character creation

«Welcome to Boundless»

As the voice's notice appeared, the black space seemed to fall apart and disintegrate as if the world was slowly breaking away the darkness holding Mo Shan imprisoned.

Crack. Crack. Crack...

The cracks grew larger and larger until it suddenly reached a critical mass and vanished altogether.

Revealing a white room that contained a person that looked identical to himself.

Mo Shan knew this was not the world of Boundless just yet. People would later call this place the blank space. This is where character creation happened and over the following six years many humans in the federation would die during battles with the demons, internal conflicts of interest or just whilst leveling out in the wild. And the first thing people would see after reviving was this blank white room.

Yes, dying in this world meant losing all your gear and starting a new account!

The image of themselves that people see would be their actual body, they just saw it in a third person perspective during character creation. People speculated this was done by the deity to emulate popular open world games back in the federation and the demon realm was probably similar since the races influenced each other quite a bit over hundreds of years of war. Yet, the sensation to see yourself from a third person perspective in real life, even if only for a couple minutes or hours still left many with a weird aftertaste for a while.

Seeing the weird third person perspective again made Mo Shan very nostalgic. He still remembered back when he first experienced this, he got nauseous due to the weird sensation and puked all over the white floor. And as a side note, seeing yourself puke in third person didn't help one bit. In his last life Mo Shan witnessed this room multiple times needing to start over from scratch every time he died in the "game".

After a couple seconds of waiting the pop up hologram screens he expected revealed themselves.

Things such as outward appearance could be changed since this world's "identity" is essentially a second body. If you die in the world of [boundless] it doesn't mean death in real life. You just needed to start over, and people could always return to the federation to their real bodies as much as they wanted by stepping in the portals in every town and city center.

And as for where your real body went the moment you stepped in the portal and vice versa, nobody knew.

Mo Shan decided to change his looks for nostalgic reasons, making himself look old yet muscular with a long white beard, like how a powerful elderly blacksmith would look, aged yet wise and full of vigor and power. This is the outward appearance he carried the last time he died back in his previous life, and also the appearance Mo Shan felt closest too, having gotten famous in his past life using this outward appearance. later even being titled the "librarian" a title earned being a member of a famous party of experts, even though he was a player who was scared of combat. Without him the party would have never risen to such fame and glory.

Why risk losing years of progress when you could just be the brains behind the scenes. This was Mo Shan's opinion after dying many times in his previous life.

By fighting and killing he would not be able to make a huge difference, even with years of experience and knowledge the deities would never have made a mistake allowing one person to overpower an entire race in combat power. At most Mo Shan would be able to become the strongest player, but even then there was a huge risk of dying and losing everything. So Why not be the guardian of humanity behind the scenes instead? Using the extensive knowledge he gathered over the course of his last life he would be able to guide humanity in the right direction, leading an exciting and extravagant life in the process!

After finishing his outward appearance Mo Shan finally entered the class selection screen.

[boundless] didn't have hundreds of classes and subclasses. In fact, there wasn't even the common stat points system like most games had. Boundless merely had large class types which would decide how your body would evolve as you level up. For instance mages would gain more mana and a stronger connection to the elements the more they leveled up, essentially evolving their body towards being a great mage. Mages could choose any element they wanted to attune themselves to thus becoming either priests or necromancers or fire mages or warlocks or many other types. But that depended on the skills players decided to learn and the element they decided to attune themselves to.

Another example was the tank classes which would gain more power and a stronger body as they levelled up.

The main classes to choose from were mage, tank, rogue, hunter, summoner, fighter and several others. But the one Mo Shan wanted to go for was none of these. Mo Shan wanted a hidden class. This was one of the mechanics from games the deities apparently decided to carry over, and throughout his six years in his previous life Mo Shan learned about many of them and how to get them. Some had no limits on the amounts of people being able to become one of them, others were limited in number and as far as Mo Shan knew, only one person had gotten this class in his previous life, not because there was a limit to it, but because only that individual happened to meet the criteria.

Mo Shan quickly found the first prerequisite he needed for his hidden class and selected it without hesitation.

Ding*

"Yes!"

Lifestyle players were basically the non-combatant classes in games, usually being tailors, smiths, alchemists etc, they levelled by leveling their crafting professions instead of killing monsters, and instead of evolving towards better combat ability they gained better comprehension, focus and more control over their body the higher they levelled. Becoming a lifestyle class was the first prerequisite to becoming his hidden class, which fit Mo Shan's playstyle too, fearing having to start all over again and wanting to be the person guiding humanity behind the scenes with the knowledge that he had.

Finalising his class choice Mo Shan filled in his chosen name.

Then he got to choose his starting city on the continent after which the white room vanished, and the old man opened his eyes standing in the city square…

<>