The Hall of Heroes was a massive grand pantheon designed to make new players feel like they were stepping into a grand epic.
Towering marble statues of the primary classes loomed over the spawn platform. They were bathed in an ethereal golden light.
To Sebastian's left stood the Guardian. The statue was clad in impenetrable plate armor and held a shield the size of a blast door.
To his right was the Archmage. Its robes billowed in an unseen wind and its staff crackled with simulated lightning. Further down were the Assassins and the Rangers and the Clerics.
They were magnificent. But to Sebastian's traumatized eyes they were entirely useless!
He walked past the grand statues without a second glance. He completely ignored the majestic swelling orchestral music that urged him to choose a path of glory.
In his past life he had seen what happened to the meta classes. The Guardians with all their armor and damage mitigation were crushed into paste by the Void Titans. Those monsters ignored physical defense!
The Archmages relied on long cast times and structured spell formations. They had their throats slit by Phase Spiders before they could even finish their incantations.
The established classes were rigid. They had strict progression trees.
If you were a Warrior you couldn't learn high tier teleportation magic. If you were a Mage you couldn't wield a greatsword without severe stat penalties. The system was designed to force players into parties and dependencies.
Sebastian didn't want to depend on anyone. People died. People mutated. People betrayed you!
He needed to be a one man apocalypse.
He walked to the very back of the hall where the golden light didn't quite reach. There sitting in the shadows was a crumbling unadorned pedestal.
There was no grand statue upon it. It was just a ragged tattered cloak draped over a wooden training dummy.
[Class Information]
↳ Name: The Drifter
↳ Base Stats: 10 Strength, 10 Agility, 10 Intelligence, 10 Vitality.
↳ Class Perks: None.
↳ Description: A master of nothing bound by no rules. The Drifter may learn any skill and equip any item but receives zero innate bonuses.
On the forums the Drifter was considered a joke. It was a trash class designed for roleplayers or masochists.
Without the innate damage boosts of the specialized classes a Drifter would quickly fall behind in damage output by level 10. They were the ultimate jack of all trades but master of none.
But Sebastian wasn't going to be a master of none. With his Nexus Glitch he was going to be the master of everything!
He reached out and placed his hand on the wooden dummy.
"I select the Drifter." He stated clearly.
[SYSTEM WARNING: The Drifter class is considered highly sub optimal. You will receive no starting skills and no passive bonuses. Are you sure you wish to proceed?]
"Confirm."
The ragged cloak dissolved into motes of gray light and wrapped around his digital avatar. His starting clothes shifted into a set of plain durable leather and cloth. There was no flashy armor or glowing weapons. Just the bare minimum.
[CLASS SELECTED. INITIATING TALENT DRAW.]
Because he had no class perks the system was programmed to offer a random universal talent to compensate. A massive holographic roulette wheel materialized in front of him.
It was sectioned into thousands of tiny slivers of color. Most were white for Common and a few were green for Uncommon. A tiny fraction were gold for Legendary.
But there was one microscopic sliver of shifting corrupted black!
Chaos tier.
Sebastian watched with cold detachment as the wheel began to spin. Normally this was the moment players prayed to whatever digital god listened.
Sebastian just stared. His eyes tracked the blur of colors. He had survived the end of the world. A roulette wheel didn't intimidate him.
The wheel slowed. Click... Click... Click...
The ticker clacked against the pins. It bypassed a Gold sliver and slid over a dozen Whites. Slowly and miraculously it ticked to a stop directly on the sliver of shifting corrupted black!
[CHAOS TALENT DRAWN: FORBIDDEN ALCHEMY]
A jolt of dark energy shot through his avatar's veins. He opened his character menu to read the description.
[Talent Information]
↳ Name: Forbidden Alchemy (Passive)
↳ Grade: Chaos
↳ Description: Your body is an endless crucible. You no longer suffer from Potion Sickness or Digestion Cooldowns. You may consume any alchemical item to instantly regain Health or Mana bypassing all consumption limits.
Sebastian let out a short sharp bark of laughter. It was a cold humorless sound.
In a normal playthrough this talent was good but not game breaking. Potions were expensive and players rarely had the funds to spam them endlessly.
But for Sebastian? It was the final piece of the puzzle!
It meant that as long as he had items in his inventory his mana pool was effectively infinite. He could spam skills that would normally drain a high level Archmage dry in seconds!
"Perfect. Haha" He laughed as he closed the interface. "Send me in."
