Overlord: The Clockwork Empress

Selene Cordel never thought she was amazing or incredible. She thought she was pretty, and smart, but never thought she was the best at what she did. Her colleagues felt otherwise. To them, she was the golden dev, the one who made her mark on the gaming community. She was, according them, invaluable as a developer. If she was on the team, you knew the game was going to be a fantastic hit.

Her official title was General Development and Improvement Programmer. She wasn't technically an official employee for any one company and enjoyed her freedom to work in all departments as a contractor for any game project. The few areas she didn't touch were mainly the Storyboard Writing, Art and Design, Public Relations and Marketing. Beyond those, she had helped with everything else for multiple projects, hence being considered a prodigy in the field of videogame development. Her approach to creating new engines, AI, Net Code, Feature Programming, UI Development and even Rigging and Animation was a huge boon to whatever company acquired her contract. She never had a problem with finding a job. They were practically beating down her door to work on the next big thing in the gaming community.

Selene didn't exactly need to work much anymore, as her main accolade was the reason everyone thought she was incredible. She had developed, on her own free time, a world creation tool that took multiple features and requirements of buildings and resources to create a random generation map that any team could use and considered all available space and restrictions. All someone had to do was pick all available buildings they needed in each village or even something larger like a city, the different needs to make the world feel livelier like blacksmiths or glassblowers, and it would build a breathtaking world with advanced topography and placement with advanced city planning and roads as well as points of interest like a cliff near a waterfall. There were no odd "rings" or flat terrain issues under the buildings, it settled everything without sunken polygons or clipping, with hills and roads being in perfect sync. Due to this, the tool was used in almost all MMO games, and she received royalties from its uses. It revolutionized game development from then on.

This tool made it infinitely faster for design teams to work on fine tuning and working on other facets of the game without any issue with holes in the world, allowing patches and expansions to be quickly rolled out for many popular games. This wasn't her only feat, as she had helped design multiple features for quite a few games that won her many entertainment development awards. However, despite what everyone thought, she wasn't effortlessly creating these incredible features and tools. She wasn't just waking up in the morning and knocking out an incredible feature for a dev team in a day. She had many sleepless nights, or nights she fell asleep still wearing Dive Gear or lying with her face smashed against a keyboard or desk. She tended to work from home half the time, the remainder being at whatever company hired her. Each time she showed up, they provided a VIP office especially set up for her. She hated them. She was almost never in them due to needing to talk to the project leads in other parts of the building and would rather have a small station to sit at near them to throw ideas their way.

She also remembered not all the features she had helped develop had worked perfectly. Some had been purposefully scrapped in exchange for something else due to the difficulty of implementation. She remembered a few that were so frustrating she got up and stomped around the room with everyone else noticing. If she threw a temper tantrum, it meant there was no chance of getting it to work and her patience had ended. It didn't mean they wouldn't try and create a replacement.

Selene had just finished one more project, a first-person shooter with some sort of disease that took over humans as hosts. It wasn't classified as an alien shooter or a zombie shooter, but something entirely new. You never knew if your allies would suddenly turn on you due to a defective gas mask or some other issue and was an immediate hit as soon as it was released. It was just more money to shove in the bank and try and retire early.

After the release of the project, she decided to take a plane home to California, San Diego. She didn't have any plants or pets as she was worried none of her neighbors would help water or feed them. As she picked up her luggage from a carousel and got into an auto taxi, she received a phone call. The young woman tried to shift in her seat to reach over her purse and bag to find her phone, but it was barely out of reach in a pocket on her backpack. Just as she was moving her long Auburn hair to unbuckle her seat belt to make a second attempt, the auto taxi barked a loud warning.

"PLEASE KEEP YOUR SEATBELT FASTENED UNTIL THE VEHICLE HAS COME TO A COMPLETE STOP." She was cupping her ears immediately, worried she was going to get tinnitus.

"Ow, that is really… oh, I'm going to have to give a complaint about that." She stopped attempting and simply waited. The call went to voicemail and that was that. Once she was at home, she'd check to see who had tried to communicate with her and return the call. Until then, it was brooding time about the loud taxi ride. She crossed her arms over her ample bosom and frowned.

Once the taxi had stopped on the side of the road to her condo, she removed all her baggage, closed the door and pulled out her phone. Before she could hit one button, the taxi started to pull away quickly, nearly running her foot over before she could get back on the sidewalk.

"Hey! Watch it!" She snapped at the automated vehicle as it sped away. The dev unlocked her phone and touched the app to request the ride, auto pay being provided by the previous company to get her home. She placed a scathing review and complaint for the ride, telling others to avoid them. As she dragged her luggage up the stairs and unlocked her front door, she listened to the voicemail via her ear piece. It was a request to call back an old friend of hers who lived in Japan.

Selene dropped her bags off in her bedroom and went to take a shower. She'd call him back after she had a chance to relax a little bit, as the flight had given her at least some jet lag. Once she was out and felt clean, she checked her refrigerator for food, which clearly was empty. She wasn't one of those people that left things to rot while she was away, she bought what was needed for the week and that was that. She remembered she had some pasta in the cupboards and tomato sauce, as well as some meatballs in the freezer. Now felt like the best time for Spaghetti.

After she had eaten and sat down on her couch to watch a little tv, she turned to a news channel while using her phone to return her call to Suchi, another developer.

"In tonight's news, record sales of the new game "Biotic Revolution" reaches well over fifty million in less than twenty-four hours. This has broken- "

"Hello? Selene?" Suchi Kazagawa answered on the other side, his heavy accent bleeding through the receiver.

