of some extremely sturdy wood and the craftsmanship was out of this world. It had some sort of leather wrapped around the wood and it felt nice when Pebble gripped it. The heads were dark gray with light gold edges and It had intricate gold engravings on it, so he brought it closer to his eyes and he couldn't believe it. The engravings were actually depictions of him performing deadly slams and leaps around a battlefield.
"Sick!" He exclaimed. Fred and Bard closed their menus and appreciated Pebble's new mighty axe.
"Wow, where the hell did you get that thing?" Fred asked as he reached out a finger to touch the edge.
"That thing looks like an ancient artifact, think about how much work someone had to put in to make it." He looked closer. "Is that you?" he pointed to the engraving as Fred cut his finger on the edge.
"Ow! It's sharp!" Fred put the wound to his lips.
"Well yeah, no sh*t, wouldn't you want your axe to be sharp?" Pebble put the axe behind him to see how it would look and the axe disappeared.
"Uh?" He stood there for a few moments, not knowing what to do until Bard snapped him out of it.
"Try reaching for your back again maybe?" Bard shrugged.
Pebble listened to Bard and tried as he suggested, the axe appeared again, fitting perfectly in his hand
"Well that's nifty!" Fred said as he tried doing the same with this staff. It didn't work. The staff fell to the ground with a clang.
Phil finally closed his menu, "Guys, I've found it. At level 80 there's a skill that allows me to ascend to a new class. The class would be human again." they all signed in relief.
"Well, I guess that makes the first goal to get to level 80!" Said Pebble.
They looked at him funny, "Probably better to set more immediately obtainable goals for now, but yes that should be a goal." Said Fred
The group spent a few more minutes looking things over and determined they were set to go. Pebble didn't look at his traits or challenge skills yet. He'd had enough for now and decided that it might be best to take information in bits and pieces for his own sanity.
They left the room and approached the attendant that was waiting for them. Bard put his arm out preventing the rest of the group from walking forward and said, "allow me to do the talking." with a smile.
He swaggered his way over to the attendant, "Hey friend, we've finished catching up. We are ready to speak with the King."
The man looked like he woke up from a stupor as he looked at Bard, "Oh gee, I really wish I could bring you to the King. He got pulled away for some very important business and he's asked me to take you to the training dungeon so you may prepare for your adventure." The attendant pulled out a note from his pocket. "You see, it says so right here! But, I mean, those are just words, I can still bring you to the king if you really want." he started poking his index fingers together.
"Jesus Bard, 20 charisma might actually be a problem. Let us talk." Said Fred as he pushed Bard out of the way.
"Take us to the training Dungeon please, good sir." Fred requested. The attendant looked confused by his own actions, shaking his hands as if they had dirt on them.
"Erm, yes, right away, sir." He said in a much deeper pitch than previously and led the group down a spiraling staircase.