Diving In

Patting his slightly bulging stomach, Alex paid the bill and walked with Melody on the way towards home. "So Mel, how are we going to play Reign? I don't know if I'd be able to afford buying the game and whatever accessories it would require."

Slapping her for head, Melody exclaimed. "Oh! I completely forgot about that in the rush this morning. You need not worry about that Alex. Remember that other package that came in?"

Running his chin and squinting a bit, Alex just shrugged. "Not really, but go on."

"Well it thankfully has all the accessories we need as well as the game for the both of us."

Clapping his hands together, Alex was surprised. "Wow, that benefactor of yours is pretty helpful."

Scoffing lightly, Melody shook her head. "I would sure hope so, if anyone can do at least that much and manage to send me back in time it would be Her."

At her brother's inquisitive gaze she just waved it away. "The less you know about Her, the better. Even I barely know how she was able to accomplish the feats she was able to do. And from my experience, She doesn't like people investigating Her too deeply."

Arriving home and opening the package to reveal two sets of what looked like Chrome circlets with a Neural Port attachment. "Melody, before we start the game and all, is there anything I should know about the game beforehand?

Thinking slightly and trying to remember the beginning of RotA's release, Melody gazed up at the sky to help organize her thoughts. "To start off, the basics of the game are fairly simple compared to some other games in the past. There are 4 main classes which consist of Mage, Warrior, Cleric, and Ranger. When you choose one of those 4 classes you can further augment their playstyle by choosing between 6 different elements of Darkness, Light, Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind.

For the most part, the elements augment certain aspects of characters such as Earth giving more overall durability and Fire giving more burst damage. Your element choice can also play a part in certain abilities you can acquire or learn for example a Fire Mage can learn fire spells more easily but does not restrict them from learning other elemental spells.

Oh, one of the most controversial changes however is how they make Reign's combat and items work. Unlike many other games before that had stats attributed to characters and enemies, there is just a health bar. However, there are levels and rarities that help determine the rarity overall usefulness of an item or difficulty of an enemy.

Piping up for a moment, Alex asked. "So what are the rarities?"

"There are 7 main rarities from Common, Rare, Adept, Elite, Paragon, Primordial, and Aspect. There is another rarity called Primal but it is so incredibly uncommon to see that most believed it to be a bug when they first encountered it. Primal rarity is only for Creatures and it signifies a mutation of sorts that makes the creature incredibly powerful and elusive that none had been able to even kill one even back in my other self's time.

Other than that, it is mostly getting used to the controls in-game and adjust to batting various creatures since it is such a new type of experience than any games before."

Pondering all the information Melody has just said, Alex continued. "So, what do you think I should play? And what are you going to be playing as? Since I am pretty much going in blind, I guess I would like something to pair well with you."

"I will be playing as a Water Ranger, I know of a way to get a special class fairly early into the start of the game that will let me specialize in the Ice element which will be extremely useful pretty much throughout the game but unfortunately locks me out from ever learning fire attributed abilities or equipment."

"As for you, it really depends on what your personal preference is. However; if you would like to support me, something tankier like a Light or Earth Warrior or a Fire mage for more damage would be great."

Thinking about the options, while being more durable with Earth would be fine, it sounded like something a lot of other players would naturally gravitate to and Alex ended up deciding upon a Light warrior and see where it took him.

"Oh, I forgot to mention. Reign of the Aspects only allows the creation of one character per account due to how intensive the game is to handle on the servers. So, if you want to change your mind make sure to do it early on so we don't get too far behind okay?"

Getting set up to go into the game, Alex hesitates for a moment. "Hey, Melody?"

"Hmmm?"

"Thank you for saving me. It doesn't feel 100% real but I believe in you, I always have, but I know that you can do anything considering that you have done it before. I just hope I won't hold you back." Feeling silly for saying something so sappy, Alex just scratched his head awkwardly until he suddenly felt something grab him.

Holding Alex tightly, Melody shook her head on his back. "Never think that you will be a burden or anything of the sort. I can't even tell you how much I missed you every moment that you were gone. I kept falling asleep hoping that what I had experienced was just a horrible nightmare and I would wake to see your smiling face again. Now that you are back, don't even think you can get rid of me that easily. You are going to be with me forever and you're gonna like it! Now come on and get ready, the launch is about to start."

Unable to resist smiling at the heartfelt moment, Alex focused himself as best as possible and placed the chrome circlet on his head and plugged in the Neural Port. Lying on his bed and after clicking through a few forms and procedures to set up his preferences. Alex waited patiently as the timer counting down the launch of Reign of the Aspects slowly ticked down.

3…

2…

1…

Welcome to the world of Reign of the Aspects!

Overlooking a ginormous planetary map as if by floating in space, Alex was amazed to see just how amazing RotA was compared to any other game he had seen before. Just the size and gravity of the whole situation in front of him spoke volumes of just how realistic everything looked and felt.

"Ahem!"

