…
…
…
…Ugh, what happened?
Last thing I remembered was going inside some ruins, finding an orb, touching it, and then everything going to black—
Where am I?
…I'm still at the same place—same room, at least.
The orb, it's gone.
And the mirror-world ceiling, too.
I was left alone in a dark room.
Just what happened when I was gone?
*BWOOM*
As I was wondering about my current state, I was alerted by a sudden, loud, blaring sound.
Readying my axe, I looked at the place where the noise was at, and it was, unfortunately, at the one door leading in and out of the room.
In my sight was a contraption of sorts that I never saw before I blacked out—a rectangular contraption that was built into the wall beside the door, wired on a locking mechanism for the door itself.
Which meant that that large sound was from the mechanism.
Which meant that the door was locked.
Which meant I was trapped inside.
Which meant I had a biiig problem.
Approaching cautiously, I tapped the thing, trying to see if I can do anything to get it to open the door.
Then, it unlocked by itself.
Not the door—the contraption.
It revealed two rows of circular buttons, of which there were five on each row.
Above those two sets was a…music manuscript.
I pushed one button and it made a tune.
I pushed another, which made a different tune.
And then the contraption made a 'Beep!' sound and the buttons momentarily went red.
Piecing the pieces together in my head, I came to a realization that I had to find the correct pattern to play these buttons in, in order to unlock the door.
Problem is that I don't know how to music or read these manuscript thingies; it all looks like moon runes to me.
…Can't I just tear down the door with my axe?
It'd be a lot easier and faster…I'm not good with puzzles.
Especially puzzles like these.
No, no, I should at least try.
*Dun-du da-da-da-dan~*
*Doo~ Waa~ Suu~*
*Beep!*
*Dun-du da-da-da-dan~*
*Hmm~ Hmm, hmm-hmm~*
*Beep!*
*Dun-du da-da-da-dan~*
*Hm, hm-hm hm-hm~*
*Beep!*
…
…
…
*Haaa~ Aaa-aaa-aaah~*
*Beep!*
Yeah, no.
Axe time it is.
Grabbing my axe with both my hands, I slammed it down on the door.
…Only for some sort of magical barrier to stop my axe midair.
I tried to get my suspended axe out desperately, and only when I was using my entire body did it let go and made me stumble backwards.
Haaa~
This is going to take long.
…
…
…
*Beep!*
Damn it.
I almost had it.
Alright, alright…this time, this time I'll finally get it.
The sequence for this should be…0914 12152205 23092008 01 0708151920 06121523051819
I pressed all the buttons in that order(0-9), ensuring I didn't misclick one by accident.
Then, I waited.
Waited for either the doomed, failing sound of another beep, or the hopeful sound of success.
And by the grace of angels, it was the latter.
The contraption started moving the buttons by itself, making a soft, warm, melodic composition of the tunes.
Accompanying it was the abrupt raindrops and sound of frogs happening—the entire room itself had shifted.
I was beside a pond, standing in front of a large tree, with its roots growing to sip from the pond.
A bed of white flowers and tall grass gently flowed below me.
I took the time to take in the moment and cherish it for a while.
Suffice to say, my frustration and effort were paid off somewhat by the wonderful song and scene.
If I could record this moment right now, I would.
Best I can do was engrave it into my mind, ensuring I would never forget it.
After the song ended, it seemed that I went back to the room once more—the scene I had experienced was an illusion, but the emotions it conveyed were real.
The door had opened, and I was finally out of that damn room.
The outside of the room was dark, but it felt like the brightest thing I ever saw in my life.
Using my Survivalist's Instincts, I found my way out of the ruins and into the greylight once again.
Immediately leaving the ruins, I was greeted with a pop-up.
-Optional Quest Completed-
▣New Frontier▣
Instructions: Venture deeper into Quintus Forest and visit a certain ruin.
Rewards: Hint for the main quest
A surprise pop-up to be sure, but a welcome one!
Rubbing my hands together, I waited for the hint I'll be finally getting.
I wonder what this game will drag me along to next?
A mine?
A town?
A city?
A kingdom?!
An entire empire, even?!
The anticipation built up within me, my heart racing like a gambler on his last leg.
Finally, the reward showed itself, and…
[All quests in this area are complete!]
[Please travel to other areas to find quests!]
…
…
…?
…Is…is that it?
…Hey.