"Hey there, I'm returning your call." She looked down at the floor as there was no one to look directly at.

"Hey, I'm glad to hear from you again. How are you doing?" Suchi sounded pretty happy to hear from his old friend. He remembered taking a few international courses with her in college.

"I'm doing well, yourself?" a small smile crept on her mouth as her eyes flicked to the ceiling and roamed her living room.

"You already know how well I'm doing after your help with our little project. See how well it exploded in popularity now?"

"Yeah he he, I can see that." Suchi was referring to Yggdrasil, the DMMO-RPG game that had become the most played MMO in Japan. No one didn't know about it, as there were also servers set up in the U.S., Europe, Russia and China. India and Australia for some reason banned sale of it, though oddly the Middle Eastern countries welcomed it with open arms.

"So, I know you just finished with that project that's all over the news." His statement seemed to allude to a question just after.

"Yeah, I'm just relaxing now for a bit. Barely even looked at my mail or emails." Her slim laptop was still stuck in her backpack, she hadn't even pulled it out. A tablet sat on top of her coffee table, and her phone she just didn't like replying to emails due to the finicky touch screen. She really needed to buy a new one.

"Ah, I see. So, now probably wouldn't be a good time to ask for a favor." There was the request she was expecting.

"It depends on the favor, what did you have in mind?" She didn't want to walk into a mess she might not be able to get out of, despite Suchi being an old friend.

"You know what? I'm sorry, I should really let you just settle back in. You've been in Texas for what, five, six months straight trying to get that project finished? This can wait a little bit I think. How often do you get to go home these days?"

"I fly back at least once every two to three weeks. Also, stop that. You always do that. I'm not one to rest on my laurels here. Is this a contract?"

"Well, not exactly." She furrowed her eyebrows. Was he in trouble? If this wasn't a contract, could he need help outside of development?

"So, this isn't work?" Selene crossed her legs and laid back a bit, flipping through the channels to a tv show or movie. She didn't really feel the need to watch the news focus on a videogame instead of something more interesting.

"Well, it is and isn't." She hated that. Suchi needed to get to the point. She was tired of people dancing around questions these past few days.

"I'm confused. What is this about?" Suchi sighed on the other side of the call.

"You see, Yggdrasil has reached the end of its lifespan, after twelve years. It's been a great run, but now we're moving on to another project."

"O…k, so this is what, an offer for a contract?" she asked. He seemed to be dancing about what he really wanted to ask her.

"No, well, sort of."

"Spit it out Suchi, I know all I'm going to do is snap at you and you'll blurt out everything smushed together in one sentence" she chuckled out.

"Ok. Would you be willing to do a log dump read for me on Yggdrasil? I've got my hands full right now and- "

"So, this is work."

"Look, I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I know this should be official, but the shutdown is tonight and I'm not asking you to look through every log and report. Just feature usage and do a little analytic review, that's all. We want to try and implement some features that were major hits, but things have changed a bit throughout the expansions and patches that we don't… well…"

"You don't know what was popular from what people used because it was the only thing available."

"Right."

"Don't you have people that do that stuff anyways? Why me?"

"Because you helped create some of those features, and I already know those alone increased the player count by over five million."

"Bullshit, you're just trying to stroke my ego" she laughed out. Her eyes rolled as she heard him chuckle.

"I'm serious! Look, I'd much rather have someone who actually knows what they're talking about vs some suits above thinking this and that are what the gaming community want. We've got a good reputation, and I'd rather have you with your amazing credit do this."

"And, what, you want me to do it right at midnight and call you after?"

"What? No! No no no, I'm just hoping you could maybe log in as an admin before midnight and download the logs after the servers would shutdown, brush through them and tell me what you think, maybe tomorrow? Or the next day? It doesn't have to be immediately. I just want your opinion."

"Well, I'm kind of tired as its 6 am here and I just got off a jet… this is a little too close to the dead line too given you're seventeen hours ahead… but… well, I'll think about it."

"Please?" Selene sighed and brushed her bangs back. She would much rather catch some ZZZs, but she did want to help her friend get their next project rolling in the right direction.

"Alright, alright. I'll log on."

"Fantastic! Great, I'll send you the admin authentication access." She would need that just to make sure it didn't consider her a hacker trying to cause chaos. Even GMs would register her log on and leave her alone.

"Ok, well, I'll talk to you later then. Expect a call sometime this week."

"Sure thing! Good bye Selene and thank you. I really appreciate this."

"Of course. Good bye, say hi to your wife for me."

"I definitely will. Hopefully we'll see you out here soon." She hung up the phone and groaned. She would much rather climb into bed and get some sleep already, but once the game servers did shutdown she wasn't going to have as complete data due to the end of life "parties" that would be happening in the game. There usually weren't just a few players feeling nostalgic, there were usually entire guilds throwing massive bashes with everyone just to enjoy the friends they made and to reminisce on old times and adventures. There would be quite a few that stay up until they were forcefully logged off.

The young woman looked at the digital clock on her wall. 6 am. This meant it was 11 pm in Tokyo. She grumbled a little as she got up and went into her office, decked out with some of the latest in high tech gear. Top of the line personal server, spare air conditioning, two laptops, two desktops and a main terminal on one side of the room, a wall size tv and multiple consoles connected on the other side, including the Dive system. She even had a developer command suite hidden inside the desk. She sat down in her gaming chair and pulled the handle on the side, lifting the footrest and reached for the headset. As she grabbed it, she pulled off her earrings and took off her necklace she always wore, as it got in the way of the wiring and hurt her ears as she put the straps on for the earphones.

