<Dragha's POV>

Damn, it's been such a long time since I played any game. It was four years ago with Letty, I think? Time flies so fast when we have things to do.

Now the pod in front of me, or, rather, the harness, cause that's the official name. A little stupid name, if you ask me, but I didn't name the thing. It was me who built it instead. I'll need to make similar things for the girls, because the original pods I got them were only quickly pulled up from the storage and are pretty outdated at this point.

Well, that's for later. It's not like the fluid is anything more than minor inconvenience for them, so better take my time to make the things as good as they can be than give them something half assed. And making something good takes time even with nanotechnology.

Oh, well. If we're talking about time, let's get in, cause there's no point wasting it. I step onto the platform and turn around, then wait a few seconds for the arm to attach itself to my body and suspend me mid-air in the zero gravity field. A minor inconvenience, again, because I could simply let my body fall apart, but very often it's the looks and symbolism that matter. After all, it's completely different when I log out into my human body than as if I logged out into a formless blob of nanomachines.

Believe me, when you are over five hundred years old and are quite possibly the strongest sentient entity in the galaxy, such things really matter much more than simplicity and efficiency. Oh, well, now it would be third strongest, huh?

So my mind is taken for a ride through the FTL Network and moments later my consciousness arrives in VOW. I almost immediately see what I assume to be the intro to the game playing before my eyes.

I watch the beautiful spectacle of a universe bursting, of worlds swirling, meshing, colliding like glittery dots in chaotic currents of water, and listen as a young girl, sounding like a goddess from stories and movies, welcomes me, narrates the events, and explains things.

“Welcome, Wayfarer. This shall be your first journey to the realms of the unknown behind the fabric of reality.”

What you see is known to many as Universe. It is one of many out there, and yet unique in itself because of what happened to it. Despite how it looks, the worlds like it are not stable. They tend to get destroyed from time to time, and this one was of those unfortunate ones.”

The little dots of light that remain, they are Worlds. Uncountable, each unique, and each only waiting to be explored with its inhabitants and wonders. They mesh with other, sometimes collide, sometimes merge, sometimes fall apart. You, Wayfarer, shall land in one of them. You will learn there, and you will grow, till you are ready to leave it and visit others and learn what lies beyond. Good luck, little one. Do not obey fate, but let it guide you.”

At this point the view gets larger as I zoom inside a galaxy, then beside the dots I now recognize as stars, black holes, pulsars, and many other celestial bodies.

I come to a stop before a rather large orange star in the center and the ring of thousands, if not millions of huge islands orbiting it, making my eyebrows rise in surprise. That's not something I signed up for, and I haven't heard it's nothing like any ordinary planet.

And the whole intro... if I saw it just a couple weeks ago, I'd shrug it off as a very original idea for a game world. Now, after talking with Letty and with Helia, all I can think of is how the fuck powerful one would need to be to casually transport millions of Wayfarers here.

When I turn around to see where I came from, I notice a huge number of colorful stars and occasional other things that thanks to the kids I know to be worlds. Well, damn me, I genuinely thought there is nothing that could surprise me in space anymore, but this is definitely not Milky Way, nor any other mapped galaxy.

That would mean I'm probably the first human, or former human cause some are insistent on the latter, who visited another galaxy and was actually aware of that fact. Letty and Helia aren't humans, and I doubt Helia thought about being someplace else than Milky Way or virtual world, even if she knew that logically. Maybe I'm selling myself tall for something that's not at all impressive, but that's still quite damn important knowledge.

Oh, well. I'll have time to think about those things later. For now let's get to my character creation, as a small window on the side seems to insist on doing. So I reach to the button with my arm...

Oh. Oh! I'm in my Mechanical body now! Can I shift... I can! Dayum, never expected that point to be recreated. Not like I'm complaining, and not like it matters much cause I still need to create my character, but it's still a pleasant surprise.

Either way, I finally get to character creation, which is basically a boundless, empty, black space with a lot of transparent screens and a white silhouette more or less in the middle, and at this point I receive a call from Letty.

Oi, girl. Ah, damn, not like I'll stop her excitement. I accept the call with a small resigned smile and a grinning face pops up in my view, with an absolutely massive forest visible behind her. Massive forest, as in massive trees. Interesting.

"Hey mom~! You're in character creation I see. Want me to explain it?" I hear immediately and I quirk an eyebrow at her.

"You think I'd need help with that? You're underestimating me." I reply with a smirk.

"I'm not! I just wanna help!" She pouts and I roll my eyes in exasperation.

"Then give me a quick rundown, I don't need detailed information for now." I reply and she delves into a quick, but still rather long explanation about stats, affinities, ability trees, and abilities. From the most important things, that is, because there are a lot more she mentions.

The stats are pretty self-explanatory once you realize what a soul is and it hits you that it's probably real, actual soul... yeah, right. Like hell. Thinking in game terms makes it so much easier than the time I'm having now when every second topic Letty touches makes me think of the connection between the, cough cough, real world and game world, using those terms loosely.

