Chapter 2: Chapter 01 – New Project

Before I knew it, I was standing in a line.

I was surrounded by people wearing a confused look on their face. It seemed like I wasn't the only one who didn't know what was going on.

The man standing in front of me suddenly started to grope his front, patting across his stomach.

"I, I thought I was gonna die...was it just a dream?"

His hand stopped just above his belly before he stared at them.

(Die?)

My mind went back to my last memory.

I was working on an indie game, but I encountered a game-breaking bug less than a month before the release. My bank account was almost empty and my credit cards hardly had any leeway left in them. I spent the last two weeks trying to rewrite a third of the game to get rid of the bug and put the game into a playable form, sacrificing pretty much all my sleep along the way.

I didn't eat much either during then, not like I could afford the time or money it took to go shopping.

I gambled everything on this game. After years of working dead-end jobs, I had enough and wanted to do something I was proud of. The result was the depletion of my life savings as I desperately coded my own game for over a year.

The night before release, I was suffering chest and head pains, but I bulldozed through that, and managed to send the final build to the publisher minutes before the deadline.

After that, nothing came up. I probably fell asleep, but that didn't connect with where I was.

No, in a sense, it did.

The man in front of me clearly thought he was stabbed and was on the verge of dying, but now he's fine and is standing in a mysterious line along with tons of others who are just as confused as we both are.

(I must've died, and now this is the afterlife.)

All I could do was crack a wry smile at the thought. I gambled a year of my life away, and in the end, I died without seeing the fruit of my labours?

It wasn't like I was hoping to get rich and famous, but at least make enough to survive until I could release another game.

Now I wouldn't know if any of my work would've paid off at all. Even if it had, even if it became some sort of impossible smashing success, I wouldn't know.

Well, I would actually. I wasn’t conceited enough to think that such a thing would happen. And I knew my game better than anyone else. It probably would've flopped. The reception to what little advertising I could afford was lukewarm, and the state the game was in at the end was barely playable.

The best I could hope for was paying off my credit card bills and keeping me going long enough to find another dead-end job.

In a sense, it was a relief. Now that I was dead, I didn't have to worry about any of that. I didn't have to go through the crushing humiliation of a year of my life wasted, the thought that the best I could do was virtually dick all.

The line continued to move as I thought to myself.

"She's not here, is she?"

The man in front of me was muttering to himself all this time, his head swivelling around trying to check people out in the line, occasionally returning to hug himself, chewing on his thumbnail.

He must've had a traumatic death if he was acting like this.

It didn't take long before the barren hallway we were following opened up into a large, mostly featureless room. All along the walls were an incredible number of identical doors with a light strip affixed above them. Most of them were red, with a few being unlit. Occasionally one of the red lights turned green, and someone would walk over from the line and enter the door. The light turned red again once it closed.

As I got close to the beginning of the line, I saw a huge man wearing a colourful toga standing guard, guiding each person to the rooms with green lights.

He looked a bit like a friendly police officer I sometimes saw that looked like he lived in a gym when not at work. Well, aside from the toga, at least.

Sometimes people would ask questions or argue with him, but he patiently gave people instructions. When they didn't listen, he dragged them by the arm or collar to one of the green rooms before coming back.

I was pretty curious what was behind the doors. A closer inspection revealed that each one had a plate with a word or two on them, but I couldn't read what was said on them. The script of each was different, and there didn't seem to be any sort of pattern to connect them. It was like each plate was written in a different language.

My curiosity about the doors was growing overwhelming, especially the doors with unlit light bars. It looked like nobody was going into them.

Was it because they weren't currently in use? Or was it a difference reason?

The only way to know was to check for myself, but the guard was paying close attention to everyone in the line.

Not only that, but while I saw tons of people enter the doors, I never saw anyone exit one once. It seemed like people went somewhere else after going through those doors, yet it was strange to think that there was more hallways beyond them. There were simply too many doors, and the architecture needed to make it work was insane.

