“Holy shit.” He muttered as he stumbled with the landing.
The first thing that hit was the sensations. The Legend of Noralon had always felt a little off. The textures were always a little wrong, and the ground was always just a little too flat to be natural. Everything was just a little wrong, enough for him to notice the difference but not enough to ruin the game. Then he spawned into the tutorial.
He looked around. He appeared to be inside a standard Noralon dungeon. He was standing inside a stone corridor. Behind him was a staircase that led down into the blackness below. In front of him was a stone table. The stone corridor turned off to the left, and torches lined the walls.
"I'm in your standard Legend of Noralon dungeon. How original," Tom muttered to himself.
Tom looked down at his hands. Examining his body, he was wearing a loincloth and nothing else. He brought up his hands, and it looked real. He could see the wrinkles and grooves in his hand. Noralon had always looked slightly simulated, but now he could hardly tell the difference. Nope, scratch that. He couldn’t tell the difference.
"This is so cool." Tom marvelled.
He didn't know what patches the devs had made to the VR, but it was worth every penny. He pressed his hand against the stone wall. He could feel the wall! The cold stone, the brickwork, the cracks and ridges. He could even feel the heat the torches were giving off.
"This feels real," Tom muttered.
He checked his ears, confirming they were now slightly pointed. He could feel it. He could literally feel his thumb and forefinger rubbing against the point of his ear. Even the tip of his ear felt real. Suddenly, A thought occurred to him: Noralon had done a lot of things, but they never …
Tom's hand smacked into his loincloth as he not so discreetly checked his package. Nope, that was real, very real, very sensitive, and suddenly doubled in size.
"What kind of pervert programmed this shit?!" Tom muttered as he felt his new equipment. "Alex is going to have a fucking riot with this," he muttered.
He paced back and forth as he tried to wrap his head around all these new or perhaps old sensations.
"Ok, first things first. Let's double-check the free Skills." Tom muttered to himself.
He just wanted to ensure they hadn't changed any of the skills around during the expansion. They did that once in 1.8, and it had royally screwed him over.
After a few minutes of pursuing his status, he was able to confirm his skills worked as he expected them to work.
[Mapping], [Storage], [System Wiki], and his bloodline all seemed to be working as they normally did, at least as best as he could tell based on his current limitations. He created a party made out of him and himself for the moment. He would need more resources to vet everything thoroughly. He did earn some levels, though.
<[Mapping] has Reached Level 2>
<[Storage] has Reached Level 2>
<[System Wiki] has Reached Level 2>
<[Knowledge] has Reached Level 2>
<[Party Leader] has Reached Level 2>
<[Best of Both Worlds] has Reached Level 2>
"Alright, nothing has changed so far," Tom muttered. I even got some levels, but nothing that directly benefits me."
He pulled up his map again, but he could only see the dungeon he was in.
Turning around, he found a staircase leading out of the dungeon. Walking forward, he tried to walk out. He just wanted to see what would happen. The results, however, were disturbing.
DING!!!
"Oh my god. You've got to be shitting me," Tom swore as he saw the notification.
While it didn't stop him from leaving, it definitely incentivized him to stay. He would lose seven Skills if he left. Suddenly, a terrible thought occurred to him.
DING!!!
"You are shitting me!" Tom swore. "I can't log out without losing all of my free Skills! What the hell, devs?! This is bullshit!!! What if I have to use the bathroom."
Tom's hands shot up in annoyance. He was stuck here until he cleared the dungeon. What the hell? Tom turned down the hallway and started to walk forward. Opening up his class options, he looked over his options.
"What the hell?! These are common classes? Where are all the weaker options?" he muttered.
Normally, he would have to pick the lowest tier of classes, Inferior or Lesser rarity, and then upgrade or combine them one by one to get his final class. Still, now he was being handed a bunch of common classes, effectively allowing him to skip step one out of his twenty-step plan. Was this a hidden premium perk that the developers hadn't mentioned? Or did they just change how the classes worked?
Tom just decided to shrug and not think about it. He carefully considered what he wanted for his initial long-term class. He aimed to evolve his first class into the mythic-ranked [Augur] class, which focused on divination, Utility, teaching, and healing.
Tom considered his options. Normally, to get a higher-tiered class, one needs to grind up skill levels, do special quests, pick up titles, and earn feats to meet the requirements for those classes—the honest way. However, there were ways to trick the system.
It was possible to achieve a higher rarity class by mashing together a bunch of lower rarity classes—The dirty way. Of course, the dirty way could backfire and inflict so much soul damage on his character that he would go to respawn.
