Afterworld Ins.

The gold means that I have the beefiest hardware and shouldn't have any lag or graphical glitches. The deluxe package means I have several AI trained in building virtual worlds, supposedly they are the best around but that remains to be seen. It also means that the nuclear generator that my digital tomb sits on has an upgraded AI control unit and comes with a complete backup parts locker with additional drones. If there's ever an issue one of my 12 designer cores can drop out to take over the AI controllers job.

The tomb itself, their name not mine, is a large metal egg. The bottom half of the egg is the reactor and AI control unit, above that in the cone of the egg sits all the hardware to run the world. Once I'm dead my backup would be uploaded into the pod and its reactor brought online. Once that happens I should have roughly 10k years before the reactor runs out of juice and everything goes dark.

And that's where I found myself, sitting or floating maybe? in utter darkness with a yes / no UI window in my vision.

“Begin startup sequence?” next to it was a countdown. Apparently I had 24 hours to decide to kill the power and myself in the process or begin my life in one of my chosen world clones. I clicked yes and the window changed, I was facing an installing progress bar.

I started to get worried after zoning out for what felt like a good 15 minutes, that, maybe the installer had locked up? That would suck to spend eternity staring at a loading screen for ten thousand years give or take a few hundred. But then the 0% ticked up to 1% and I sighed in relief. Apparently I won't be stuck here until I go mad but only just.

Well since I've got at least a few hours to kill sitting here in the dark with only myself to talk to, I might as well try and remember what worlds I had loaded into the designer pool. I had built many Google Docs listing potential worlds I'd want to go to if I died, which was kind of the theme at the time. There’s at least 2 or 3 anime about going to another world each season as well as at least 1 or 2 cell games a year. So I daydreamed as I walked my dog about the kind of world I'd want to go to if given the chance after death.

I like lists, I keep hundreds of lists in my drive of all kinds of things from game ideas to worlds or story thoughts as well as possible roles I'd want to play in said world. I had several worlds ready to go when I was introduced to my head design AI. It would sit running on backup power slowly parsing all the data I had given and delegating world building instructions once the bootup sequence began which is what I expect was happening now.

My package came with 6 worlds and a small tutorial world all editable by me. My tutorial world I had decided would be a world of my own creation which I called magic mayhem. It was a game idea I had back when I first began writing them down. The player would play the role of a teen on his way to the town hall for his advancement ceremony. You know the one that means you're a man now and must forever do the job the church decided was appropriate for you. While taking the longest way possible to your destination you stumble across a pair of mages battling with actual magic. As you watch one mage best’s the other, in a cry of pain the mage was blasted back, his spellbook flying from his hands… to land under the exact bush that I happen to be hiding in.

Before I realized what happened I picked up the book and folded it open in my lap and a blast of light shot from the pages straight into my eyes. In that moment this book was bound to me even beyond death.

And fade to black, at least that's how I imagined the introductory cut scene. From there the victorious mage finds you, has a few sarcastic remarks and lets you live warning that they’d find you later and collect more than just that one spell from your corpse.

After that the game world would open up into a roguelike magic battle game where you have to sneak around learning magic while avoiding city guards and nosey citizens attempting to master a single magic spell. In this case mastering magic is bringing control of your starting spell and all of its sub spells to master rank. So grinding spells for xp while not getting caught. Aside from randomly generated villages there's a few keeps and even a large capital city where you can enter the dungeon for grinding xp in peace.

Once you die you start over with a new spell. Once you've mastered your starting spell and have died at least once you can enter the first world which is supposed to be one of the fantasy themes I selected. Depending on the type of world I'll have to complete a series of quests to “beat” the game and unlock the full multi dimensional traveler skill which will allow me to travel to the other worlds. Also the longer I wait to travel to any given world the more fleshed out the world will be upon arrival. I guess the designers have more editing power when the world is not actively being used.

Knowing my tutorial world means I know I'll have some fun while learning how magic works. My first request was that the magic system should be universal between all worlds fantasy or not. I ordered that one of the designers was to be in charge of magic, the creation of spells and the editing of spells deemed to be destructive to the stability of the game world. The magic designers que held several game worlds as well as a few of my favorite rpg systems and even a couple novels.