She activated the system and downloaded Yggdrasil. She didn't play the game at all, though she remembered each feature in it as she had helped create almost everything. This was so long ago and with so many other games that caught her interest, she just wasn't an MMO type of gamer anymore once she was out of high school. She just didn't really have the time. While in high school, she would raid often.

Once the game was downloaded and installed, she logged in as a special custom admin. It asked if she wanted to use her personal avatar, a custom angelic being that seemed almost entirely asymmetrical in all facets of the body. The wings were made of fractured crystal disconnected and floating from the back, with the rest of the extremities hovering away from the torso. There was no face, just a pair of white eyes and flowing silver hair. Despite how it looked, no one seemed scared of it. It didn't exude any sort of evil or inherent goodness, it just seemed to fit for a general avatar to use to test multiple games without having to create a new avatar each time.

"No, I think I'll just go straight drop in" she spoke aloud to her mic. The system acknowledged and loaded her in as just a representation of herself, albeit without any clothes. She seemed to be wearing a skin-tight glowing bodysuit as a replacement for her body textures, though it hardly mattered as no one could possibly see her with admin status. As she loaded into the game and looked around, she was floating in the sky with a broad view of the surrounding landscape. It was night time in the world, with small lights twinkling both below her and above, the stars shining brightly one last time. A few shooting stars flew by the moon, disappearing after a second or two.

The woman floated down to a rooftop and watched players enjoying their last night together, trying to get personal information to stay in contact with guildmates or talking about dungeon crawls. Food and drink would be free right now until the shutdown, so people were just dropping kegs of alcohol everywhere, feasts were laid out and large parties were flourishing. Some were crying that they would lose their friends they had made throughout these years, which most likely referred to the players that simply weren't on anymore. As time continued forward, she leapt from the rooftop and teleported to different parts of the world instantly, checking on dungeons to see if there were still players doing crawls, guild meetings in their fortresses or hunting of monsters. There might even still be pvp engagements still happening.

She checked through a small list of the most recent features that everyone was using, but then quickly stopped. It wouldn't provide accurate data as in the end of the service life of the game, of course people wouldn't be using the features the same way as normal. Crafting would be all but useless, so there was no point in checking on that for sure. Her logs needed to exclude what she was seeing right now to some degree. As Selene went through the process of setting up downloads of the logs and in-depth checks, she loaded her list with the required restrictions and timelines needed, with recordings of errors and tweaks made to fix any of them.

"Four hours? Oh, you've got to… fine, I'll be asleep by the time that's done and logged out." She knew by the time the logs had finished compiling and downloaded for her to really look at them, the servers would be long since shutdown. The best she could do right now was Macro usage, messaging and how communications was holding up for the remaining players.

"Remember that time we- "

"How many were there? We must have taken out a whole army!"

"Sorry to do this Momonga, but I just don't have the energy anymore- "

"So here we were, stuck in this tunnel, right? And- "

She slipped through chats quickly, not really caring about what they were saying as how they were sending it. More than half were using face to face communication with other avatars, with very few using long range messaging. They wanted to see their friends one last time. The dev pulled up time in the upper right-hand corner. Fifteen minutes to shutdown.

"I'll miss you all!"

"This is the end!"

"I don't wanna go out like this!"

"We will find each other! In the next game we will rebuild our guild! Are you with me?"

Selene was tired, and before she knew it, she was falling asleep before the shutdown had completed. She already knew what was going to happen, she'd wake up with the logged out blank system screen showing into her eyes, skin indentation from the helmet on her face and chin and the need to pee. There was always a very light beep noise that came from the shutdown of a server, she knew it from a few forced shutdowns of previous test builds for other games to sift through error reports.

Oddly, this never sounded off in her ears.

What happened next for her was something she never would have expected to ever happen in her wildest dreams.

Eight Hours Later

Selene woke up to the rough feeling of dirt on her shoulder as well as grass. She looked around, blinking and confused as she slowly moved to a sitting position. That was when she panicked. The woman bolted to standing on her feet as quickly as she could, stumbling a little bit as she surveyed where she was. What was in front of her eyes was not her office, it was not the log out system screen, and she had no idea how she got here.

Surrounding her was an open field, with a forest further off to her left, a small pond to her right, and further up in front of her was a sea of small hills with a mountain range in the far distance. She turned around to look behind her and saw a good twenty-five miles behind was another mountain range curving off to the North and South.

"What the… where… wha… how…" she spun around quickly in all directions, looking for a road or a sign, something to tell her where she might be. As she did so and looked down at her feet, she noticed something very important. She was completely naked.

"Where the fuck are my clothes. Who the… no way… no no no no… this can't be happening this can't be happening…" she started to repeat. Selene tried to calm herself down as she looked up at the sky.

"This is a dream, it has to be a dream, I'm dreaming. All I have to do is wake up." She pinched herself on her left arm and Winced. She felt pain. Games could not allow direct pain ever, they would have law suits immediately for causing a form of torture in all courts everywhere. The amount of griefing and trolls that would cause adrenaline spikes, heart palpitations, dizziness and other issues would spike. The list went on for medical conditions it could exacerbate. Even Yggdrasil only allowed limited touch sensation. She might be really here.

"Did someone…" she was scared now. Someone could have broken into her home, potentially raped her and thrown her off in some rural area with no clothes. Some crazed fan? Some angry rival in the development community? She checked her body over and trembled. Nothing was out of the ordinary, no scratches or issues. She was just completely nude. It could have been a really bad prank, but she doubted it.

