D1V1N3 Gamer prologue

D1V1N3 Gamer

Prologue

I opened my eyes to the void, an empty space... dark, featureless and boundless. I couldn't feel anything, let alone remember how I got in here. I have vague memories of the hospital, and then… nothing. I surmised that I have died. A feeling welling up in me made it so that I knew this with uncanny certainty. I don't know how long I spent in this void, the time was immeasurable.

In retrospect, I was satisfied with my life. I became a stylist and a trend setter, and had three beautiful kids with my partner. We never married, but we didn’t need any big ceremony or contract to tell us what we were to each other. The void wasn’t so scary after that, it gave me the time to meditate on myself, my memories, my feelings about dying; it must be the role of this place, that this void must be “limbo.”

I felt that I was prepared to move on, and let go. But when I had accepted  that a blinding light invaded the darkness; big words appeared that stilled my thoughts.

Gamer System Initialized

...Really? I mean, I feel honored... but... I would prefer to move on, you know?… However, If I had to… Excitement filled me when I recognized what was happening; after reading and writing so much fanfiction when I was bored, I knew what this was. The Gamer ability was versatile and powerful! It also meant that I was about to have another chance at life.

World Selected:

DC

Well... shit. It was too good to be true, huh… DC was a death world through and through. Even with the gamer system, I could be killed before I was truly prepared to deal with it.

Loading…

I looked as a loading bar was filling slowly before my eyes. Everything hinged on what type of Gamer system I recieved, some versions were limited or comparable to the one Han Jihan has. With bated breath I waited for the system to load the world I was going into.

Loading Complete

A screen appeared before me, and I saw the planet Earth in the background with the Watchtower in orbit. The planet turned lazily on itself. It was beautiful. I see skies of blue and clouds of white, so pretty… What a wonderful world. Then another screen appeared, it was something familiar, an endless knot representing Karma from asian culture. I know this because I had to study for my fashion and take history into account for the style I used in my work.

Host Karma Calculation...

10,000 Karma Points

Congratulations, Player, a New Challenge Approaches

What are Karma points?

The system answered my thought at that moment by infusing me with the knowledge. The Karma system worked with the spiritual principle of cause and effect. Underlying this system are the two opposing aspects of Yin and Yang, that are reflected in how Karma is manifested in the world. This alignment resembles in many ways the aspects of morality, Good and Evil, but does not always map to the same relative ideas.

So if I understand well, Karma points are the quantification of the good and bad deeds that I made in life and it seemed that ten thousand points was a lot. It’s true that I did a lot of good things as an influencer on youtube, helped my fashion models in life, set up charities for the destitutes or the fundraisers she ran for good causes and made a lot of money that I donated for other projects to better others. It means that I was going to get things in exchange for those points! As if to prove my point three windows opened with the symbol of Yin and Yang with the word ‘Store’ and with a loading bar on it. Meanwhile the system loaded something else on the main screen.

So that means someone who was particularly selfish would need to be more frugal and get less perks and skills. Well that’s fair, it seemed that the karma system favored people who did good.

Loading Character Creation Module…

Loading Complete

Character Creation

Ah! Here it was, the interface slightly reminded me of the one from Black Desert Online, and I knew my way around this one! I think this Gamer system was using a format that responded to what I knew. It still sucked that I was going into DC, couldn’t I have been dropped somewhere like in Fairy Tail? I mean I could totally dig that friendship magic shit instead of DC that got the Joker or Darkseid in it.

Choose your race

Available Race choice:

Human (Free)
Homo Magi (500 KP)
Amazon (1000 KP)
Atlantean (1000 KP)
Green Martian (2000 KP)
White martian (1900 KP)
Tamaranean (2000 KP)
Kryptonian (9000 KP)

Well, it’s not like I didn’t see that coming… I mean if those are the only available choices then I am lucky. I had a choice to make, it was beyond important. Being a basic human was not a safe choice, sure I could buy stuff like becoming a speedster with the speed force or train, but with monsters like the Anti-monitor, Trigon and other scary aliens it was a bad idea. Even with that sweet Homo Magi race that I was seeing in the list. If I couldn’t get to the level of Zatanna or Enchantress, I was going to be cannon fodder.

