"Damn it, cutting in line, huh?"
"Have you no manners?"
A young man dressed in a black hip-hop outfit glared angrily at a boy next to him, who looked a bit shabby.
"What's the deal with you cutting in line…"
The young man was about to shout, but his expression suddenly shifted when he saw the boy, who appeared rather poor, hand him a thick stack of Federation General Currency.
At a glance, it looked like several thousand dollars, and the Heroic Epic game helmet he was trying to buy was only priced around 3000 dollars.
The boy just grinned, "Hey, bro, I'm really in a hurry to play. You know the game's servers are opening in just over 10 minutes, right?"
"I overslept. Is it alright if I just buy your spot?"
"Sure, no problem."
"Here, take it."
The young man quickly grabbed the position, eager not to let the boy back out of the deal, and hurriedly moved to the side.
What he didn't notice was the faint look of relief that appeared on the boy's face.
"Phew, I finally got the helmet before the servers open."
"Every minute counts for early game development."
"Luckily, at 18, even though I only managed to get into Heroic Epic over two months after it launched in my previous life, losing out on a lot of opportunities, I still managed to save up quite a bit of money from my part-time jobs. Otherwise, I wouldn't even have enough to buy the helmet, let alone pay for the spot."
Foster thought to himself as he quickly paid for the helmet, grabbed the beautifully crafted item, and ran towards the hotel he had booked in advance.
He is a transmigrator.
In his previous life, Foster never paid much attention to the game Heroic Epic. Eventually, he was dragged into it by a few of his friends.
At first, Foster was indifferent, but soon he found himself surprisingly hooked by the game's core mechanics, which revolved around hero development, army-building, and managing a nation. He quickly became engrossed and, by the time of the Descension Day, had risen to the rank of a Lord of the Fifth Order.
Descension Day was the day when Heroic Epic would merge with reality. On this day, all the wealth, resources, soldiers, and even entire nations from the game would manifest in the real world, expanding the size of the Earth by tens of thousands of times.
As a Lord of the Fifth Order, Foster lived a life of luxury—though not quite the highest rank, he was far beyond the ordinary folk.
However...
Foster had originally planned to tour his vast territories and indulge in the offerings of the more than ten Elven Female Slaves that his subordinates had given him. But somehow, a streak of dark light fell from the sky and struck him dead.
When he awoke again, he found himself back in his youth—just one hour before the opening of Heroic Epic.
No hesitation.
He immediately withdrew all the savings he had and forcefully bought a position in line to purchase the game helmet.
It didn't matter that he had to wait a little longer.
Unlike those nonsensical novels where early logins grant powerful artifacts or talents, Heroic Epic didn't work that way. Everyone started with the same conditions: random talents and a random spawn point.
But when a game that can change your destiny is presented before you, where the strong can even transform into deities from various myths, who would still care about a few thousand dollars that are irrelevant in reality?
You see, after Descension Day, anyone with a certain level of accumulation and power in Heroic Epic would have the chance to jump from being at the bottom to becoming an elite. Meanwhile, those rich men who had never touched the game would be left to scrounge in the slums, reduced to the most pathetic of the impoverished.
In his previous life, Foster's life had been good, but compared to the real powerful figures who controlled entire continents, explored other planets, and had lifespans that rivaled the heavens, he was far behind.
This time, being able to transmigrate to the past, he would never limit his ambitions to merely becoming a Lord of the Fifth Order!
He quickly reached his hotel room, punching through the packaging of the helmet in one swift motion—he wasn't gentle. He connected the helmet, put it on, and shouted:
"Charge! Charge! Charge!"
"Log in! Log in!"
He shouted, eagerly awaiting the game to begin.
The virtual reality game helmet directly integrates with the Federation's identity system, so no additional registration was necessary.
Foster wasn't sure how many times he had shouted "Login" before his vision suddenly brightened, and the opening CG sequence began to play.
In the first second, countless dragons and angels slowly let out long cries as they gradually entered the screen from behind the curtains.
"Skip!"