"Hello? Anyone out there? I need help" She yelled out in all directions. There was no response from anyone, and frankly she didn't see any signs of civilization. That should be impossible. Getting out of San Diego would be extremely difficult with traffic at the time she fell asleep, and after eight hours there should still be some sign of roads or buildings nearby. The only way there would be no signs was if she was dropped off somewhere in Arizona, somewhere in the desert. This was clearly not a desert.

She was almost at her breaking point and ready to fall to her knees and cry, but every sensible thought going through her head told her to start walking. Maybe if she followed the mountain range, she'd find a town or a Sheriff, maybe a road she could follow. Heading towards the hills seemed like a sure-fire way of getting lost, and so did the forest. Unfortunately for her, the forest was somewhat in the way near the mountains. She had to go somewhere, and hopefully someone could help her.

As she dropped her hands from cupping her mouth, a small sparkle shimmered in front of her. She was surprised and moved her arms again up to her mouth, seeing the shimmer happen a second time. Nothing seemed to appear or try and harm her, but it was very odd, as her eyes widened, and her feet started to back pedal. She tripped and fell on her butt, looking towards where the sparkle had faded away. She had to start moving, or whatever it was could get a chance to manifest, and she wasn't about to stick around for that.

Selene got up and stumbled a bit, then ran for the mountains until she was out of breath, and nothing seemed to follow her. She could hear birds and crickets chirping throughout the area as she walked, not really noticing anything else besides wildlife and nature. She tried to cover herself as best she could, though there didn't seem to be much of a reason right now given that there was no one to see her buck naked. She felt a breeze and shivered a bit, trying to rub her arms to keep away the cold. In the distance she could see a small black dot on the bottom of the mountain she was heading towards. It would slowly get bigger and turn into a cave entrance. By the time she reached it, twenty-five miles had been crossed and the day was almost over. She was exhausted after walking for so many hours. There was no chance of finding civilization right now that her legs felt like jelly. To compound issues, she was hungry and thirsty.

As she reached the cave, she checked to make sure no predators were living inside of it, whether it was a bear or wolf pack. If there was, she probably would be killed instantly. Luckily, there wasn't a single living creature inside. The woman walked in and sat down with her back to the end of the cave, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was alone, naked, out in the middle of nowhere, and she had no idea how she got there. There were no signs of civilization yet anywhere which made no sense, and that sparkle happened back when she was near that pond. She really did feel like crying now, as tears welled up in her eyes. Her hand moved up to try and brush them away and as it did so, she saw the shimmer again. She backed up as far as she could against the cave wall and stared. After a few seconds she moved her arm again, and the shimmer appeared for the fourth time. This time, however, she saw a slight image appear inside the shimmer.

"That's it, I'm in a new game, maybe they put me in a holding server. Those assholes!" She was pissed now, at least for the single minute she thought about what the image might have entailed. She moved her hand again, waving it about in front of her. The image focused a bit here and there, but ultimately, she barely made any sense of anything she saw. She also realized if she was in a game, she wouldn't have felt pain. Something was wrong beyond the obvious. She tried to think logically.

"I was wearing the Dive gear and was in Yggdrasil. I fell asleep. I wake up out here, in the middle of nowhere, with no clothes, and I see this odd hallucination. I can't find any signs of civilization… where am I?" she speaks to herself as she tries to bullet point the facts by word of mouth. Selene looked at the cave wall and put her right hand to it, feeling the intricacy of the rough stone. She then balled her hand into a fist and slammed the bottom of it sideways like a hammer. It hurt. It hurt just like the pinch. She was here, physically, in wherever this was. Continuing to physically harm herself wouldn't change that.

"Aliens? No, maybe, possibly. Magic? That thing keeps popping up when I move my arm. Supernatural? WHY AM I ASKING THESE QUESTIONS! I WANT TO GO HOME! SEND ME HOME! PLEASE!" She started to scream, tears pouring from her eyes as she just sat there with a bruised hand. A small thought popped up in the back of her head that she was asking herself these questions to keep her sanity. She just dropped her head against her knees and sat there, crying for a few minutes. After what felt like an hour, it started to get dark outside. Here she was, naked and alone huddling in a cave. She couldn't just sit and die out here. She needed at least some answers to what was happening.

The young developer looked up and sat on her knees and waved her hand around in front of her. The shimmering kept happening, with slight image appearance at certain spots. She was starting to get annoyed as she couldn't really make out anything she was seeing, a few letters here and there but that was it. She finally was fed up and punched her fist at the air. The image became crystal clear for an instant then faded away. It looked like a character sheet. That surprised her greatly. She tried to bring it back but kept getting more shimmers. She didn't want to punch at air again to bring it back, as each time she did that it would take energy she needed to conserve. She did remember she focused hard on it when that happened and tried to concentrate on what she saw.

It took a minute or two, but it slowly stayed for longer and longer until it didn't go away. Once she had it staying, she tried to turn it off, which took a bit of time to figure that out and "send it away." What she saw was very interesting.

Written on the sheet were stats and skills, along with resistance percentages and what seemed to be a full body view of herself. To the top left was her level, one.

"I'm not in a game, or am I?" She whispered. She noticed a name for the location she was in, "New World. Second Continent. Artinia." That slightly confused her and at the same time explained things a bit. She wasn't on Earth anymore. This made her blood run cold.