…
…I SAID HEY!
YOU STUPID SYSTEM!
AFTER EVERYTHING I'VE BEEN THROUGH, THIS IS ALL I GET?!
[That's just how it is. Get over it.]
[ᗜ⩊ᗜ]
…Hah.
The system can talk back now?
What kind of hot-dog water drinking dev designed this?
A system's job should be to factually provide the information; not act like a sarcastic, full-of-nonsense, pile of SH—
Y'know what?
Whatever.
"Hey."
[...]
"I SAID HEY!"
[Yes?]
[( • ᵕ • )...?]
"How do I turn this feature off?"
[Erm…you can't. I'm stuck with you forever. Teehee~]
[(๑•̀ <๑)]
"The hell you mean 'I can't'? And what's with that tone saying you're the one stuck with me, when I'm the one who's stuck with your annoying self!"
Feeling my teeth about to break from my rough gritting, as well as my blood about to boil over, I forcefully tried to calm myself down.
Fortunately, by divine chance, I was able to do it.
It seems that it realized it couldn't anger me anymore, and thus decided to genuinely help me now.
[You are really pitiful. I'll throw you a bone; you can disable the talkative module in the settings. There. You don't need to thank me, you're welcome.]
[(⸝⸝> ᴗ•⸝⸝)]
"Wasn't planning to."
After making a snide counter against the system's talk, I tried to open my settings.
I flicked my wrist, ready to turn off that yappy feature and restore some peace to my life.
You think you're smart, system?
I'm Grul, the beastmaster.
I'm stronger, I'm smarter…I'm better, I AM BETTER!
But when I did, I didn't see the normal, standard setting windows that I usually saw.
Instead, what I saw was a behemoth of a screen.
This thing almost encompassed my entire torso, practically blocking out everything else.
It was littered with so many buttons, sliders, and checkboxes that it looked like the control panel for a rocket launch.
What in the goddamn…?
The thing was pulsing a dark green, which, okay, not a terrible choice.
Then, I saw it.
Beside nearly every single option—from 'Toggle Combat Text' to 'Ambient Swamp Smell Intensity'—was the tag: [Mod]
My dense brain finally began to put the pieces together.
The mods.
The mods were finally back!
Well, some of them, anyway.
Not all the good ones, of course.
Just the weird, niche, quality-of-life stuff I installed back when I was a vanilla player dying of boredom.
A quick glance at the header confirmed the culprits:
I actually felt a little flicker of joy seeing these pop up.
I could do lots of things with these—hell, I could even turn this entire world into my sandbox!
With the excitement of a toddler who just got an entire set of toys, I started fiddling with the settings.
…Only to be met with a huge disappointment.
[Locked: Requires System Admin Privileges]
[Locked: Conflict with Core Game Mechanics]
[Locked: Incompatible with other mods]
All of the actually good settings were locked, leaving me with the mediocre to downright useless ones.
"Screen size: MAX."
I'll just—no, if I resize it down, I'll just have to scroll more.
"Screen color: Green."
Keep that there…cuz green iz best.
"Setting style: All."
I'm changing this to category style—there, better.
Now the settings are categorized into tabs based on, well, their category.
Much more pleasing to the eyes.
There were dozens of tabs: Physics, Audio Rework, Visual Filters, and even one simply labeled 'Orc Stuff' (belonging to the Orc Mod as a compatibility add-on to the Extended Settings mod).
I tried clicking a few more things.
In the 'Physics' tab, there was a slider for 'Object Fall Speed'.
I cranked that bad boy to 50% just to see what would happen.
Nothing.
A little lock icon flashed beside it: [Locked: Conflict with Game World Mechanics]
Damn it.
I moved to the 'Orc Stuff' tab.
"Tusk Polish Sheen: Slider."
Who cares right now?
"Roleplay Orc Speak: On."
Now that's useful!
I tried to flick it off, but a message popped up: [Conflict with skill: Orcish Blood]
Oh, come on!
I scrolled to another tab, finding one of the most illustrious things imaginable to me.
"Enable Fast Travel: Off"
On, on, on!
On, now!
[Conflict with Intentional Core Game Mechanic]
For the love of—
Welp.
That's that.
I'm stuck with a giant, comically green system screen that provides literally nothing of value.
I sighed, scrolling past a useless 'Bloom Effect: ON/OFF' toggle.
Maybe I could at least change the font size?
