Cora was a complicated game, and it was made even more so by the fact that much of what it did was unique. For one example, the ability system in Cora was pretty complex, like some kind of programming. You didn’t get abilities given to you, you made them yourself; you didn’t unlock new abilities as you progressed, you unlocked new pieces to make them with.

The game ability system was just the tip of the iceberg, though — for another example, there was the profession system, which was similar to the ability system... while also being not at all alike, having “recipes,” “techniques,” “formulas,” or “blueprints” that all had their own levels. On top of that, there were hundreds of different races, spread out between the different countries and regions and broken into many different factions all vying for power.

If I had to be honest, there was so much that it was a little overwhelming. Like, if you wanted a very specific setup (to roleplay, for example), the game would probably support it, but you’d need to know so much about the world. It wasn’t just about designing a character that looked nice, it was about choosing a race that matched your preference, stats and ability trees that fit your needs, a starting location conducive for your early-game growth, etc. 

All of that complexity made it rather nice that we were starting with these randomised characters — we had much, much less to think about, since the AI had done our thinking for us. Now all we really needed to do was familiarise ourselves with its choices.

And so, after our decision to deal with the dysphoria, we had begun to look through them. I, for one, started with my name and race.

“My name is ‘Yuki Fall,’” I read aloud. “I’m an ‘artifisuki.’”

“Yuki is a Japanese name, right?” Russ asked.

“How’m I supposed to know? I guess it does kinda sound that way... maybe?”

He blushed. “I was just wondering what it meant.”

“Maybe we’ll find out. Hmm... Yuki. Yuki Fall... I like it, I think?” I repeated. “Hi, I’m Yuki!” I said, trying to replicate a girly voice. Err, well, girlier? “Okay, now that’s just cute. Probably?” I looked at my friend and winked again.

“Y-yeah,” he said, keeping his eyes averted. In my periphery, I might have noticed him glance in my direction once, and his cheeks might have twinged an even brighter red. Why was he acting all shy and embarrassed? He really did seem a lot different as a girl. It was... it was kinda cute, to be honest. It made me want to keep flirting with him.

“I’m a highland faerie, apparently,” he croaked, a moment later. But what he said barely registered, because right afterward, he cleared his throat, and— ahhhh, it was making my heart beat so fast! Was this how girls felt all the time when they saw someone cute? Seriously, I was feeling things I had never felt before. He was just too cute. And it made me want to tease him so bad. 

He continued, hiding his face in his hands, “...and my name is ‘Earthbound Star.’”

“Earthbound?” I snorted. “That doesn’t even sound like a name.”

“Don’t make fuuuun of me,” he complained.

“I mean, I’m making fun of the character, not you... Plus, you could be making fun of me, too... uhh, Star,” I winked. “Isn’t that what we always do?”

“I... uh...” he fumbled, blushing and covering his face in his hands. “Why are you so good at this... ”

“Don’t see how it’s any different than normal! Oh...” I realised. I walked up to him, feeling my tail swish. Wow, that was a new feeling. “Is it... is it cause now I’m cuuute?” I winked, trying my best to stand in a way I’d find adorable, my tail still swishing behind. I tried to twitch my ears. Was I doing it? Was it working?

Probably yes. My friend’s face was so, so very red. “Stop it! I can’t take this,” he blushed, spinning away from me and mumbling in the other direction, of which I only caught “than I am” and “even questioning.” Something about questioning my sanity, maybe? I had no idea... and anyway, I felt pretty sane right then. 

But... maybe he was right to think I was crazy. It probably was a bit weird to have so much fun in a girl’s body... On the other hand, I didn’t think I’d be having anywhere near as much fun if I was stuck in this body. Gosh... could you imagine being stuck like this in real life? It’d be so... Well... actually, I couldn’t think of anything wrong with it, to be honest, but that was probably just because I was too distracted for my brain to work right. At the very least, I did know that people would probably make fun of me, though, right? But... wait, they already did... Ahhh, I don’t know, it was just weird, right? And wrong. And it’d probably be scary, even. So me having fun couldn’t be anything more than like... I don’t know. Temporary excitement from something unique and different. It probably felt like... a fun little game, kinda? Like roleplay! Which sent my mind down a journey remembering all the times I had roleplayed with people in text messages. Those had been fun, and some of my favourite characters to roleplay had been girls. Maybe that was weird, too, though?

My friend was scrolling through the information that was displayed to us about our randomised character, glancing at me every once in a while as I thought. I finally hmmph’d, then looked through my own.

Your unique trait is... a unique character backstory!

