Rewind: A Grimdark LitRPG Series (Pyresouls Apocalypse, Book 1) by James Callum (reading tree .txt) 📕

came down to finding spells and Spell Gems. Both of which were difficult to attain. If time wasn’t an issue he would have been tempted.

The few fairies Jacob saw at the Crossings often left him awe-inspired at their prowess.

That left elves as his only choice for a full-blooded race. According to Alec, if he picked two races at once he would create a hybrid. It was a little known secret, one that Jacob didn’t ever remember seeing posted on any forum after he quit.

While there was no way to customize your starting stats beyond choosing a race, by creating various hybrids you could influence the stats to your liking. Some combinations were simply bad.

Fairy mixed with karhu for example, made something very similar to a human although inferior to what Jacob wanted. Using human as a base worked well to temper the more extreme stat swings.

Human and karhu for example were physically robust and magically weak but not so much to the point of utter uselessness. Of course, their TMP was still quite low.

After playing around with different hybrids, for a grand total of 10 actual race choices when you counted the 6 hybrids, Jacob finally made his choice.

As tempting as being an elf was, he had no understanding of Clemency and its set of Harmony-based spells, which were based on FTH. Despite barely finding any spells as a fairy, he did learn a great amount of information about Sorcery and its set of Chaos-based spells.

Most of his information came from neither his own experience in the game nor from Alec. It came from the various forums after he quit the game, trying to understand what he did wrong. His primary reason for turning his back on Clemency was its effect on other players.

Compared to Sorcery, Clemency was less than half as potent at damaging other players. There wasn’t much information other than an overwhelming amount of anecdotes that pointed to Sorcery being designed to harm another person while Clemency was used to soothe those hurts.

The few instances of Sorcery that Jacob was unfortunate to see up close Post-Collapse only confirmed those suspicions. The most dangerous humans he ever dealt with – largely running away from them – were all Sorcerers.

He shuddered at the memories of the charred corpses of both monsters and innocent humans alike.

Pushing the memories from his mind, he selected human and fairy. The resulting stat build was close to what he was hoping for. A capable fighter with good capacity to wield Sorcery.

Unlike most games, you couldn’t change your physical appearance into something else entirely. Only changing race altered the way you looked.

Increasing various stats improved your physique but you were still you. Anybody you knew would still recognize you, not that that mattered when nearly everybody wore equipment that hid their features.

Still, it was neat to see the effects of being a human-fairy hybrid. Looking at himself in the mirror, Jacob’s green eyes turned bright. They gleamed with an inner-light when he tilted his head, much like a cat’s might flash in the dark but without the freaky slit.

His facial features were lifted a little, cheekbones a little higher. He thought he looked a bit more handsome with better facial symmetry but it had been a while since he had seen this younger face before.

Most intriguing of all were the emerald-green shimmering tattoos that curled across his brow and down each of his arms like emerald vines.

A deep resounding gong filled the dark emptiness around him and a large ruby-red countdown clock appeared as large as a holoboard you’d see from the interstate. He had an hour left.

I already spent thirty minutes doing this?

Thankfully the curse selection was going to be a lot easier. You couldn’t create hybrids with them like you could the races, making his choice easier. Undeath was off the table and as much as he’d like to turn into a hulking bear and rip things apart, he knew it was a trap.

Without control over your actions, you were no better than any other beast, and that meant you were easily killed by any enemy that could strategize.

While he hadn’t met many enemies that could do that early on, right before he quit the creatures he faced began to use pack tactics and according to Alec that only increased in the later areas.

That left Fractured Sight as the only contender. At least with what he knew of that curse, he could exert a modicum of control over it. Selecting the curse, he was greeted by a confirmation window for his choices.

It seemed the human and fairy hybrid had a name. He didn’t expect that.

Kemora – Fae-touched (Human/Fairy)

VIT: 3 | AGI: 6

END: 3 | TMP: 8

STR: 4 | DEX: 5

INT: 8 | FTH: 3

Curse: Fractured Sight

Boon: Peer into other realities and gain valuable insight into hidden paths.

Bane: Potential realities have a habit of bleeding into one another, letting in unspeakable horrors.

Accept?

Y/N.

Jacob tapped his finger against the mirror, confirming his selection. The other three mirrors vanished and were replaced with rows of mannequins wearing various types of armor and wielding weapons in their wooden hands.

He felt the change settle on his skin like static in his blood. He flashed a slightly feral grin at his reflection and turned to examine the equipment choices.

All that was left to do was pick his starting gear.

4

There were 10 starting load-outs. Calling them classes would be a stretch since Pyresouls didn’t actually have any classes. Nevertheless, they were often referred to as classes. Probably for the sake of people coming into the game without any frame of reference.

Warrior, Knight, Rogue, Barbarian, Cleric, Hunter, Bandit, Noble, Sorcerer, and finally Savage. None of them changed your stats or gave you abilities like in most MMOs. It was down primarily to the gear you were given at the start. Gear that had remarkably low Guilt for the parameters they provided.

All of them except the Savage.

It seemed like a joke, armed with nothing but a loincloth – like he