Shocked out of his awe at viewing the wonders of his situation, Alex spun around to see a pink-haired beauty staring at him.

"Great, now that I have your attention, I'd like to introduce you to Reign of the Aspects as it is your first time here! Would you like to go over the classes and elements to choose from?"

"Huh? Oh, right right, this is a game after all. Hmmm…" Seeing the smooth and flowing locks of the girl before him, Alex was incredibly distracted and couldn't help but think of just how incredibly lifelike this game was to create such a goddess in the virtual flesh.

"So…what is your name?"

"The classes are Ma…oh, my name? My name is Eilyria! How wonderful, I haven't met someone that was interested in talking about anything besides rushing into the game faster. This is so amazing!" Eilyria rushed up to Alex and held his hands tightly. "What is your name mister?"

While it was one thing for her to look and talk much like another human being, the fact that Alex was able to feel the touch of Eilyria's hands grasping his own. Flustered and speechless, Alex struggled to say much of anything. "Umm…my name is Alexander; my friends and family mostly call me just Alex though."

Smiling cutely, Eilyria backed up and brought up a floating list of the various classes and the elements they could be augmented with. "Nice to meet you, Alex! Would you like me to go over the classes and elements for you then?"

Missing the sudden loss of her warm hands, Alex tried to clear his crazy thoughts quickly and focused on the various classes in front of him. 'Hmm, just as Melody said about the classes and elements huh?' Looking over the classes in detail for himself, Alex quickly chooses to be a Light element Warrior. "Thank you for all the help, it was very nice meeting you! I hope that we meet again soon!" Waving goodbye before seeing how Eilyria would respond to my sappy comment, Alex teleported into the game.

"Geeze! Took you long enough to get here! Too shocked by the beautiful AI woman, were you? If you want, I can introduce you to some nice girls that we meet in the game if you're interested."

Perking up immediately, Alex hugged his sister tightly. "Really?! That's a promise and no take backs!" Whistling a tune, Alex walked for a few steps then realized he had no idea where to go.

Shaking her head slightly, Melody beckoned Alex over and walked in the opposite direction. "Follow me Alex, we're off to get our familiars. I forgot to mention before but every player gets a Familiar that is the same as your chosen element. It is given a random rarity between Rare to Elite."

"So, what stops people from constantly remaking their characters to get a rarity of familiar?"

As if expecting such a question, Melody smiled. "There is a warning for players that wish to restart their character about a 24 hour cooldown period if they wish to restart their character more than once per day. So they can reset once immediately but after that, they would have to wait.

Most of the time the wait is not worthwhile since the rarities race of the familiar is largely cosmetic and the rarity helps but there are other ways to boost your familiar in-game with either equipment or special quests."

They stopped in front of a very ancient but pristine-looking alter, Melody went inside, and Alex waited patiently for a moment and Melody walked out with what looked like a small water snake lying on her shoulders. "Look at this little cutie Alex, I got pretty lucky, I guess. He is an Elite water Ermine Prince."

Ermine Prince Aquis (Water Elemental Familiar)

Rarity: Elite

Special Ability: 'Water Prince Aura' – Water Attributed spells and abilities deal 2% more damage.

Looking at the small slightly furry, or at least as furry as a water familiar can be, water creature on her shoulders, Alex clapped and cheered. "I expected nothing less of my fabulous and number one sister that even reincarnated to save me!"

Punching Alex to hide her slight blush, Melody shooed her brother into the alter next. "Hurry up! Other players are coming through and we gotta get going!"

Rubbing his injured shoulder slightly, Alex chuckled and quickly shuffled through the alter corridors and ended up near an unimaginably large statue stretching from the very ground up to the ceiling. The being depicted was clothed in a long flowing robe and it was pretty difficult to determine its gender. Regardless, held within an enormous pair of hands was a flat pedestal of what looked like marble. Walking up a small flight of stairs, a notification pinged up as he stepped on the last stair.

Welcome, An'Elari! Would you like to summon your familiar?

"Yes!"

In a blinding flash of light, the statue came to life as it slowly raised its massive marble hands past the pedestal and wrapped its fingers around the floating ball of light. Within the statue's hands, the light shifted colors rapidly between a myriad of different colors. After a few moments, the light began to slowly settle on a soft pink.

Seemingly satisfied with the result, the statue shifted back to its original position. Left on the pedestal was a tiny ball of pink light that began to drift over in front of Alex. Landing on top of his outstretched hands, the light faded and showed an incredibly cute humanlike figure sitting upon his palms.

Studying his newfound familiar, Alex found the tiny human had a pair of delicate pinkish wings, long hot pink hair, and skin as pale and blemish-free as a layer of freshly fallen snow. 'Weird, she looks JUST like…'

Waving gleefully towards him, the pink-haired fairy called out. "Hello Alex! Or I guess I should call you Master now. Hehe, it's me, Eilyria!"

"Huhhhh?!?!"