All three fixed attributes were extraordinarily important; giving up any one of them would sting, which made allocating the fixed attributes undeniably far harder than the free ones. Yet Ye Tianxie did it all in one smooth stroke without the slightest pause, pumping Charm straight to its maximum — 10 points — with Luck at 0 and Comprehension at 0.
“…Sir, are you certain you want to make this choice? If your Luck is 0, your drop rate and critical hit rate in the World of Fate will be at their lowest, and every attack will deal only the minimum of its damage range. And with Comprehension at 0, in the World of Fate you’ll…”
“Do you think my charm is worthy of a full 10 points?” Ye Tianxie faced forward and flashed a wicked, drop-dead gorgeous grin — or so he himself believed.
“…Sir, you are indeed very charming.” The system voice had no choice but to give a polite reply.
“Then it’s settled. Next up should be class selection, right?” Ye Tianxie laughed smugly.
“Ding… Fixed attribute allocation complete. Please wait; the system will now scan your talent attributes. This will take between ten and twenty seconds.”
“Oh? Talent attributes?” Ye Tianxie felt a flicker of surprise. Innate free attributes and fixed attributes could already be called talent attributes, so what did these talent attributes refer to?
“Ding… Talent attribute scan complete. Your talent attributes are: Reaction: 72. Perception: 53. Focus: 42.”
Another white panel appeared before Ye Tianxie, marked with three strange attributes he’d never once seen across his entire gaming career — and the notes behind them piqued his interest enormously.
Reaction: the ability to respond quickly to external stimuli. Perception: the range and ability to sense external stimuli. Focus: the ability to concentrate the mind without being affected by external stimuli.
The talent attributes a player displayed in the World of Fate were exactly equivalent to those in the real world… reaction, perception, focus — all attributes tied to the mind. And since full-immersion virtual games all operated using the human brain’s electrical waves as the carrier for the mind, these three attributes, with the brain as their core, would naturally be unaffected. Put concretely: whatever reaction speed you had in the real world, you’d have that exact same reaction speed in the World of Fate.
“What’s the average value for talent attributes?”
“That would be… around 7 to 10 on average.”
“7 to 10?” Gazing at the numbers on the panel — several times that average — Ye Tianxie broke into a teeth-gritting grin. Talent attributes had always been fully in play across every virtual game; Fate had merely turned them into hard data through some marvelous scanning method.
What did reaction speed seven times that of an ordinary person mean? Twice over, and you could be called superhuman-gifted. Three times, and you could call him a superman. But seven times… only one name was worthy of describing it.
Ultraman!
“Next, please choose your novice class. The World of Fate has seven basic classes: Warrior, Guardian, Archer, Assassin, Priest, Mage, and Summoner. For life classes, please seek them out yourself within the World of Fate. Given the free attributes you have allocated, we recommend you choose either the Apprentice Warrior, specialized in melee combat, or the Apprentice Guardian, specialized in defense.”
“Apprentice Warrior!”
“Ding… The class you have selected is Apprentice Warrior. The Warrior possesses powerful physical attack capability, versatile attack methods, and relatively strong physical defense — a key attacking damage-dealer in melee — while its mobility, hit, and dodge are comparatively weak. After the first class advancement, you may become a true Warrior and choose one of two class branches according to your wishes. The Warrior’s primary attributes are Strength, Constitution, and a small amount of Agility. For each point of Strength a Warrior gains, physical attack rises by 2; each point of Constitution adds 10 HP and 1 defense; each point of Agility adds 1 dodge and 1 hit; each point of Spirit raises magic attack by 2 and MP by 10. Now conferring your novice class, please wait…”
The seconds ticked by one by one. Conferring a class should have been instantaneous, yet the resplendent, many-hued world had fallen utterly silent, and no voice came for the longest time. Ye Tianxie reined in his patience and waited.
“…Please wait.”
Ye Tianxie: “…”
“Ding! Due to an unknown cause, novice class conferral has failed.” After yet another long stretch, when the system’s voice finally sounded, it handed Ye Tianxie a completely unexpected answer.
“Class conferral failed? What’s that supposed to mean?” Ye Tianxie asked, brow tightly knit. Class conferral was one of the very first steps you went through entering any virtual game; for the system, it should have been the simplest step imaginable, with no reason whatsoever to fail. With the mythic halo Fate had been granted, why would an error this unthinkable crop up?
“This… I’m not entirely sure myself. I just tried over a dozen times in a row for you, and every one failed… I’d recommend that once you reach Level 10 in the World of Fate, you seek out a class mentor and advance directly to a true Warrior.” The woman’s voice was clearly a little tense. At present, the Huaxia Region of the World of Fate alone had already seen several hundred million characters created, and a class conferral failure had never once occurred. Even this reception AI, possessed of intelligence on par with a human’s, was so astonished she was at a loss.
Advance only after Level 10? That meant throughout the whole novice stage he’d have no class at all — both his starting point and his rate of progress would lag a long way behind other players. Suppressing his rising temper, he said, “Wasn’t it supposed to be that in the World of Fate, every player gets an absolutely fair starting point? If I really can’t do a class advancement, then the least you can do is give me suitable compensation.”
“This… this… I… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” The system’s voice brimmed with tension, unease, and panic, faintly edged with a sob, all of it carried in that airy, delicate tone. Such a voice made Ye Tianxie picture a little girl with a face full of grievance and a single teardrop hanging at the corner of each eye. The bellyful of anger he’d been about to erupt with, he forcibly swallowed back down. He glanced at the clock — still two minutes shy of ten — and said feebly, “Forget it.”
Not waiting for the system voice to reply, he issued the Exit Game command with his mind. The world before him twisted and warped at once, turning into pitch darkness. He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling of his own room. Lifting his hand to look at the jet-black wristband on his wrist, then — a bellyful of dissatisfaction notwithstanding — he couldn’t help but voice a word of praise for how miraculous this game device was.
Nine fifty-nine.
Shooting a glance at the clock, Ye Tianxie got up from the bed and walked over to the azure-blue gaming pod beside it. This was the gaming pod for a virtual game called Slaying Gods, which had kept him company for close to seven months — and today was the day he bid Slaying Gods farewell for good. Ever since the day two months ago when Fate‘s game devices had begun being distributed, the seven most wildly popular virtual online games in the entire world had all announced they would shut down every one of their servers today. This astonishing fact told the whole world just how important a place Fate was going to hold in human life from here on out.
(End of Chapter 3)