Chapter 2 – VOW and character creation

"Welcome to virtual space.” I hear a pleasant womanly voice say just after I regain my senses. Don’t ask me why almost every AI has woman’s voice, there are at least ten different answers depending on who you ask.

I blink, adjusting to the plain of grass I find myself on, blue sky and clouds overhead, and don't wait to admire the view I saw hundreds of times, instantly giving a command. “Play VOW.”

“Launching VOW.” The voice replies without a shred of emotions.

The space around me becomes black and after a moment I hear another voice, this time full of emotions, seemingly of a young girl, but with this divine vibe.

“Welcome, Wayfarer. This shall be your first journey to the realms of the unknown behind the fabric of reality.”

I suddenly see something akin to a bubble with a whole lot of tiny dots inside it, looking as beautiful as it resembles universe seen from outside perspective as some people believe it is in reality.

“What you see is known to many as Universe. It is one of many out there, and yet unique in itself because of what happened to it. Despite how it looks, the worlds like it are not stable. They tend to get destroyed from time to time, and this one was of those unfortunate ones.”

The bubble before me appears as if it was squeezed from its sides and it suddenly seemed to pop, and all the dots of light inside swirled rapidly. Then a stream of similar dots flows from the side and into the cloud, mixing them all together in a beautiful display.

“The little dots of light that remain, they are Worlds. Uncountable, each unique, and each only waiting to be explored with its inhabitants and wonders. They mesh with other, sometimes collide, sometimes merge, sometimes fall apart. You, Wayfarer, shall land in one of them. You will learn there, and you will grow, till you are ready to leave it and visit others and learn what lies beyond. Good luck, little one. Do not obey fate, but let it guide you.”

The whole view suddenly starts getting larger as my perspective gets smaller, and I see the dots of light zooming past me, growing into galaxies at some point, one of which I fly into. I pass a lot of stars that became discernible individually, I also spot some more unique things, one of them looking like a quasar and one I believe to be a black hole, though I can’t exactly see the latter.

I feel myself slowing and I come to a stop before a bubble deceptively similar to the first huge one, merely with completely different insides. I quickly spot the obvious orange star in the center, but it takes me a while to realize that what I am looking at is not a star with no planets and merely a huge ring of asteroids, but it’s a… ring of thousands, if not millions of huge islands.

That’s right, islands. Don’t ask me how it works, because it’s most likely some magic knowing that this game has it, but they are real huge ass islands rotating around what seems to be… a ring of lightly glowing energy, whatever that is.

I take a deep breath at this realization, not made any better because of the effect the intro had on me.

Wow.

I marvel for a while at the sight before me and then turn around. I see a lot of other worlds behind me as small bubbles, but they are all too far to see them as something other than colorful dots of the stars inside. I turn back to the one before me and notice a window kinda out of place in the space here.

It asks if I want to begin character creation. Without much hesitation I slam the 'yes' button since there is no point in dawdling around if I can go into the actual game faster.

The view around me fades into nothing and I appear in a white space as a lot of windows displaying various parts of character creation appear all around me, and on the side stands a human silhouette, currently completely white and featureless. I look around, familiarizing myself with everything that’s out here, and inspect each window one by one. The game system looks just like what I got to know over the course of the past week.

What I'm particularly interested in is a certain panel on the side. I grin, looking at it.

Randomize character.

I know this little fucker might screw me over, but I am definitely going for it, for various reasons. Putting aside the fact I don't really have anything I'd like to play with, the main one would probably be the chance to get a race I wouldn't be able to pick normally, because that's what randomization can give in exchange for choosing blindly.

It might get you something you don’t particularly like, but it is guaranteed you won’t get a shitty character with conflicting characteristics and there is a fair chance of getting something you can’t create normally. No matter what you end up with, it will be something with good abilities and generally good looking, and that’s something they actually made separate AI to work properly, apparently somehow drawing information from your brain structure, DNA, and a bunch of other things to get something suiting you.

Race, by the way, is the very base of the character, and it dictates almost everything else, especially if you choose some more fancy races. Dryads, for example, that have a huge amount of types, but no matter what you choose you will be a tree in loose meaning, you will have abilities connected to nature and you will be genderless, or, in rare cases, female.

