HERO SWORD VI<br/>Collector’s Edition<br/><br/>The words were floating above him in 32-bit gold font, each letter independently going up or down to give it a wave-sort of look. Gunther had to crane his neck to read it, which was not making the headache any better. He felt he should be hyperventilating out of panic, but his own 8-bit body lacked the complexity to move his lungs, and possibly even have lungs. His mind worked, though, and it was freaking out. Gunther would run, run as far away as his legs could carry him but the world was 2-D and the edges of the screen formed a closed loop. If he ran off to the left he would appear to the right. He could see his own body from behind if he looked to either side.<br/>Gunther was stuck in the loading screen of a videogame. He did not know how. He could not even imagine how, unless it was a dream, and that was a distinct possibility. He had tried pinching himself but the 8-bit body lacked fingers. All he could do was wave his arms up and down, side to side.<br/><br/>Below the banner of the game name, were golden options, floating in front of him. How it could float in front of him, he did not know, since the world was 2-D, but his little 8-bit body did cross or cover the text. The cause of the headache was at least in part due to perceiving an impossible world. Gunther wanted to get out of this screen, so he read the options before him again.<br/><br/>CONTINUE<br/>HELP AND OPTIONS<br/>NEW GAME<br/>LOAD GAME<br/>DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT<br/>QUIT<br/><br/>Obviously hitting Quit had been the first thing he had tried. The world had made a whirring sound and the ominous black clouds that floated in the distance had gotten jagged edges for a second and frozen in place, before the screen had continued as normal and no quitting had been achieved. Further hits of the Quit button had yielded similar results.<br/>(Again, how could there be clouds in the distance, the world was 2-D!)<br/><br/>He tried punching the Continue or Options, but his 8-bit body could not reach. He also found each of his jumps were the exact same height and accompanied by a “Boing” sound. He tried clicking Load Game, but that prompted a message:<br/>NO SAVED FILES<br/>Underneath it was a box that said: OK, which Gunther could only barely reach if he timed his jump and click just right. He shuddered to think how stuck he would be if that message box had been a bit further up the screen.<br/>He sighed – a mental sigh, since he had no lungs – and clicked New Game. He was still scared, but it seemed there was nothing else to do.<br/><br/>The world dissolved.<br/><br/>He found himself in a cave, which was, if nothing else, somewhat nicely rendered. He could see the square design of the rock walls if he squinted, but he found himself unable to look down at himself. He definitely had a sense of self but he could not<span style="font-style: italic">see</span>it. He waved his invisible arms about and could certainly feel himself doing it. The cave was slightly drafty and he felt naked, except possibly around the groin. He walked forward, and yup, he was definitely wearing a loincloth. He had never been comfortable with nakedness, so this was at least some relief. He was also quite sure he was going mad, but at least he would be partially clothed when the men in white jackets came for him. Perhaps he was really in a fetal position underneath his bed, making gurgling sounds and pretending all this was happening.<br/><br/>He walked forward at a set speed. It was impossible to move in any other speed than this. After a few steps a prompt popped up:<br/>ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL?<br/>Predictably there were two options beneath it, and Gunther did realize at this point he couldn’t feel anything below the invisible loincloth.<span style="font-style: italic">Things</span>should be dangling. They weren’t. Well, that was a good reason to choose quickly. He reached out to punch the “BOY” option, and tried very hard to aim since he could not see his hand. It was then he noticed that at the edge of the options was a scroll bar.<br/>To scroll or not to scroll? Scroll! He was already going mad, might as well scroll up and down the rabbit hole.<br/>More options appeared as he scrolled: TRANS-BOY, TRANS-GIRL.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">”That’s very PC of the game,”</span>Gunther thought and scrolled further.<br/>NO GENDER<br/>ALL GENDER<br/>HYPER-BOY<br/>REVERSE-BOY<br/>DOUBLE-GIRL<br/>NO-BOY GIRL-BOY-GIRL-GIRL-BOY-GIRL<br/>TRANS-DIMENSIONAL FIZGROP<br/>Gunther scrolled up and punched “BOY”. Definitely BOY. Nothing more, nothing less.<br/><br/>The cave shifted again. Resolution improved and the lighting effect brightened. Still no body, though.<br/>Gunther’s body felt numb – and something dangled, yay – and he just walked forward without really registering it mentally. This was… it was too<span style="font-style: italic">odd</span>to blow his mind completely. It all felt too familiar to really break him in to a sobbing wreck in the corner. He was in a video game… that offered just enough sense of narrative to make him just go with the flow. Stability. He could predict another option would come next, and that was… well, that was nice.