No, that's locked too.
Looks like my glorious return to modding freedom was just a big, fat, mostly unusable screen of lies.
Well, at least the mute system feature wasn't locked.
After a few more minor tweaks here and there, I closed the Settings and decided to check the big one: My Status Screen.
+====================================+
// STATUS SCREEN //
+====================================+
|NAME: Grul
|RACE: Orc
|CLASS: None [+]
|LEVEL: 25
|XP: 0/900
+------------------------------------+
|HEALTH: [█████████] 100% |
|STAMINA: [██████████] 100% |
|MANA: [----------] -10/0 |
+------------------------------------+
|ATTRIBUTES:
|STRENGTH: 69 (+24 Racial)|
|DEXTERITY: 55|
|VITALITY: 67 (+24 Racial)|
|INTELLIGENCE: 35|
|WISDOM: 35 |
+------------------------------------+
|SKILLS:
|- Unarmed Combat (B+) (Passive)
| ↳"Everybody was kung-fu fighting!" - Carl Douglas … Increases effectivity of unarmed combat.
|- Sprinting (B+)
| ↳ Drastically increases movement speed at the cost of stamina.
|- Orcish Blood (A+) (Passive)
| ↳"Orkz is made for fightin' and winnin'!" - Ghazghkull Thraka … Bestows a formidable constitution and innate combat prowess. Provides a significant bonus to physical attributes and combat effectiveness. Also changes your diction when talking to others. For each battle you survive, increase physical attributes comparative to the difficulty of the battle fought.
|- Throwing (B+) (Passive)
| ↳ Increases the accuracy and force of thrown objects.
|- Iron Stomach (B) (Passive)
| ↳ A growing tolerance for poorly prepared, rough, or unappetizing food. Reduces the negative effects of consuming spoiled or low-quality ingredients. Also provides moderate immunity against status ailments like poison, venom, and paralysis.
|- Trap Making (B+)
| ↳ Allows the creation of exemplary traps using raw materials which could incapacitate, severely wound, or eliminate the one caught inside of one.
|- Axe Mastery (B+)
| ↳ "Here's Johnny!" - Johnny Torrance … Considerably increases efficiency of axes you are using.
|- Heavyweight (C) (Passive)
| ↳ "Move 'em on, head 'em up, head 'em up, move 'em on, move 'em on, head 'em up, Rawhide!" - Frankie Laine … Causes all things with a weight greater or equal to 10 lbs. to have their weight value reduced by 35% when you carry, hold, or drag them.
|- Survivalist's Instinct (A+) (Passive)
| ↳ Provides a complete, intuitive mastery of fundamental wilderness survival techniques. Also grants a heightened awareness of the environment, allowing for the automatic detection of food, water, resources, and hidden dangers. Gives a huge boost to stamina regeneration and overall perception.
|- Shadow Hunter (A) (Active/Passive)
| ↳ "The predator's silence is the prey's oblivion." ... Seamlessly blends movement with the environment to achieve near-total concealment. Drastically reduces visibility and sound while moving. The longer you maintain concealment and focus on a target, the higher behavioral information you gather, or crit rate, should you choose to strike at the poor victim.
|- Brutal Intuition (B+) (Passive)
| ↳ "The head is for thinking, the gut is for knowing." ... Grants an automatic, instinctive reading of an opponent's weakness. Provides a moderate bonus to critical strike chance and large bonus to perception.
|- Makeshift Fortress (B+)
| ↳ "*Home Depot theme starts playing*" ... Allows for the rapid construction of temporary, sturdy defensive structures, such as barricades and basic shelters, using raw materials with a 50% reduction in required materials and time.
|- Environmental Weaponry (C+) (Passive)
| ↳ "Every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right." … Drastically increases the effectiveness and durability of improvised weapons, such as rocks, tree branches, and salvaged junk. Improvised weapons can also be sacrificed to stun or temporarily disable armored opponents.
|- Trailblazer (C+) (Active/Passive)
| ↳ "Where we're going, we don't need roads." - Doc Brown … Reduces the stamina cost of travel through dense wilderness. Actively allows the creation of temporary marked trails for easier retracing of steps.
|- Juggernaut (A) (Active/Passive)
| ↳ "I ain't got time to bleed." - Jesse Ventura … Considerably improves stamina and health and their respective regeneration. Grants severe immunity against physical status ailments. Physical effort will continue so long as mental will has not ceased. When activated, gain 50% damage reduction at the cost of severe aftereffects.
