Palace of Character Creation

Zhao Xu had spent the afternoon doing a lot of research. Every account was tied to the player's iris scan, so once he logged in, the seller couldn't take the account back.

After completing his research, Zhao Xu went right back to his dorm room.

VR headsets had become mainstream over the past few years. It had replaced the laptop as a standard item for every college student to own.

On top of that, VR headsets could now engage in a few hours of activity during the user's light sleep stage, so the sales of these headsets exploded.

Zhao Xu had bought one because the headset could make use of his sleep time.

His mind was filled with nothing else but the game, so he gobbled up his takeout in a few bites and focused on all the game strategies he could find online as he started going through his own memories of the game.

At almost 8 PM, his two other gaming dormmates put on their VR headsets and lay in bed without moving.

Their last roommate was gunning for a postgrad course, so he had gone to the library to study in order to get away from the gaming atmosphere that was building up in the dorms.

The entire floor was silent as everyone got themselves ready for the game servers to go live.

Zhao Xu scrambled onto his own bed and put his VR headset on.

Over the past ten years, these types of VR headsets had advanced past relying on sight, they were actually directly projected onto the user's brain.

Zhao Xu was no stranger to TC's games. He only took a few seconds to log into TC's game platform. He found the game Arthur, then used his brain to control his actions in the game.

He keyed in the activation code he got from that seller on xFish and, after it was verified, Zhao Xu reached the game's homepage.

The servers hadn't gone live yet, so there was just a countdown timer on the page.

Those who had spent either or would have their activation codes keyed in automatically by the system at the verification page.

Once Zhao Xu's activation code was successfully verified, he breathed a small sigh of relief.

Since there was still a bit of time left, Zhao Xu opened the account menu and started reading everything of note.

After looking at it for a while, he flipped to the last page, which listed the conditions for a Testing Account.

After a few seconds, Zhao Xu couldn't help but burst into laughter.

No wonder he could still buy an account today. The catch was hiding in the fine print.

The thing about Arthur that players were most unhappy with was the fact that the punishment for reviving your character was very heavy.

Arthur's players didn't go down by a level after dying in the game.

But, each time a player died, it would deduct one Revival Stone from the player.

Once all five Revival Stones a player had were used up and no other revival skills or spells could be used, the player would be removed from the game altogether.

The player would have to use his account to recreate a character and start all over again from Level 1.

This sort of cruel punishment for dying kept most players at a low level.

There were many people who didn't even make it to Level 2 before they had used up all five Revival Stones that were tied to their account and there was no way to exchange anything for them.

The even more troublesome part was that every account had limits on the character you could create.

Each account could only create a 28 point character once, a 22 point character thrice and a 15 point character as many times as you liked.

Once the player had used up his one chance to create a 28 point character, he could only create a 22 point character three times or just create a 15 point character.

In other words, if you wanted to create another 28 point character in the game, you had to fork out another for a new account.

The Testing Accounts' rules were even crueler because you could only create one 28 point character and nothing else.

Once that character died, there was no way to create a new character with the same account, and the system would take the account back.

Zhao Xu wasn't very gifted at gaming, but he was familiar with how to avoid being caught in a situation where one might suddenly die.

No matter how dumb he was, he had an additional one year of gaming experience and nine more years of actual experience in the world of Arthur compared to everyone else right now.

After everyone transmigrated, their Revival Stones were taken back and the player just had to make sure he didn't die more than five times within a year.

The game's countdown timer was down to the last minute.

Zhao Xu felt his heart tense up.

This one year would determine if he was going to make it big or die miserably.

When the countdown timer finally hit zero, Zhao Xu's field of view was completely covered by a white flash of light.

"Dear Adventurer, welcome to the Palace of Character Creation."

The white light faded and a familiar scene appeared before Zhao Xu's eyes. He was in an incredibly magnificent palace with a long staircase in front made from countless gemstones cut and placed together. The staircase continued into the space above the palace and he couldn't see the end of the stairs.

There were sculptures and paintings of various gods around the palace, and their eyes were all currently focusing on him.

Unlike the other players, who were either overly excited or nonchalant about this part of the game, Zhao Xu quickly bowed before the sculptures of these gods to show his reverent attitude to them.

But, after he had bowed, he was slightly stunned by himself.

He wasn't in the real world of Arthur anymore.