Looking at his classes, the Skills he needed to get [Augur] the dirty way, and the number of levels he needed to get those Skills …
"[Light Mage], [Lumenmancer], [Life Mage], [Biomancer], [White Mage], [Pathfinder], [Seerer], and [Diviner]," Tom muttered as he devised his mental road map to the [Augur] class.
"I think I can get away with 1 level in each class, so … 7 levels in total." Tom nodded as he decided.
He would start with one of the mage options first.
DING!!!
DING!!!
DING!!!
Tom groaned. He really didn't want to be the support, but he had agreed to be the healer, so he had to make the best of being the support player. He knew he wanted the Augur class. He had some plans with his bloodline and the scribe class, but everything else was in the air.
Then an Idea popped into his head: Light magic combined with Glyphs. He was already planning on touching on glyphs, so it wasn't even a waste.
DING!!!
First thing first, Tom assigned his free points. The stats in the Legend of Noralon were a little funny. You got stat points from one of five places. The first was racial stat points. These were assigned at every level automatically and were completely locked in by your choice of race. For Tom, he benefited from +3 WILL, +2 CON, +2 CHA, and +1 SPIRIT.
The second place you could get them from was free points. Humanoid races like humans, elves, dwarfs, etc. All got 14 points to assign per level. These were also a blatant trap for new players. You needed to assign the same number of stat points to the same stats at each level to get the most out of your stats. If someone just assigned points as needed, they would find themselves with mediocre stats in the end game and would have to sunder their build and start over. Because of that, wherever he puts his free points now, he will be stuck for the rest of this play.
He decided to go with +4 to Will, +4 to Perception, +3 Intelligence, and +3 Charisma. He set his system to automatically assign those points with each new level so he wouldn't have to. He also set it up so it would display all of his increased stats per level regardless of where it came from. It was a preference thing.
The third was the bonus he got every ten levels. That would only matter once he reached level ten, so he ignored those for now. The fourth place where stats came from was his bloodline. He got +5 INT per level. You could also get stats from skills. But those were rare. Only Legendary skills granted that effect, and most of those skills were locked behind the higher-tier classes. But Tom knew he would get there soon enough.
The moment Tom hit accept, a surge of energy jumped through his body. Power seemed to flood every inch of his body, curling his toes as pleasure seeped through his muscles and into his bones. Tom almost collapsed to the ground as the feeling faded away.
"What … the fuck … was that?!" Tom muttered
He didn't feel pleasure when he levelled before. Were the devs trying to get him addicted to levelling? If they were, it was working.
With his stats out of the way, Tom opened up his skill list for Light Mage. He already knew what to expect and wasn't surprised when his choices popped up.
DING!!!
He chose [Light Magic], not for any real reason; these Skills were functionally identical at this level. When he picked [Lumenmancer], he would also pick up [Lumenmancy].
DING!!!
Tom smiled as he opened his list of possible spells he could learn. Well, that wasn't true. He already knew exactly what he was going to pick.
"This is going to be juicy," Tom muttered as he made his choices.
DING!!!
"Alright, time to test if the most broken spell in the game still works," Tom muttered.
Placing his finger in the air, he started to draw a symbol, a glyph of Lighting Bolt. When he finished drawing, he touched it with a bit of mana.
ZZZZAAAAPPP
His drawing collapsed in on itself, turning into a lightning bolt before leaping out of his hand and smashing into the nearby wall.
<[Light Magic] has Reach Level 2>
<[The Pen is Mightier than the Sword] has Reach Level 2>
<[Words of Power] has Reached Level 2>
<[Gift of Tongues] has Reach Level 2>
<[Wordsmith] has Reach Level 2>
<[My Mind is my Temple] has Reach Level 2>
<[Knowledge] has Reach Level 3>
<[Light Magic] has Reach Level 3>
<[Best of Both Worlds] has Reach Level 3>
"Oh, this is going to be good," Tom chuckled as he tried out a few other glyphs, getting a few more notifications as he did.
This was why he had picked his bloodline. [Words of Power] boosted his glyphs. [The Pen is Mightier than the Sword], and [Wordsmith] helped with his penmanship. Finally, [Knowledge] and [Gift of Tongues] helped him retain information about glyphs.
"This is going to be fun," Tom chuckled as he rubbed his hands together maliciously.
You may skip to the next chapter.
Base
Personal: +4 PER +4 WILL +3 INT +3 CHA
Racial: +3 WILL +2 CON +2 CHA +1 SPIRIT
Bloodline: +5 INT
Mini-Character List
Tom: Our Protagonist a [Light Mage]
AN: