"What exactly do you mean random?"
His question was interrupted as his eyes opened to a completely new ceiling. His head slowly turned to look around as a smell that seemed to be the mix of rotten fish and alcohol hit him. He tried not to breath in the horrible smell as he looked around the wooden room he was in.
The room was not very well lit, in fact it was not lit at all, the only light was coming in through the small cracks and holes in the roof. Around him there were multiple hammocks strung to the roof. After a few seconds he also realized he himself was lying in a hammock, and it was shaking quite well.
"Woah!"
It was as if the moment he realized this the shaking got worse and he had to hold on in order to not fall of, but he failed this and fell onto the floor and rolled for a little bit before he managed to stop himself. He shakily stood up, almost falling again as the floor bumped up and down.
"It really does feel like reality..."
He looked down and moved his hands around a bit. He had doubts when he heard about the realism of this system, but all that was now completely wiped away. But, there was still a problem.
"Where the hell am I..."
He had gone into the game mostly blind, deciding it would be better to check out different guides later if he needed them. One of the things he had known beforehand, however, was that the starting point for all races was supposed to be in the streets of a city called Bradtiel.
But he definitely wasn't standing on the streets now... And he knew the reason, it happened just a few seconds ago after all...
---
Everything surrounding him gave of a bright white light, but it quickly faded and turned to a more gray color as the seemingly angelic figure of a girl descended down from above. A long white dress, blonde hair and eyes as red as blood. These were the characteristics of the girl who had descended down onto him.
As her feet touched the ground, she bowed before him.
"My name is Alicia, I am here to support you with the creation of your character. First, please select a race."
"All right..."
His choices appeared before him in the form of different versions of himself. Each had taken some features from a different fantasy race, a tall and pointy-eared elf, a short and stout dwarf, a vampire with white skin, a fur-covered werewolf and a man covered in scales, named dragon.
Dragons in Dreamland were a slightly complicated existence. The humanoid creatures clad in scales were referred to as dragons while the creatures that would normally be called dragons were referred to as draculs.
Not that he felt like picking any of these races, he didn't want anything complicated. He would pick human, he had heard there were three new premium races coming to the game as well, and one could change to those later if they wanted to.
"Human, I think."
Alicia nodded.
"Well, would you like to make any special changes to your body?"
He looked at the copy of himself, messy brown hair and green eyes, an average build with average looks. He was nothing special, but he was quite okay with that. Though maybe a few interesting additions would be good...
"Uhm... Make my eyes golden and then... Make the face look less like... me."
"Like this?"
The eyes of the copy changed to a dull golden color and the features of the characters face to become more sharp turning his normally aloof expression to a more serious, mature one. This would ensure no one from the game would recognize him in real life.
"Yeah, Like that. That's all."
The copy disappeared.
"Then next, please choose four skill trees."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Skill trees?"
"Yes! In order to make the skill system as balanced as possible it works on the premise of each user picking four different skill trees to base their character off, each containing multiple paths to go down. There's a huge variety too, so the system doesn't restrict you much. "
The girl smiled at him after she had finished giving her rather lengthy explanation.
"Right..."
A bunch of cards had appeared around him as soon as his character disappeared, each card supposed to symbolize a different skill tree, they each had an image on one side and a short class description on the other.
He grabbed a random card.
The image was that of a knight with a white surcoat with a golden cross on top of his armor. He flipped the card around in order to read the description.
Holy Knight
A melee fighter focused on a balance of offense and defense with many attacks that use holy magic.
"This description is pretty.. .underwhelming. Can you tell me anything more about this class?"
"Sure. I could tell you anything from it's starting skills to what the community thinks of it. Ask away."
Hearing Alicia say this, he suddenly got excited. He had many choices to make, so there were a lot of questions he was going to ask.
After around an hour of consideration he finally managed to decide on what skill trees he would pick.
Holy Knight
A melee fighter focused on a balance of offense and defense with many attacks that use holy magic.
Starting Skills: [Block] [Slice]
Community Opinion: Good (8)
Engineer
A utility skill tree focused around the crafting of machines and the construction of different buildings.
Starting Skills: [Basic Engineering] [Creator's Eye]
Community Opinion: Good (7)
Merchant
A utility tree focused on buying and selling.
Starting Skills: [Bartering] [Charisma]
Community Opinion: Horrible (1)
Marshal
A support tree focused around boosting yourself and others stats for short amounts of time and organizing troops.
Starting Skills: [Commander] [Charisma]
Community Opinion: Bad (3)
He had picked two which had one starting skill that crossed over with one another, but he wasn't too bothered. What bothered him a bit however was the bad community opinion for two of the skill trees he had selected. But he decided he didn't really care since he was only going to be playing this game on his free time anyway.
"Are you sure of your choice?"
"Yes."
"Alright, then please choose a name."
A name... What sort of name was he going to choose? Something cool? Something exciting? No probably not. Something normal would be best.
"Leon."
"Alright, Leon. If you are done here, I welcome you to Dreamland."
Leon nodded.
"I'm done."
"Then before you leave there is one last thing... The Randomizing Roulette has selected you for a special spawn. With a very small chance you have been chosen to spawn out on an island. Have fun."
---
And that was it. Some higher power called The Randomizing Roulette had apparently decided that he would be spawned here, wherever 'here' was. He looked around for any doors, and quickly spotted one.
Leon made his way up to the door and pushed it open, instantly being hit by the fresh sea breeze outside. As his eyes quickly adjusted to the lighter setting outside he looked out over the large deck of a ship. There were many people standing there, all wearing dark green clothes with golden thread sown into the sides.
By their wastes hung metal sabers, and on their backs they all had a black circle sown on.
The white flag that hung from the ships mast also had the same black circle drawn on it, and the ship was moving rather quickly through the waters.
But as Leon stood there, gawking at the games realism, he was interrupted by a gruff voice only a few meters to his left.
"Good to see you're still alive after that whole event. We're soon coming up on the drop-off destination, so this'll be the last time we meet."
The man who had just spoken was tall and had broad shoulders, his build was very muscular and his leather vest seemed about ready to burst at the seems while his pants seemed more like he had just thrown a potato bag on. He was the only one on the ship that wasn't wearing the color coordinated green clothing.
"Drop-off destination?"
"Ah... Seems you did hit your head pretty hard back there..."
The large, bald mans facial expression turned a bit sad but then he broke into a wide smile.
"Well, my name's Jones, commander of the Circle's third fleet, I've been assigned on a mission to deliver you to that island over there."
His thumb pointed towards an island that the ship was quickly closing in on.
"There's a few things for you as well... Would you like a knife, a sword or a crossbow with a few arrows?"
This was the part where he selected his starter equipment, and his choice was quite obvious.
"I'll take the sword, please."
"Right then, here you go."
The large man pulled a sword out of a barrel filled with them. The sword had a simple design with a wooden hilt and a normal iron blade, it was a typical longsword.
As he grabbed the sword, a small screen with information of it's stats appeared in Leon's vision.
Iron Longsword [Class-D]
2-handed
+15 ATK
+ 1 STR
Description: A regular iron longsword.
And that was all. It seemed there really was absolutely nothing special about this sword.
"There's also this."
Jones handed Leon a small, neatly folded piece of paper.
"What is it?"
Jones shrugged his shoulders.
"Dunno. You're supposed to read it."
The man gave Leon a bright smile and a thumbs up, signaling him to go ahead. Leon sighed and unfolded the note.
Hello!
You may not remember but I'm the one who payed for your trip to the island! I really do hope you get along well with the locals, it's a new settlement after all. Well, if you can find my contact there just show them this note and they'll provide you with further information on this mission.
'Til next time, C-6
"What?"
He muttered for himself, not understanding the contents of the note.
"Okay boys, throw him off."
Was this some sort of story being set up for him? If so, that was interesting. But what was with the 'if' you can find my contact, that just sounded like Leon wasn't very important at all...
While he was thinking about this, he felt his body get lifted into the air and instantly snapped back into reality.
"What are you doing!?"
His shouting seemed to be to no avail though, as three men carried him towards the corner of the ship, and before long he had been thrown off. With a loud thud he landed on the sand of the island.
As he sat up in confusion, the ship quickly sailed away from him.
And thus, the adventures of Leon began with a very confusing series of events.