|- Battle Trance (A) (Active/Passive)
| ↳ When in actual combat, acquire battle trance stacks. As more stacks are gained, strength and attack speed continually increase. At ten stacks, ignore one hit for every ten hits.
|- Gambler's Luck (D+) (Passive)
| ↳ "GAMBA GAMBA GAMBA! / Let's go gambling! Aw, dang it! Aw, dang it! Aw, dang it!" … In stressful situations, increases your luck by +3 as you continue to endure. If you voluntarily make it even more stressful for yourself, luck increases by +6.
|- Cockroach (D) (Passive)
| ↳ Possess an infuriating ability to survive fatal damage. Once per month, if HP reaches 0, will instead stop at 1 and are granted immunity to any damage for 12 seconds. Does not cure already afflicted status ailments.
|- Marksman (B+)
| ↳ Upon hitting an enemy's weak spot, cause a critical strike to occur alongside weak spot damage. Increases critical damage.
|- Logical Deduction (C+) (Passive)
| ↳ Significantly reduces the mental drain when learning advanced or logical concepts. Increases insight gained from failure.
|- Tenacious Spirit (C) (Passive)
| ↳ Gain a significant bonus to Willpower and Resolve. General mental fatigue gain is decreased.
|- Advanced Combat Technique (B+) (Passive)
| ↳ "TECHNIQUE! TECHNIQUE!" - A sponge that lives in a pineapple under the sea … Significant increase to prowess. Movement has become fluid and precise, using only minimal stamina to do the most possible.
|- Imperial Form (A)
| ↳ "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!" - Muhammad Ali … A mastery of Imperial-based combat that emphasizes fluid, calculated precision. This technique emphasizes minimal force, efficient footwork, and tactical feints to disrupt the enemy and create openings.
|- Written Language (C) (Passive)
| ↳ Ability to write and understand written texts from certain languages.
|- Linguistics (D) (Passive)
| ↳ Improves study of languages.
|- Bookworm (E) (Passive)
| ↳ Acquire a natural, albeit fledgling, affinity for the writing world. Your mind retains memories with greater ease than most. Grants a basic competence in speed-reading texts.
|- Taunt (E) (New!)
| ↳ Chance to aggro all enemies around you.
|- Distraction (D) (New!)
| ↳ "Hey, look there!" … Increased probability that target/s fall for the deception. Increase duration of deception and adds chance of confusion.
|- Bloodlust (C) (Passive) (New!)
| ↳ After three successful hits in a row, next attack deals 200% damage. Crit and other effects still applicable.
|- Berserk (A) (New!)
| ↳ "URAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" … Enter a state of frenzy that drastically increases Strength, Dexterity, Speed, Agility, Tenacity, Vitality, and Health Regen, but drastically decrease Evasion, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Mental Resistance while active as well as five minutes after.
|- Lightbringer (A) (Passive) (New!)
| ↳ "Gloria! Honorifice! Proelium Facio!" - Tirion Fordring … Gain resistance against darkness attributes, increase damage against creatures with darkness attributes. Creatures with darkness attributes have a slight fear towards you. Increases proportionally to level difference.
|- Presence of the Apex (A) (Active/Passive) (New!)
| ↳ "You will heed my words, or you will break." … Projects an invisible pressure that affects the minds of nearby beings. The passive aura makes others highly more inclined to agree or submit. Activating this skill releases a concussive Roar that can potentially terrify, confuse, stun, or even cause targets to flee, with the probability proportional to the level difference. Beings, once affected by this skill, are more likely to be respectful and polite to the user.
|- ??? (???) (New!)
| ↳ ???
+====================================+
Haa~
Bliss.
Every time I see those stats go up and a new skill being made, I just feel bliss~
Three new (A) rank skills, just what I like—wait, what's that '???'?
…Eh, probably just from a mod.
I was also glad to see that the Darkness Inflicted status was no longer there, but the -10 mana was still there for some reason…?
Eh, not something I need to worry about yet.
Now, finally, time for my class.
There's now a '+' symbol next to.
Clicking on it, I am greeted with a flood of options.