And yeah, I think I'll do that for now. I'll think about the relation between the game and the world later when I have more time. I promised Letty and Helia I'll go play with them and no way in I'm going back on that promise just because I'm bothered about something that won't go away... probably forever.

Now with that out of the way, things finally start making sense. Stats become very easy to understand once Letty supplies me with information about cores and supernatural energies. There have been many games in the past that used different names, but in the end all stats are built around similar concepts like strength, vitality, speed, mana, and other. Spirit and Focus are kinda vague here, but it's not really a surprise considering they don't really have a tangible representation like Strength, Speed, or Capacity in the soul subcategory do.

Affinities afterwards are also simple, because while it's not as straightforward as the popular elements, it boils down to the same concepts. Because that's all it is, if I'm not wrong. For instance affinity of flame is a connection to everything under the concept of flame, as far as I understand, and its higher tiers allow you to access wider, less obvious things that fall into the domain.

Directly related to affinities are the talent trees and abilities created using them, former of which are a concept widely used before, but brought to completely new levels by the fact that talent trees in other games were mostly where you unlocked abilities and their upgrades, not where you unlocked their components like it's in VOW. The sheer number of combinations possible is not simply ridiculous - as far as I understand it's literally infinite.

And that would conclude the summary if Helia didn't quip in. "Also, Dragha, while the skills you can make are really useful, I'd recommend not to rely on them too much. We haven't tested it extensively, but, as far as we are aware, everything you can achieve using skills is also possible with direct energy manipulation, though it might be hard to achieve the same efficiency."

"What do you mean?" I ask reflexively as she pauses, looking through the panels again in case I missed something. "There's nothing about it here."

"Yeah, I know." She replies and I see her light, distant smile when I look at the window and at the two cuddling on some hill. "You won't find many things in the system. Mom told me that most of it is just there for convenience and ease of use, and only abilities are actually something more than that. I don't understand it exactly, but in essence abilities are parts of your soul pre-programmed to do certain things, like manipulate mana."

Wow, wait. Doesn't this mean I'd be able to use them out of the game? No, I wouldn't have mana to do that, I guess...

"Those abilities are also present among the locals and are called talents. A good example of one is lava manipulation. Or in terms of Wanderer's skills, my flaming gauntlets are another." She says and raises her arms, on which moments later yellow flames bloom and shape into a pair of gauntlets covering her arms in the style I would imagine hearing about demonic weapons. "I originally used my ability to create them, but now I'm doing it with my thoughts alone."

"Alright..." Holy shit, how powerful she is then? I have seen her fighting a couple times in the videos going around FTLN, and from them learned how ridiculously powerful her flames are, but I never thought she could control all that with thought alone. And that's... scary, to be honest.

I, as in my body out of the game, wouldn't be able to even scratch her, because any of my attacks would disintegrate the moment they touched her flames, and coupled with thought control and her sense for supernatural energies, it's not even possible to sneak attack her.

Oh, well. Not planning to fight her. Ever, and for much more than one reason.

"Is that all?" I ask the girls, going back to present.

"Probably, yes." Letty nods with a wide smile. "We'll get to the map when you finalize your character."

"Time to randomize then~." I say with a grin and tap the holographic button, watching the silhouette in front of me attentively.

And my eyebrows raise high in surprise when I see it taking shape, and- Holy fuck. No way. No way it recreated my appearance as a human...

No, it didn't, but... it's so fucking close. Rather short height, wide hips, strong muscles covered by tanned skin, small breasts, kinda rough face of a troublemaker with small nose and roundish features. Someone who doesn't know me would think it's the younger version of the body as I am using currently. About fifteen years old, to be precise.

It's not, with the only glaring differences in the eyes and the hair. My hair is golden blonde and eyes are deep green now, while the figure has them crimson red and sky blue. Both could be dyed, but neither I or the game would resort to such tricks. I'd change color at the very base, and the game, well, no explanation necessary.

Oh, and ears. Oh! They are pointed, and like, long long. Stretching at least four inches to the sides measuring from my temples, so pretty damn long, suggesting an elf. A dark elf, maybe? Not sure how the naming works here.

But wait a moment, speaking about how this thing works, why does it even look like me? Shouldn't it be like, random? Even if it based the character on my soul, there should be some differences from my past human self, no? Unless my soul got affected by my body somehow? I've got no idea how it works, there might be many things affecting that randomizer, but something makes me think it should be visually different from me.

Hm, I wonder how it is in other areas though. Like race, for starters...

Slime, alright... wait what the fuck!?

"Letty!" I turn to the window with scrunched eyebrows. "What about nonhumanoid races?"

"What?" She asks in confusion, tilting her head. "There should be some. Did you get one?"

I rub my forehead, realizing that I gave too little information, and I turn the camera to show the figure to the girls.

"I got a slime. It says the base template is forest elf." I say bluntly after a moment and see as Letty's eyebrows float upwards in surprise. "And logically I know what it means, but how the hell is that supposed to work?"

"Shouldn't it work just like your body out of VOW?" Helia's voice comes from outside the view and I blink.