Then again, if this really was the afterlife, then common sense wouldn't apply, nor logic or physics at that.

A few more minutes pass and I had become second in line, with the fidgeting man being next to dissapear.

Without warning, the giant guard pointed to a green-lit door.

"C'mon, it's your turn"

"Huh? No. What's that?"

The guy started to argue back.

"Sorry, I can't answer your questions. Just calm down and go through that door"

"No way man! How do I know you're not gonna torture me over there?!"

"As long as you stay calm and do as you're told, nothing bad will happen. We accommodate everyone the best we can"

"How can I trust you?! Nobody's come back from those doors!"

I was a little surprised. I didn't think he was in a state of mind to notice that.

"That's because these doors are one way only. You're holding back the line. Please just go through the door"

"Nuh uh. No way! Screw that! I can't trust you at all!"

The man backs away. It looked like he was thinking of making a break for it.

"Whoops, can't have you break the rules"

Faster than I could see, the guard grabbed the man's arm and started to drag him to the aforementioned door.

Despite the scene and everyone staring at the spectacle, the thought that went through my mind first was something quite different.

(This is my only chance)

Without sparing a second thought, I ran while making as little noise as I could towards the first unlit door I saw. I only had one shot at this. While I had no idea what the consequences of my actions would be, I could argue that any punishment they tried to give me for doing this was fundamentally unfair, since there was no indication that I wasn't allowed to do this.

"Hey, wha...?"

Someone noticed and whispered a cry, but I ignored that person. Instead, I quickly reached the door and turned the knob.

It wasn't locked, no was there anything to it beyond what I expected.

Without any hesitation, I slipped past the door and closed it quietly behind me.

The room beyond the door was properly lit, yet there wasn't anyone there.

(Talk about a waste of electricity)

...presuming the lighting was powered with it.

What greeted me was what appeared to be a small office. There was a desk sandwiched between two chairs and a pair of house plants standing in pots in the far corners. I didn't recognize the plants, but that didn't mean much in the first place. The desk was lightly cluttered with some personal belongings and a large crystal orb propped up on a stand.

Aside from the orb, everything on the desk resembled random office toys, but as expected, I didn't recognize a single one. It was like a universal rule that if someone had actually seen your office toy before, it's a failure of an office toy.

Leaving the pointless gizmos aside, the only thing that might've not been useless was the crystal orb. Normally I'd have discounted it as just an oversized office toy, but in this place, my common sense didn't apply.

Without anything to lose, and me possibly running out of time before someone figured out where I went, I tried placing the palm of my hand on the orb.

Reacting to my touch, the crystal orb lit up for a few seconds, pulsating almost like a slow heartbeat, before settling on a dim glow. From there, a pair of screens appeared, one in front of each chair.

They were hovering in the air like holograms.

What was displayed on the screens looked like some sort of form. A profile picture of my face was plastered on the top left of the form. Beside and below it were a series of entry fields, most of which were empty, including my name for some reason.

While both screens looked to display the same thing at first, a few seconds of looking at each revealed a simple difference: the one for the chair away from the door was prompting for additional input.

It looked like normally I was supposed to meet someone in the room, who would fill in the various fields while taking my requests into consideration.

If that was the case, then rather than letting someone else dictate what would go into my information, I'd rather do it myself. At the worst, I'd get booted and forced to go through the procedure properly while under more strict supervision...most likely.

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I sat down on the soft office chair and had a closer look.

At the top of the form, the words [New Incarnation Settings] was clearly labelled.

Most likely, the form was to set up my initial starting conditions on my next life.

(To think that these rooms were for setting up our reincarnations!)

If this was some sort of dream, then I didn't want to wake up.

I tried to touch the name field, but it was greyed out. It made sense, since normally your parents would name their new baby, not some sort of celestial power.

The next field was destination world. The word [Terheim] was already set, and touching the field didn't allow me to change it.

(Perhaps the rooms designated which world the reincarnator was going to go to?)

Following that was species. [Human] was placed there by default, but when I touched it, a drop-down box opened up, revealing a wide range of possibilities. The possibilities were nearly endless, but it quickly became obvious that almost all of them were automatic rejections. While most of them were things I'd never heard of, the fact that random animals and even bugs were on the list, the reincarnation process would allow me to become something that wasn't even sentient.

I wholeheartedly rejected that notion.

Lots of the staple fantasy races were on the list as well, but the one that stood out for me was the vampire.

Vampires had it's own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, but that in itself made them more interesting than any of the more typical fantasy races. I just hoped that they weren't considered to be a universally evil race or something.

When I selected vampire for my species, a whole slew of additional options were added a little further down.

The first of the new options was [apparent age]. It seemed like I could select what age I started as. Vampires weren't born as babies in this world it seemed.

I wasn't too surprised by that fact, since most myths have vampires be ageless, so they always had the same appearance as when they turned. I was a bit skeptical about how it would work for someone born as a vampire from the beginning, but didn't concern myself about it. There was no point in worrying about something you had no information about.

For age, I selected 16. I figured that it was old enough that I'd be fine with it for the rest of my next life, yet I'd get a few extra years if I did grow beyond that. Regardless of the world, it was also old enough to be independent, but young enough that I wouldn't be at a social reject for not being already married or something.

The next were a series of options regarding physical appearance.

For hair colour, I selected silver. For a vampire, black and silver are the only real options. I refused any other possibility. My own hair was near black, so I wanted something different for my next life, hence silver.

Eye colour was fixed to red. I couldn't change it.

Same with skin colour. It was fixed to pale.

The next option was height. Rather than simply just a drop-down box, this, as well as the rest, were all accompanied by sliders. The default settings on all of them were [Normal Distribution Random] and the sliders were greyed out.

When I opened the box, the revealed options were various other distribution patterns for random, with manual at the bottom.

I selected manual of course.

For height, I moved the slider to a bit under a quarter from the bottom.

My current height was well above average, just a bit over two meters. Frankly, my excessive height gave me no end of trouble, and I was eager to take the opposite end of the spectrum without hesitation. I've always envied people who could fit on a bus seat between two others without problems, or could walk through public places without worrying about hitting their heads on stuff.

Short people always envied tall people like me, but from my perspective, the world was designed for short people, and generally it was at the expense of the tall. At least that was my personal experience.

The next setting was physical attractiveness. That was maxed out. No doubt in my mind, there was no reason to go any less than that. Any debate there was a waste of time and energy.

I continued to play with the sliders a bit, but since there was no feedback, I wasn't sure about the effects. It wasn't like my portrait picture changed as I fiddled with my appearance settings.

Half unsatisfied, I moved on.

The next option almost blew my out of my seat.

The label for the section was [Skills].

At first, I wasn't sure what it meant, but looking further down, the meaning dawned on me. The [Skills] didn't refer to techniques that a person accumulates through knowledge and practice, but are quantified abilities built into the person themselves.

The first few entries proved that point splendidly.

Below the label [Skills] was another sub label [Default Skills], which had a single entry [Local Language] included. Touching it opened a tool-tip that described it in detail.

[Local Language]: Knowledge of the languages used in the incarnated world. Available by default for any users incarnated outside of standard birthing.

In other words, it gave me the ability to communicate with the people of the world because I wouldn't have a few years to learn under parents. It was a pretty considerate skill. It made me realize how odd it was that I could read the form in the first place, but I waved the idea away with the presumption that any power that could reincarnate people across multiple world would find the ability to adjust systems to allow anyone to understand them was a pretty paltry ordeal.

Below [Default Skills] was another sub label [Racial Skills], and under that was the two skills [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] and [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]. I opened the tool-tips on them to read their descriptions.

[Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)]: Allows one to suck a target's blood or similar fluids and absorb their essence.

[Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)]: Strengthen one's own body as if it were a weapon. Exclusive to claws and fangs for vampires.

