Cardinal: King's Line

Darius found himself floating around in what he assumed to be the void, endless darkness as far as the eye could see. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but Darius's current situation was disappointing. After all the promises of the Full Dive gaming pod, the only console on which one could play New Gaia Online, he didn't feel any different from reality.

He was still a 6 foot 3, 30-year-old English-Black man with a fairly burly build, a defined jawline, and flowing hair that he kept in Cornrows that was missing both legs. While his injury was never too inconvenient since his legs were amputated below the knee, it still felt crap that he had to take his prosthetics off to use this thing it wasn't even able to make up for it. At least that was how Darius felt until the timer he had been staring blankly at for the past hour finally hit Zero and the game launched officially.

{{Welcome to New Gaia Online Player- You have been selected as an envious Immortal Adve-}}

Darius dismissed the welcome message from the system as he had already heard it 101 times when he was briefed on this game for his mission. What he was more interested in, and silently happy about, was the fact that the system suddenly rendered legs for him according to his body proportions that he admitted felt like real legs to him, a perk that would make navigating this game a lot more convenient. Darius stared at the system prompt for him to select a name for himself, calling his avatar 'Basilisk', before moving to the next screen where the world map was highlighted before him.

More accurately, he suddenly felt himself being pulled across the void before suddenly being stopped outside of a massive planet, the planet in question having only 5 Continents. The Arctic of the North, The Celestial Realm of the Centre, The Mortal Realm of the West, The Ancient Kingdom of the East, and The Beast Glades of the South. Each of these Continents where broken up into difficulties to navigate by using standard gaming rankings: The Easiest was surprisingly the Celestial realm of the Middle with a B grade difficulty; Above it was the Ancient Kingdom with an A grade, then the Mortal Real with an S grade, the Beast Glades with an S+ Grade, and finally the Arctic region which had an SSS+ grade for what Darius thought were obvious reasons.

Now for the none intellectuals who have no clue as to why a place called the Celestial Realm would be that much easier to Navigate in a game than the Arctic would, let's put it like this- The Celestial Realm is like real-world America with its many questionable personalities and morals flying around, along with its plenty of risk factors that required luck to engage with well, however, it was still doable. Try this challenge, don't bother doing planning, research, travel budgeting, or even packing clothes- As you are right now, move to Antarctica and thrive in whatever field you are engaged with. If you are a student don't be stupid and stay in school; If you are a Teacher try and build a Harvard-level school over there; If you are a sports star try and start a world-renowned league with nothing but the Items would have on you that is hosted, maintained and managed over there. As a marker of comparison that would be the potential difficulty of a player attempting to play this game with the Arctic Region as a starter Zone.

For the more common gamers in the group, the celestial realm was like playing in a mobile legends gold Lobby, while the Arctic was like trying to clear every souls game to ever exist simultaneously in a freezing room while naked, suffering partial blindness, also suffering from intense hypothermia, with a tight rope as a gaming chair in under 24 hours- In summary, you would more than likely die trying. In this case, that was very literal as the sensation of death in this game felt very real as a result of you feeling everything in-game the exact way you would in real life. Now obviously there were a bunch of safety nets in place to mitigate the problems that would come with such a thing that I refuse to go into right now, but the main thing was that you felt everything you felt in the game like it was real life and as such picking an Ice region for a starter Zone was beyond foolish, though many people were still going to attempt it.

Darius on the other hand did even have the luxury of choice in this instance- Besides the fact that he wouldn't be playing this game in the first place if it was up to him despite being a pro gamer, He was sent here by a certain group with very specific instructions on what he was meant to spend his time in here doing, once he was done with the task he was given he could delete his account for all the group cared and it wouldn't change a thing. Darius selected the Mortal realm of the West as his Starter region and he was pulled further towards that planet at ludicrous speeds that made seeing anything else a hassle and a half.