<br/><br/>CHOOSE YOUR RACE<br/>The words floated before him again. The word font was nicer too. That boded well; he would not want another 8-bit body.<br/>He punched HUMAN, which was the top one and to his right came a stat menu and a beautifully, photo-realistic portrait of a human popped up.<br/>Strength: Average<br/>Dextery: Average<br/>Gunther scrolled down. There were a lot of stats.<span style="font-style: italic">A lot</span>. Breeding stats: High.  Population: Extreme.  Geographical spread: Extreme.<br/><br/>…<br/><br/>Gunter looked at the other races. The list was astronomical. He scrolled up and down at random. Minotaur? No. False-blood? No. Gnoll? Hmm… no. Who would pick a gnoll, anyway?<br/>Gunther scrolled back up, punched human and immediately he was able to see his body. He was only a little chubby in real life, but this body had a defined six-pack and arms much more muscular and hairy than his own. The world around him shifted in resolution again. Much better. The walls looked real. His own arms almost looked real. And his loincloth was filthy! Ew! He hurried onwards. If he knew videogames, next would come class selection and that might just come with a class-specific outfit.<br/><br/>CHOOSE YOUR CLASS<br/>Another absurdly long list, but Gunther was going to take his time with this one. From this point on he didn’t know what would happen… what should he focus on? Fleeing? Blending in? If this was a video game he would need survivability in some form but…<br/>FIGHTER – definitely not.<br/>BARBARIAN – Half-naked and a front-liner. Not a chance.<br/>ROGUE – that might be something, good at hiding. Gunther read through the class description… A lot of focus on backstabbing. Assassination class feature, apparently. Eeehm… no. Killing was… that didn’t seem quite right.<br/>WIZARD – That could be.<br/>He scrolled down again randomly… scrolled… scrolled…<br/>The list of classes was… it was insanely comprehensive. Thousands of classes just from a quick scroll up and down. He took hold of the scroll bar and manually yanked it to bottom just to see what would be there.<br/>CARPENTER<br/>FREEMASON<br/>SCHUWM HERDER<br/>INTERIOR DECORATOR<br/>Noooope. He scrolled back up to the<span style="font-style: italic">actual</span>classes.<br/><br/>Gunther took a deep mental breath. Stay calm. The situation was obviously mad, frightening and impossible but it was not… foreign. He was slightly nerdy. He liked games, books, movies and it was not foreign for him to imagine himself inside whatever media he was into at a given time when he was in the shower or out shopping for milk. He was inside a video… he had already played through this mental scenario and if he got killed instead of being the biggest badass because he was too shocked to pick his initial stats properly… He would never forgive himself – provided, of course, he figured out how to save.<br/>Gunther had never seen Sword Art Online before. He knew it was about something something video game, but he had read a fanfic about a guy being shuffled around random anime universes whenever he fell asleep and in the end decided to use his knowledge of the plots to win.<br/>Gunther would do the same. Only he would start out being smart, not go through several chapters of confusion and near-death experiences. He would minmax the shit out of himself, as soon as he figured out the rules. Start by picking a smart class, have it be versatile.<br/><br/>A tune started playing in his head and the thought that he could live out some kind of power fantasy was grounding, solidifying his thought. Don’t be a stereotype. Don’t be a victim. Use all your knowledge. Exploit everything. Win everything. Don’t fight fair, don’t try to follow the rules of this game. Do the impossible, see the invisible. Touch the untouchable, break the unbreakable.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Rawr rawr, fight the power.</span><br/><br/>In his mental models of how he’d actin a video game one of the requirements was something he would be able to use once he got out of the game. Being a monk and learning martial arts would be nifty, never being afraid of L1 Real-World humans again, but on the other hand, he had never been in a fight in his life. Would he ever need real world martial arts? How about magic? It would depend on how mana worked.<br/>Survival, versatility, not reliant on things he can’t get in real world – just on the<span style="font-style: italic">general rule</span>that he already thought about that factor. Alchemist class might need reagents not found in real life. A Demon Slayer would need demons to slay.<br/>Perhaps he could just choose carpenter and live a quiet life in a small village for the rest of his life until a horde monsters came about and killed him and everyone else to inspire the true hero to begin his quest.