He had just done it! A month after the launch of the Shadow of Erdtree DLC, he had finally defeated Radhan, Consort of Miquella, after countless hours and attempts. He had finally overcome him, but... he didn't have time to savor his victory before everything went black.
Had the power just gone out? Was it that jerk of a neighbor messing with the circuit breaker again?
These thoughts were swept away when he thought about his game, his save file... Could the power outage have prevented his victory from being saved, or worse, corrupted his entire save file?
A cold sweat ran down his body, prompting him to get up to fix the problem, but nothing happened. His body was no longer responding to him, or so he thought, when he realized that it was simply gone. His arms, his legs, his torso... everything was gone, but his consciousness was still there.
He wanted to scream or even panic, but even his voice and emotions had disappeared without him realizing it.
Suddenly, the darkness in which he had been plunged since the beginning was blown away by a wave of intense light. The change in scenery was so abrupt that it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust, if he still had eyes...
Suddenly, a voice rang out.
"Finally, you're here!"
He turned toward the voice and that's when he saw them. Two women, at least that's what they looked like, with a few notable exceptions...
One had golden skin with long, immaculate white hair, long, tall horns shaped like deer antlers, and a long dragon's tail behind her, while the other woman had dark purple skin, shorter hair as black as night, curved horns, and a huge pair of wings on her back.
"Oooookay... what the hell is going on? I'm pretty sure I haven't consumed anything suspicious in the last hour..."
That's what he would have liked to say, but the moment he tried to utter the first syllable, nothing came out.
The golden woman spoke first, her soft, deep voice exuding a certain warmth, almost maternal.
"I know you must be completely lost and have a lot of questions..."
"No shit, Sherlock..." Once again, no words came out.
"But unfortunately, we're running out of time and we can't afford to waste any more."
The woman approached him, and the closer she got, the more gigantic she seemed, or perhaps it was him who had shrunk.
She then reached out her hands and gently lifted him up from where he was. It was then that he realized his condition.
His body was gone, replaced by a small sphere of light. Was it his soul?
She brought him close to her chest and whispered tenderly.
"This is all very sudden, but we need you more than ever. When the time comes... we will meet again..."
The other woman then spoke up.
"Sister, we don't have much time left. What will happen if they find out what we're doing?!"
"You're right! Do you have what we need?"
"Of course, who do you take me for?"
"Very well, let's begin!"
The two women moved closer to each other.
"Wait... start what? What are you planning to do?" No answer.
The purple woman then made a tiny golden particle appear between her hands. The particle began to float towards him.
"Wait, wait, wait... what is that?"
The particle finally reached him and entered him. He expected pain, but instead felt a warmth spread through his entire being, a warmth he seemed to have lost long ago.
"Thanks to this thing you call Grace, you now have everything you need for Remnant!" said the one holding him between her two hands.
"We've even prepared a gift to help you on your journey, so be grateful, mortal!" exclaimed the other sister.
Suddenly, he felt himself floating higher and higher, as if he were being inevitably drawn by an invisible force.
"Wait, Remnant... like in RWBY?! And what gift? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!"
The last words he heard were those of the golden sister.
"May the blessing of darkness and light guide your steps!"
Once again, he was plunged into darkness, but this time something appeared and illuminated the place where he was, but he paid no attention to it and let out a cry of frustration that had been bubbling up inside him for a while now.
What kind of shithole had he landed in? Was he dead? Were they talking about Remnant from RWBY? And this "Grace" that had entered him, was it the grace of Eldin Ring? So many questions, no fucking answers...
He sighed deeply before his attention was drawn to the light that illuminated the dark void he currently found himself in.
It only took him a few seconds to recognize what was in front of him. He then burst out laughing, but it was not a laugh of amusement. It was a nervous laugh, as if he were going crazy, as if the world were playing a cruel joke on him.
In front of him was an interface that was none other than the class selection screen from Elden Ring. The same screen he saw the first time he launched the game.
"You've got to be kidding me..."
If he could, he would have punched himself in the face as hard as he could, just in the hope of waking up from a bad dream, but even that he couldn't do.
He remained silent for a long time, several seconds, several minutes, several hours even, who knows? He had lost all sense of time where he was.
He then turned his attention back to the screen in front of him, resigned.
It wasn't as if he could do much else at the moment.
After a few seconds, he confirmed that it was indeed the class selection screen from Elden Ring.
All the classes were there:
- Vagabond
-Warrior
-Hero
-Bandit
-Astrologer
-Prophet
-Samurai
-Prisoner
-Confessor
-Wretch
He could navigate through the different classes just by thinking, which proved useful given his situation.
After long minutes of reflection, he was strongly hesitant to choose the Samurai class. It was the class he had chosen for his very first character, like most Elden Ring players, with a dexterity and arcane build and "River of Blood" as his weapon of choice... yeah, not exactly original.
Bleeding builds have always been broken...
Well, as mentioned earlier, it was his first character, and he had created many other characters with which he had played equally broken builds.
Honestly, the number of builds you could use to cheese the boss in this game was insane.
But that wasn't the issue at the moment. He had to choose which class to start with, and to do that, he had to plan for the future.
After several minutes of internal debate, he finally made his choice and chose the Hero class.
It was the class with the highest strength stats. He was free to choose in the future whether he would go for a Strength/Faith build or a Strength/Intelligence build.
He had always had a preference for weapons in the strength category.
Once he had made his choice, he pressed the "continue" button, ready for anything, but a new screen appeared before him.
It was the character creation screen. He remained silent for a moment, realizing that he technically no longer had a body.
The possibility of creating a new body sounded good to him, and he had no intention of creating an abomination like other players had since the game's release.
After spending far too much time on character creation, he was finally satisfied with the result.
A/N: Here's the pic.
It was finally time for him to press that damn button and face whatever crap awaited him.
"CONFIRM"