"Magic. I don't believe in magic." She tried to come up with some other explanation, something logical, but this was the best she could figure out. It was either that or some supernatural wormhole opened and swallowed her up, as well as removed her clothes. It had to be true. She was here, not home. No one took her clothes and dropped her in the middle of some open field, at least not human. She pushed her head down and covered her eyes with her hands. She needed to believe it, there was no other way she'd see a character sheet floating in front of her eyes. Yggdrasil's sheet didn't even look like the one she had. None of the character UIs she had helped create looked like it either. This was unique. It also looked ugly to her. The design was square and far too symmetrical, with everything having to be a certain size. There was a lot of information that didn't always fit in one column, so this seemed to annoy her.

"If you're going to give me something like this, at least make it functional!" She slapped at the sheet and it deformed halfway, mushing together a bit. She panicked, and her level was now mixed with resistance percentages and armor rating. Selene tried to pull the corner back out and rearrange to how it was originally set but noticed she could move things about. It was customizable. She felt another shiver as it got cold in the cave. She tried to brush it off, as there wasn't much she could do to fix the situation until morning.

"So, what do I have here at least" she whispered as she looked through all the "features" of her sheet. It would at least keep her mind off her horrible situation. What she noticed were multiple bars just under her level. One was red, which she figured was her health points or hp. Below that was Blue, what she figured was her mana or mp. Below the blue bar was an orange highlight bar that didn't seem filled. She was curious as to what that did and decided to test it. She slapped the palm of her hand on the ground and yelled. It went up a bit, then slowly started to fade away.

"Yup, rage. That's been around since… hell, since World of Warcraft. It's been used in how many knock offs I can't even remember…" she said to herself as her blue eyes looked further down. She remembered most of her gaming history during computer science courses. There was a yellow bar below that, what she figured was energy. It seemed to be one quarter full. Rogues or thieves would be using this she thought, but then corrected herself. She noticed two vertical bars to the right of all the horizontal ones. One was a light blue and was at one quarter bar, the other was a light orange and was similar.

"Son of a… it's crafting survival features. Food and Water bars. Of course! Yellow isn't energy, it's stamina!" It was like lightning struck her brain as she figured it out. Some of what she was seeing was MMO, another part was crafting survival. For all she knew, there were first person shooter elements and maybe sim city somewhere as well for management. She was somehow in a real new world and yet had game elements she could use. It didn't really make sense, and yet she couldn't come up with any reason it had to be just a bad dream.

Below the yellow bar was a purple one, which she immediately figured was psionics. She didn't have any of that, did she? She needed to check if she had any spells or abilities she started with. Only one ability appeared in her list, something called Molecular Reformation. The ability had a golden sparkle around the wording. It brought a thought to her head of Terrain Deformation, a tool devs used to create the lay of the land. This seemed different.

"I wonder what this does. There's no real tooltip… that would have been helpful…" she said in annoyance to no one. She wanted to cast it, but she didn't really know how. As her eyes wandered past her sheet, she was looking at an outcropping of the stone surrounding her. Selene focused on it carefully, as maybe that was how to get anything to work was to simply concentrate. As she looked at the stone her hand slowly reached out, almost to extend whatever force she was trying to exert on the material. That was when she noticed dirt and dust sifting and moving just below where she was pointing at.

"Come on… come on…" the stone started to crack, and just as she was about to reach her wits end, a piece fell off and dropped to the floor. She had caused that.

Her eyes immediately flicked to her sheet, straight to the bars to see if any of them moved. She needed to make sure it hadn't cost her health, but most importantly she needed to know if that took any points from the other bars. None of them moved. This wasn't magic, or psionics, or rage or even energy. This was just something she had. A special ability. Was this just a gift for her, given the fact she had helped code so many things in games that used this stuff? She was a developer, so this might have been given to her to help her develop. Things weren't set in stone for her "Character." She also wondered if the reason she was a level one and naked was she hadn't picked her avatar, otherwise she might be godly right now.

Just then, her stomach growled. She hadn't eaten the whole day or drank anything. Her mouth was dry as well. She swore as she saw both the food and water bar were ever so slowly lowering. She would need to find food and drinkable water in the morning. She also needed to test this power she had a bit more before she went to sleep, and she figured out the most effective way right now.

As she focused on other stone outcroppings around her in the cave, she tried her best to see what she could do before it got too dark. She didn't want to collapse the place on her, but she also didn't want a wide-open cave mouth waiting for animals to try and crawl in and end her life, as well as not being so cold. As she concentrated on the stone, she tried to focus on as little as she could, seeing just how much and how tiny an amount she could make fall off. What she noticed was what seemed to be a fine dust slowly floating away and piling up on the ground. Was this the very molecules of the stone? The smallest amount? It seemed incredible, but also taxing on her concentration. She needed to finish this "experiment" before she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. She also needed to make sure she didn't inhale that powdered stone on the ground.

Selene took a more forceful thought process and focused hard on the stone, and literally ripped out a slab of it from the wall. She jumped as it happened and slid maybe three feet forward, creating a small outcropping. It helped a bit with the wind flowing into the cave.

"Ok, wall it is, before I drop." Multiple other blocks popped out of the walls as she built a makeshift blockade to help stave off the cold. It worked quite well; the stone created an impenetrable barrier that she made high enough so that most animals couldn't try joining her inside as well as keeping herself from turning into a popsicle. This was a step in the right direction. Her eyes wandered over the sheet still floating in front of her and looked at the remainder of information. She was getting really tired, but this was important to keep her alive. There were two icons at the bottom, one showed a bag and the second one seemed to show a letter T. Other information she noticed was there was no class anywhere and no race. She was pretty sure she was human last time she checked, as she most definitely had the proper female equipment.

"Is the bag an inventory?" She questioned herself as she touched the icon. It didn't do anything. She yawned and waved her hand around near it, and then felt like a ditz. Everything seemed to need concentration on that specific tool or ability. She focused on an open bag and received a new menu with slots going horizontal, probably to show what she had. All it showed was empty in bright white letters.

"Of course it would be empty, because then it would be too easy to give me clothes and food and other things to keep me alive." She sighed as she gestured in annoyance. Her hand moved through a small shimmering spot near the menu, disappearing inside. She pulled out her hand quickly and grasped it with her other hand. Was that her inventory? An invisible floating portal?

She groaned as she perused how the menu was set up. It was the standard Japanese layout with boxes and lists that expanded into other lists endlessly. You could sit there and sort through everything you had for the next ten minutes trying to find that one healing potion or armor you needed. She abhorred it.

"I'm changing this right now if I can, that is just so unintuitive." She started to pull it apart and put it back together, ripping parts off and moving them to one spot then another. She started to remember all the UI designs she had to work with and one she especially loved. She chuckled at that thought, as it had revolutionized how any actions were taken to reach equipment for all western games from then on. "Battlefield of the Stars" had her help develop a Spiderweb Radial menu that was completely customizable. It had a main hub that allowed access to the character sheet, with multiple "links" to other bubbles. Each had a focus depending on what the player wanted, whether they wanted one to be inventory, another to be basic stats, another to be their belt spare weapons. You could further expand with more bubbles connected to those, allowing you to restrict and control what went into each. You could build a sorting system for your inventory that you could quickly reach at a moment's notice. One could be used for just healing potions, another for just mana regeneration food, another for spare melee weapons or ranged. All you had to do was tap and move down the next chain. Inventory could be sifted by typing in the search bar, or the quantity or assorted other requirements the player set to keep things organized.

By the time someone with the standard Japanese layout had found what they were looking for, the Spider Radial would have allowed the player to completely swap weapons and armor, drank a healing potion, picked ingredients for their next meal, prepped new spells to cast, quick check their stats beyond their Hud and potentially talked to guildmates and friends, all while still waiting for the next enemy to swing their sword. RTS gamers could only dream of this kind of control. Just then, her wish was granted, and her inventory menu updated with the Spider Radial.

"Yes! Yes, this is what I need, thank god. Boy I can sure make use of this." It made perusing her character sheet infinitely faster. She could tell where her skills were, her stat bars, quick inventory check which was still empty, resistances and even perks and special effects or buffs. The final check she had was the T icon. She had no idea what it stood for. She decided to just focus on it and see if it did anything. What she saw astounded her. Her mouth dropped open.

Before her very eyes, was a massive tech tree, spanning from Early Paleolithic era straight to "Final Ascendance." It had a tier range from one to fifty, Early Paleolithic era being tier 1. And she somehow knew exactly where she was at. Beyond the tiers, there were lists of technology she could learn or unlock, using what seemed to be chunks of her experience points she would accrue. Each tech unlock would cost at the beginning ten experience and go up by a factor of ten every five character levels. She didn't like that much, as if she wanted to level that would slow her down just to improve the tech and equipment she needed to use. Selene bonked herself on the head and remembered where she had seen this from. There was another game she had helped try and design this for, a crafting survival game that eventually allowed you to get into space from the stone age. There was one feature that allowed you to bypass using your experience to tech up however, but it cost something probably more worthwhile than those points. Every time someone wanted to just max all tech in one tier to move to the next, they could have the game delete all materials and resources they had available. It wouldn't delete any tools or equipment, but any ores or supplies used for crafting or food would just up and vanish. It provided the technology for the tier you chose each time, which while making it faster to learn everything, you now had to gather more materials to make use of those new tools or weapons. To stop anyone from abusing it and handing over the materials to their guild or only gather a certain amount, they can to construct one hundred of any technology in the tier they were exceeding, and any resources given back to the player from the guild would have a time stamp to make it vanish if they touched it. Guildmates could craft something with the resources and hand it to them without issue, but if it was the raw materials it was gone.

Of course, the major advantage was you didn't lose any experience, so you could level up faster, and you gained all knowledge of that tech tier. Tier 1 was automatically provided so people could start somewhere, but it seemed she didn't even have that. Given that she had Molecular Reformation, she wondered if that would allow her to collect enough starting resources to tech up. A thought occurred to her as she looked through the tech tree and swapped quickly to her experience bar. It had gone up, whether from "exploring" just to get to the cave or using the Molecular Reformation ability to move blocks of stone around. She'd have to do more testing in the morning. She wasn't quite ready to reach level 2, but she was well past half. The technology tree matched restrictions for the first five levels, then after that was no longer restricting. This was to help players start with basic tools. If she could get to level three, she would reach Upper Paleolithic era, and at least have some standard stone tools, probably a stone spear and a bow and arrows. She'd also, if she could figure out how to hunt, get some hide clothing to stay warm. There was an unlock that allowed plant fiber clothing, which seemed to either use grass or leaves from a tree. She'd need that immediately.

The woman thought about what would happen once she did make the equipment or clothing. If everything was to be believed, then hopefully she didn't need to follow Yggdrasil's equipment tier system. Low, Middle, High, Top, Legacy, Relic, Legendary, Divine and World tier. She really would much rather use "Divine Apocalypse's" tier system. It was much larger, though it did have far more low-quality tiers to balance things out and allow players to ease into better equipment, allowing quests to flow more efficiently. The tier system goes Trash, Shoddy, Petty, Worn, Common, Uncommon, Professional, Elite, Blessed, Magic, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Artifact, Celestial, Ascendant, Mythic, Black List, Unique, and finally Special. Mythic and Black List weren't allowed to be gained by players, but she might be an exception.