+====================================+
▣ Juggernaut ▣ (RARE)
▣ Apex Stalker ▣ (SPECIAL)
▣ Warmaster ▣ (EPIC)
▣ Blood-crazed K'harn ▣ (UNIQUE)
▣ Iron Warlord ▣ (UNIQUE)
▣ Orc Warrior ▣ (Uncommon)(Progressive)
+====================================+
This…is quite the list.
All of these are pretty good.
I won't lie, they all sound tempting.
But…I'm going for Orc Warrior.
You may ask why, and let me explain.
Here's the eeeeexpossiiitioooon paaaaaaart~
For those newbies out there, classes are categorized based on a few things, but the ones you need to really know right now are the usual ones: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, and Legendary.
Plus Unique and Special, and finally Progressive.
Common is, well, common; something you can find just by walking a bit through a town, like farmers, bakers, guards, bandits, and the likes.
Uncommon are classes like mine: warrior, mages, priests, berserkers, thieves.
Then you have Rare classes, classes you'd only find around five to ten times by casually walking in a big city or even capital.
To put into simpler terms, you'll find a rare class after looking through a thousand common classes.
Epic is even rarer, finding only one in a hundred thousand.
Legendary is—well, exponentially harder to find.
Like, one in a hundred million kind of hard to find.
That's the basic class rank system; the one you can find in any game or novel about classes and fantasy and games and whatnot.
Then you also got Special and Unique, which are different on their own.
You can usually find a special among the commons; like a hawk-eyed soldier among hundreds of normal soldiers, or a talented officer among hundreds of normal officers, or even a genius among hundreds of students.
They're very rare to find, but you can find more than one of them roaming around the world.
Which is unlike unique, where it's a one of a kind in everything in a world.
Unique is basically the game taking your achievements and your general leaning ( Physical, Ranged, Magic, Support, etc.) and then mashing them together.
Sounds good, right?
WRONG.
There's one teensy-tiny flaw that Unique has that has caused most in the community to consider it a total waste.
And that flaw is that YOU CAN'T UPGRADE IT, I.E. FIND A BETTER RANKING VERSION OF IT.
YOU'RE STUCK WITH IT FOREVER.
UNLESS YOU MAKE A NEW CHARACTER OR ADD A MOD, YOU CAN'T REMOVE IT.
At least for Special classes, once you get the chance to level up your class, you can find a better one, or at least the higher ranking Common one which is still better than a lower ranking Special.
But unique?
Like, after leveling up to the point you can 'rank' it up, all you get is a +1 to the stats it gives.
That's how little of an effect it gives.
All the others—although having the same grade as before—at least give new modifiers and bonuses and skills and a lot of other things when they're ranked up.
That's why Unique is considered the noob trap and has made dozens of people shed tears of agony, realizing they've basically screwed themselves up by blocking an entire area of content that the game had.
Sure, they could still win the game with the class, but the game is just way less fun and challenging in the 'not very fun' way.
And that rant leaves me with Progressive.
Y'know all classes (aside from Unique), regardless of grade, level up.
No matter their grade, it will level up.
But, the issue for that, is that the grade never changes.
Your class can go from Soldier to Knight, or Apprentice to Mage, but it'd still be common.
For your entire life, your grade is as-is with almost no hope of reaching any further.
And that's where Progressive comes in.
Progressive is basically the trait that gives the big bird finger to the entire convoluted class system and allows your grade to go higher alongside your class.
So, even if you start at Common, with Progressive added in your class, you can eventually reach Legendary, which is the best rank you can get out of any other rank.
And that's why…I'm choosing Orc Warrior.
Did you get what I said?
No?
Yeah, me neither.
Let's just move on, yeah?
Clicking on the Orc Warrior, I feel a jolt of energy rise within me.
I am…growing…more…powerful!
+5 to all stats
+10% to DMG
+5% to DEF
+10 to VIT
Unlocked Skills: Cleave, Guard, Charge, War-Stomp
Pretty good for an Uncommon class.
I can't wait to see what stats this will give me once I reach Legendary.
This isn't even my final form!
Mwahahahahaaha!
*Rumble!*
…Uh-oh.
Guess I've been lingering around too long.
Time for me to head back and eat.
And also check back on the settlement—gosh, how long has it been?
There better not have been any timeskips without me, I do not want to feel like that guy from Interstellar.
It's been 23 years, Grul…You said you'd come back…
Grul…the contract…my necklace…
uuuwWAAAAH I NEED TO HURRY BACK!