Amazon? Functional Immortality, superhuman strength, stamina, agility and durability thanks to the blessings of five goddesses. I could see myself being one, because of the community they form… but the androphobia and hate for men was a bit too much at times in the things I read about them, I mean what about the boys born on the island? Where were they? I didn’t choose this race. So Yeah, sue me to not want to be part of a maybe baby killers society.

Atlantean, I really liked that race! They were still human but had the full package that I liked, Superhuman durability, stamina, strength, agility and speed; the enhanced senses and their amphibian nature was awesome. I thought about choosing this one but I remembered that there’s severe racism amongst them if you had some mutation and didn’t look like a pure blooded Atlantean. Damn I liked them because of Mera and Aqualad mainly but I couldn’t be blinded by their faults. Okay I will put this one on the top of the list.

Martian green and white… the telepathy, phasing and all the goodies that came with the martian species were attractive. But I still wanted to look human, that’s what I was used to and I didn’t want to have to adapt to anything else. Something told me that I would have more pressing responsibilities if I chose this race.

Tamaranean! I liked them as well, but they aren’t all super powered like Komand’r and Koriand’r. I passed the race instantly. Next!

Kryptonian… Okay do I have to sum up what they could do? Fuck no, they were the best alien race in DC but they had glaring weaknesses. Vulnerability to magic, Chi, Kryptonite, can’t see through lead and they depend on Solar Energy. But something tells me that I could use the Karma system to do something about it.

I weighed the pros and cons between Atlantean and Kryptonian, those were the most attractive races to me. There was a chance that I would get born either as a noble or a normal Atlantean… And knowing myself I would get cross with the royalty… oh and there was the fact that I may be born unable to breath on the surface, depending on the version of DC I was going into. Maybe another time then, I guess my only choice is to go Kryptonian.

Kryptonian (9000 KP) Race Chosen

9000 Karma Points Spent

1000 Karma Points Remain

Kryptonian Template Loaded

Customize Your Body

Just like I expected, the character creation screen was just like in Black Desert Online; I went with what I knew and modeled my appearance on my favorite Kryptonian, Power Girl, but a less buff version of her. Tall, blue eyed and gorgeous, I didn’t choose the same hair color though, I went with a reddish black instead of blonde. I spent more time working on the texture of my new body’s skin, her face and her hair that became a bit wavy at the end.

I let my new body do different poses and wow you could even let her wear clothes to show off how they would look on her. Okay, it’s ready.

Loading Character Sheet

Character Sheet
Name: Céleste
Race: Kryptonian
Title : The Gamer
Stats
EN: C
CON: B
STR: D
DEX: D
MAN: N/A
INT: B
WIS: F
LUK: D

I had no frame of reference to understand what the Gamer system was telling me, wasn’t it supposed to show me things with numbers and percentages? Hey system, what do you mean?!

Loading Abilities…

Huh, did it just ignore me? I thought we had a good feeling going between us, System…

Loading Complete

Abilities Added

[Gamer’s Mind] (Passive) - EX

Protects the Gamer from mental and emotional manipulation, trauma, and status effects.

[Gamer’s Body] (Passive) - EX

Grants the Gamer with a body of infinite potential and growth

[Observe] (Active) - S

Displays information about the target.

[Inventory] (Active) - SSS

Infinite storage space, used to show all the items the gamer has obtained and stored including the clothes she wears and the weapons she has obtained and equipped.

Aha! Now we’re talking!

The normal fare of abilities of the Gamer goes with this. Focusing hard, I used the skills called Observe on the name of the attributes. EN seemed to be for Energy, Con for constitution, Str for Strength, Man for Mana, Int for intelligence, Wis for wisdom and Luk for luck. So that means that I can raise my stats with training, though… There was a distinct lack of the level system and my version of the Gamer seemed to use a ranking system akin to what I saw from the Fate series. No numbers, did the Gamer system know that I was bad at math? Yeah, it totally does. Well now at least I knew how it worked, the ranks climbed from F to SSS instead of using numbers to quantify the strength of someone.

The screen of the Karma store finished loading and it showed me an array of perks and skills that I could buy with my leftover points. But damn, they were expensive!

