2: Character Creation
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, .
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. So didn’t mind it, so hated it, and so 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 na 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 ga’s lore, she was a body created using the temple’s magic so that a wandering spirit, , could inhabit her. She would collapse and fade away without my soul to give the body aning and life.
So, that’s what I did. I closed my eyes and pushed my epheral spirit form into the sa space as the body. I felt a sort of ntal click, as the ga transferred into the body. Imdiately, 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 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 ti, 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 t. I was she, I was a girl, I was… oh. I still needed a na.
Testing my limbs out one at a ti 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 sotis joked with my brother that I was a boy-you-got-from-the-dollar-nu, and it was almost depressingly accurate. This body though, it was… not stronger, but like…
I couldn’t figure out the words to describe it, so instead, I carefully assud a stance that my father had drilled into 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 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 seriously if I have this voice.”
Whatever. I’d make them respect by stabbing them.
The space where my body had been standing before I assud control had turned into a mirror, so I turned to look. Sothing very strange happened inside as I t my own eyes, eyes that widened with shock. It was one thing to be staring at a pretty girl with perpetual ‘fuck ’ 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 though. Just, look at ! 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 na.
I was fairly sure of the first na. I’d use the na my mother had said she wanted to give if I’d been a girl. Keiko. As with all Japanese nas, it had about a thousand different anings, but I liked several of them. Depending on the kanji used, it’d be pure, or studious, or respectful, or even firefly.
The family na, though, I’d have to co up with my own for that. Maybe sothing 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 na…
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 na 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 na ant deception, or bluff. It was a little cheeky, to na 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 na, it brought the last na 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 na, carefully adding the correct kanji to the translation area just in case. Didn’t want the ga to auto translate it to like, ‘empty duck’, or so shit. Japanese seriously made my head spin sotis.
Next, ca 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 gas went. Strength was fairly self explanatory, of course. It allowed your character to exert more force with their movents.
Then, there was Athleticism and Dexterity, which basically controlled the speed of your movents and the precision of your movents 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 at 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 teor 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 a subclass of arcane assassin, which was about the most glass cannony you could get in this ga. 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 sll, 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 with five points and five stats to allocate, so I just shrugged and put one point into each. There we go! Nice and well rounded! I’d probably have to prioritise so 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 sothing.
Which led to the abilities I’d start off with. Rellithesh was one of my favourite gas of all ti 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 ga 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 ca with nice little damage bonuses or whatever. It was a great system that actually taught you real skills in so 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 so 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 so kata I had morised, but it was new to . Had they gone and made up a whole new discipline of swordplay that took inspiration from—but was different to—that of various katana styles? That had 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 t with nothing but air, while the actual attack landed ho. That would be fucking incredible for player versus player combat. Nothing ruins a good player’s strats more than ssing with their heads.
I could already tell that this class was going to be incredible. I was actually legit excited now! Which ant… it was ti to go and play the ga!
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