To take control of the character, I had to walk up to her, and then step into her. Which, of course, was rather nerve wracking when I was face to face with an absolutely beautiful girl like her. No, that wasn’t quite right. Not her, but rather, me.

The long, shaking breath I took to steady myself made no noise, but I felt like it did anyway. God, I’d never done this before. Taking on a female body in VR. I’d heard stories of people who did. Some didn’t mind it, some hated it, and some few even enjoyed it. Which would I be? I deserved to hate it, but I really hoped I just didn’t mind it.

I needed to think of a name for myself too. Should I do that before or after I was wearing the body? Probably after, if I was honest, so it would feel like I was naming myself, rather than another person.

“So…” I said, although my voice made no sound. “I’m going to, uh… walk into you now.”

Predictably, she just continued to stand there blinking, unmoving and uncaring. According to the game’s lore, she was a body created using the temple’s magic so that a wandering spirit, me, could inhabit her. She would collapse and fade away without my soul to give the body meaning and life.

So, that’s what I did. I closed my eyes and pushed my ephemeral spirit form into the same space as the body. I felt a sort of mental click, as the game transferred me into the body. Immediately, I gained an awareness of a body that was utterly alien to anything I had felt before. A quiver ran up and down the length of my spine, and I hugged my arms to my chest instinctively.

Soft warmth greeted my forearms, and my eyes flew open with a gasp. Oh. Oh goodness, those were my breasts. My breasts. I shifted to take them in my hands, staring down with such a vortex of emotions going through me that I couldn’t possibly have pinned any single one down. I let out a little laugh when I realised how stereotypical my actions were, though. Guy finds himself in a girl's body for the first time, what does he do? Grope himself.

No, that wasn’t right. I couldn’t keep thinking of myself like that, or I’d end up outing myself to the first person I met. I was she, I was a girl, I was… oh. I still needed a name.

Testing my limbs out one at a time with small, slow stretches, I marvelled at how this new body moved. I was used to playing in big, buff, manly bodies, even if my real one was about as generic as you could get. I sometimes joked with my brother that I was the type of boy you got from the dollar menu, and it was almost depressingly true. This body though, it was… not stronger, but like… 

I couldn’t figure out the words to describe it, so instead, I carefully assumed a stance that my father had drilled into me since I was old enough to hold a wooden practice sword. One hand on an imaginary sword, I closed my eyes and filled my body with my own sense of self.

Then, in a flash, my equally imaginary blade was outstretched before me in a one handed grip. I let out a laugh of wonder as I felt this strange new body move. It was nimble, I think. That was the word I would use to describe it.

Of course, those thoughts ground to a shuddering halt as I realised what I sounded like. My voice. Oh my god, my fucking voice!

“Holy shit,” I breathed, reaching up to place two delicate fingers on my throat. I sounded so damned soft. If a cute pink plushie was magicked into voice form, it would be what was coming out of my mouth.

Clearing my throat, I said, “Well, I like it, but nobody is going to take me seriously if I have this voice.”

Whatever. I’d make them respect me by stabbing them.

The space where my body had been standing before I assumed control had turned into a mirror, so I turned to look. Something very strange happened inside me as I met my own eyes, eyes that widened with shock. It was one thing to be staring at a pretty girl with perpetual ‘fuck me’ eyes, and it was an entirely different thing to realise that the girl was you.

I quivered, struggling with the weird, uneasy feeling in my gut. I watched my tongue slip from between artfully curved lips to wet them, then shuddered again at how it looked. I couldn’t… I couldn’t watch. I turned away from the mirror and wrapped my arms around my slim waist.

Get a fucking grip. It’s just you. Calm down.

My eyes, however, rebelled, and found their way back to the mirror. Look at me though. Just, look at me! I was incredible! I was also very very short, even if my proportions didn’t make it seem so at first.

Okay. Okay. Uh… what was next? Right, I needed a name.

I was fairly sure of the first name. I’d use the name my mother had said she wanted to give me if I’d been a girl. Keiko. As with all Japanese names, it had about a thousand different meanings, but I liked several of them. Depending on the kanji used, it’d be pure, or studious, or respectful, or even firefly.

The family name, though, I’d have to come up with my own for that. Maybe something to reflect my situation? God, I wished I hadn’t forgotten most of my Japanese.

Walking over to one of the couches, I plopped myself down in its comfy embrace and then promptly frowned. It was kinda hard to sit in it, considering how short I was. Like, it was doable, but sort of awkward.

I opted to pull one leg up so I could lean on it, while the other was flung wildly off to hang over the edge. Much better.

Now, about that family name…

I’d always had trouble sitting still, even as a child, and the next thirty minutes were a perfect example of this. I finally decided upon a last name while upside down, with my legs hanging over the back of the couch and my braid trailing across the floor.