The number of races is greatly limited for manual choice and despite the option to combine races, make halfs and quarters and all that, actually the great majority you can only either turn into in game in a specific event or get through random generation.

Well, anyway. To be honest, the girl’s last words were the nail to the coffin as to why I decided to use random generation.

Do not obey fate, but let it guide you.

I slam the ‘yes’ button with theatrical swing of my arm and turn to the silhouette on the side, but shortly after that I reflexively avert my eyes at the thing that slowly looks less and less like a silhouette, and more like a damned gorgeous demoness.

And I mean damn literally. And she’s naked.

Not like I have never seen a woman naked. I have, despite never having sex with either of two girlfriends I had brief relationships with. But, hell, this girl, because I now see she looks to be at most eighteen years old, is so fucking gorgeous I start to suspect this AI was programmed to make characters as beautiful as they can get. Despite what was said by the devs.

I take a breath to calm myself down and turn to face the character to properly see how she looks.

And damn, my first impression of gorgeous stands.

Taking her in properly from top to bottom, the first things that catch the eye are horns. Very peculiar ones, starting around her temples just above slightly pointed ears, beginning to grow down and sharply curling to the front and far upwards, growing at least five inches above her forehead. They are shiny black with bright yellow ridges through the front and branching sideways and slightly upwards, forming something resembling dragon’s belly scales, and ending with pitch black, pointed segments.

She has... unique hair. It's wild, thick, and long, reaching her waist in flaming cascades, though it's not the unkempt wild and messy, but the purposefully and beautifully wild and unrestrained. It's kind of between white and deep yellow, like a hot flame, and I would say it's golden if it didn't shift colors from one end of the spectrum to another when I look at it from different angles.

Then two rather large crimson eyes with slightly elongated slits rounded by long strands of hair and dark reddish, almost black brows and lashes, small, sharp nose, and small, plump, pink lips. Her jawline is cute kind of sharp and her face looks youthful and kind of girly, but in no way immature and more like the young warrior type from games and movies.

Moving on, from important matters, she has nice, relatively tall build, around five feet and eight inches, which is slightly shorter than my current self. Her skin is a bit tanned, but closer to creamy overall. As for her build, narrow shoulders are compensated by visibly outlined, smooth yet strong muscles on her shoulders, arms and belly that would put many boys to shame, perfectly fitting between outlined and too pronounced for a girl, making her look powerful and at the same time preserving slim figure. And it only adds to her gorgeous appearance.

Her boobs are definitely large, but to the extent of being satisfying and not to the extent of being a hindrance, and appear very firm and round, drooping only a bit, likely non-squishy to the touch. Wah, my comparisons sometimes get really weird? Don't judge me.

Maybe I should also note that her nipples are pink with yellow tinge, which seems to be the main color of this body, skin excluded.

Anyway, she has a rather slim waist, as much as it can be slim with a fair amount of muscles on her belly that almost make a vague six-pack, but the true wonder are her hips and legs. Term of birthing hips seems to be the best way to her really wide, beautifully curved hips that look like... the very widest you would make them not to appear excessive and exaggerated, and somehow still preserving the natural feeling they give. Her ass I can tell is great even looking from the front.

Her thighs are not juicy, but muscular and firm as is the rest of her legs. Not so much to look buff and hard, but more than enough to see power in them and making them attractive in their own way. Though her feet are a bit of a different matter.

I now notice that saying she is almost as tall as me in real life is not exactly accurate, because she is standing on her toes with her heels around four inches above ground. Or rather, they are not exactly toes. She has three short, thick claws in pure white color splayed wide instead of fingers, and her feet are built much stronger than these of ordinary humans.

Then there is the fact that her heel looks significantly different from human heel, shaped quite like a large, short finger with a short, thick claw at the end. It looks like she can move it a fair bit, and it’s quite similar to human heel in how it is built and how it protrudes from the leg, but there are noticeable differences, stemming mainly from the fact that the heel can move independently and her feet are built to support her as she stands, with significantly more definition than humans have.

She has no skin on her feet, instead it’s something that looks like black stone with cracks filled with vibrant yellow magma. Not like socks though, it shifts smoothly into skin halfway to her ankles. Interesting.

