Chapter 1 New beginnings

Luck was sitting on his porch one day when a voice suddenly appeared in his head. The voice was unfamiliar yet he had a vague notion that he had heard it before somewhere in life. This foreign yet familiar voice said to him "you are one of my more interesting creations. I have heard your thoughts and would like to make you a offer... how would you like to leave this existence behind and travel to a more exciting reality"?

Luck was currently a 35 year old man, married with two children. Smothered in debt and trapped in a monotonous life, in fact almost nothing in this world had ever gone his way. He spent the majority of his time reading web novels and playing video games when he had free time. Mostly though he was just a man living like some 1940s housewife. Cooking, cleaning and raising children were the things that his life revolved around.

So without much hesitation he mentally responded to the voice "yes", no matter what the voice offered it had to be better than his current life he thought. Besides it was a voice in his head and he figured maybe he might have finally snapped and developed some alternate personality so he didn't feel like he had anything to lose anyway.

Luck began disintegrating on the spot. Starting with his feet and slowly working upwards he could see himself falling apart at a fast rate. There was no pain, no feeling at all even much to his surprise. He started to panic! "What in the hell is happening to me? Is this real, or am I really having a mental breakdown? Did I eat something weird? No, I just had ham and grits that morning. Couldn't be something I ate." As his vision faded, his last thoughts were about what he was leaving behind... "Damn I didn't even get to say goodbye to my family."

When he regained his vision, what he noticed was that he couldn't turn his head, he couldn't even feel his body. Luck felt nothing at all and the only thing he had was his thoughts and his vision as best he could tell.

Directly in front of Luck appeared a character creation screen much like what he had been accustomed too in his 35 years of life playing video games. The voice that had spoken to him was now in his mind. "This next part should be familiar to you, as my chosen one you will be given 2 bonus abilities that will grow with you - Choose wisely."

Luck started forming all kinds of questions to ask, "where am I? Where am I going? What is all this? What happened to me? How do I even select anything from the screen?" Luck heard nothing else from the voice so he was on his own, left deep in thought. "Alright then he said to nobody in particular maybe this is a virtual reality and I can just select something using my mind. Well that should work anyway right?"

Gender: Male, female, she-male, robot, none.

Race: Human, Orc, Troll, Elf, Giant, Half giant, dwarf, Demon, Angel, Mechanical, Lizard, Vampire, Beast

Age: ??

Interesting choices Luck thought, as far as gender goes that ones easy enough. "What's up with robot though I wonder, how is that even a gender. Whatever let's go with Male. That's what I'm familiar with and I can't say I got any complaints about it other than my dick always getting me into trouble but since I'm older and somewhat wiser now that should be fine."

[System - User gender acknowledged, Gender Male confirmed.]

A different voice is speaking to him now, a pleasant sounding female voice is heard in his mind. "I guess that's the system? Uhh ok. Now on to the race selection. This one seems like a bit of a harder choice." Hey system is there is any attribute bonuses or unique skills associated with the races?" Once again he is left with silence.

Not knowing if he picks a race like demon or angel if that would lock him into some faction that might restrict his freedom, Luck immediately thinks back to all the games he played and all the lore he could think about regarding each choice because he has a suspicion this will be a big issue for him very soon.

Luck was a human not that long ago and now he is just a sentient consciousness looking at a screen. "Being a human kind of sucked he thought, nothing special about them in the reality I know. However that doesn't mean anything right now. I know in games Humans are usually the most populated race with the largest variables in power. So I could be a farmer that's nothing but food to a monster or some hero that kills monsters as easy as breathing."

Troll - "No, I just think of something big, ugly and mutated looking that's hard to kill."

Elf - Snobby and reclusive, physically weak. "Yeah no thanks."

Giant - "Too big, limited to physical prowess I guess."

Half giant - "Half of what exactly?" Just what did the giant mate with? "Gonna pass there too."

Dwarf - "Absolutely not."

Demon - "Probably locked into some horrible faction that the entire world wants to kill and that's including other demons too."

Angel - "I don't know, probably just slaves to some god. With no free will." "Gonna pass on that too, I like my freedom."

Mechanical - "What is this like sentient androids? Why would I even choose a gender if I'm a mechanical robot? Can they procreate? I don't know. What would that even look like? Would I need to eat or run on batteries or something."

Lizard - "Is this something that turns into a dragon later on? Those are pretty apex predators wherever you go. I won't know that for sure, and I am damn sure I don't want to be some smelly lizard man type creature living in a swamp."

Vampire - "That's just a human or something that's got some bonuses at night. Probably can't even be in the sun without dying. Plus it has to feed on blood, seems like a pain in the ass even if it is strong." "There's always checks and balances with this kind of stuff and I feel vampires get the short end of the stick. Going to pass on vampire."

Beast - "How incredibly vague. Is this like in the anime's? Am I going to be some tiger man or some bullheaded cow man? Does this mean there's going to be bunny girls and whatnot, or is it literally just a beast. Usually in games I would be able to see a portrait or preview of what the race would look like but there's nothing like that here."

"Maybe I'm just over thinking all this, it can't be that bad right? Then again I just disintegrated and am now physically non existent. I don't want to lose out and pick something weak, weird or restricting but this damn system isn't making this easy on me right now. Too little information about those races I don't know, so I will just stick to what I do know and choose (human) Luck told himself."

[System - User race acknowledged, Race Human confirmed.]

There's that female voice again, now for the age. "How's this going to work anyway, am I going to have some parents or something if I choose this? Let's go with something younger. Who knows what the life span will be for humans here, I don't want to pick 35 when the average lifespan is 40. Can I be a kid again? That would give me time to figure out some stuff and have some fun."

Age 7

[System - User age acknowledged. Age 7 confirmed]

Now it takes Luck to another screen where he can customize his looks for his age 7 human male character choice. Hair styles of all sorts with a color chart, eye shapes and colors, face customization, height and body mass etc. The system is very detailed at this part and Luck is pleasantly surprised to see that.

Luck decides he is going to model himself after one of his favorite video game characters. He decides to give himself medium length silver colored hair, bright green eyes and a tall muscular build that no 7 year old should have. His avatar now has practically perfect facial features and flawless white skin.

[System - User appearance acknowledged]

The system then guides Luck to a basic attribute panel screen and he has 2 bonus points to distribute there.

Physique - 10

Energy - 10

Aptitude - 10

Luck - 10

"Not quite what I was expecting", there's only 4 categories here and once again, no description. Luck starts to think back on what he knows: "I am guessing physique is basically my strength, agility and stamina all rolled into one." "Makes sense I guess since all those things are pretty interrelated anyway."

Energy - "That's a bit new, maybe that's something like mana and I'll need a MP pool for skills." Aptitude - "isn't that like natural ability or talent?"

"Seems important, might be something I need to use weapons or abilities later."

Luck - "Random chance for something good or bad to happen." Seeing as how one of the attributes is named luck he starts to laugh. "Now then, this all seems fairly straight forward and he dumps both of his bonus points into luck. "If I learned anything it's that getting lucky is often more important than anything else."

Physique - 10

Energy - 10

Aptitude - 10

Luck - 10 + (2)

[System - Initial status confirmed.]