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  Tom found himself floating in a familiar void with dozens of icons in front of him. After selecting the Noralon icon, the other icons disappeared.

  In front of Tom, the familiar logo of Noralon online expanded into the size of a house, along with multiple options. Moving his digital body, he clicked on the new expansion.

  "Welcome to the Noralon Online Frontier Titan Expansion," the epic voice-over guy's voice echoed in the void. "In this expansion, you will build a brand new character before you are unleashed on Noralon. The great goblin hordes, under the instructions of the great titans, have taken over the southern continent, and the northern kingdoms need your help to survive the oncoming storm. Crush your Enemies, and Honor your Allies!!!"

  That never got old, no matter how many times he heard it. Tom was just about to get started when an unexpected notification appeared in front of him instead of the character creation.

  DING!!!

  "What?!" Tom muttered as he reread the message. "Last update?! What the hell, Discordia?! You can't just shove Premium rewards in my face and gloss over the fact that this is the last expansion. What the hell?!"

  DING!!!

  Okay, this wasn't that great. It was clearly aimed more at the new players, and Tom would probably just sell it. But hey, free money.

  DING!!!

  This was more like it. [Storage] and [Mapping] were cornerstones of any adventurer's kit. Everyone had some variation of those skills. And even if he hadn't picked up, he would have gotten item equivalents of both.

  [System Wiki] On the other hand … that one was just garbage despite its rarity. The [System Wiki] skill did offer information, but the Noralon Wiki online contained everything the [System Wiki] did, as well as information on monsters, items, quests, and dozens of subjects. Compared to that, [System Wiki] was just weak. He would probably just sunder it or combine it with something else later on for something better, but it would be no big deal.

  DING!!!

  Tom paused at the words Whisper in the Sand. He still remembered that nightmare well. This whole premium thing was a bit of a walk down memory lane, but the Whisper in the Sand was special. It was one of Noralon's Superbosses. It was famously unbalanced.

  It was no Hakkar, the soulflayer, but more along the lines of people assuming the boss was an immortal object unbalanced. That was the raid boss that made him famous as the Death Sovereign. He had lost thousands of undead in that fight, hundreds of hours of work down the drain, not to mention all the money he had spent.

  It took the thirty-six top guilds burning hundreds of real-world dollars, billions of in-game currency, two weeks of planning, and more than a few in-game exploits just to put the stupid thing down. His job had been mainly to stall the super boss with a literal army of undeath while everyone else took a break, which was probably why he got [Party Leader]. It was a support skill. It was meaningless on its own, but once he got more skills, that would change.

  He opened the following notification, trying to forget about how much money he had wasted on that boss.

  DING!!!

  Ok, that was just bullshit. He could get a legendary class right out of the gate, but he couldn't use it. Tom had already been dubbed the healer, and as much as he wanted to ditch the role, he wouldn't do so at the expense of his friends.

  Tom thought back to the class options, running through his memories of legendary classes, hoping there was something healer-ish. But he got nothing. There were some mythic classes, but nothing worth the token.

  He looked over the notification again, and a thought occurred to him. He could get a Bloodline.

  Typically, if he wanted a bloodline, he would have to roll for it in character creation for a 1 in 20 chance at having a random bloodline, or he would have to go through multiple dangerous, complex, and potentially expensive rituals in order to obtain something halfway useful. Honestly, he preferred the second option, as that gave him a choice instead of locking him into a pre-existing role.

  But if he could pick and choose a bloodline. That could work. If he was going to be stuck grabbing support classes, a good bloodline could mitigate the problem. And if he could pick and choose at the start of the game … that was a game-changer.

  Oh, this was going to be fun. With this mind made up, he dove into the character creation. The first part was his first choice of race and gender. He picked male without a second thought. He wasn't like Alex, switching genders for fun, nor was he transgender, and he had already tried being a girl once to satisfy his curiosity, not that he would tell anyone that. As such, he stuck with being a male, as that was what he was comfortable with. His choice of race was a much more difficult one.

