AURORA BOREALIS:
A pounding headache awoke me. I was… lying down on what felt like a rough bed. The blanket I was on wasn't exactly uncomfortable but it was nothing like the blankets I knew at home. There was a wet rag on my forehead. Its cool temperature was refreshing. As I considered my condition, I realized my armor was unequipped. A bolt of fear shot through my heart. Before I could act on my fear, a voice whispered in my ear.
Greetings, Architect.
"Hey there Enoch, what happened? Where are you?" I chose to Message back instead of responding verbally. I reasoned that because Enoch knew I was awake, he was nearby. Even so, responding telepathically was the safer option for now.
A group of extremely low-level humans stumbled upon the site where you crashed. This unit overheard them debate whether or not to aid you. When they arrived at the consensus of providing aid to you, this unit unequipped itself and transformed into its necklace form, allowing them to provide you aid. In the event of a threat, to either the Architect or the humans, this unit would have entered combat mode and attempted to eliminate the threat, or escape with the architect alive.
"I see. You emphasized the level of the humans. How low are they?"
"While this unit cannot guarantee the number, it is estimated that they are all level one with the exception of three individuals of level two and one individual of level three,"
I inhaled sharply in surprise.
"That low? Are you sure"
"Affirmative. In addition, the humans mentioned were of 'Carne Village.' This Unit does not recognize that name in any of the nine worlds of YGGDRASIL."
"Got it. Well, I might as well wake up and thank my saviors."
"This unit advises exercising caution. Your resurrection ring has seven hours, forty-three minutes, and eight seconds before activating again."
"Will do, Enoch."
And I terminated the message. I needed to take a step back and seriously consider what was going on. I was in YGGDRASIL for the shutdown, and I blacked out before waking back up in this New World. I wasn't sure how reliable Enoch's memory and knowledge were of YGGDRASIL, but I didn't recognize the name "Carne Village." I was put into the body of my avatar, an incredibly powerful paladin. I was an angel, one of the more powerful heteromorphic species. Furthermore, I had extremely powerful angel and paladin classes that played off each other's strengths excellently. I was a min-maxer through and through. I had my powered suit, Enochian Bulwark. While it functioned as a pseudo-NPC in YGGDRASIL, it was fully sentient in this world, capable of holding conversations with me. It seemed to have a very dull personality, like that of a robot. Stupid, I chastised myself. It is a robot. It is quite literally a robot power suit. I need to have a further conversation with it and gauge its sentience. From what I gathered, it was loyal to me enough that it was willing to kill to protect me.
I considered what else I had. In YGGDRASIL, I had a full inventory. Using cash shop items, I greatly increased my storage space. When you first start out in YGGDRASIL, you have a small carrying capacity that's also determined by your strength stat. You can increase this carrying capacity with backpacks, pouches, and bandoliers, but you are still reliant on your strength stat for your weight limit. In one of the main quests, you gain the ability to access a dimensional storage space that's limited to three hundred items, far more than you can ever carry with backpacks or other obsolete storage items. Most players finish this quest by level seventy-five at the earliest. If you do side quests or even just mundane grinding you can easily be level one hundred by the time you finish this quest. Items held in your storage aren't affected by your weight limit.
Do I have my storage space? I sure hope so. I held many, many good items there. With the use of a cash shop item, you can increase your storage space by a hundred items at least, with more expensive items granting up to a thousand spaces. I personally had ten thousand spaces, as that was the max. Of those ten thousand spaces, nine thousand, one hundred, and four spaces were filled up with miscellaneous gear. I had consumables, materials, preserved foods, armor, and weapons. A lot of weapons. I had far more than I could ever hope to manage. Then anyone could hope to manage. I had a small section that I used and the rest were thrown together haphazardly. But I had a reason for that. In the past, I used a world item that allowed the user to spawn a portal that could launch any weapon from their inventory as a projectile for a tiny sliver of mana. Upon striking the target, the weapon would imbue its effect. Launch a flaming sword, deliver fire and slashing damage. Launch a lightning mace, deliver electric and bludgeoning damage. It was a decently powerful world item. When summoning a portal, you can set preferences on what kind of item was launched. When I fought undead with it, I can set portals to only launch items with the bludgeoning tag, or only with the fire tag. The weapons would despawn shortly after hitting a target.
While that world item was nifty, it wasn't the best for my build. And I got my hands on another world item that filled my artifact slot. So I traded it away to one of my guild members. The current world item equipped in my artifact slot was Omnipotent Endeavour. It could store one hundred job class levels within itself, and grant the spells and skills of those levels to the wielder. Among the non-twenty world items, it's among the more powerful world items. But it has its limits. If two casters of the same exact build existed and one of them got one of the Omnipotent Endeavours with fifty caster levels, they wouldn't be able to steamroll the other caster with stats alone. They'd simply have access to more spells and skills. The other weakness was that abilities granted by Omnipotent Endeavour had their efficiency slashed by thirty-five percent. Some classes and races allowed you to copy other players' abilities. Tricksters and doppelgangers were excellent examples. When using copied powers, doppelgangers often had penalties imposed upon them. The penalties given by Omnipotent Endeavour weren't the same, but it was still crippling. Choosing to fill it with levels of your job class isn't exactly the best way to use it. Instead, I chose to fill it with levels in wizard and artificer. This would allow me to supplement my close-range combat with spells and increase the power of my magic items. I was a powerful gish without sacrificing any of my close-range potential. Rather than considering myself a level two hundred player, I was something of a level one hundred player with twice the options available to me. Which was still extremely powerful.
My mana came from some of my angel racial levels, so I didn't have much to supplement many high-level spells. This would have been a glaring weakness were it not for the Crown of Macedonia, a conquered guild item. When we defeated the guild Macedonia, we took their crown as a trophy. As a guild item, it could hold almost as much data as a world item. Their guild leader was a powerful caster who burned through mana quickly. To balance this weakness of hers, she made the crown hold an excessive amount of mana. Almost all of its data was focused on mana capacity, with about a tenth dedicated to mana recovery. With the crown equipped, I had the mana capacity of an average max-level caster.
Before I could ponder the matter of my inventory and equipment further, I felt the rag being taken off my head. Right, I'm being tended to in a village. I sat up while rubbing my temples, hoping to ease the fading headache. I heard a shriek and the sound of something being knocked over. I rolled my tongue over my teeth, leaned back on my hand, and turned toward the person I detected sitting beside me. I opened my eyes and took in the world around me. I was in a small room with stone walls. Wooden beams criss-crossed the ceiling, which itself was made out of a material I couldn't recognize at a glance. Wood perhaps?
There were a couple of tables in the room, one of which had a myriad assortment of herbs, bottles, and other such knick-knacks. Wet rags were on the other table. The girl tending to me was standing up, wet rag still dripping in hand. Two buckets were on the ground next to her, one had less water than the other. Her stool was on the ground, knocked over by her sudden movement. A full chair was also next to me, implying that another person had been present tending to me. Such an effort for little ol' me? How kind.
The girl herself was staring at me in shock with bright hazel eyes. She had blonde hair in a braid that went over her shoulders. She was dressed in a brown woolen dress that covered a white shirt. I stared back for a moment before blinking. She screamed.
Not the first impression I was hoping for.