David attempted to place a hand to his forehead as his surroundings came into focus, though strangely, he couldn't reach far enough no matter how hard he tried. His hands seemed to fall short of actually extending above the front of his face, and for that matter, in any direction other than up or down. He blinked once, then again - it seemed that they also fell short of possessing fingers, knuckles, or more than a single solid colour across their entire surface.<br/><br/>Not reality, then. That much was certain. He took a look around, which turned out to mean "up and to both sides", as his mind seemed to have misplaced a dimension somewhere during its transition into the dream or coma or whatever bizarre mental illness he seemed to have acquired to allow him to perceive a flat world from the<span style="font-style: italic">inside</span>. The title card, though hardly the strangest thing about his situation, was difficult not to notice.<br/><br/>HERO SWORD VI<br/>Collector’s Edition<br/><br/>"Am I inside a video game?" he silently spoke, a scrolling text box audibly popping into existence above his head to transcribe the words he had just uttered. It disappeared just as suddenly two seconds after completing the sentence.<br/><br/>Placing a poorly detailed hand-analogue to where his chin would have been, were his head not a simplified and excessively large low-resolution caricature of an actual human's, he considered his options, starting with the options playfully floating above his balloonish countenance.<br/><br/>CONTINUE<br/>HELP AND OPTIONS<br/>NEW GAME<br/>LOAD GAME<br/>DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT<br/>QUIT<br/><br/>Simple enough, but his first thought was to test his limits instead. He appeared to be in control of himself, which was preferable to the alternative, but his ability to interact with the world was disappointing. He could move, in a manner that felt like running even though his legs could only shift instantaneously between three positions, and he could jump, effortlessly up to around five times his height but not a single centimeter higher, but it was impossible to escape the floating words, as staring into the "distance" simply revealed another instance of the same words, and another instance of himself which was likely staring at the back of a third instance of both, and so on to assumed infinity. Around the fifth time he had passed under an identical list of floating options without making any progress whatsoever on overtaking his closest doppelganger, he resigned himself to staring up at the written options he was undoubtedly expected to choose from.<br/><br/>"Help and options", he said. The text box helpfully reappeared to give voice to his command, but the menu was unfazed. He jumped, but could not reach the letters - nor the text box, which mimicked his movement to remain perfectly above his head. He cursed, and a mash of symbols filled the text box to simultaneously acknowledge and sensor his profanity.<br/><br/>"Quit" seemed the obvious choice if he intended to escape, and it lay at a tempting height, but David hesitated. He had no guarantee that his world - or indeed, any world at all - lay beyond the end of this one, and though he feared for his safety going forwards, he was curious about just how far he could explore his surroundings without a menu holding him back. If he didn't like what he saw, he reasoned, it was a video game and the quit button would likely always be available somewhere. He pressed "New game" instead - quite literally, with whatever his hand had become.<br/><br/>The world, and his hand, disappeared. Only the former returned, fading in from darkness to reveal the interior of a cave, but with it came the much-coveted third dimension, and though David no longer seemed to possess a body, his ability to orient himself finally approached something resembling normal. He could even feel a light breeze on his skin, which itself felt bare, and the strangely empty brushing of an invisible loincloth apparently positioned to preserve his invisible modesty. He stepped forwards - slower but far more smoothly - but found his progress halted by yet another menu.<br/><br/>ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL?<br/><br/>The options scrolled to near-infinity in clear defiance of the prompt above. Rather than risk losing himself in the sea of choices, David flung the bar to the very top and hovered his finger over "Boy", before scoffing and muttering jokingly to himself, "What if I'm already a<span style="font-style: italic">man?</span>"<br/><br/>The prompt automatically jumped to an option some two-thirds down the massive list which simply read, "MAN". Impressed, he pushed it, and was startled at once by the sudden improvement to his surroundings - and to his manhood, he bashfully noted. Fortunately, he remained invisible, though the cave had become far brighter and more detailed than before. He checked the wall at his back, just to be certain, but the features of the rock surface were only notable for having<span style="font-style: italic">become</span>features, so he moved forwards again.<br/><br/>CHOOSE YOUR RACE<br/><br/>This one caused David to pause. It promised to be significant to the game itself, as the preposterous number of statistics suggested, and if it were a choice of what<span style="font-style: italic">body</span>he would possess, it was not one to be made lightly. Thus, and in spite of his patience, he began to scan the daunting list from top to bottom, quickly learning to skip a rapidly increasing category of what he deemed "nonessential stats" on each page. The list began predictably enough, with humans, elves, dwarves, and a dozen different variations of the same basic "person" shape with slightly altered features and proportions, but David ran out of interest long before he ran out of half-somethings, and added "nonessential races" to his imaginary filter to save time as he scrolled. It didn't take long after that before he struck gold.<br/><br/>Cheetah-men, rat-men,<span style="font-style: italic">piranha-men</span>. There were more beast races than he even knew species of beasts, and that itself was only the beginning. Limbs seemed optional - some races lacked two legs, others had eight, some had multiple heads, and he could have sworn that he passed by a sentient slime with no discernible anatomy whatsoever at one point. It was like the game had opened up its entire repertoire of monsters and made them available as fully-realized character options, even going so far to describe in detail their relationships with other races. As expected, most were strongly at odds with humans and the rest of civilized society.<br/><br/>David grinned and looked back over the list. He had nothing against humans, but he preferred fighting for the underdog and knew he would feel guilty for not taking full advantage of the variety on offer. One race in particular stood out to him.<br/><br/>GNOLL<br/>"These savage, hyena-headed humanoids are known for their brutality and carnivorous appetites. Countless peaceful settlements have been razed and looted by skirmishing bands of gnolls, leaving their inhabitants to be devoured, enslaved, or sacrificed to the creatures' demonic masters."<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Perfection</span>, he thought to himself. Strong, fast, exceptionally hardy... lacking in intelligence and particularly discipline, but so long as he remained<span style="font-style: italic">himself</span>, these were merely numbers that couldn't affect his actual behaviour - or so he hoped. It was a gamble, but he always did have a certain love for monsters and tended to enjoy playing as evil characters in games, if not only because they had the most freedom to do what they wished and rarely if ever faced realistic consequences for their actions. Playing nice, he reasoned, was a waste of effort when one's opponent was a machine without feelings to hurt; better to brazenly rob every house in sight (a curiously tolerated crime in his experience) and slaughter the town militia if it meant gaining an advantage faster or more easily than one could by obeying the "rules".<br/><br/>He confirmed his choice and the world changed again, further approaching realism as he knew it. His body changed as well - his perspective felt much higher, and his center of balance underwent a sudden and disorienting shift as his heels effectively disappeared, having been replaced by two large digitigrade paws. His eyesight became more acute, a brown and black muzzle jutted out from his face, and beyond it at long last, he could see his hands. His large, fuzzy, man-crushing<span style="font-style: italic">clawed</span>hands. With a grin far wider and toothier than he had ever before been capable of, he clenched them tight. They felt<span style="font-style: italic">dangerous.</span><br/><br/>Growing more excited by the second, David took a short while to get used to walking on his new feet before he stepped forwards again. The entire experience was new to him, but also very, very familiar. He knew video games. He dedicated himself to<span style="font-style: italic">breaking</span>video games. If he couldn't devise some method to cheat his way to ultimate power and trivialize every challenge this world could throw at him, he would consider it a personal failing of the highest degree. The next prompt tempted him to do so even more than the last.<br/><br/>CHOOSE YOUR CLASS<br/><br/>He scrolled through the options, and frowned. As before, there was a maddening number of choices, and this was a promising sign that there must have been at least a few highly unbalanced gems among it, but the details were so frustratingly vague as to make telling one apart from its peers impossible. A written description of each class's capabilities was all well and good, but there were no skill lists, no specialization trees, no<span style="font-style: italic">numbers</span>that he could throttle and twist into something truly, magnificently abominable. He skimmed through the list for several minutes, finding nothing at all he could satisfactorily abuse, until giving up and searching instead for something that merely sounded like it would suit his preferences and still play to his strengths.<br/><br/>Wizards and their derivatives were right out. He would miss the versatility of magic, but they were too weak elsewhere and his race could hardly be<span style="font-style: italic">less</span>suited to the job. Fighters and barbarians... played to his strength, but as much as he loved solving his problems with violence, he knew too little about the game to justify such a limited skillset. Rogue was pointless - he wouldn't<span style="font-style: italic">need</span>a subtle approach to crime, and healing classes were always a coin toss between being a tireless, invincible god of combat and a useless ornament that relied entirely on the support of allies he couldn't count on having. He needed something<span style="font-style: italic">stranger</span>... and then he found it.<br/><br/>DIABOLIST<br/>"A versatile master of forbidden magic, the diabolist requires neither training nor study to wield her dark power, merely sacrifice and the constitution to survive her own reckless sacraments."<br/><br/>The expanded description promised more; with poor armor options but impressive hit points, a diabolist was built to fight up close and turn damage inflicted on itself, often<span style="font-style: italic">by</span>itself, to its advantage. It could summon expendable minions, steal life from its enemies (and allies, he gleefully noted), blast groups or focus on single targets comfortably... he tried to find some kind of catch, but there was nothing. No weakness the class couldn't overcome at the cost of some vaguely defined price. It even fit his race, which was not particularly surprising given the theme, but it did validate his opinion that evil was simply the best way to "win" any game that allowed for it. He skimmed through a few hundred other classes just to be certain he wasn't missing something even better, reached "Cheesewright" without being impressed, and returned to where he had begun. Diabolist it was.<br/><br/>Clothing appeared over his body - a dark, tattered robe that clung loosely to his massive figure and reached nearly to the ground, topped by a spiked, semi-circular collar that felt like it was crafted from sharpened bones. Sinister totems hung from hooked straps along his waist, as did the sheath of a wickedly curved knife, which he drew out of curiosity. It was so dull that he could have gripped it blade-first without risking injury to himself. Typical.<br/><br/>Another step brought him to a prompt that allowed him to alter his appearance with a window that acted like a mirror, but without the grounding physicality of an actual pane of glass in front of him. David nearly jumped at the first sight of his "reflection". He was<span style="font-style: italic">terrifying</span>, and the realism only made things worse. Were it not for his own disarming expression, he could have honestly believed he was staring at an actual monster. He made a couple of faces at himself to be sure it was really him, and then in one of the most surreal experiences he'd underwent since this strange dream began, made his actual face. It took a while to get used to and he had to navigate through more styles of mohawk than any sane person should have ever needed, but by the end of it he was quite into it all, practicing predatory grins and applying war paint with confidence. Once he was sure he could send a grown man fleeing with a glance, he was ready to move on.<br/><br/>IS THIS INFORMATION CORRECT?<br/><br/>Yes. Absolutely. The thought of revisiting those lists made him shudder, and really, who<span style="font-style: italic">wouldn't</span>want to try being a gnoll just once?<br/><br/>YOU MUST CHOOSE A NAME<br/><br/>He hesitated for a moment. "David" was hardly fitting, and while he didn't particularly care what a bunch of NPCs called him, even such a trifling thing felt worth some thought if he was going to literally<span style="font-style: italic">be</span>the character of his own creation. After thinking and rethinking a few ideas, he said it aloud.<br/><br/>"Yiathahak." As he anticipated, his voice was completely foreign to him, but he had chosen well - he could pronounce the strange word with ease, and it sounded natural coming from the mouth of an imposing hyena-man. Undaunted, the prompt took his vocalization as an answer, and one confirmation later he could see his freedom at long last.<br/><br/>A bright flash blinded him before his eyes even had the opportunity to adjust, and... he found himself in yet another cave. This time, his exit was visibly blocked by a red screen where three others - a dwarf, human, and some off-colour mostly-human he'd likely skipped over the stats of - seemed to have gathered. He stepped forwards to tower over the group from behind, and was about to speak when he noticed the text above the barrier. It spared him the need to ask any questions, and so he did as it suggested - he waited, whether for the barrier to disappear or someone else to speak up. Idly, he both hoped he wouldn't be mistaken for an enemy despite looking so obviously evil, and wondered what would happen if a fight broke out in the waiting room. Best not to be the aggressor, he figured.