-"Welcome to New Earth"

Li Wei opened his eyes and found himself standing in the middle of a small room. He calmly examined this new environment, in front of him was a giant screen with these words. The room was empty, except for the screen, a door on his left and a bed behind him.

The screen quickly continued to play accompanied by an epic background music:

- "Greetings human, welcome to New Earth. Zero, a once flourishing planet is now at the mercy of monsters. Humans once ruled most of the planet, but greed is the root of all evil, they could not be satisfied with what they had and the great empires fought each other. After countless wars, when humans were at their weakest, came the other races; the elves, the dwarves, the mermaids... all tried to expand their territories and 10 years later came the invasion of monsters from other worlds "

- "Realising their mistakes, humans unified themselves and with this accumulation of power, they were able to resist the assault of monsters. But it was too late and more than 75% of the population perished in all these wars, now only 10 empires are still standing."

- "Zero is now ruled by monsters, each race can only defend their own territories. It is a land full of mysteries and magic, the possibilities are endless, it is up to you to make you of your own ingenuity, skills, and talents to survive in this world. Be it exploring, fighting, crafting... everything is possible. You choose your own destiny, Zero is waiting for you"

This was undoubtedly the usual introduction texts one would see when opening a game for the first time. It was very vague but could still bring excitement to the heart of the players.

A bright light suddenly shone in front of the door and a young lady appeared. With one look, one could say she wasn't human. To begin with, she was floating above the ground and coming from behind her back were 2 white angelic wings. Apart from this, she was the epitome of beauty, the gentle type of beauty from which you could not help but steal a glance. She was wearing a long white dress and her blonde hair came up to her waist. She calmly looked towards Li Wei,

-"Greetings Li Wei"

Li Wei was mesmerized by the sudden appearance of the beauty, but he quickly got himself together and answered:

-"Hello sister, may I know who you are?"

-"I am Gaia, the person in charge of New Earth. I came to help you understand your situation before sending you to Zero."

-"Alright, but I think that I don’t need the tutorial, I have played enough MMORPGs in my life for that. Isn’t this one similar to the others?"

-"Indeed, the storyline and goal are similar to the ones you played before, but there are also new additions and unique features. So please bear with me while I explain but since you seem to be familiar with MMORPGs, I will skip the usual part. What is special about New Earth is its realism, you are absolutely free to do any actions you want. For example when fighting, you are not restricted to the given move sets but can also derive your own moves and combos. You can also use your environment to your advantage. NPCs are also given personalities and can think, they are not brainless figures that constantly repeat the same thing. To further stimulate reality, you will also feel pain and fatigue if you fight for too long, there is also...”

“New Earth will also constantly be evolving so you should continuously improve yourself and become stronger. Naturally, the system will assist you to some extent at the beginning, but things will become harder as time goes by."

-"I understand. It is not very different from the virtual reality games I’ve read about,"

-"More or less, yes. Before you ask me any more questions, please create your own character. Have a look at the screen!"

At that moment, the screen flickered and displayed a 3D hologram of Li Wei. It was identical to the real one. The human figure was 177cm tall with black hair and dark brown eyes. There was a timer at the top left of the screen indicating 1:50:59 and next to the character were written:

Name: ???

Race: Human

Level: 1 (0/500)

Class: None

Title: None

HP: 60/60

MP: 50/50

Strength: 6

Dexterity: 7

Vitality: 6

Intelligence: 5

Wisdom: 6

Stat Points available: 2

Skills: None

[Information]

Increasing strength increases the physical damage inflicted per strike and physical resistance.

Increasing dexterity increases the attack speed, reaction speed, and movement speed

Increasing Vitality increases the amount of HP, HP is calculated by Vitality*10

Increasing Intelligence increases the amount of MP, MP is calculated by Intelligence*10

Increasing Wisdom increases the magical damage inflicted per spell and magic resistance.

You were granted 2 bonus stat points since you are using a Middle-Class capsule. Please allocate them to your desired stat.

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Li Wei did not know it yet, but his attributes were pretty good. In average people would obtain a total of 25 starting points based on their physique. But Li Wei obtained 30, this was due to his diligent work at keeping a fit body by doing some training every day. Although he wasn't muscular, he was in decent shape. As for the bonus stat points, the Middle-class capsules gave 2, the High-class capsules gave 4 while VIP capsules gave 6 bonus points. It wasn't much but it was just one of the advantages the difference in capsules provided.

-"This is your character, please choose a name and allocate your stat points. You can also make some changes to your appearance, but we won't tolerate a distorted appearance, we can only allow up to 5% change in appearance. "

-"Ok, got it. However, can I have more information about the game before I do my customization. I know about the different classes, but I would like to have more specific information before allocating my points."

-"Of course, that's understandable. First use your index and do a downward motion; it will open up an interface. From that, you can access your storage and find an item titled "Basic Information". It contains all information about the lore, the different classes, and some advices. There is also a small guide attached to it, it was made by a group of Beta testers."

Li Wei quickly did what she told him to do and pressed the icon of "Basic Information." It turned into holographic pages that floated in front of him.

-"You can take your time and read through the information, every player is given a buffer period of 2 hours before starting the game. As you can see at the top of the screen there is a timer showing how long is left before the start. You can do whatever you want as long as everything is ready when it reaches zero. Additionally, you can also access the forum through your interface, it is useful if you want to ask questions or discuss with other players. With that I will be going. Just say my name if you need more information. I will also come back 5 minutes before the end of the countdown for the last-minute review."

After that, she slowly became transparent, she made a smile and then completely disappeared.

Li Wei did not lose time, he quickly sat on the bed and started reading through the information. Even though he had 2 hours available that wasn't enough if he wanted to correctly plan his path. Li Wei did not like to face the unknown, he liked to always plan ahead, such was his nature but he had to admit that this situation was quite exciting.

Being an experienced player, Li Wei did not need long to get the information he needed, and it was quite disappointing. Upon reaching level 5, players could choose between 6 main classes namely Warrior, Paladin, Mage, Ranger, Rogue and Priest.

They were common classes in RPGs. Li Wei had a lot of experience playing and knew which stat to prioritize in each class. He did not really mind which class to play but since he was a solo player, he was more inclined towards Rogue that usually walk alone or a balanced class like Warrior.

"Never mind, let's decide after reading the forum. I might find something interesting there."

Unfortunately, he found nothing interesting, the forum was full of posts like "Excited for New Earth", "Let's go save Zero", "Why can't we change race... I wanted to be an elf”, ...

Disappointed, Li Wei resumed reading the rest of the information, especially the beginner guide compiled by the Beta Testers. It contained some information about the beginner's village. But since the play time was short, they themselves did not get a lot of insight in the game. Out of the 5000 Beta Testers, none of them were able to leave the beginner's village; the highest-level player was named Shadow Tiger and only reached level 8 after the one-week playtest.

30 minutes before the end of the countdown, Li Wei finally stood up and approached the screen. He decided that upon reaching level 5, he would go with Warrior, facing the unknown, it was better to have a balanced character. He then decisively added the 2 points to Strength before he started doubting his choice again.

He then made some minor modification to his character, just enough so that people won't directly recognize him; longer nose, bigger eyes, lighter skin tone, slight changes to his body profile. Li Wei wasn't especially good-looking. You could say he was slightly above average, and so was his new look, he did not really mind his appearance so only slightly changed it. He liked to be alone sometimes; Li Wei wasn't a loner and actually socialize quite well, but he did enjoy the time he spent alone playing his games.

"And now all that's left is the hardest, finding a good name..."

"There is still 20 minutes left. Let's read the lore, maybe I will find some inspirations"

The lore wasn't very interesting, it only vaguely described each war that happened, how some heroes rose up from the masses but ended up falling in battle. In the Dominion Empire, only 1 Guardian Hero is still alive and is now the Grand Commander of the royal army. It had to be known that each person's provided "Basic Information" was different. Since each player would spawn in different villages in different empires, each player was given the lore of his empire and in the case of Li Wei, it was the Dominion Empire.

-"Hello again Li Wei"

-"Ahh it's you, I did not expect time to pass so quickly"

Gaia chuckled and quickly said, "I see that you have not yet chosen your character's name, is there an issue?"

-"Not really, it is just the lack of inspiration and the names I tried were all already taken, so..."

She smiled "I understand. But if you do not find anything before the end of the countdown, I will have to allocate you a name of my choice"

"That will be my pleasure," answered Li Wei while stealing a glance at Gaia's face to see her reaction.

However, the latter remained expressionless.

-"Anyway, let me give you some information. You won't directly be sent to Zero, this is because you are too weak, consider it a tutorial period. All players will be sent to different Beginner's towns and these towns reside in a different dimension to Zero, once you reach level 10, you will finally be able to enter the open environment of Zero. This isolation method was used to prevent Beta Testers from getting too much of a lead over other players. Players will be allocated according to their residence's location. Since you were living in Beijing before the disaster, your starting town will be ‘Little Root Town’."

-"Is there a difference between the Beginner's town?"

-"No, they are all identical, this is just to avoid the traffic of players at the beginning. There will be about 5000 players per town. There will be lots of opportunities for you to gain experience and equipment during this tutorial. However, you will be forced to leave the beginner's town when reaching level 10 if you want to continue your adventure and let me tell you that Zero's environment will be much harsher. So, you should take advantage and familiarise yourself with your character."

-"Got it. Is there anything else I need to know?"

"That's it, Zero is meant to be discovered by the players, it will ruin the fun if I give you too much information. And... your time is almost up," said Gaia while pointing towards the screen. The timer was still slowly decreasing with only 15 seconds left

Li Wei was startled, he looked at his hand and found that they were slowly becoming transparent, actually his whole body was starting to disappear... but then a thought passed through his mind "Oh crap! I still don't have a name"

-"This is farewell... Best of luck Li Wei... ah no... from now on your name shall be... Seven"

-"Seven? What kind of name is that? "

-" Well I am just an AI... and you are the seventh person to whom I am bestowing a name" Gaia smiled while saying that, she then chuckled and waved her hand in sign of goodbye.

And at that moment, the timer finally reached 0:0:0. This was the last thing Li Wei saw before completely disappearing.