Each example in the list had some unique magic features that I liked. One book called Adventurers Wanted had the coolest player housing feature built into their bag of holding which was expandable if you paid enough gold. Feel like learning crafting well, pay enough gold and have your own smithy installed. Tired of running out of food on your adventure? How about a magical greenhouse that you can harvest from any biome any time you like. I had to have something like that built into the world for sure. And yes before you ask, I do sometimes think with an infomercial sales pitch voice when I'm selling myself on a thought.

To be fair I decided that everyone in the world would start with a single slot and gain another one with every birthday. Eventually you'll have a ton of storage space but to truly gain the most use of the personal space you must upgrade adding living space as well as actual volume based magical storage space rather than the item slot space.

My tutorial had the starting character beginning on their 18th birthday which means I had 19 slots total. Each slot could hold something about the size of a large 50 gallon barrel. Only downside is that I'll drop everything on death until I reach a high enough level, that's when you unlock the soul slots which lets you take items with you into your next rebirth. Normally your interface ring goes in the first slot you get at birth. That's what my character planned to put in the slot but you only get those during the advancement ceremony. So I'd have to buy my own when I acquired enough money and hit level 10.

I had a decent memory of Anima and pre D&D Iron Kingdoms magic systems which were the two rpg systems I'd given as a base rule sets to start with. That gave me a good idea how magical combat worked so I'd have a leg up once I started. Though I guess that's the point, given that the world was built for my enjoyment, can't make it too difficult.

I remembered that I'd requested a game world similar to some of my favorite anime series, SAO, reincarnated as a slime, pick up girls in a dungeon, and so on, you get the idea there's only about 12ish good rpg anime along those lines. Another game world was to be a bit nostalgic, based on my first mmo love Lineage 2. Though it too had my own twist. After playing through the base game content up to chronicle 3 I deviated from the official canon. In my version the evil goddess succeeds in killing the emperor allowing her to conquer the world. All except the human starting village where the next phase of the game begins. That world goal is to retake the continent and push back the dark goddess. Most are adventurer guild themed adventurers all with the unique variety of races from all the game worlds I liked combined. I had a modernish era world and a space opera world.

My thoughts were interrupted by a feminine cough, looking up I found an attractive woman that looked straight out of an anime. It was crazy as if I had stepped into an anime. She stood patiently waiting while I gawked at her. After a moment I dumbly asked who are you?

“I am your lead designer, I've been working on the finishing touches of your tutorial and need some clarification before you can begin. Firstly do you find my form pleasing?”

Twirling before me, her clothes suddenly vanished and she stood bare before me. She turned again this time slowly for me to see every bit of her. When she came back around to face me new clothes appeared, an office style skirt and blouse with heels. The return of her clothes also brought my upper brain function back.

“Uh what was the question?” I asked, realizing that if I had a body I'd have probably been drooling.

“I'll take that as a yes!” the designer said, smiling and checking a box on a tablet I hadn't seen her with a second before.

“Please look at these mannequins and select the least appealing to you?” gesturing with her hand to the left.

Looking in that direction I found dozens of mannequins lined in rows all randomly altered variations of the lead designer. I had trouble picking the ugliest. Most weren’t bad looking but I found a few that I'd safely say it’d take some serious beer goggles.

“You may select more than 1” I heard from behind me.

Reaching out I poked at the couple I had been having trouble with and they lit up with a dull white glow. I picked a few more that although not truly unattractive they just weren't my type. After that she had me arrange them from most to least attractive. Apparently it was how they determined the beauty parameters for the world. Like the average look of the population. This went on for what felt like hours, we went through dozens of body shapes for every part of the human body both male and female. Once that was finished we went through all the fantasy races bodies and picked out how I perceived those species.

Once we were done with humanoids we got into the fantasy creatures and that went on for days. After doing the 1 to 10 scale on a monster's beauty there would be a series of culture sliders that I could alter, things like aggressiveness towards other species, whether they could evolve into a new species and stereotypical comments about each creature. It even got into slang both derogatory and general. After what felt like my millionth Facebook personality survey on what monster I'd be if I was this monster the unthinkable happened. The lead designer stood and smiled.

