“Entering World of Damakar. At what spawn point would you like to start? Beware that your choice of spawn point will be a one time choice, and your retrat-summon will be locked to your starting region. Would you like to review you spawn point possibilities?”

Led was now suddenly hovering over the planet of Damakar, as if he was an astronaut chilling in space and looking down on the world. Except for the fact that the world was visible colour coded showing the different regions that was available for choosing. The major cities were also named in big bold letters, something Led doubted astronauts could see when looking down on earth.

Since Led knew where he was going he could skip the whole process of figuring out the best place to start his new life in Damakar. He couldn’t remember the last time he did something so guided with no prior research. He hadn’t picked the game for himself, although he would’ve if he could’ve. It was Dan however that had made sure he got to play the game from release. What was weirder for Led was that he hadn’t had a choice in neither the class nor race he was going to play. He had even locked himself to the class even if he decided to abandon the class on his first day of playing it. Now, Led couldn’t even pick his starting city. This might’ve been the least of Led’s worries, but somehow the fact that his glass was getting fuller and fuller strained his analysing nature. If this went on, he might actually go on tilt.

“Oh well, at least I should have free reign on how to play this class.” Led had to remind himself, the lack of control he had of the situation was apparently gnawing on his mind more than he first had expected. He also noted to himself that it would’ve probably taken him a longer time to save up the money for his own VR-Helmet, than the one month class-change ban. Led let it all go and stated to the computer.

“I’d like to start in Eldegaard, city of Stenland, please”.

“Please say confirm if you would like to start in Eldegaard, city of Stenland.” As the computer repeated what Led just had said, the world had zoomed into a bird eye view of the land of Stenland. It looked as normal as a fantasy-world would look, it even looked normal for regular earth.

“Confirm.”

As the last syllable left Led’s lips he was engulfed in millions of small light particles. It looked as it was devouring him from the tip of his toes and quickly climbing up his legs. In a matter of seconds he was completely surrounded and his vision was only that of the light from the particles. And then, just as if someone had flipped on a light, he was standing outside in a meadow looking at a bustling city some stone throws away.

Led had expected to be flown down to the city from his astronaut view, as if an alien who was crash landing. Instead they had done the old blindfold trick on him and instantly summoned him instead.

As he looked around he had to remind himself that he was in a game, it all felt so real he couldn’t believe it. He had to argue for the fact that it wasn’t a game and that he had simply been transported by the game, but when he realized he had a health bar hovering in the corner of his vision he conceded that it really was a game. Still, the feel of the air on his skin, the crunch under his boots as he made his way towards the city were as if he truly was outside somewhere on earth.

“Eva, can you show me my stats please”. Led was glad he got to test both the Eva command and check his stats at the same time. As he asked a picture appeared in front of him hovering just an arm's length from his face.

World Of Damakar Class: Trickster Priest Name: Led Health 1000 Race: Serpent Mana 500 Known Race treats Strength 10 Intelligence 10 Magic Resistance Wisdom 10 Ectothermic Dexterity 10 Hard Skinned Endurance 10 Infrared Sensitivity Luck: 5 Vibration Sensitivity Venomous Skills Skill lvl Known Weaknesses Trickster Priest Heal 1/100 Instant Heal 1/100 Weak HoT 1/100 Weak spot Fire sensitive Light magic sensitive

“Hmmm, this looks standard enough”. Led thought to himself. “Everything seems so orderly, I wonder if every character starts with the same base stats."

Led double checked his race treats and pondered on the skills he had. This was a powerful early game healer, the [ Trickster Priest Heal ] was pretty decent for a starting healing skill. On top of that he got an

[ Instant heal ] and a [ HoT ], meaning healing over time! He understood the greatness of the early game trickster priest. He guessed that no other healing class was able to start with more than one, or at most two, healing spells. And he guessed that no one was as powerful as these spells this early.

“This class should be played by everyone!” Led thought. Why weren’t every healer just picking this class? It had all you needed for a healer, and more. He could see himself lead a 10 man group with these spells. Well, not quite. Since it seems that he had no offensive skills, he would need to rely on physical attacks or his teammates.

“Eva, explain the weakness [ Weak ] please.” As commanded the pleasant lady from the intro part spoke to him, but this time she came from his mind and not from an outside source. Led guessed that this meant only he could hear her.

“The weakness means that there is a limit to how many point you can put into strength each level up. There are however no upper limit as with all other stats. [ Weak ] also means that your physical attacks with a weapon, ranged or melee, will automatically do half the damage of what someone without the weakness would do.” The lady said.