  There were elves, dwarves, orcs, amazons, beast-kin, and on and on. The list went on and on. Before long, Tom's eyes started to glaze over as he tried to look at his options. Finally, he picked one at random to see its stats.

  Tom ignored the Orc while it was interesting. It was geared towards a [Warrior] build with no magical potential, which was not what he was looking for. What he wanted was a healer. He wanted a bonus for intelligence, perception, will, or maybe charisma stats.

  "[Lionhearts] is pretty good, and [Eat, Drink and Be Merry] is useful if I want to go the [Beast Tamer] or [Druid] route," Tom mumbled to himself. "Human and High Elf are good if I'm going to be the face of the party. High Elf gives a bonus to Charisma, too. But it leaves me a bit too squishy."

  In the end, he didn't go with any of them. While many races were an okay fit, he was trying to min max. That just meant he was going to have to go for a hybrid. Some Hybrids, like half-orcs, could give higher-tier skills. In this case, he would combine [Human] and [High Elf] to combine [Storyteller] and [Manipulator] into something better.

  "Alright," Tom began, "Okay, I just need to alter my appearance." Tom smiled as he accepted the half-elf race as his race.

  His avatar appeared before him, and Tom just stared in stunned silence. What the fuck was he looking at? He stared at the near-perfect copy of himself staring back at him blankly, the only difference being he had slightly pointed ears and he was in his underwear.

  “I can’t tell if this is an amazing update or just outright creepy,” Tom muttered.

  He had to admit he wasn't what anyone would call handsome. His hair was a mop of curly straw, his eyes were a bit too bright a shade of blue, his waistline sported a third tire, and an unhealthy amount of teenage acne covered his face.

  "Thank you, Mom and Dad, for feeding me nothing but McDonald's," Tom muttered.

  He absently wondered if he should change his appearance or just randomize it into something else. Nah.

  He immediately got to work making his ideal version of himself. He trimmed off his fat and removed the acne. He gave himself enough muscle to look good, but he didn't want to look too buff. He altered his hair color, changing the limp straw hair with what looked like locks of spun gold. He turned his eyes into sapphires. He gave himself an extra foot of height, bringing him to a little over 6 feet tall. And finally, he gave himself a twelve-inch penis because he was an immature teenager, and the idea of having a massive shlong appealed to him. Finally, he accepted his choices and moved on to his magic.

  Honestly, it was unimportant in the long run. A person could just pick up any classes they wanted with enough hard work. In the short term, it would allow him to pick up some specific mage classes early on. He had been thinking about this all day, and he had figured out the perfect combination of affinities for him as a healer.

  Now, he could pick up Water, Earth, Light, and Life magic right off the bat. He could still pick up the other magics, but he would have to find spells or a source for the affinities he had below 50. Finally, he moved on to the last part of character creation.

  Tom pressed the button, not expecting much. There was only a 1 in 20 chance for him to get a bloodline.

  DING!!!

  Well, that was to be expected. He hadn’t really expected to get a good bloodline. He mainly had just been hoping against hope that he wouldn’t need to spend the system token. But he wasn’t that lucky.

  Tom stared at all the options. He was going to kill his friends for making him the healer. Unfortunately, despite his desire to do so, he couldn't take any of the blatantly awesome choices. He scrolled down and down until he found what he wanted.

  It wasn't even close to a top-tier bloodline with only six skills and one stat booster, but it would become utterly overpowered when combined with the right classes. Also, it saved him six skills he would have otherwise had to buy to make the combat portion of his class work.

  Once he was done, he checked over his character one more time. All he had left to do was to pick his name. For some odd reason, he decided to use his real name. Tomus Bruner

  DING!!!

  "What's up with the happy apocalypse part?" Tom asked. "I'm pretty sure that wasn't there befo--"

  Tom was cut off as he fell into the void.

  You may skip to the next chapter.

  Base

  Personal:

  Racial:

  Bloodline: +5 INT

  Mini-Character List

  Tom: Our Protagonist.

  AN: