I take a deep breath

YGGDRASIL, A game that's been advertised to hell and back, and I was going to be playing it for the foreseeable future.

Because of my somewhat noteworthy fame I was selected to basically become an advertising tool for those shity game devs. That and I was not going to just let a free DMMO-RPG pass me by, Afterall I had enjoyed Aberage quite a bit.

'Well, best not keep the devs waiting' I put on the headset and turn it on expectantly waiting for the game to start. I felt my consciousness start to fade as I began to enter the new game of mine.

"Well look who it is. Michael, the Blaze of the west himself" I awoke to a white room with a glowing orb in front of me "Indeed, though I ask not to use that ridiculous nickname given to me" the glowing orb floated towards me "oh you're embarrassed by just a simple nickname, maybe you're not as impressive as I was told." 'fucking shity devs' "if you don't want me to advertise your game you could have just said so." "Hey hey I was joking don't take everything so seriously. 'Dumbass' "I am in bad mood today and your the one who said that this job was worth getting out of my retirement for." "oh, it's worth getting out of bed for old man."

Suddenly the white room shifted and then I was standing in a grassy field with a blue sky and the occasional tree it was like the old days when the pollution hadn't reached its full effect. "Look around you, what do you think about our lovely world we have created" "if I'm going, to be honest, it's more than I expected " "good to know that our hard work paid off in the visuals department but you still haven't experienced the best part" "oh and what pray tell would that be" "the freedom to live how you want in a world of our creation " "that's a bold claim for someone who hasn't shown me the game yet"

"Yes yes very funny we will get to that soon but first you have to make your character" "alright you shity dev and how exactly do I do that it's not like you gave me a menu to use for character creation" "oh just look at that mirror over there" my hud then pointed to a random spot in the grass "there is no mirror there" oh shit sorry I had it in Dev view let me change that back suddenly in front of my eyes a mirror appeared directly in front of me "you know this is not the best introduction you could have given me"

"Yea yea walk in front of the mirror already" I do as he says and walk in front of the mirror to find my appearance is that of my younger years without cybernetics or genetic treatment 'well that's certainly something" "why does it look like a younger version of me" "how narcissistic, that mirror simply shows your ideal human form. It seems you like yourself quite a bit "if it's my ideal human form why change it." "Player freedom once again why leave just the ideal options" "it still hasn't given me a menu." "There is no menu old man. just visualize what you want for your appearance in your head" I look at the mirror my younger self looking back at me. 'black hair, steel blue eyes, and pale skin the only thing lacking is the dark circles around my eyes. As I thought about the features lacking from my youthful form dark circles formed around my eyes 'well now isn't that something

After messing with the character creator for a bit I settled on an older version of myself but still younger than I was in real life: the same black hair and instead of steel-blue eyes I had just straight gray eyes the pale skin stayed but with some scar remnants similar to the ones I had in real life.

"I think I'm done" "no you are not, you still haven't chosen a race yet" "why not just select it in the mirror shity dev" "because you need a baseline for how your race will look unless of course, you want to play as human" "perish the thought" "well anyways now we will give you the race menu" "oh so now menus are good enough for you to use whats with the change" "the change is we needed a way to show the players the different stats each race has and just appearances were not cutting it"

In my hand appeared a tablet with the listening of all the races they were listed as Humanoid demi-human and Heteromorphic under the Heteromorphic tab there was a warning, warning if you play as a Heteromorphic race there will be no penalty for killing your character and many of the player areas will be harder for you to play on., but there will be no penalty for killing other characters. 'Well I have to pick one of these guys then, now way am I going to be limiting myself with who I can fight'

"let's see Demon, vampire, slime, troll, dragonkin, celestial, skeleton, elemental, golem, Dragonoid, angel, fairy, Death vine, zombie, Naga, lycanthrope, Doppelganger,'I suppose elemental may be fun' Elementals are the sentient embodiment of magic. Their abilities strengths and weaknesses are derived from the set of magic that they originated from. There are 7 different types of elementals: fire elementals, water elementals, Earth elementals, air Elementals, swamp elementals, undead elementals, life elementals, and basic elementals all elementals are immune to certain physical damages such as fall damage (warning basic elementals are Severely weakened during the start of your playthrough) 'huh a challenge within a challenge I think i may like this' i selected the basic elemental tab

Basic elementals

Basic elementals start as the weakest of the 6 because of the fact that they have no major resistances instead having a general 20% resistance to magic and non-silver or silver-lined weapons. All spells cast as this race will cost 2x times more to cast until higher levels, melee attacks do 50% less damage until Higher levels silver weapons will deal 2x more damage to you ignoring all resistances until higher levels, you will drop rare items on death so you will be hunted, you start with extremely low health, once you hit level 20 you upgrade to the race grand Elemental 'damm did they have to give it so many downsides' I decided to pick the basic elemental as my starting race for the sake of a challenge

As I selected the basic elemental my appearance changed once more my body took on a wispy texture my face morphed into the blue energy I could still see the remnants of my humanoid form it was just blurry behind the energy. Please select a name for your character ' i thought for a moment "hmm how about Magnus" are you sure you want to pick the name Magnus Y/N "yes"

"Oh you picked the Basic elemental, good luck with that, all of the alpha testers switched to the other elemental options before they hit level 10. "We will see if it becomes too irritating to handle for me though I doubt it. "Still with that confidence I see we will see how long that lasts anyways it's been an hour and we only have till midnight before release to the general public. so my only advice to you old man is just to play how you want and don't be too lewd or else you will get banned. "What about my job to advertise" "don't worry about that once people find out your playing that will generate the hype we need, so just try to have fun in this game of ours, or at least that's what my boss tells me."

With that said a bright flash engulfed me and then I felt myself falling when my eyes adjusted I saw the blue sky in front of me. A screen of text appeared in front of me Welcome to Midgard MagnusI look down to see vast forests and grassy fields below me 'well this landing will suck' as I braced for impact as I approached the top of a tree.


*Thunk*

I landed on the tree I was above I look to my health bar to see that I took no fall damage 'huh it seems that they have a decent physics system' that was my first thought when seeing the broken branches and the burning outline of my impact.

I wandered around for a bit before encountering an oversized boar a health bar and name appeared above it Midgard forest boar lvl 5 'well looks like my first fight has arrived' i look in my menu for spells to use as the aggressor before settling on burning touch it, doesn't do much damage but it's also the only spell I have that doesn't cost half of my MP I charge at the boar and grab it with the spell active removing 1/10th of the beasts' health.

The boar kicked back hitting me in the arm removing half of my health with one hit 'shit they were not kidding about the low health. I guess the best way to win this is to simply not get hit' i jump back away from the boar and realize I just have fists for weapons 'i have to get something to hit it with' the boar charges at me as I step to the side 'that was fast I better be careful as it prepared for the next charge I grabbed a sharp-looking stick on the ground weapon: pointed stick +5 to attack 'well better than nothing" as the boar charged a second time I jabbed the stick into its eye dealing another chunk of the boars' health. The fight continued for what felt like five minutes until I was left with barely any stamina and the boar was left with barely any health 'come on you stupid boar charge again so I can kill you' the boar charged one final time as I hit it with my stick killing it.

The boar's body dissipated and a crystal fell to the ground you have gained 50 XP 'huh just ten more and I will reach a new level' i put the crystal in my inventory Midgard forest boar meat. restores 10 health when eaten 'its sad that that's enough to fully heal me' i use the meat and restore my health. I lean against a tree in order to look through my menu as I was sitting down I heard the sound of the ground being scraped I quickly roll to the side to just barely be missed by another boar 'another one ' I look up to see not just one but 3 boars 'alright I know their attack pattern I just have to avoid getting hit by the three of them '

The fight lasted about 9 minutes this time with me not getting hit once and landing my own hits faster but I was severely low on stamina. 'alright I'll just sit here for a bit to regenerate my stamina' i finally get the chance to rest and 'this so far has been pretty good I guess. I will just pick a random direction and head that way'.

After about 15 minutes of walking in a random direction, I found a rusty chest next to a tree. I open it up Rusty iron sword + 20 to attack. 'Finally an actual weapon maybe I can do some grinding with this.' i keep walking in a random direction.

A little while later I encountered more enemies I made swift work out of them. Or as swift as you could get when you were this weak. I was currently fighting lvl 7 cave bat one hit from it almost killed me but I managed to heal off of the boar meat and continue dodging. As I stabbed it in the wing it fell down and dissipated you have gained 200 XP 'ah that should be enough to level up let's see' i pick up the crystal the bat dropped before looking into my menu I hit the level tab before selecting level up you have gained +1 to race level gaining +5% to your resistances and 1.5x to health and mana.


Meanwhile in the dev room

"Would you look at that Magnus is currently surviving Midgard just fine"

"He still hasn't met any of the other players and once he dies after meeting a player above his level we will teleport him to a more sensible place like Niflheim

"you're assuming he is going to die he still has a good headstart on all of the other players."

"That's assuming he doesn't go to sleep first. remember how old he is. staying up that late would not be good for an old man like him.

" you haven't worked with him before have you"

"No"

"Then you'll be in for a surprise once he gets going"

"Gets going? with what the weakest starting race and no class"

" with one of the most powerful late-game races that's what"

"He will be killed before he gets that far especially since he's in Midgard. If not to some random mob then by human players.

"What makes you think that he can't win"

"What do you mean what makes me think he can't win he is playing the weakest starting race he has no class he can't cast any good spells on top of all that he will be killed in 5 hits from the majority of attacks.

"Ha, a good assessment but I still have high hopes for him."

-End


A/N I am creating this as a writing exercise for myself I hope you enjoy my dumpster-fire of a soon to be fanfic