"What kind of character shall I create this time?"
As he sat in front of the computer, he shook out his frizzy hair and stretched his fingers.
With a few deft taps on the keyboard, a familiar interface appeared on the screen, casting a warm glow over his face.
After entering his login credentials, the words "WORLD ver.3.0" appeared briefly before giving way to the image of two characters.
As he gazed at the monitor, he saw a young boy dozing off on a thick log, and a sniper holding a bright blue rifle.
A slightly faded gauntlet lay near the young boy, while a magic circle slowly rotated over the gun barrel of the sniper's rifle.
He leaned back in his chair, contemplating the characters before him.
These two men were the avatars of a game he had created and nurtured.
The game, called WORLD, was renowned for its ever-changing worldview and timeline, and its goal of being an open-world single-player experience.
He couldn't help but feel a sense of pride in his creation, as he let go of the mouse and continued to ponder.
As he sat in front of the computer, he was both playing the game and developing new characters with each update.
He had greatly enjoyed the game in its previous versions, and now in version 3.0, he was eager to create a new character.
He leaned forward in his chair, deep in thought.
He had already decided on the type of character he wanted to create: a Wizard.
The allure of the colorful magic circles, powerful spells, and versatility that could not be found in any other profession in WORLD was too great to resist.
He had become so enamored with magic while playing his previous character, a Magic musketeer, that he had invested too much in the magical abilities, resulting in a "Ruined Character".
Through this experience, he learned the difference between being all-powerful and being incompetent, and this time he was determined to create a wizard character with a singular focus.
With this in mind, he quickly grabbed the mouse and pressed the "Create Character" button.
With determination, he opened the character creation window and carefully selected the initial talents for his new wizard character.
He knew that by putting the main emphasis on magic talent, he could avoid creating an ambiguous character.
"Then, let's begin," he murmured to himself as he quickly set the character's appearance and age.
He then moved on to the talent distribution window, pouring all of the given stats into magic-related skills.
"Magic reserve, control ability, computational power… I can't neglect mana sensitivity," he thought as he allocated the points.
The finished character was truly unique.
On a 30-point scale, the magic-related stats hovered around 25-27, while the physical body-related stats barely reached 3 or 4, resulting in a character that looked like a walking corpse.
The character on the screen, dressed in clothes resembling a patient's uniform, had a pale complexion.
However, he gazed at the monitor for a long time with a dissatisfied expression and then moved the mouse again, ready to make adjustments and fine-tune his creation.
As he scrolled through the stats window, he focused on the attribute column and clicked to reveal the available options.
These attributes, which can be given to a character's innate constitution, talent, or special ability, require a significant amount of skill to add.
Normally, players simply choose one or two useful traits and move on, but he disregarded this approach and continued to scroll through the list.
As he did, the useful traits such as preemptive delay and blue blood disappeared, replaced by traits written in bright red.
These traits, such as chronic headaches, depletion of magic power, and sexual dysfunction, seemed to penalize the character, but he, having played the game twice, understood their purpose.
With a serious expression, he selected a few of the less beneficial traits and added them to his character.
"Add insomnia, mana addiction, overuse… even Life span reduction doesn't matter," he said.
It was an unusual choice to add negative traits to a character that would be played directly, but surprisingly, each time he added one of the bright red characteristics, the remaining distribution ability, which he thought had been exhausted, began to increase slightly.
The ‘Karma System' in WORLD allows players to add penalties to their characters in exchange for increased abilities and talents.
This system opens up new possibilities for character creation, allowing players to break away from traditional limitations.
He had never used the karma system before, but this time he was determined to push the boundaries of his character's concept as far as possible.
As he scrolled through the list of available penalties, he carefully selected those that would enhance his character's magic abilities, such as insomnia and mana addiction.
He knew that these penalties would come with negative effects, such as chronic headaches and a shortened lifespan, but it was a small price to pay for the increased power his character would wield.
With a satisfied smile, he pressed the button to complete his character's creation.
The thought of exploring the vast world of magic with this uniquely talented character was thrilling.
Even the loading screen as the character was created was exciting.
He set the character's name and background at random, eagerly awaiting the journey ahead.
“……”
As he waited for the loading to finish, his eyes drifted to the bottom of the screen where a game tip phrase appeared.
The phrase was particularly bothersome to him. It read:
[The first is a coincidence. The second is inevitable. The third is fate.]
[All three updates were recorded for this moment.]
[Accept your fate]
He muttered to himself in confusion, "What is this…"
Suddenly, a flash of black light engulfed the entire room, devouring every trace of the person and leaving behind thick dust as if they had never existed.