Backstory:

You, 雪 (Yuki), grew up in a cabin in the woods with your father, Noct. Your father was a loving man, and you spent most of your early childhood together: between helping him with his artificing, going out to hunt with him, and making meals together. It was a good life.

During that time, your father told you stories of other people like you — the rest of the artifisuki. There were stories of massive, walking cities called land ships, where hundreds — or, in the largest, thousands — of artifisuki families lived, all of which were passionate about artificing.

But, unfortunately, all good things come to an end. As you grew, and began to take care of more of the chores, he became more and more distant. Oftentimes he stayed isolated in his messy workshop for days, sinking deep into a depressive silence. Mechanical wings. That’s what he was working on. He spent more time on those dysfunctional things than on anything else... and that time only increased.

There were many things that your father never had a chance to tell you, too caught up in his depressive isolation... For example, your mother. When you were very little, he may have mentioned her, but only in passing... Not anymore. And not once did he explain how you came to live in the cabin rather than in a land ship... 

Eventually, time ran out, and your father died. Not in a particularly pleasant way, either, such as from old age... But those memories were dark, so they were locked away, just as were the errant wings on which he had spent his years.

It has been eight years since your father died, and the winters have only become steadily worse. The temperature has not been above freezing for two years. For the most part, you have made do with what you have and the abilities and skills that you learned through necessity or that your father passed down. You’d like to think you’ve been making him proud.

What a depressing backstory. Well, artificing sounded fun at least. Building things and engineering and such. I had always liked things like engineering and programming when we were exposed to them in elementary school, but they weren’t really in very high demand nowadays, since AIs could handle pretty much whatever we needed now.

I idly clicked around the backstory page for a moment, finding more information.

Your unique backstory comes with multiple bonuses!

 

• Artificer tree (Click here to view starting unlocks)

• Artificer Passive: Nimble Fingers [Unique] — Artificing enchantments are applied 20% faster

• Artificer Passive: Boundless Curiosity [Unique] — Artificer tree unlocks cost 5% less ability points

 

Wow, the game was really pushing me towards artificing, huh? Well, hopefully I’d like it when I got in-game. I wondered what kind of role that’d give me. Obviously some kind of utility role? But how would I do in a fight? Maybe I’d be able to build tech that allowed me to switch around to multiple different roles based on where I was needed. That’d be kinda fun.

I glanced over at Russ, and found him reading through his own generated stats and abilities. As he read, his long, pointy ears kept shifting up and down, maybe with his emotions? For a moment I considered interrupting to ask what he’d gotten — what was making his ears perk up, or tilt down? — but decided against it when I realised my heart was beating fast again. 

After just staring at him for a while — watching him idly curl his hair around his finger, watching him rub his soft chin — I finally pulled my eyes away and back to the editor in front of me. I had more to read, anyway, since I still hadn’t looked at the stats or ability trees it had given me.

Okay, so — I took a deep breath — stats in Cora were separated into three categories: physical; mental/magical; elemental. Physical stats were to do with your physical body, things like strength and speed, while mental stats were to do with how many abilities you could equip at once or how powerful your magic is. Elemental stats were affinities to specific elements — those had effects such as reducing damage taken from attacks in that element, or increasing damage dealt with attacks in that element.

Reading through my stats, I found that I was relatively average in most physical stats, with my Speed stat being the highest of them and my Toughness being the lowest. So to begin with, I’d be very fast, with high stamina. I’d be relatively strong and resistant to low-level status effects, but I wouldn’t be able to take too many normal hits.

In my mental/magical stats, however, I was... I was not great, to be honest. Rather, every stat was abysmally low. (In fact, I was looking at the absolute minimum for all of these, ?) That meant that if I kept this character, I’d be sticking myself firmly in the physical side of combat — I’d be relying much less on abilities than on gear. 

Considering I was supposed to be an artificer, that probably made sense, but... I didn’t really know how I felt about it. It wasn’t really what I’d expected... but on the other hand, it could probably be fun? Designing my own equipment to use in combat and such.

Deciding I’d think about it again before confirming my character — could always use the appearance but not the rest, after all — I moved on to my elemental affinities instead. As I had expected given my lackluster magical stats, I only had an affinity to the physical element.

Interesting. At least that matched my stats, I supposed. 

Anyway, having finished exploring my stats, I only had one more thing to look at. However, it was arguably the most important. My ability trees. 

First, there was the Dextrous tree. It seemed to include a lot of components to do with my body and how it moved. I saw nodes I could unlock in the future that would improve my speed, flexibility, precision, strength, you name it. It seemed as though the majority of the tree — the stuff I’d be unlocking soon, anyway — was for general physical ability type stuff, which sounded pretty good to me. Could do stuff like making a toggle-able sprinting ability that increased my speed while it was active, that kind of thing.