If she was standing like a normal human she would be just five feet and four inches tall, but if she straightened her, uh, feet, legs? Whatever, the point is she would be taller than majority of women at around five feet ten, plus over five inches of horns. It also makes her legs look alluringly longer, only improving her image and preventing her hips from appearing too wide.

The posture she is in, with her feet angled around forty five degrees to the ground and her ankles bent slightly, seems to be the natural way she moves in. Or maybe she moves like humans normally, and switches to that when she fights? Hard to tell now, I guess I’ll see how it goes.

The only remaining part between legs... well, a vagina, like every woman's. Just note that for whatever reason she seems to have no hair on her smooth skin at all, including that place.

I take a deep breath as I think about the body. Or actually, not exactly think, since from the very beginning I intended to use what the generator gave me, but more like marvel at it. And I mean, seriously, maybe it’s just my preference, but even with all the DNA modification, surgeries, and shaping, nowadays it would be really hard to find a girl that would look as good as who I see before me.

She doesn't look like a model and isn't exactly beautiful in the way you would expect a girl to be beautiful, that is soft, delicate, things like that, but the general impression she gives is a young, powerful warrior and a hot, gorgeous girl somehow combined into one. It will attract a lot of needless attention, and most likely trouble along with that, but, uh, ask yourself if you would purposefully make yourself uglier. Yeah. I certainly have no plans of doing that anytime soon.

I curiously walk around the girl and notice that her back is as muscular as the rest of the body suggests, and with slight disappointment conclude that she lacks any other demonic features apart from horns. Maybe I’ll get them later.

Along the way I notice her nails being white, not transparent white, but bone white, and pointed. Not like claws though, just triangle nails.

And her ass is great.

Moving on, I proceed to look at the character sheet, since no matter how good a character looks I won’t play it if it has shitty abilities and stats, and oh boy, I need to double confirm if what I see is actually, like, really correct.

First of all, race, Star Demoness. For whatever reason male option is unavailable, so even if I wanted, I wouldn’t be able to choose it. Not like I would choose male option, because the female is not a problem for me. I actually like what the generator gave me here.

Star Demoness

Demons, or Primordials as they were called long ago, are one of the most powerful races in all the universes. Star Demoness, the starborn, is a unique Demon of origin in collapsing star, classified as one of rare Battle Succubi, which are Succubi that left their original path of lust and learned the craft of battle while retaining their typical characteristics.

She is one of the legendary Demons that manifest more than one of Demons' Seven Primal Desires and Seven Great Desires. In this case it is destructive flame of Wrath, eternally burning Love, and Pride of the giant, just like star she hails from. Star Demoness is extremely powerful in various aspects, but especially excels in strength and pure power. Her Flame burns eternally, akin to a that of a Phoenix, but with its source in a star, and not an ember.

Dayum, that’s some hot shit. Like, every sentence in this description screams of power. It even suggests that this race is immortal.

And it’s confirmed further down on the sheet, save for immortal part which doesn’t seem to be mentioned, not like I’m eager to find out in practice. And the affiliation with Succubi explains female only characteristic of this race.

My ability trees are called Demonic Star, Self Enhancement and Body as Weapon. These are what you create abilities with. I’ll check them out later.

The stats are not anywhere near stars yet, though they are high above what should be normal with all of them being above average, some very much above. They are rather balanced, though more on physical side of things.

Before I begin I should mention that stats are numerical representation of character’s strength, and not the other way around with character strength depending on stats. In this game there is nothing like +20 to Strength. Nope. If anything, it would be an increase to your muscle density or something, most likely permanent, that would translate to some additional stats.

First five, so body stats, begin with extremely high Strength, abnormal even, which is pretty intuitive, then very high Speed, which is just how fast you can move. Don't mistake it with dexterity or agility from other games, because that's just skill and practice. Then she has a tad higher Endurance, so how much energy you have and how long you can go on before you go to sleep like a toddler at 8 a.m., and Constitution, which is similar to vitality from other games and represents how fast you regenerate, how resistant you are to what would be status effects in other games, but here are just mechanics, and a few other things. Then Toughness is lowest of them all, but still significantly above average. It affects generally how sturdy your body is.