The sight of this made me want to jump for joy. It seemed like the world I had inadvertently chosen was ruled by game mechanics. It was like many of those books that had grown popular lately.

The fact that the skills had a [1] on them implied that they could be improved further, and that the world quantified the people's abilities in a tangible way. Once something was systematized, the possibility of loopholes and exploits appeared. The thought of finding such a thing excited me.

Unfortunately, the fields stated that I had zero available points to purchase starting skills. Reexamining the fields again, I saw that [Local Language] cost zero points, [Natural Weapons 1 (Vampire)] cost one point, and [Blood Sucking 1 (Vampire)] cost a whopping four points. As the latter two were both racials, I couldn't remove either to get some points back. Not like I'd remove blood sucking. If I didn't have that, I doubt I'd survive long as a vampire. I had no idea how normal food would effect a vampire, but I doubted I'd get much nutrition from such a thing. [Local Language] was a freebie, so I didn't touch that even to see if I could remove it in case I couldn't figure out how to get it back.

Below that was a few more options labelled under [Miscellaneous], and among them was one of particular concern for me: [Memories upon incarnation].

The default option was erase. I impatiently changed it to preserve. I absolutely didn't want my memories to be erased. It would ruin the whole point of everything I was doing. If I didn't remember who I was, then it was the same as doing this all for a complete stranger, rather than myself.

The next option I looked closely at was [Starting Location]. The default option read [Racial Default]. The tool-tip only gave the vague message of starting in locations typical for the chosen race. I imagined that simply meant being born from a mother like normal for a human or being more likely to be born in a big city, but the message was too vague and generic to satisfy me. The lack of context made me extremely uneasy.

I went through the options, but they were all pretty vague and generic. Each one was in the vicinity of something generic, like a city, lake, mine, mountain, etc. This form was probably made to work for any world, so there probably wasn't any options to get more specific than that.

Then I noticed one option that was a bit different from the others: [In the vicinity of rich resource deposits preferred by chosen race]

The tool tip implied that it would put me near a location that was one of the highest concentrations of resources that were considered extremely desirable by the race I chose. The impression it gave was that for a place with lots of small rodents and birds for a fox, or maybe a literal gold mine for humans?

Just like the others, it was vague, but it felt more reliable than the others. Especially when I had no idea what kind of landscape would be preferable for vampires, nor what kind of association other races had with them as well.

Finally, I reached the bottom of the form, and a strange field was waiting for me.

[User Privilege Level]

When I opened the drop-down box, it revealed four options: Minimal, Standard(default), Moderator, Administrator.

I selected the fourth option without any hint at hesitation. When the admin option exists, always pick it. That was my belief.

But before closing the box down, a warning window opened up.

[Warning, administrator rights can only be given to a limited number of users per world. In addition, rights cannot be changed until user returns to the Life Settlement Facility. Available administrators in chosen world: 1/1. Do you wish to proceed?]

It was a bit unfortunate that if I hit yes, I'd be taking the only admin slot for the world, but I couldn't bear with not taking the privilege while I had the chance, so I unwaveringly hit yes.

With that, all the fields were completed, so I hit complete at the bottom.

[Confirm settings]

Of course I hit ok.

With a smile, I sit back. I had no idea if what I did would actually do anything, and even if I had succeeded, I had no clue as to what came next.

To me left was the sound of paper being rolled out.

I sat up in surprise and grabbed the sheet as it came out from a slit on the left side of the desk.

When I looked at the sheet I was lightly pulling on, I saw the details of the form I had just completed was being printed out, starting from the bottom.

While I wasn't sure what would come next, it looked like I had done everything right up to this point.

Suddenly, a pillar of light descended from above, surrounding me. Little motes of light rose up and my body felt like it was losing it's weight.

*Rrriiippp*

While I was distracted, I accidentally pulled too hard on the printed sheet and it ripped into two.

Before I could do anything about it, the light grew stronger, blinding me. My feet rose off of the ground, then everything went dark.

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