<br/>Yeah, no. Some kind of tanky wizard? Or stealth-focused wizard? Or a druid who could hide behind his animal companion and run around while it took the hits or snag the experience it got from kills?<br/><br/>He was thinking hard… thinking. Actually…<br/>Actually… that was more appealing. He scrolled about and tried to find a specific class like that, but there were thousands of class choices. The core classes were at the top. That was easy to search but if he wanted something special… well…<br/>“Can I, ehm… can I search for… ehm… Psion?” He said it out loud, hoping something would happen. And it did. The display at his side instantly showed the Psion class. He read through it… and yeah, that sounded like it. Ability to do as he thought, telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation. Lots of tele.<br/>Not good hit points, but apparently some ability to form mind shields or whatever. It wasn’t saying much about how to do things, just things the class could<span style="font-style: italic">potentially</span>do. Still, that sounded fantastic. If he could mind-control some strong enemy – which wasn’t sentient so it wouldn’t be an evil act – then he’d even have a meat shield.<br/><br/>Gunther punched the “SELECT” box and the resolution once more upped himself. And he was clothed! Clean clothes! Blue and silver robe. A snazzy cone-shaped hat and… eeeew.<br/>He reached up under his new robe and tossed the dirty loincloth away. Never, ever again.<br/><br/>He proceeded. Some more customization options. Appearance stuff, fluff. He clicked the “random” button until he found a face that seemed mostly like his old one and then adjusted minor details. He could not help but think that the UI was surprisingly good, and everything looked… real now. Very real. The graphics were indistinguishable from real life and it was scary to customize a real face.<br/><br/>Hit “SELECT” and continue onwards.<br/><br/>A menu popped up as he walked on, towards the end of the cave, a summary of all he had chosen.<br/>IS THIS INFORMATION CORRECT?<br/>He looked it over it and realized he had already made a blunder. He was going to minmax everything. He was going to be a badass, not die to a roaming band of stray cats. He had picked human as a race. He was human in real life so that had been his reasoning, but if he was looking for power he would pick some psionic race or something with the ability to never die.<br/>A part of him – the nerdy voice in the back of his head – was also shouting that humans were boring.<br/><br/>Intelligence: High<br/>Dexterity: Clumsy<br/>Strength: Below Average<br/>Life span: Inapplicable<br/><br/>Dust-Born. Gold-skinned. Blue-skinned. He liked this. It seemed like it would make a great psion. Not short, not tall, slender and mostly humanoid.<br/><br/>He took one more step… and then the final option box popped up:<br/>YOU MUST CHOOSE A NAME<br/>He stood around for a little… Gunther Kringlbasse… hardly heroic, was it? Maybe he’d be targeted by the alley-lurking cutthroats simply for having such a name. And he could choose anything… something cool. Like “John the Gun” or “Max Payne”. “Jack “Death Merchant” Slaughterhouse” or even “Blaze Fenix, the Burning Bombardment Bird”.<br/>And well… the name he used online and in video games was…<br/>There was no way of writing so he tried speaking out loud to the naming box:<br/>“Saerimnir the Infinite… 3473… no, delete the numbers.”<br/>To his surprise it obliged him. He had thought he would have to say “delete” four times to get a result but it seemed the game had at the very least a degree of word-recognition. Which was scary. Even scarier if it could understand full sentences, as it seemed… and incredibly terrifying if the game was sentient.<br/><br/>Gunther… no, Saerimnir the Infinite walked into the light at the end of the cavern, because there was nowhere else to walk. There was a flash, another shift to upgraded graphics, repeating sounds going “Nyeh! Nyeh!”, and then he was in a domed cave (ugh, more caves) with the outside clearly visible.<br/>A huge red translucent barrier blocked off the outside world. Little, ugly, impish creatures were jumping against the barrier and striking at it with pickaxes as they shouted the “Nyeh!” sound. First encounter… that was terrifying.<br/>The nerd voice at the back of his head tried to calm him down.<span style="font-style: italic">”Don’t panic! It’s the first encounter! That is always a pushover. It’s just to make you use your powers.”</span><br/>And the more rational voice, which shouldn’t be speaking since rationality was broken at this point, informed the nerd voice that he didn’t know how to use his powers and all he had for a weapon was, in reality, a wooden stick.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">”Then experiment,”</span>said the voice of his inner genre-savvy nerd, “you’ve got time. Look above the barrier.”<br/>Of course Saerimnir had already looked above, which was how his inner nerd could comment on it, but right now speaking to himself felt like sanity… which was, of course, insane.<br/>Above the red barrier floated golden words:<br/><br/>WAITING FOR OTHER PLAYERS TO CONNECT. PLEASE BE PATIENT.