The second category is soul. There is Core, which is further divided into Capacity, Channeling, and Control. They affect, respectively, your mana capacity, your speed of charging mana, and your control over it. Control is useful mostly to mages, but both other are much more universal since abilities you create from talent trees very often use mana. All three of them are above average, though Capacity and Channeling are significantly higher, almost at the level of my Speed.

Two other stats are Spirit and Focus, two vaguest of the stats. Spirit is a very general thing, but it generally affects your mental resistances and other mental things, but not, as some people think, courage, or emotions in general. Focus meanwhile increases your perception and helps with balance, mana control and a lot of other things, including, uh, ability to focus. In this case Spirit is a bit low between Capacity and Control, but Focus is on the same level as my Speed.

The stats are very impressive, and very much not something I could get normally, but they are not what makes my reaction so intense. What makes me wonder if I didn’t accidentally roll a fucking goddess of a character are soul and affinities.

Okay, soul. First I should explain that VOW has very unique system of levels, or actually it doesn’t have levels in traditional sense. You have soul that grows as you kill enemies and absorb part of their power. The strength and other aspects of your body are increased as your soul gets larger and more energy, usually mana, flows through it. The main point of interest though is a certain part of the soul.

This part of the soul is, in most cases, Mana Core. There are also different kinds of energy and cores, but they are very rare. And this thing has what you might call levels, because as your soul grows, allowing more mana to flow through and making your body stronger, your Core also grows alongside it and increases its capacity. At certain thresholds the Core gets kinda denser, and it’s called the Core Rank.

At this point you also get a lot of random upgrades, like additional ability slot or something, and if you meet specified conditions you or your affinities or skills might evolve. There were no details on that though.

In my case the soul is... demonic. My soul, well, Demonic Flame actually, and it explains what the race description meant, is something that definitely wasn’t mentioned in the overview they released a week ago.

Demonic Flame, whatever that is exactly, is the equivalent of Mana Core. At least in place, not in power, because it is telling me that my demonic energy is around thirty times better than mana in raw power. Duh.

The other part are affinities. Now you might think it is like elements from other games, like fire, water, ice and all these classic, but it’s a lot more complicated here. And yet incredibly simple. Affinity, to put short, is your attunement with something, and that something can be a lot of things. Maybe it’s better if I use an example. All typical and less popular elements are affinities here, but you can also have affinity to coldness, blood, vitality, energy and a whole lot of other things, which are not exactly elements. Apparently you can also get affinity to swords and things like that, but that's a rumor no one really confirmed.

I have two affinities, and one is directly connected to my Demonic Flame, called Stellar Flame. And it is a Tier 9 affinity, while affinities in general are supposed to be scaled from 1 to 7 from worst to best, and 5 is already incredible to have. No idea what that means, but, whatever that means, it should be something good.

The second one is Energy affinity, which is… uh, Tier 8? I think the overview mentioned that it varies from Tier 1 to 4, but well. It is a pretty unique affinity, its nature being simple raw energy manipulation, including kinetic energy, heat, electric energy and other types, then at higher levels momentum and other things that are more or less closely related to energy, like torque. At Tier 8, uh, it should include momentum, I guess? Heh.

I have read that Energy affinity in general is nothing very powerful, especially by itself, but it allows to better make use of other affinities and it gives great possibilities to add to your skills.

Actually, there is a note next to my demonic energy. Uh, Primordial Energy.

Primordial Energy is a resource that currently doesn’t naturally exist in any world and is only created by Primordials as their flames. Therefore, your reserves of it will increase dramatically slower than if you had Mana Core due to lack of outside source.

You will begin with a much smaller Demonic Flame than other Wayfarers would with Mana Cores, but your overall power will still be higher. Your strength will also not be passively affected by your soul due to unique nature of the Demonic Flame that fills your whole body. Instead your strength will be directly dependent on the size of your Flame.

Oh. A pity there is no more information, but oh well. Good enough I have this.

With that said, I dare say that thirty times more powerful energy than mana is good enough to compensate for all that.

I take a deep breath to calm myself down, and lose it, grinning like a fool.

Let’s fucking play as that chick.

This already seems like a lot of fun, and I haven’t even entered the body yet.

I don’t know what kind of experience it will be since other games didn’t have full immersion, but I'm definitely looking forward to it.