The one thing Darius could see though, were the 100 Thousand other streaks of light drawing closer towards the planet at intervals, some of which he swore he saw shooting towards the north, but that wasn't his problem. Darius suddenly stopped in the sky as the streak of light surrounding him was presented with a second choice, which he realised might determine the clothes his avatar would spawn with from the jump. Within the Mortal realm existed 9 human Empires, being the Myton Empire, the Zosha Empire, The Bael Empire, The Phasal Dynasty, The Hyodo Dynasty, The Solan Dynasty, The Stidel Empire, The Wraviel Empire, and The Pharis Empire. Darius noted that the design of the Empire he could make out from here vaguely resembled satellite shots of places in the real world but he digressed from that line of thought and picked a place.

 Similarly to the Continents, the Empires were rated according to difficulty to navigate and according to Darius' report the average rating of the Empires made up the rating of the Continent as a whole so one should not be surprised to find that even the easiest region to Navigate on here, being the Zosha Empire, was A- Grade; the worst of it was the Phasal Dynasty which was SS Grade despite only being Empire, one that was a 5th of the Continents mass by itself. And unfortunately for Darius, this was the continent that his mission required him to pick. Once more Darius was drawn towards the Empire but only close enough that he could make out the 6 Kingdoms that made the Empire up.

Darius made a weird face when he saw the names of these places as he assumed there would be some sort of copyright infringement of some kind for this kind of blatant naming, the 6 kingdoms were Africa, Europe, Asia, North America, South America, and Australia. The ratings for the kingdoms were Africa, Australia, and South America at S Grade while Europe, Asia and North America were at SS Grade. He picked Europe and was finally given clothing, his avatar manifested a standard brown cotton shirt, black trousers and plain brown boots for footwear.

At this point, Darius was required to pick a random Fortress within the Kingdom of Europe to join as a starting location, among the 100 fortresses that spanned from A grade to the 4 SSS grades Darius chose to start in one of the four in question called the Iron Bastion, as that was the most ideal starting point for him to proceed with his task. As soon as Darius' avatar spawned he saw yet another system notification which he swiped off fairly quickly after scanning- It was another congratulatory message that told him he would be starting in this Fortress with 45 stats points to distribute since all stats were set to 1 as an automatic default, 10 Bronze coins, a random common weapon, and a random Common skill.

Of his boons Darius chose to deal with his stats first and foremost, now one should note that the main reason our duty-bound gamer hated this game wasn't necessarily due to the full dive tech, the fraudulent naming, or even the overly complex combat system behind it, it was the stats. Unlike other games that had a fixed starting point for all players regardless with a growth speed that was consistent across the board, this game made it so that if someone managed to change races to something with a higher State of being than a Human, which is a lot of races really, they would not only have a bunch of extra basic stat points they already missed out on gifted to them for free, on top of which they would also be getting more stat points rewarded per level up than human players.

 Sure, one needed to find a way to change races in a game that was meant to be completely new but the fact of the matter was that if it was that someone would eventually figure it out and profit ludicrously from it changing whatever balance of power would exist at the time completely, forever and without warning. In any case, all of that was Phatic and meaningless to him at the moment as he wasn't playing this as a tried and true gamer, but rather as a means to an end- Darius focused his gaze on a small green dot in the far corner of his vision as a Player status window opened up before him.

ID: Basilisk Age: 30 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 0 Exp: 0/100 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: None HP: 0/0 (1/1) MP: 0/0 (1/1) Sta: 0/0 (1/1) Atk: 0 (1) M.atk: 0 (1) Def: 0 (1) M.def: 0 (1) Str: 0 (1) Spd: 0 (1) Agi: 0 (1) Int: 0 (1) End: 0 (1) Luck: 0 (1) Stp: 45 Skp: 45 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: None

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: None.

After messing around with his setting a bit Darius figured out how to add stats and manipulate the system without unnecessary strain or needing to talk the system. This allowed for the use of hand gestures to manipulate the player status window, inventory and items. Darius pondered for a moment before changing his mind, he had the usual way he went about things like this but decided against that for now. He was here for strictly business so he would bury his old habits this time and decided to get his skill first, before accommodating his stats and strategy around that. This way his early game would be more structured instead of him forcing something that wouldn't work out for the sake of pride, with that in mind Darius opened the skill first.

{{Congratulations, Player Basilisk, you have awakened the Common Rank Skill 'Focus'}}