The screen stuttered for a moment, and then a soft female voice was heard:
"Welcome…"
"Skip!!"
"Skip!"
The screen froze again. In front of him, the figures of several people slowly appeared in a distant, ancient-looking scroll.
"Skip!"
"I choose One who owns nothing as my starting class!"
"Are you sure…" the system prompted.
"Confirm!"
The next moment, a vast map appeared on the screen.
"Skip!"
Foster muttered incessantly.
The map disappeared, replaced by an image of a wild field rich with water plants.
[Your spawn point has been confirmed.]
"It looks like there won't be a shortage of physical resources early on, but minerals might be lacking. Still, it's not a bad start, my luck is pretty good."
Foster quickly analyzed the scene before him. The Heroic Epic CG was certainly impressive, but there were no rewards for watching it. He skipped it all, giving himself a few extra minutes of early development time.
Although… it might not even matter.
In less than 10 seconds after the server opened, Foster had already completed his class selection—
a person with nothing.
The class had no special abilities or advantages, but players would start at level 1. Choosing other classes would start them at level 5, with their stats already assigned between levels 1 and 5.
This would mean that when Foster later unlocked hidden class promotions, he might not be able to perfectly allocate his points. Even with stat respec items, he could only reset the points he gained after starting the game, meaning the points allocated to his starting class couldn't be changed.
As for the attribute disadvantages that come with being a person with nothing?
What a joke.
In his past life, Foster had ranked among the top 50,000 players in PK (player killing) rankings. If you calculate that for now, his skill level was number one among all Earth players. Dealing with early-stage wild monsters? The stat disadvantage didn't matter at all.
Meanwhile, Foster had completed the random spawn point selection, and it looked like he had drawn a decent one.
Now, the only thing left before entering the game was the final step—
Talent selection!
He couldn't help but rub his hands together.
"God, please, don't give me anything too terrible."
Although Foster knew that there were items to enhance talents, as a transmigrator, he was also confident that he would be able to obtain them.
A good Talent was critical for early game progression and future development.
Moreover, the items that could enhance Talents only worked on low-level Talents, while high-level Talents could only be drawn at the beginning.
Although Foster retained memories from his past life in Heroic Epic, the game's map was vast. He couldn't explore many valuable treasures or quests ahead of time like the protagonists in some novels.
As long as he got a good Talent, he was confident that he could stand shoulder to shoulder with the top-tier players from his previous life—those who were even striving for the divine realm.
But if he ended up with a trash Talent? Foster wouldn't be able to carry that weight.
Becoming a seventh or eighth-tier Lord was still within his reach, but aiming for divinity… standing at the pinnacle of the world?
That would be impossible.
[Do you wish to begin drawing your Talent?]
With the prompt, Foster took a deep breath and nodded silently.
"Yes."
Immediately, multiple doors appeared in front of him. Most of them shimmered with white light, followed by green, blue, purple, gold, and, in very rare cases, red.
These corresponded to the quality of the Talents. White was the lowest, while red was the highest.
Foster knew that the few players who stood at the top of the Earth in his past life all had gold Talents!
As for the red Talents? There had only been one person with that Talent on Earth. Once her information was exposed, she was killed by a powerful being from another planet.
At the time, Earth was about to merge with the game, and a meteorite fell from the sky, turning several cities to ash.
It wasn't until much later that people realized that the alien existence had intervened to eliminate the red Talent holder from Earth.
Foster didn't dare to hope for a gold Talent.
He would be satisfied with a purple one!
In his past life, his Talent had been purple, called Dragon Summoning. It significantly enhanced the strength of the dragon-type units, and it was thanks to that Talent that he had been able to grow into a Lord of the Fifth Order despite entering the game late.
As he silently prayed, countless lights began to flash!!
One by one, the doors attempted to light up but quickly extinguished.
Finally, the glow stopped, lingering in front of one massive door.
It wasn't purple, gold, or red.
Foster stared in confusion as the door revealed…
A pure, pitch-black glow!
[Congratulations! You have drawn the unique Talent: All Things United.]