Trash tier was just that, trash. It was some of the worst equipment anyone could get their hands on, had already been heavily damaged and was falling apart. You found this in early starting areas when you didn't have anything in your slots. This would be replaced very quickly. It didn't provide much protection, but it was better than nothing. Just barely. This would be considered low quality for Yggdrasil, maybe not even that.

Shoddy was a decent step up from Trash, but unfortunately it still fell apart quickly. It was mainly a tier that provided better protection than trash, but its durability was still low, only allowing a few hits before straps unbuckled or plating came off. This was provided as quest rewards by starting area quest givers, which would constantly make you want to do the next quest to replace that broken armor. It wasn't much, but it would be a step up from something you found in a dumpster or on an undead skeleton. Despite it being a better tier, it would still be considered low quality for Yggdrasil.

Petty was the next step up and provided as bought items from vendors at the beginning. Better than Shoddy, it would provide average armor and protection without falling apart. The side effect was that it was usually made of ramshackle materials and looked like something a bandit would wear or an asymmetrical anime character. The armor would usually be difficult to repair due to the nature of all the materials added. Again, low quality.

Worn was basically poor man's Common. It had cheap materials used, and usually was incomplete and missing at least a key feature that Common provided, whether that was a pauldron or thigh plate. Oddly enough, this was the main gear used by starting adventurers getting out into the rest of the game. Also, oddly, this might be considered mid-tier for Yggdrasil, depending on what slot it took up.

Common was interesting, as it was unlike all the other common armor from other games. It was as its namesake states, it was a common tier used by most anyone. Usually kept as back up weapons or armor when higher tiers were damaged or broken, this could be used to enter groups and not be considered a noob. It was at least average quality, nothing cheap but also nothing expensive for materials. This was, despite the lower tiers, considered entry level armor to enter any dungeons. Despite it being called common, this would be considered mid-tier.

Uncommon was usually higher quality Commons with better materials. They usually had armor patches added in certain critical areas, decent stitching and buttons, and were usually easier to move in. This was what players would try and receive in most dungeons, as it was always an upgrade across the board for all stats. Unlike most other games, it didn't usually provide stat boosts, just far better armor and durability with less inconveniences, and probably a cooldown decrease on skills and abilities. This is also considered mid-tier.

Professional was what was used by seasoned players, mercenaries and assassins. This was the tier that a decent number of players tended to stop at and provided at least some stat boosts. It was made of some of the highest quality materials, didn't restrict any mobility, provided a cooldown decrease and tended to be fashionable. If someone was wearing this, you usually didn't want to fight them in pvp, as well as wanting to group with them for a dungeon. This tier level would be considered high-tier for the Japanese MMO.

Elite was considered some of the finest equipment most players would receive, usually providing the best materials commonly available without using special resources or ingredients. This would be what a king would wear, with the finest silks and leather provided. Anyone walking around in full Elite would turn heads. It would be considered high-tier.

Blessed was the first tier provided by early raiding, and always had special effects that the lower tiers couldn't provide. One of the effects she remembered seeing was "1% chance on being hit to fully heal." A good portion of the effects were nothing especially amazing but combined with other Blessed equipment and this allowed raid groups to continue further on to better raids with less down time. This would more than likely match the qualifications of Top-tier gear. Some games would call it "Epic" tier.

Magic tier was not the normal magic tier other games had. It was as its name suggests, pure magic. It would provide all the benefits of the lower tiers, and yet always had a unique ability attached. Some of the abilities were new spells or powers a person's class weren't allowed to have, like a warrior casting a fireball from his sword to draw aggro or set an area on fire. They were highly sought after, and only rarely dropped from raid bosses. If someone had one, everyone would congratulate them on their fortune. It made doing anything in the game far easier. Despite how powerful they usually were, Selene believed it could be lumped in with Legacy-tier. This could also be considered a Legendary in a dungeon crawler game.

Rare never got its name changed, it was a standard for so long due to the coloring of the item. It would probably be equal to Relic gear from Yggdrasil, and usually provided set bonuses and high stat boosts. It wasn't necessarily stronger than Magic tier, but the set bonuses combined would allow very near breaking of raid bosses. One advantage one set allowed was allowing tanks to have total immunity to certain damage types, without needing any resistance. Forum posts complained about how pvp couldn't be done against those players who had immunity to that type of damage, and the response from other players was always "so change your damage type. Everyone has at least three forms of damage."

Epic was one of the strongest tiers anyone could get, and very few ever received them. The strength of even one of these would be considered equal with the Legendaries of Yggdrasil. Fewer than ten thousand players in Divine Apocalypse had them. There were multiple forum posts about how broken some of them could be in a pvp environment, but the devs, including herself, never wanted to change them due to the effort required just to receive even one. Some required extremely long quest chains, each requiring an absurd amount of time and patience as well as sacrificing high quality materials and even equipment just to gain them. There were even a few players that held epic weapons, only to be completely naked bar a loincloth due to throwing the rest of their items away for it. If someone had an Epic, they had earned it.

Legendary for Divine Apocalypse meant just that, a weapon that sparked stories or armor that caused everyone to remember them for years. The number of players that ever gained one were less than a thousand and were almost exclusively raid players or world boss destroyers. Very rarely, if ever, did anyone who held a Legendary pvp. They were just too busy preparing for the next raid to fight. If someone had a Legendary, they were more than likely being offered spots in any groups, even going so far as sparking guild wars to have them join. This seemed to be the last tier any decent number of players ever received, and she could easily place this on par with Divine.