My second tree, Arms, was basically a general, non-specialised equipment tree. Some of the components I saw were ones relating to swords, shields, ranged weapons, etc. It was fairly self-explanatory. 

The final tree was Schemes — it seemed a lot more random than the other two, and even after reading about it, I didn’t really understand. Apparently it was to do with traps, physical and magical, but most of the components I was seeing in the initial nodes seemed kind of... miscellaneous. There was a component to increase awareness/perception, which I figured probably came from the Perception tree, a component to play a sound, and a few components for targeting mobs or players... Again, random. A junk drawer of different utility components, I supposed.

I had officially run out of things to look at, and it was a good thing, too, because I was getting a little bit antsy. I ran over to my friend and peeked at his screen around his shoulder, feeling a little weird for a moment that I couldn’t peek over his shoulder (he wasn’t particularly tall, but I was short).

“What are you doing, Orr?” he asked.

“Looking at what the randomiser gave you, obvs.”

“But... why are you looking at it from behind me?”

“‘Cause I’m trying to be cute.”

He was silent for a moment, and I looked up at him. His face was a little red. Good, good. After hesitating for a moment, I took the plunge and latched onto his arm.

“Wh-wha?” he sputtered, instantly losing all concentration on what he was reading and nearly falling over.

I burst into a round of giggles. “Ohmygosh you’re so easily embarrassed! Why aren’t you like this in real life, dude? It’s so funny!”

Russ was blushing so red again. “Is this going to become a normal thing?”

Finally recovering from my laughter, I put my finger on my chin, as if I was deep in thought. In the most pompous voice I could muster in this body, I answered, “Yes. Yes it will.”

He rubbed his temples, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly. “It... it is cute, though,” he whispered.

And suddenly, with but a word, I found myself blushing as hard as he had been. Trying to be cute and having a suspicion you’re succeeding is much, much different than actually being told you are. And... wait... was that a compliment? It felt like a compliment. I was not ready for compliments like that, not at all. Gosh.

“Th-thanks,” I said, trying to regain my flirtiness from before. But based on the fact that our eyes kept awkwardly landing on each other right when the other was looking, and how we both kept looking away, our blush increasing... I wasn’t doing a very good job. I did not feel in control of this situation at all anymore. What was even happening?

“So, uh...” he started, taking a deep breath. It seemed like he was trying to ignore whatever... that was. Good. I didn’t think my brain could take much more, I felt like I was going to melt. “What did you get?”

“I... uhh... Well, why don’t we wait to tell each other until in-game when we meet?” I suggested. “Y’know, roleplay? Although... Hmm. I do wanna know about Earthbound Star now...”

“My backstory — err, hers? — is a little embarrassing, so I actually prefer the waiting idea...”

“So your unique trait was a backstory too? Well that just makes me want to see it even more...” I groaned.

“Sorry,” he smiled... and then winked. My breath stopped for a moment. “Let’s do that roleplay thing,” he decided. “Maybe I’ll get back at you a bit for all your teasing?”

“N-not likely,” I mumbled, probably incoherently, but... based on how he acted outside VR, I had a feeling that I was going to be proven wrong.

“I promise I’ll tell you, but I do think it’ll be... uhh... cuter to wait and let it come naturally. That’s what you’re trying to do, right? Make it cute?”

“S-something like that, I guess,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, well, we should share our stats and abilities at least. So we know if we’ll be able to party together.”

“Yeah, that sounds good,” my friend said.

We started with his, since we were already at his panel. The first thing I noticed was that his abilities were very magic-focused; he had Ranged Cast Magic, Rejuvenation Magic, and Arcane Magic. They each seemed rather self-explanatory — basically, he’d be a ranged healer with some arcane magic on the side. Whatever arcane magic was.

“Mind if I look at the tree?” I asked.

He nodded, and not a minute went by before I was as confused again as I had been at Schemes. And I didn’t think my confusion was because I was distracted with the whole Russ situation, either. No, it seemed like both of our third trees were rather miscellaneous — and this time, the description didn’t really tell me much of anything. ‘The arcane tree is used by mages to manipulate raw magic, bending it into new shapes to rearrange the world around them.’ Like, how vague can you get? What does it even mean to shape magic? And ‘rearrange the world?’ Like, it’d help us move furniture around or something? 

Well, whatever. We’d figure it out later.

