I woke up to the smell of dirt.
It was a rich, damp smell, mixed with the sharp scent of pine needles. For a moment, my brain, still stuck on the phantom memory of screeching tires, couldn't process it. Then I felt the tickle of a blade of grass against my cheek. I opened my eyes.
Sunlight, dappled and golden, filtered through a thick canopy of leaves high above me. I was lying in a small clearing, surrounded by trees so tall they seemed to be holding up the sky. Birds were chirping, a gentle breeze rustled the branches, and somewhere nearby, I could hear the sound of running water. It was aggressively peaceful.
I sat up, expecting the usual chorus of pops and creaks from my spine. Nothing. I felt... good. Better than good. I felt like one of those "after" pictures in a posture-correction ad. My limbs moved with an unfamiliar ease, and when I took a deep breath, my lungs filled with clean, crisp air instead of the stale, recycled stuff from my apartment. Anat wasn't kidding about the new body. This hardware was a serious upgrade.
I pushed myself to my feet and looked down. I was wearing simple brown trousers, a loose linen shirt, and sturdy-looking leather boots. It was classic Level 1 peasant gear, straight out of every fantasy RPG Iâd ever played. It was all so⦠predictable. I almost expected a talking owl to land on my shoulder and start the tutorial.
Thatâs when it happened.
A soft, electronic ding sounded in my head, and a translucent blue screen materialized in front of my face. It hovered there, about two feet away, clear as day.
[Welcome to Avaris, Stephen!]
[Class: Novice]
[Level: 1]
There it was. The UI. No frills, no fancy graphics, just clean, functional text. A part of me, the part that had spent a lifetime staring at screens, felt an immediate sense of comfort. This, I understood.
I focused my thoughts, trying to will the interface to do something. Status.
The screen shimmered and changed.
[Name: Stephen]
[Race: Human]
[Class: Novice]
[Level: 1]
[HP: 20/20]
[MP: 10/10]
[Stats]
[Strength: 5]
[Agility: 5]
[Stamina: 5]
[Intelligence: 5]
[Wisdom: 5]
[Luck: 5]
[Unspent Stat Points: 0]
Stolen story; please report.
Pathetic. Utterly, completely pathetic. A flat-five spread. The kind of base stats you get on a character you plan to delete in five minutes. It figured. A new world, same old grind from the bottom.
Skills, I thought, my cynicism already bubbling to the surface. I braced myself for a list of equally useless starting abilities. Maybe [Punch] or [Look Around].
The screen changed again. And my heart sank. The list was almost empty.
[Skills]
[System's Favor (Unique)]
That was it. Just the one. The so-called "small gift" from the goddess. My gut feeling in that void had been right. It was probably some useless passive skill that gives me a slightly higher chance to find loose change. I sighed, the sound loud in the quiet forest. Might as well see what kind of joke Anat had played on me.
I focused on the line of text. Details.
The description expanded, and I read the words. Then I read them again. And a third time, just to make sure my brain wasn't short-circuiting from the whole dying-and-being-reborn thing.
[System's Favor (Unique)]
A boon from a benevolent goddess. The System is biased in your favor.
Effect 1: The concept of a 'level cap' does not apply to you.
Effect 2: The concept of a 'stat cap' does not apply to you.
Effect 3: Through focused, repeated action, new skills can be generated and evolved.
I stood there, frozen, staring at the blue screen. The birds kept chirping. The wind kept rustling the leaves. The world went on, oblivious to the fact that its fundamental laws had just been handed to me on a platter, completely and utterly broken.
This wasn't a "small gift." This wasn't a "boon."
This was a developer tool. It was an admin command. It was a world-breaking, game-destroying, reality-shattering cheat.
No level caps. In every game Iâd ever played, the endgame was defined by the level cap. Level 99. Level 100. That was the finish line. It created a semblance of balance. But for me? There was no finish line. I could go to level 101. Level 1,000. Level a million. The very idea was absurd.
No stat caps. This was even worse. Or better. Way better. Most systems had a hard limit. 255, 999, whatever. It kept a single character from becoming a god of strength or speed. But me? If I put a million points into Strength, I would have a million points of Strength. The potential wasn't high; it was literally infinite.
And the last one. The one that tied it all together. Create new skills through focused, repeated actions. I didn't need to find a master swordsman to teach me how to fight. If I swung a stick enough times, the System would just give me a sword skill. If I practiced sneaking around, Iâd get a stealth skill. I could build my own class, my own skill set, perfectly tailored and optimized from the ground up, without ever being limited by a pre-set class tree.
The cynical, world-weary gamer inside me went quiet. He was replaced by the cold, calculating min-maxer who had spent 80,000 hours looking for exactly this kind of exploit.
Anat, the beautiful, smiling goddess, hadn't given me a head start. Sheâd given me the keys to the entire kingdom. She had pointed me at a game and essentially said, "Have fun. By the way, God Mode is enabled."
A slow smile spread across my face. It probably looked predatory. Out of place in this tranquil forest.
Okay. Avaris. Let's see what this game is made of.