Batting at it like a bored cat, I gave it one last good think. Kyosei Keiko. The last name meant deception, or bluff. It was a little cheeky, to name myself after the fact that I was being sort of deceitful by shucking off my old character and starting anew. Still, when combined with my first name, it brought the last name into a more benign light.

So there it was. Kyosei Keiko. It was cute, but also sort of edgy. Perfect for a little fairy samurai.

I pushed myself off the couch like a slug, then popped up off the ground like an acrobat and bounded over to the book again. This body was actually incredibly fun! So agile!

I penciled in the new name, carefully adding the correct kanji to the translation area just in case. Didn’t want the game to auto translate it to like, ‘empty duck’, or some shit. Japanese seriously made my head spin sometimes.

Next, came the truly difficult part of this whole exercise. Yes, it was even harder than taking on the body of a girl. I was, of course, talking about… dun dun dun, stat allocation!

Rellithesh had a pretty complex system of stats, at least as far as VR games went. Strength was fairly self explanatory, of course. It allowed your character to exert more force with their movements.

Then, there was Athleticism and Dexterity, which basically controlled the speed of your movements and the precision of your movements respectively. It was a little more complex than that, obviously, but that was the gist.

Next was Stamina and Constitution. Stamina was, you guessed it, how much moving you could do before you conked out like a toddler finally falling asleep at 8 am. Constitution was that thing that deranged actors liked to— just kidding, it was how tough the meat and bones of your body were to chop up. Also like, how easy you could shake off physically based debuffs and poisons.

Intelligence handled your maximum mana, plus your casting speed, and the level of the spells you could cast. A statistically stupid mage wouldn’t be able to cast a meteor until he threw a bunch of points into the stat, for example. Int was one of three magically based stats. The other two being Wisdom and Resolve.

Wisdom was all about mana regeneration and magic resistance. Resolve, on the other hand, was all about the potency of your spells. Damage, duration, all that stuff, it was the one you wanted to spec into if you were a glass cannon type. My best friend was… well, my ex best friend, she had been an arcane assassin, which was about the most glass cannony you could get in this game. Her Resolve stat had been astronomical.

Finally, the last stat was Focus. This one was sort of an all-rounder, having its grubby little fingers in every pie. It governed your senses, from smell, to hearing, to eyesight. It was also responsible for how easy it was to interrupt your actions. Say a boss does a big ol’ stomp, and you get caught by the shockwave. If you have a high Focus stat, you’ll take it just fine, but if you don’t then whatever spell you’re about to throw will fizzle like my future in my old guild had.

Based on how this body moved, I figured I wanted to prioritise speed and agility over raw strength, but I couldn’t completely abandon it either. Everything started off at zero, unlike a lot of other systems, with zero being baseline for whatever race you were.

I had twenty points to work with, so I began by dropping a good five into Athleticism, then another five into Dexterity. Three went into strength, and with the physical attributes accounted for, I pondered what to do with the remaining seven.

I should probably place two into Focus, since it always sucked to neglect that stat. That actually left me with five points left and five stats left, so I just shrugged and put one point into each. There we go! Nice and well rounded! I’d probably have to prioritise some of the magic stats later, though, since I had a feeling this class might stray into the more magical side of things. Like the samurai version of a spellknight or something.

Which led me to the abilities I’d start off with. Rellithesh was one of my favourite games of all time because of how it handled abilities in virtual reality. Since you couldn’t just press a button and unleash a perfect lunge or whatever, the game instead coached you through the actions to perform the ability like it was an interactive app. It was sort of like all those language learning apps you could get on your phone, that had you practice things and when you got it right, it would reward you with happy little beeps. Each level of mastery over the skill also came with nice little damage bonuses or whatever. It was a great system that actually taught you real skills in some cases.

Later on, I’d get to pick which new skills to unlock, but for now I was stuck with the four basic ones of this class. Imbue strike appeared to be some sort of way to charge the blade with magical energy. Then, Imbue Parry was its defensive counterpart.

More interestingly, I was surprised to see a spinning, slashing attack that I wasn’t familiar with. The moves that the little instruction video showed were reminiscent of some kata I had memorised, but it was new to me. Had they gone and made up a whole new discipline of swordplay that was based on, but different to that of various katana styles? That had me really really interested.

Wait. What on earth was Deception Strike? My jaw fell open when I watched the little video, seeing my character perform an attack that split into two separate ones. Only one was actually real, though, and the enemy who tried to parry the wrong one would be met with nothing but air, while the actual attack landed home. That would be fucking incredible for player versus player combat. Nothing ruins a good player’s strats more than messing with their heads.

I could already tell that this class was going to be incredible. I was actually legit excited now! Which meant… it was time to go and play the game!