[Login Confirmed. Transporting to Novice Village #109.]
The world shifted and Sebastian materialized in the center of a chaotic bustling cobblestone square.
The noise hit him like a physical blow. Novice Village 109 was packed shoulder to shoulder with thousands of players.
They were running around like headless chickens. They shouted for groups and harassed the local guards and marveled at the realistic physics of the game by picking up apples and throwing them at each other.
"Looking for group for Level 1 Slime Farm! Need a tank!" A heavily armored player yelled.
"How do I open the menu? Guys how do I open the menu?!" Someone else panicked.
Sebastian stood perfectly still amidst the swirling tide of naive enthusiasm. To them this was the ultimate playground. A vacation from the grim reality of 2077.
To Sebastian looking at their smiling faces he only saw walking corpses!
When the Great Merge happened ninety percent of these people would die screaming because they treated the mechanics like a game instead of a survival manual.
He didn't waste time feeling pity. He pulled up his inventory. He had exactly 50 copper coins. The standard starter stipend.
He moved through the crowd with the fluid pragmatic grace of a veteran assassin. He turned his shoulders to slip through tight gaps without breaking his stride.
He ignored the Village Chief who was currently swarmed by a hundred players trying to pick up the slime starter quest. He ignored the Blacksmith offering rusty swords.
He headed down a narrow dirty alleyway toward a dilapidated tent that smelled faintly of sulfur and cheap ink. This was the general magic vendor. It was a grumpy non player character named Silas who catered to the Mages.
Silas looked up from his ledger. He sneered at Sebastian's plain Drifter clothes. "You don't look like you have the coin for the arcane arts boy."
"Show me your trash tier." Sebastian demanded. His tone brokered no argument.
The vendor blinked. He was taken aback by the sheer authority in the level 1 player's voice. Silas grumbled and pulled out a dusty moth eaten crate from beneath his counter.
Sebastian sorted through the garbage. Minor Heal. Basic Strike. Mud Ball.
His eyes landed on a crumbling poorly bound tome. Basic Spark. It cost 45 copper.
It was the weakest offensive spell in the game. It dealt a pathetic 5 to 10 points of fire damage. It had a one second cast time and a range of maybe five feet.
Mages only bought it because it was a prerequisite for learning Fireball at level 5.
Sebastian handed over 45 of his 50 copper coins. He didn't bargain. He just took the book and shoved it into his inventory and turned on his heel.
He had exactly 5 copper left to his name. He had no armor and no weapons and a spell that couldn't kill a rat in one hit.
He walked out of the village gates and left the screaming crowds behind.
______
The outskirts of Novice Village 109 were a rolling expanse of idyllic green plains.
Hundreds of players were currently chasing after low level slimes and horned rabbits with rusty swords and wooden clubs. The fields looked like a disorganized chaotic medieval warzone fought entirely by toddlers.
Sebastian walked right past them. He didn't draw his weapon because he didn't have one! He just kept walking with his dark eyes fixed on the treeline in the distance.
He pulled the crumbling Basic Spark skill book from his inventory.
In The Ethereal Plane you didn't need to read the books to learn the skills. You just had to crush them.
He closed his fist and the book shattered into a cloud of red glowing particles that absorbed directly into his skin.
[Skill Learned]
↳ Basic Spark (Tier 0 Fire Magic)
↳ Level: 1 / 10
↳ Cost: 5 Mana
↳ Damage: 5 to 10
↳ Proficiency: 0 / 100
Sebastian pulled up his stat sheet. He had 100 maximum mana. That meant he could cast the spell twenty times before needing to sit down and rest.
Normally reaching level 2 of the skill required 100 successful casts. A normal player would spend hours just grinding this one pathetic spell on slimes to see a minor 2 percent increase in damage.
He reached the edge of the plains and stepped into the shadow of the Wailing Woods.
The atmosphere shifted immediately. The bright cheerful sunlight was choked out by towering twisted pines.
The ambient music faded into an eerie unsettling silence. It was broken only by the snapping of twigs and the low guttural growls of predators.
This was a Level 5 zone. New players were explicitly warned by the Village Chief to avoid it until they had a full party and decent gear.
Sebastian was Level 1. He was wearing starter cloth and was utterly alone!
He stopped in a small clearing. It was time to test the Nexus Glitch.
.
.
A/N: Creation is wild, exhausting, and sometimes my brain wants to run away. Power stones are my only bargaining chip to drag it back. If you liked this chapter, toss me one or a few, it helps more than you think.