Then look back at the figure, and down at my arms. Holy...

Well, yeah, it's more than a randomizer alright. If it gave me a slime because of my body out of VOW consisting of nanomachines, and quite possibly my soul being attuned to it or however you say that, then... well, then I've got no more questions, I guess.

Hm. Let's see the stats, maybe?

Physical stats abysmal, great... though there's a note that the displayed stats are as high as they would be when the body is used like a human would use it. So I assume that I will be able to achieve much greater results if I make proper use of this body's properties. There's another note by Endurance saying that my body doesn't use chemical energy, but mana. Hm.

Other five stats are not bad, with Channeling well above average, Control slightly less than that, then Spirit and Focus exactly at the average. The odd one is Capacity, which is significantly lower than the average, but has a note that it can dynamically change along with my core size. I guess it means that my Mana Core can expand or stretch, whichever would be more accurate in this case.

Then there are affinities... tier 3 Energy, tier 2 Corrosion, tier 1 Time... huh. Time? That... I know it's tier 1, so it's probably very limited in what it can do, but it's still interesting, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually the most valuable from the three. Corrosion is pretty self-explanatory, though I assume it's in the wider meaning here, more or less synonymous to acid, but only relating to the effect, not the substance. So an educated guess would be that I will be able to corrode something, but unable to create a corrosive acid among other things. Well, I'll see.

For now...

"Helia? You have energy affinity, right?" I ask, turning back to the window.

"Yeah, I have it. Did you get something similar?" She asks curiously and this time I see her looking up from something in her hands.

"I have Energy affinity in tier 3, apparently. What would it include?"

"No idea." The demoness shrugs and I look at her with raised eyebrows. Shouldn't you know that? "I have it much higher, and I've no idea how it would play into your race. But, hm, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to control mana more easily, and you'll definitely be able to control your momentum and kinetic energy to some extent. Maybe mass as well? You'll need to find out on your own. If you want, I can show you what you definitely won't be able to do." She says with a smirk.

"No thanks." I mutter. "Though I can guess it won't include time, since I have a separate affinity for that."

"Probably, yeah. Though some things might loosely overlap, like my Space-Time and Nihility." Letty quips in.

And she has Space-Time. Hmph.

I nod my head, putting aside the... well, I'd like to say unfairness of the randomizer, but I really can't since it's supposedly perfectly fair, and go to talent trees, which are the second last important thing.

There are two. Liquid Body and Adaptable Core. I'll check all of that later, because it would take me at least a couple hours to make proper use of them, and what's important for now are the abilities. I seem to have three of those, which is higher than the regular number as far as I know.

Anyway, the first is called... Adaptive Body, which apparently makes my body change consciously according to my thoughts and automatically depending on the environment. Not sure what exactly it means, but I guess I'll learn soon enough.

The second is Mana Corrosion, which sounds a little sinister, but all it does is corrodes things using mana and allows me to analyze the components of whatever I corrode, gain energy from it, and probably do some other things that aren't directly mentioned.

And the last is Impact Reduction, and it's literally what it sounds like. It reduces the momentum of whatever hits me, which is a pretty straightforward, but nice effect.

Hm, hm~.

"I'm done, I think." I tell the girls with a smile. "What were you saying about map earlier?"

"Ah. You need to choose your spawn point somewhere relatively close to us if we're going to meet." Letty perks up. The panel with the map should be on the other side."

I look around and quickly spot the thing, then Letty gives me a crash course on the world of Neva, as it is apparently called. Funny I didn't find that name anywhere, but I guess they know it from another source. Helia's mom, maybe?

In the huge ring of islands, the area known to humans is a couple tens of islands on relatively matching orbits, among which six are occupied by larger numbers of people. The one that currently matters is Beholder's Eye, an apparently very reasonable name, inhabited by humans on the south and southeastern edge. The rest is mostly wild forests, though there are some hidden societies there, not only those of humans.

"It shows me that I can spawn anywhere in... more or less a ring on the edge of the island. I can choose one of sixteen regions." I say after analyzing the map.

"Outer forests, then." Letty comments and I assume she means that this area is collectively referred as that. "Similar to Helia. You should probably choose the lower southeastern part, so like, sixth one clockwise. We'll find you as soon as you show us some proper landmark, I hope."

"Mhm, this one then." I mutter, tapping the thing. "You hope?"

"Well, I've no idea where exactly you will start." I hear in response. "And, um, I know from experience it can be weird."

"...Alright." I nod my head, not inclined to delve deeper. "See you in game, then?"

"Yeah." Letty smiles as I look at her. "See you in a while. Call us when you have something to guide us."

"Sure."

Then I press the button to finalize and send me into the game, and I'm ripped out of FTLN, flung somewhere I don't feel any connection to the Network. Well, fuck.

It's almost as bad as losing a sense, and damn, how long it was since I got this trove of knowledge connected to my brain? Over four hundred years, I think. I can adapt, fortunately, because it's not like I relied on it often, but it's... kinda unsettling.

I guess I've got definite proof it's more than a game, if I ever needed one.