chapter 3

When the black faded, and Hector could see once again, he was in a vast space where the sky was darker than the night, and large mossy stone tiles covered the ground as far as the eye could see. It was empty.

"Welcome to the information and tutorial zone of Iefril", a slightly robotic voice say from thin air startling Hector. "This zone is mainly created to give basic vital information, after which we will teach you to interact with your character sheet and it's menu"

Realizing it'd take a while Hector sat down.

"Starting off with your menu. You can access the menu for this plane of existence through the main menu and then pressing Iefril. You can also access it by thinking about it the same way you opened the main menu. This is also possible with any sub-menus like your character sheet"

Hector followed along, leading him to a page with three buttons reading; Party, Quests and Character Sheet. The Party tab was for adding and removing people into parties, which would then have all the gained XP shared among the party members.

The quests tab would have a list of all world given quests. Apparently the natives of Iefril couldn't give quests, not even the gods. Those would just be agreements to do something for a reward, while quests would only be given out by the AI that controls the whole place.

And finally they got to the big part; the character sheet. "The character sheet consisted of 5 major parts; player level, stats, skills, knowledge and titles. There are multiple hidden smaller parts of the character sheet, which you will be able to unlock, add or even create yourself." The tutorial voice explained as Hector followed along.

"When reaching a new level a player would get 5 stat points and one skill point, in addition to other rewards starting at level five. Each new level would need double the experience or XP than the previous level There are 2 ways of gaining experience, actively and passively. The active way is by doing something challenging, new or anything that gives you literal real experience in some way. Reading a book for the first time and killing something dangerous are both examples of gaining XP. The passive way to gain XP is just by living. The amount gained per day is determined by the distance from the center Iefril, with the center being the starter city."

"Your stats determine your strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, charisma and perception. Strength is how strong your muscles are. Constitution is how healthy you are. Dexterity is how coordinated you are. Intelligence is how fast and how well you can store knowledge. Wisdom is how well you can use that knowledge. Charisma is how well you can express yourself the way you wish to. And perception is how well you notice small details and how good your senses are." the tutorial voice continued, while highlighting the stats in turn. it was all basic stuff to Hector, but he was still listening patiently.

"Each stat is a result two modifiers multiplied together. The first is the stats value, which can be increased with stat points. The second is the multiplier, which can be changed with actual effort, and it also is what changes your body physically. You can work out to improve your strength multiplier, or read a book to improve your intelligence modifier. They also will decrease when not used. The average humans value for each stat is 100" It was an unexpected way to improve stats, but Hector could understand the reason for it.

"Skills and knowledge work hand in hand. knowledge is the theory you know about something, and skill is the intuitive knowledge you have about something. You can read a book about sword fighting and learn sword knowledge, or you could train with a sword to get a feel for fighting. This is also where skill points come in, as they allow you to add your knowledge of a subject to your skill set. This way you can read a book teaching the theory of manipulating magic, use a skill point and then you can intuitively manipulate magic. The more knowledge you want to turn into a skill, the more points needed. So transferring knowledge of a sword style needs more points than what you'd need for a single move ".

It was something that surprised Hector, as it meant that there would be no learning something without specifically spending the effort to learn it. There would be no magical improvement in his ability, or spontaneously learning something new. It also meant that knowledge would be literal power.

"And finally there are titles. They are given to you by others, but you need large amounts of others for them. Depending on what other people believe you to be, titles give knowledge and skills for you to mach those beliefs. get enough people to believe that you can breathe fire, and you'll be able to. Or maybe get a few million people to believe that you're a god, and you'll be one. The Power of the titles are determined by how many people believe in it... Any questions?"

At this point Hector realized something,"What about the classes and races." he asked.

"There aren't any. You'll have to create your own. if you want to become a rogue, then learn to be sneaky, lockpicking and all that. or of you want to become a wizard, learn a bunch of spells. You won't be limited by any classes, but instead you'll be able to become what you feel like. A spell casting archer Alchemist hunter, or maybe a shadow traveling swordsman of you feel like it" the voice answered. "There also are multiple different intelligent races and species, both humanoid like elves and non humanoid like dragons, you afterlife players can play as, but you'll start off as yourself. You will be able to change your appearance, race and species to anything you wish later on with the right magic."

"Okay, that sounds kinda awesome so far. Anything else I should know?", Hector questioned.

"Yes. All the natives of the VERse gave access to their own menu with the same settings as you players. They are virtually identical to you dead players, except that they won't respawn. It's also why we don't call them NPCs as it would dehumanize them. But even so you will intuitively know if someone is a player or native." the tutorial voice answered,"If you don't have more questions, we can get your starting stats and gear set up."

"yeah, let's set me up then!", Hector practically shouted in his excitement.

"Alright. You have 700 stat points to spend on your stats. your multipliers can't be changed yet and they've been set to 1."

After a moment of thinking, Hector came to the conclusion that wisdom and intelligence both would be pretty important. So he ended up having 75 points in strength, constitution, dexterity and charisma, allowing for 150 in intelligence and wisdom, leaving 100 for perception.

Next he got to choose 7 items from a large selection of basic clothing, weapons, shields, armor and tools. He got excited by the swords, so he took a light one handed rapier, with a dull slightly curved single edged blade. Then he found a cheap utility knife, and some light leather armor. He didn't know what else he'd immediately need, so he chose to get some better more comfortable clothing, and a money pouch filled with 10 silver coins (copper, iron, silver, gold, platinum, aluminum and mithril. each stage 10x the worth, with 1 iron being about $1).

"Great, you're almost done. last thing to do is to choose a new name for yourself" the tutorial voice said.

Giving it some thought, Hector came to the conclusion that he didn't want to change his name even though he never really liked the name Hector, he'd gotten used to it. He thought about using his family name Nirmala, but came to the conclusion that too many people would connect it with his father, and he might get too much unwanted attention.

"I'll use my old name; Hector" he said.

He was finally ready, and somehow not feeling tired at all. He'd woken up earlier than he'd been used to, and it was Getting late with only a few hours till the release of the VERse to the public, but he guessed that while In Earth's plane of existence, he wouldn't feel tired if he didn't want to.

"I'm ready to enter" he whispered in excitement, before everything faded to black once again.