Led thought about that for a second. This class might be more tricky after all. He could basically do no damage, even with a bow or a slingshot. He could get a wand, he guessed, but those were expensive or hard to get by. I need to ask Dan when I can expect to get some damage spells, considering I might not get to group with them after he was done helping his group.

Speaking of which, I should group up with Dan as soon as possible. Led wanted to test out Eva again, so this time he only thought of the command to see if he could do it in his mind instead of voice activating it.

“Eva, please contact Shadow Leaf”. Led thought, if this worked he could use Eva to ask more basic question without outing himself to people his intentions. Led also knew Dans character name as Dan had said he had transferred his beta account to the live version. When asked, the voice again sprung to life and answered in his head.

“Contacting Shadow Leaf. Contact established.” Led was pleased that he could activate Eva with only his thoughts.

“Hey Led! Groundbreaking name you got there!” Dan showed himself in a little window, also floating in eye level in front of Dan. “Wow! What the hell? What race are you? Did you pick Serpent?!” Dans disgust clearly showed on his face.

Dan wondered if that really was an issue for Dan. It was a game after all, who cared how anyone looked like. Not all races were as beautiful as the Elf race. Led took a look at his character screen, he looked like a normal human being actually. Besides that fact that he had scales instead of skin and was a colour of smeared dark ash. He really looked as if he had done just that, smeared ash all over its skin. He also had snake eyes that were in a dark tone of red, which Led guessed made him seem pretty off putting. Snake pupils would take a bit of time to get used to as they were just black slits instead of irises, but it didn’t really freak him out as much. In fact he thought it was cool that he was looking at himself as another creature, that was half the fun of virtual reality wasn’t it?

“Yeah, it seemed like the best option for this class, is that a problem?”

“Ah, I guess not. I’ll have to warn the females in the group though! They might faint if they see you looking like that without a warning first.”

It seemed as though Dan was both serious and joking at the same time, Led really couldn’t read Dan, but again he brushed it off as just a personality quirk.

“Hah yeah, you do that. Say Dan, did you ever play shadow priest during beta?”

“No. I played around mostly with the damage dealing classes, I did play with a lot of people playing the class though. It was quite popular for a period when a beta-tester discovered the powerful early game heals”.

“Ok, do you know how they survived the early game with no damage dealing spells?”

“What? You don’t have the [ Trick shot ]? It wasn’t the best of spells but it was ok enough for a healer.”

“No, I don’t. What spells do you remember the trickster priest started with?”

“Hmmm, I remember it being a heal and the [ HoT ] spell, you got those?”

“Yeah, those I got. I also got [ Instant heal ], but no [Trick shot ]”.

“Really? You got another healing spell?!” Dan sounded excited now. “That’s awesome! We can do the dungeon even earlier now! I’ll invite you to the group, we should level up as soon as possible, the faster you get to level 5 the better.”

“What happens at level 5?” Led was intrigued that Dan was suddenly so upbeat. He always seemed like the person who had everything in control and never showed unnecessary emotions, perhaps his gamer personality was starting to show?

“Ah, you’ll see. It’s a spell we need to conquer a tricky dungeon, well, more a section of a dungeon that we struggled with in beta. I’ll explain it later. I’ll invite you to our group, come meet us in the field northwest for the city. You should start with some basic gear, so no need to browse the city for goods, let’s just start grinding levels”.

“Sure! I’ll be there soon”.

As Led shut down his communication with Dan he got an group invite, Led accepted and started to walk in the direction where Dan had wanted them to meet. Led could see the other 5 group members as dots on the minimap each in different places around the city also started to move towards the field.

As Led walked he asked Eva about all the skills and race treats, as well as the weaknesses. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to get any other info from Eva that he had already researched. This was a bit of a disappointment as he really didn’t need Eva to just read him the skills. He could do that easily by himself, and he could activate all of his skills by just thinking it, no need for Eva the middleman, or lady. Led wondered if he should just disable Eva as he didn’t see any use for her.

“I’ll just keep you around Eva since you were so helpful in the intro stages”.

“Error, did not understand command from >, please rephrase or say another command”.

“Don’t push it”. Led thought, he still wanted to keep her around for a bit to see if he could use her.

As Led got closer he could see a group of people standing in a circle listening to a tall human raced blade master. Hovering over his head was the name Shadow Leaf, as Dan had called himself.

“Ah, here is the slowpoke himself. Group, meet the man who will be our healer for the next days, this is Led as some of you know from school.”