Star’s stats were also very different than Yuki’s. While I, as Yuki, had a Physical elemental affinity, Star had two affinities — one to Arcane and the other to Cold. While my character excelled at physical things to match that affinity — except for toughness, that is — Star seemed to physically be... well, a wimp. Her highest physical stat was Speed by a wide margin, it was nearly at the same value as my own. The rest, on the other hand, were all at the minimum. Yikes. 

As for her magical or mental stats, they made up for her physical weaknesses, at least partially. She could have more abilities than normal (thanks to her high Anamnesis), more complicated abilities (from her Intricacy), and she was even rather fast at casting them (thanks to her Urgency). Her Capacity wasn’t all that great, though, and her Power was pretty abysmal, which meant that not only would she not be casting powerful abilities or spells, but she’d also tire out fast from them.

“Wow, think you definitely got the short end of the stick between us,” I giggled.

She blushed aga— wait, no, he. Ugh, I was such a stupid idiot... I’d managed to confuse myself because I was talking about our characters. For a second there, I had nearly forgotten Russ was actually a guy. 

Although, to be honest, it would have been kinda funny if I had. Easier to be in character, too. I wouldn’t mind acting like we were both girls while we were in the game — tossing out our annoying, normal identities.

Maybe that’s why I was having so much fun? Maybe I had already begun to do that? I didn’t much feel like myself, and I didn’t have to, since I was pretending to be a cute fox girl instead. Whatever, I’d let it happen. No point in fighting it, especially if we were going to do some kind of roleplay!

“Maybe...” she agreed, a slight, crooked smile on her face. Cute. “But I haven’t seen your sheet yet, so I can’t really compare, can I?”

“Oh... I’m just good at physical stuff. Most of it is okay, but my speed is highest and my toughness is lowest. All my magical stats suck though.”

My friend nodded, thinking. “Well, together we might make one full player.” I snorted, and she smiled. “What are your ability trees?”

I showed her my trees — Dextrous, Arms, and Schemes, and she glanced through them. “Interesting...” she said. “I have a feeling you’re going to have a lot of fun with this.”

“Hehehe,” I smirked. “Apparently I’m an ‘artificer’ too, so like, I guess I’ll be making equipment for the both of us.”

She snorted. “Okay, yeah, you’re really going to like being that character.”

“Yeah, I... I think I will.” I was getting excited. I was going to get to play this cute foxgirl. I was going to be Yuki! And I was going to do it with Star! Well... Russ, but... Star! I didn’t know why Russ being Star felt so much more exciting, but it definitely did. Too excited to do anything else, I asked, “Do you wanna jump in now?”

“We haven’t tested our abilities yet, though?” she noted. Hmm, we hadn’t, but was it necessary?

“True,” I agreed. “But... do you think it’d make you switch to a custom character?”

“Well... no, probably not.”

“Me neither. So then in that case we’ll just test in-game. Come on, let’s get in!”

“Oh, why not.” 

I turned to the one shared panel between our editors, one where we were to choose our spawn region. “Where should we spawn in? Have a preference? Seems like it wants us to spawn in the Everwood Highlands? In Joret?”

“I don’t have any qualms with that,” she said. “I think Joret is a relatively nice, xenophilic country, based on what I’ve heard. With our races, I think we’ll be fine as long as we’re not in Pagatum, basically.” She smiled, tapping her confirmation button to accept her character.

Now it was just me. Once I confirmed my character, our choices would be locked in and we’d enter the game for real. Was I ready? Was I really going to be okay with this choice? What if I did have the dysphoria after all? What if she had the dysphoria? Did she already? Was that why she was acting so much differently?

Suddenly, so many thoughts were rushing through my head — I was fraught with worry. Was this really okay? Even if I didn’t get the dysphoria, and neither did my friend, wouldn’t going with these characters make us... you know, weird? But it wasn’t like anybody would know, so that... that was probably okay. I just... I just didn’t want her to be hurt by it, because she seemed so much more sensitive than she ever was in reality.

Maybe if we did meet people we knew in real life, we could just say that we accidentally confirmed the default randomised characters without tweaking them, and this was just the luck of the draw? But at the same time, that would sound kinda unrealistic. Who would manage to accidentally confirm a character of the wrong gender? That would just be ridiculous. Nobody’s that oblivious, right?

“Everything okay, uhh... Yuki?”

I nodded, finally, steeling my nerves. It’d be okay. I was going to have fun. We were going to have fun. And on the off chance we didn’t have fun, we could switch to a different game. It was as simple as that. 

Ignoring a gut feeling that something was going to go wrong, I pressed the confirmation button.