“Thank you, this should be enough data to begin the population phase. Your tutorial will begin shortly. Shall we get on with your character creation?”

Character creation was interesting, I stood at a pedestal that projected a screen. Two nude humans stood before me. Looking at the screen it had a list of races on the left with two panels on the right, the top one had what looked like average numerical stats. I was happy to see that they looked very similar to the character sheet from Anima so I had a pretty good idea how the builder would work. The final panel on the screen was fluff about the race in the world. I scrolled through tons of races looking at the models for each, I noticed a slider that I must have missed and found that moving it changed the beauty scale from fugly to drools.

I set it to an above average setting and settled on human. I wasn't sure I'd want to be any of them yet at least not on my first go. Next was the character builder with all the expected sliders and even an option to “try on” the skin. That was crazy. One second floating nothing, the next I'm standing on the platform looking down at the pedestal with the screen on it.

I could feel! I hadn't realized how much I missed feeling... well, anything. I ran my hands all over my body flexing and stretching, it felt good. In the middle of my imaginary nude fitness montage I somehow managed to bump into the other mannequin. She was soft and warm and moist in all the right places, yeah I fondled a bit not like anyone was watching besides it's my own little world so fuck off. I shouldn't have been as surprised as I was when I started getting aroused. I’d nearly talked myself into trying to bend over the model when the lead designer spoke.

“Would you like to load a basic AI?” her voice reminded me I wasn't actually alone at least not in my mind. Embarrassed, I stepped away and attempted to calm myself. The internal battle raged for several moments as I tried to figure out whether it was morally ok to fondle an empty virtual object. In the end I fucked the model and I had the designer join too. The best thing about a video game world is stamina regen, moments after finishing my stamina would regen fully and I'd be ready to go again. We rolled around on the grassy pedestal for some time before I was finally satisfied.

I finalized the body I was in and fiddled with my voice a bit before moving on to the next task. The grassy pedestal and my still nude sex partner faded from existence and the screen on the pedestal grew until it was the size of a large whiteboard. On closer inspection I found that there were advantages and disadvantages and there at the top of the list was my requested starting package. A specific set of spells and abilities all in a class designed specifically for me.

The package cost all of my creation points but I was fine with that, it looked like everything I had asked for made it into the list. The first was the ability to use magic and additional martial knowledge letting me learn specialized martial arts. With the martial knowledge I was also able to learn ki techniques. My favorite advantage was in the list as well, blood of the ancients. Means my ancestors had some ancient powerful being in the family at one point and I had some of that power in me. Apparently they chose my ancient species for me and it seems I'm part incubi. Which explains how they added the LP system from that pervy dungeon anime. Seeing and doing anything that turns me on grants me LP which I can spend during my creation ritual. The creation ritual and scan spells work in tandem, I can scan things with my scan spell which costs lp to use. I can bring up the scan while in the creation ritual editing it to alter it to my desires be it a sword or golem or other construct I wish to create.

My scan function seemed to have some limits. I could only scan creatures with their permission, it seems that all creatures are naturally resist scanning magic unless one of three things occur. I can either kill it before scanning it, I can get its permission or I can sleep with it. Seems the act of sex auto scans my partner and I already had 2 scans in the list, go me, getting ahead in my afterlife already. While thinking it would be nice to be able to read the fine print on my skills I was startled when a book appeared in the air before me. The book was titled “Fine Print” and I laughed as I opened it. There was a bit of fluff about the abilities I got as well as any info I could possibly ask for. Seriously, as I thought of a question it would appear on an empty page along with the answer.

My ritual of creation also had some interesting “perks”, for instance anything created has to be able to fuck in some way. Sword hilt must double as a dildo or the pommel has a magical vagina in it crazy shit like that. Apparently my designers really had a field day on tying in my ancient blood advantage with my custom abilities. Not a problem when I'm making creatures to fight for me but it's gonna be interesting when I get around to crafting items with the ability.

Next up was spending development points and spending some of my martial knowledge. I boosted all my combat and magic abilities as well as health and magic regeneration. I purchased a few ranks in several of the social skills like mercantile and carousing. I finished up on martial knowledge, picking a few combat styles that worked well unarmed or with weapons and one of the most powerful sounding styles based on their descriptions.

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