Chapter Four: Avatar Design
Alexia wakes up in a wide open space. She sits upwards and looks around, but finds nothing but blue paneling both in the sky and on the ground for as far as her red eyes can see. She's still wearing the hospital gown that she was wearing when she fell asleep, however, she feels something off about her legs.
Originally, since she hasn't used them in so long, she could barely feel anything at all from them anymore, as if they weren't even there. But now, there's a strange soreness to them. She tries, and finds out that she's able to move her toes with no problems at all. She then arches her knees, placing pressure on the bottoms of her feet. After that, with more force than she's ever conjured, she pushes herself onto her feet with her hands. However, she immediately loses her balance and drops down to her knees. She lets out a deep breath, and gets her feet underneath her, and then tries to stand once more. This time, she stumbles, but quickly gets her sense of balance back. Finally, she straightens out her knees, and stands fully for the first time in four years. Alexia takes a few steps forward and stumbles a bit, but continues to walk. Her slow walk quickly turns into a fierce run, and her wondering face soon bends into a warm smile. As she runs, she continues to test the limits of her game body by running faster as well as performing high jumps. Finally, after a long sprint, she does a full somersault and lands on her feet with no problems. Though she's almost completely out of breath, tears well up in her eyes as she continues to smile.
"I've never been able to run like this before. I'm so strong."
Suddenly, a translucent, blue screen appears in front of Alexia's face that reads, "Welcome Player. Would you like to start Legend Conquerors Online?" with a yes and no button underneath the question. Alexia quickly presses the yes button and she's whisked off into another space. The new space is much like the old one in the sense that all she can see are tiles in both the sky and on the ground. However, whereas the original ones were blue, the new tiles are as white as snow, just like Alexia's hair. In front of the young girl is also a new screen that reads, "Welcome to Legend Conquerors Online. What is your name? Note: please refrain from using your real world name."
Alexia puts her finger to her chin, "Hm… I need a different name than my own? What if I use my favorite book character?"
The young girl then types, "Eris Vermilion," into the white space bar beneath the question, and hits the enter button. A new panel takes the place of the other one. This one says, "Please choose your race," with a list of different creatures. Alexia scrolls through the list and finds many different creatures including humans, elves, dwarves, and various types of fantasy and mythological creatures. Near the bottom, she finds something that catches her eyes, and taps on it to see its description.
"'Vampires are considered a type of demon and are easily characterized by their pale skin, red eyes and sharp fangs,'" she reads, "'They have many strengths and very few weaknesses. They have increased magic power, sharp claws, and powerful regenerative abilities. Vampires also have the power to manipulate blood, turning it into weapons and drinking it to recover. Vampires have affinities for darkness, fire, and necromancy magic. Curse, and psychic magic have no effect on vampires, and ice magic and darkness magic have a lower effect on them. Vampires are very weak to light and nature magic, as well as silver augmented weapons.'"
Alexia's curious expression bends into a wicked smile as she presses the button once more for the vampire species. A white light shines over her body and then fades away. Then a mirror appears in front of her. Not much has changed from her original appearance. Her eyes stay their original scarlet red color, and her pale skin stays its original shade. But a quick look inside of her mouth reveals her wickedly sharp canines, all four of them are almost double their original length. Not only that, but her ears have also elongated slightly and are now pointy at their ends. Alexia smiles, showing off her sharp fangs to herself even more. Then another panel appears in front of her that says, "Please choose your age, and hair color. Notice: as you age, your avatar shall age as well."
She thinks to herself once more, "Hm, does that mean that if I choose ten for my age, I'll actually look my age?"
She tries it out and types in ten for the spacebar beneath the age section. Another white light envelops the young girl, and when it fades away, Alexia finds that she's taller, around 55 inches tall where she had originally been around 43 inches. She smiles as she then looks over the many different colors for her hair. As she presses each of the colored buttons, her hair color changes down to the smallest strand. Finally, her hair color turns to a beautiful, raven black, looking almost blue in the white light around her.
"This is it," she says cheerfully as she presses the enter button, ensuring that her hair color remains that way.
The mirror and blue panel disappears, and the panel is replaced by a new one. Alexia is also then surrounded by different types of clear, translucent weapons, with their names underneath them. The new panel that appeared in front of Alexia reads, "Please choose your class," with a list of both underneath it. She scrolls through the classes and finds one that intrigues her.
"Magic Warrior; a class in which one can cast spells as they're wielding other weapons. Gives bonus strength, magic strength, and speed. Reduces defense and magic defense.'" she reads, "Hm… if I can increase the power of my regeneration and learn some healing magic, then I shouldn't need massive amounts of defense. I'll go with this one." she says pressing the button for it.
A white light envelops Alexia and then fades away, revealing her new outfit and equipment. The young girl now wears a light brown, knee-length skirt, a short sleeve shirt of the same color, dark brown gloves, and dark brown books that almost go up to her knees. She also gets a sword that's perfect for her height, resting in a leather sheath on the left side of her hip. The panel disappears and yet another takes its place saying, "Please choose your three starting magics," with a list of magic attributes underneath it. The list includes fire, earth, water, wind, light, dark, nature, lightning, ice, null, psychic, curse, enhancement, alchemy, summoning, space/time, and necromancy
Alexia is quick to act, "I choose darkness, fire, and lightning," she says while pressing the buttons for each of them.
The panel disappears and three more appear, one with a strange type of chart and the other with various letters and numbers. The chart seems to be the one for the letters and numbers on the screen to the left, which looks to Alexia to be her starting stats for the game.
The screen reads as follows, "Name: Eris Vermilion. Race: Vampire. Age: 10. Class: Magic Swordsman. HP(Health Points): 100. MP(Magic Points): 100. SP(Stamina Points): 100. Strength: 20. Defense: 10. Magic Attack: 20. Magic Defense: 10. Speed: 30. Passive Skills: Sharp Claws (level 1), Regeneration (level 1), Blood Gathering (level 1), Blood Drinking (level 1), Blood Manipulation (level 1), Hypnotic Eyes (level 1), Vampirism (level 1), Flight (level 1). Skills: Darkness Magic (level 1), Fire Magic (level 1), Lightning Magic (level 1)."
Next to that is that chart for her strength, defense, magic attack, magic defense, her speed stats. The final panel to the right says, "Please distribute your 100 status points."
"Interesting. I guess I'll put 15 into defense and magic defense, 20 into strength and magic attack, and 20 into speed. I'll work on increasing my defense later. After all, it doesn't matter if my enemies are strong if they can't hit their mark," she says with a wicked smile.
Alexia does as she says and distributes the points between her stats. All of the panels disappear from the young girl's sight, and yet another shows up. This newest panel asks, "Which map would you like to spawn on?" and has a list of twelve different names underneath the question. She combs over the list of names and looks at their descriptions by tapping on them lightly.
"Interesting. Brother did say that each of the maps were gigantic right? Oh?" Alexia finds one that intrigues her and reads its description, "'Necron. This continent is the birthplace of vampires, ghouls, dark elves, chaos elves, demons, anti fairies, and all forms of undead. It's said that this was the first continent that the goddess of darkness, war, and death conquered in her campaign to destroy the gods. This continent gives a slight stat boost to any of the species stated above, and slightly weakens creatures of the light like elves and seraphs. This map is crawling with undead monsters and other powerful creatures.' This sounds like the perfect place for me to go."
Alexia presses the button to spawn in that map, and is then surrounded by a bright light. The light envelops her until her face can no longer be seen, and then starts to disintegrate into smaller particles of light. The particles then disappear into thin air.