Artifact, despite anyone else thinking it might be equal to Divine, was considered a higher tier than that. It was always unique, and there were finite amounts of them in the world. She'd place it easily on power level with a World item of Yggdrasil. They always required special planning to reach, with multiple raid groups teaming up just for a chance at it. So much planning was placed on retrieving the artifact to stop any problems from arising, as even one mess up could cause the artifact to be lost forever, never to be seen again. Most of the Artifacts had been categorized, but new ones were added every six months. Fewer than a hundred players had access to them, and guilds had to share that access amongst themselves due to the effort and supplies used.

Celestial was the final tier any player had seen. There were only ever two players who ever gained them, and until recently were only ever considered something a Game Master, or GM, could spawn. If someone had one, no one tried to go after them in world pvp, and they had enough power to solo raids, though this might not be the maximum extent of their abilities. One of the players who received his had spent so much time trying to gain it that his obsession caused heart failure after he acquired the item. The second player is in hiding to keep guilds from trying to find her and send advertisements to join them. Due to both players disappearing, no one truly knows how powerful they are except for GMs and developers.

Ascendant was the highest tier known, but no one has ever received one or made anything at that quality. Some think it doesn't exist, it's just a lie from the developers. Selene knew otherwise, at least for the tier being real, and hoped no one received one until her friends at Lost Cause Games could create a raid or invasion that required access to one. So far, they had no luck. She could smell a contract being offered in the future. For all she knew, there might only be one in the game.

Mythics weren't used by players, and only ever touched by developers. They were fully broken items just for use in testing features. Did the feature work? Yes. How much damage did the weapon deal? Does it matter? The feature worked, that's what they cared about. They were horribly imbalanced tools that could only be spawned in house, and never downloaded by the game client. The files were completely missing outside of the company. She could say that each company had their own Mythic list, if she could even lump other equipment tiers from other games into it.

Black Listed Items were avoided as much as possible, even by devs. They were Mythics on steroids and were unstable. While Mythics would test a feature, Black Listed would usually test stability of the game and see just how good the net code or how structurally sound the entire game was. She remembered one friend of hers, Brian, had to use a Black List sword to see if a new type of weapon damage was working correctly. He crashed the game so hard that when he was able to start it back up, the npc he attacked was corrupted so that it would constantly die from so much overkill damage he couldn't be resurrected correctly. They had to recompile and load the back up of the npc into the game just to make him not collapse on the ground, effectively stopping any quests being given. This was why most devs didn't even want to use them. They were a last resort while working on the project.

Uniques weren't in any tier, they were usually given to players for special events. They could be any quality level and had special names you couldn't get anywhere else. They always had some special power added, though the power wasn't always useful in combat. Some allowed removal of certain material requirements from crafting recipes or limited how much mana a certain healing spell would use permanently by drinking a unique potion. This made players want to attend the events and participate in whatever the event called for. Not everyone gained a unique, as the event could be something like a champion arena to show your martial prowess, or maybe racing your pure-bred mount around an obstacle course. She remembered there was a tier for Yggdrasil like this, she just couldn't place her finger on it. There was no list provided by the devs when events happened, to keep people hoping for something incredible. If a list showed up, some people wouldn't attend because they knew what was being offered as a reward and they didn't like what they could get.

Specials were Quality of Life improvement items. They had special powers that just made the game easier to deal with. Town portal scrolls or tomes, unending campfires, unending water jugs, all of these fell into this category. This was usually the first tier beyond uncommon that most players wanted to gather as much of as possible, as it just made playing more enjoyable when they didn't have to track how much water they had, how much food or repair kits they were carrying, whether their mount was being overburdened etc.

Of course, all of these tiers could be modified and crafted with entirely new features in Divine Apocalypse. The list of what could be done just to craft that special equipment made just for you was huge. Primary Material, Secondary Material, Tertiary Material, Primary Additive Material, Secondary Additive Material, Main Focus, Cleansing, Primary Forging Technique, Secondary Forging Technique, Tertiary Forging Technique, Tempering/Bit sewing, Filing Technique, Primary Sharpening, Secondary Sharpening, Additive Sharpening, Primary Modifications, Secondary Modifications, Fitting, Enhancing, Imprinting, Auras, Blessing, Imbuement, Runic Etching, Enchanting, Socketing, the list went on. It needed to so that players had something to look forward to beyond just finding developer gear already placed in the world and dungeons. It also helped that the maximum player level was 100,000. This also didn't take into account the tech tree tiers, or Reputation Level, or any of the other factors that could raise that beyond 100,000. Theoretically, the maximum player level with everything maxed would be one million, which no player could possibly reach in their lifetime. This made everyone feel unique in every sense of the word. There was a reason Divine Apocalypse was the number one selling game everywhere right now.

A yawn escaped her lips as her eyes started to get droopy. She couldn't stay awake any longer and being hungry didn't help. She'd need to scavenge in the morning and figure out if there were any bushes that had edible berries, roots she could eat, or maybe some small animal she could catch if that was even possible for her. She'd also need to make some rudimentary clothing to stop being cold or getting a sunburn. There was a lot she'd need to do, and as she tried to build a plan for her excursion out of the cave, she drifted off to sleep, no longer able to keep herself awake. She had a long second day ahead of her on this New World. No one was coming to save her. She needed save herself.