Karma store

Perks

Kryptonite Immunity (28 000 KP)
Kryptonite Resistance (9000 KP)
Magic Resistance (500 KP) (1000 KP for Kryptonian)
Mana Adept (500 KP) (1000 KP for Kryptonian)
Poor Man’s Grimoire (100 KP)
Metamorphmagus (Minor) (750 KP) (1500 KP for Kryptonian)
Cuh-Ray-Zee! (Free)
Taunt (100 KP)
Soul Defense (1000 KP)
Mind Defense (500 KP)
Mindscape Manipulation (250 KP)
Enhanced Inventory (250 KP)
...

Are Kryptonian discriminated against or something? I mean anything pertaining to magic for my new race is double the KP. I looked at the second skill list in the third window, and saw that the same shit happened.

Skills
Weapon Crafting (200 KP)
Colossal Strength (200 KP)
Parallel Thinking (300 KP)
Magic Warfare (400 KP) (800 KP for Kryptonian)
Telekinesis (1000 KP)
Spatial Maneuvering (100 KP)
Clairvoyance (400 KP)
Leadership (500 KP
Cooperation (100 KP)
Allspeak (100 KP)
Writing (Free)
Mana Perception (150 KP) (300 KP for Kryptonian)
...

Well... shit. I had some choices to make here, at least there were some free skills... I only had one thousand points left, is there a way to get more points, System? Once again, in a rush, information flooded into me and the Gamer system told me what I needed to. I focused on the character creation screen and thought about customizing my character even more. Weakening my character to obtain more perks and skills was a must at this point.

Customized Character Creation Screen

I focused on the attributes of my character and manipulated the stats… lowering them. It was not a great loss, I have the Gamer system! I could train and raise them back up. Each time I lowered my stat from one letter, I obtained points so I ended up with my character sheet looking like this.

Character Sheet
Name: Céleste
Race: Kryptonian
Title : The Gamer
Stats
EN: F (Solar Starved *)
CON: F (Solar Starved )
STR: F (Solar Starved )
DEX: F (Solar Starved )
MAN: N/A
INT: F (Solar Starved )
WIS: F
LUK: F

*You are weakened by the lack of sunlight at your emergence point in the world

With this, I obtained another one thousand points, giving me two thousand Karma points. With this, I choose my perks carefully. I want to cover for my future weaknesses. I choose the  Mana Adept perk to have access to my Mana attribute, then I choose the Mindscape manipulation, and the Enhanced Inventory perks; the first will help me with the manipulation of my inner self and I read that it can evolve into a mind palace ability which will come in handy to protect my mind, and maybe more at a low cost. People in DC think that dying is scary, but from what I know of this universe, we have threats to the soul. This is the corruption to everything living. Enemies like Neron represent the temptations we fight every day.

The second one will allow me to store everything I touch in my infinite inventory, as well as mental commands.. I took the free perk called Cuh-Ray-Zee! An awesome perk that would allow me to do things with style and pull off anything like blocking attacks with the back of my hand if I train hard enough by beating up logic with skills. There was more to it than that but I digress.

Then it was time to choose my last perk, there was nothing in the skill list that I couldn’t take later from what the system was telling me. I thought long and hard about what to choose and I was thinking about the future when I was going to go out flying around the world. It was certain that I would need to lead a double life… and I didn’t want anyone to bother me when I was chilling so I chose Metamorphmagus (minor) for one thousand-five hundred Karma points and then all my point count melted before my eyes.

I looked at my character sheet and for my perks, skills and abilities.

Abilities: [Gamer’s Mind] (Passive) - EX, [Gamer’s Body](Passive) - EX, [Observe](Active) - S, [Inventory] (Active) - SSS

Perks: Cuh-Ray-Zee! Mana Adept, Metamorphmagus (minor), Mindscape, Enhanced Inventory

Skills: [Writing] - Rank F

Not too shabby. Huh, the screen for the Karma store disappeared, the main screen with Earth in the background appeared again. The screen turned into some kind of whirlpool of light and I was caught into its event horizon. As I passed through I felt a burst of sensations and then I lost consciousness.