"Now then, what kind of character should I make this time..."
He sat down in front of the computer, running his fingers through his disheveled hair.
After tapping the keyboard a few times, a familiar interface appeared, reflecting his face.
He entered his ID and password to log in, and the text [Otherverse] appeared briefly before fading away, revealing two figures on the screen.
A young man dozing off while leaning against a thick log, and a marksman holding a rifle that glowed bright blue.
Near the young man lay a slightly faded gauntlet, and above the muzzle of the marksman's rifle, a magic circle slowly rotated.
Looking at the young man and the warrior, he let go of the mouse and fell into thought for a moment.
The two men moving inside the monitor were game characters he had personally created and raised.
The game Otherverse was famous for being an open-world single-player game that continuously changed its world setting and timeline through steady updates.
He too had been playing the game, creating and raising new characters with each update.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the game in versions 1.0 and 2.0, he would need a new character for 3.0.
After seemingly pondering for a moment, he quickly grabbed the mouse and pressed the character creation button.
In truth, he had already thought through what kind of character to make to some extent.
For his third character, he planned to create one completely specialized in magic.
He intended to properly experience the thrill of magic that he had felt when playing the Magic Marksman, his second character.
Flashy magic circles, powerful force, and the versatility not found in Otherverse's other classes or skills were definitely attractive advantages even in the vast open world.
So much so that while raising his magic marksman, he had become so addicted to magic and invested too heavily in magic abilities alone, causing the character to fall into what was commonly called a "ruined character."
Having learned through the game that there's only a fine line between being versatile and useless, he was determined to raise a character perfectly dedicated to being a mage this time.
If he allocated all the talent points to magic in the initial character talent selection window, at least he wouldn't end up with an ambiguous character.
"Shall we begin?"
Having made his decision, he quickly determined the character's appearance and age, moved to the talent distribution window, and poured all the given potential ability points into magic-related categories.
"Mana capacity, control ability, calculation ability... I can't forget mana sensitivity and affinity either."
After dumping all the initial distribution points into mana-related abilities, the completed character was truly a sight to behold.
On a 30-point scale, the magic-related stats hovered around 25-27, while physical abilities barely reached 3 or 4, a walking corpse was complete.
It might not have been his imagination that the character beyond the screen, dressed in something resembling a patient's gown, looked pale.
However, with a still dissatisfied expression, he stared at the monitor for a long while before gripping the mouse again.
He scrolled down the stat window and moved the cursor to the traits section, clicking the arrow to display the full list of selectable traits.
The traits section was designed to grant characters innate constitutions, talents, or special abilities, but adding these traits also required considerable ability points.
Therefore, it was common to simply add one or two generally useful traits and move on, but he didn't even glance at other traits and began scrolling down the list.
After scrolling for a while, useful traits like Swift Movement and Blue Blood disappeared, revealing traits written in bright red text.
All sorts of negative traits that seemed to impose penalties on the character, like Chronic Headache, Mana Depletion, and Holy Power Rejection.
Someone unfamiliar might easily mistake this as a useless feature existing purely for concept play, but having played this game twice before, he knew the real reason precisely.
With a careful expression, he began selecting and adding various unhelpful traits to his character.
"Scarecrow, Insomnia, Mana Addict, adding Excess Is Deficiency Too and Talented But Ill-Fated... lifespan doesn't matter anyway."
It was an incomprehensible action to impose demerits on the character he would personally play, but surprisingly, each time he added a trait written in red text to the character, the remaining distribution ability points that he thought were completely exhausted began to increase little by little.
The Karma System, which only activated when creating characters in Otherverse, paid additional compensation proportional to the penalties imposed on the character.
Thanks to this karma system, players enjoying Otherverse could create characters more freely, escaping from simple ability and trait limitations.
By adding a few penalties, they could additionally inscribe talents or traits on the character that wouldn't be allowed based on ability points alone.
Until now, he had never actively utilized this karma system, but since he was determined to create a character this time, he intended to push the character's concept as far as possible.
With the remaining ability points gained through the penalties he had loaded onto the character, he filled all magic-related stats to the full 30 points, and only then did he press the creation complete button with a satisfied expression.
A character with innate poor health, insomnia, suffering from addiction symptoms when using mana for too long, with lifespan cut in half due to excessive talent, and whose whole body creaks with every movement, but what did it matter?
It was just a game character. For having fun with magic, there was no more perfect character than this.
"This ought to be fun."
With this much talent, he would be able to extract performance beyond expectations no matter what magic he learned.
Just thinking about what magic to learn was already immensely enjoyable.
He randomly set the character's name and background and finished editing, then a black loading screen filled the monitor.
"......"
As he idly waited for the loading to finish, his eyes suddenly moved downward on the screen.
This was because the game tip text in the corner of the loading screen, meant to ease gamers' boredom, was particularly bothersome.
[The first is coincidence. The second is inevitability. The third is destiny.]
[All three updates have been recorded for this moment.]
[Accept your fate]
"Huh? What is this..."
The moment he muttered to himself at the rather forceful tone for a tip message,
A black light flashed and swallowed everything in the room whole.
Only after consuming without remainder all traces of a person's entire life did it burp with satisfaction and disappear.
As if there had been nothing there from the beginning, thick dust had somehow piled up abundantly in the room.