The bright light blinded him as a different mechanical voice echoed within his head.

[Welcome to the world of Zenaris Online.]

As the light faded, he found himself within a plain white room with a small fairy flying before him.

She waved at him. "Player Ray, once again, welcome."

Ray nodded back at her. He recognized this space. It was the character creation space where everyone started.

The fairy tilted her head and suddenly started flapping around him. "I can smell the scent of the ruler on you."

He did not want to entertain her, so he just stared back at her.

She puffed her face at his blank response and then waved at him. "There you go."

The very next moment, a massive blue panel popped up before him.

[Please confirm your name.

Current name: Ray

(Continue/Change)]

Ray rubbed his forehead.

In the past, he was obsessed with keeping his in-game avatar as close to his original self as possible, and it had bitten him many times.

He just said, "Change name."

[Enter your new name: ___________]

He thought for some time. Many popular names came to his mind, but he did not want to copy others.

He thought for a long time, going through many names.

After racking his brain for a couple of minutes, he said, "Adder."

He liked the sound of it. Also, he had read somewhere that it meant snake. That was more than brilliant.

He repeated the name. "Adder."

As he said it, the famous scene of a news anchor flashed through his head.

A woman in a suit was screaming at the top of her lungs. "Everyone! Today, we have a very special guest. Some people called them the Serpent Killer, while others named them Adder Crushers. Please welcome the heroes who conquered the snake dungeon. Clap! Clap!"

In the past, he helplessly saw the team that crushed his dungeon receiving the hero’s treatment.

"I want to see how they’re going to crush the Adder this time."

More than the name, it was a reminder for himself. A reminder that would keep reminding him of his pathetic past.

[Adder... checking availability... The name Adder is available. Do you want to choose ’Adder’? (Yes/No)]

He smiled. Thankfully, no one had taken this name.

He nodded and said, "Yes."

Ding!

[New user Adder registered.]

[Body model detected for biometrics... Character creation in progress.]

The next moment, an avatar slowly formed before him.

A boy of twenty-two years of age with slightly sunken cheeks. Black hair, black eyes, and pale brown skin.

Ray just stared at his old self. This avatar had simply copied his body’s current appearance. Only the blue marks were missing.

He stared into the avatar’s eyes. It once again hit him that he was back.

A mechanical voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

[15 percent of cosmetic customization is available for the avatar. Please make the changes.

(Note: any change to the avatar is permanent.)]

Ray sighed. After some thought, he changed part of his hair to platinum white and changed his eye color to green.

It was a marginal change that he liked.

He took one last look at his character and then pressed the finish button.

The next moment, the avatar started moving closer to him. The very moment it touched him, his vision shifted as he merged with the avatar.

Ding!

[Character creation finalized... Class selection... Hidden class detected.]

Finally, the notification he was waiting for popped up before him.

Ding!

[Congratulations, Participant Adder. You have completed the Trial of the Ruler.

Calculating reward...

Hidden Class: Dungeon Master (pre-set)]

Ray squinted his eyes when he saw no extra reward.

He did not get much time to think as more panels popped up before him.

[Server selection in process... The system assigned you to the 6th server based on Player Adder’s real-world location.]

[Based on your local live location, the Rowali Kingdom has been selected.]

The screen shifted in front of him, and an entire map of the 6th server appeared.

Then it zoomed to the bottom edge of the map where the Rowali Kingdom was located.

Soon, the entire Rowali Kingdom map occupied the screen.

He saw multiple green, yellow, and red dots scattered across the map.

The map zoomed in on the northwest side of the kingdom, but just then, the fairy appeared before him and clapped.

The blue panel blacked out, and another one popped up beside him.

[Name: Adder

Class: Dungeon Master

Species: Nil (Locked)

Faction: ???? (Locked)

Server: 6th (Assigned)

Location: Blackwater Village (Assigned)

Game-wide active players – 1,894,567,006 / 3,254,920,520]

She smiled at him. "I wish you good luck on your adventure, Ruler Adder."

Before he could react, a bolt of black lightning struck him.

Zap!

Adder opened his eyes within an empty stone hall. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

He instinctively turned to the center and saw a fist-sized prism-shaped crystal floating in the middle of the hall.

A beam of bright light fell onto the crystal, which then turned into a bright violet glow, lighting the entire hall in a violet hue.

He took short breaths to calm himself, but failed to calm his spiked heartbeat.

Thump! Thump!

One step at a time, he walked closer to his dungeon core as the image of the broken core continued to flash through his head.

Finally, as he stopped just inches away from the core, a wide smile plastered across his face as he started laughing aloud. "Hahah, I am really back."

He looked up at the stone ceiling and called out, "Status."

Player Name: Adder

Species: Human/???

Class: Dungeon Master

Subclass: None

Title: N/A

Level: 1

Health: 100/100

Mana: 100/100

AGL: 5

VIT: 5

INT: 5

STA: 5

STR: 5

DEF: 5

Status: Healthy.

Unassigned stat points: 0

It was a standard start. In Zenaris Online, all players started with 100 health, 100 mana, and 5 points across all six basic stats.

What differed between classes was the stat gain.

Upon leveling up, common classes got five stat points for each level, which the player could freely distribute.

Whereas rare classes got extra stat points based on their class. The game had no restriction on stat distribution, allowing all kinds of different gameplay.

Choosing the best stat distribution was the first thing that distinguished any casual player from a serious one.

For stats, Adder had some plans, but those could wait. He just closed his status and checked himself.

Currently, he was in worn-out common pants, patched-up shoes, and a sleeveless shirt that had a few tears here and there.

The basic beginner kit.

He shook his head and moved toward the dungeon core, finally placing his hand on the core.

Ding!

For his dungeon, it was snake-type monsters.

At level one, his dungeon was only two floors deep with a total monster capacity of 3000 slots.

It wasn’t much. From experience, he knew a decent group of players could easily kill these monsters in a couple of hours.

The last one was dungeon funds. He was a bit surprised at the amount. After his performance, he did expect a bit more, but it did not look like this was his reward.

Adder closed the dungeon status and turned to the Void Village status.

At this, the little spirit Xarik chimed from the side. "Master, Void Village is a nursery for our dungeon."

He nodded to the little guy and focused on the time difference.

This Void Village was linked to one of the core mechanics of Zenaris Online. The mechanics of one life for non-player characters.

In this second reality, there was no common concept of revival for NPCs, and this included monsters.

Once you killed a monster, it would forever be dead.

Instead, Zenaris Online had space cracks all over the game world.

Each of these space cracks was connected to different planes where time flowed much faster than in the game world.

These spaces were the natural habitat of all creatures.

Now these space cracks expanded and closed at certain intervals, allowing one-way entry for all sorts of different creatures to enter the game world through them.

In his past life, players used to call this the influx invasion. It was just that these invaders were constrained to a certain area around the space crack.

This basically created an equilibrium hunting zone. On one side, the invading monsters would rush out in cycles to expand the influence of the space crack.

While species from the game world would get to hunt them and gain resources from them.

This uniqueness was one of the biggest reasons many called it a second reality, not a game.

Not only that, in the past, some people went as far as to create gene-tracing equipment using different forms of magic.

He did not know the workings behind it, but had seen the paper on unique gene prints that shocked many.

Heck, one group even managed to successfully recreate the genome of one of the non-magic monsters in the real world.

All this, with the game’s hidden creator who never came out, made this second reality something else.

The little spirit pulled him out of his thoughts. "Master, do you want to check the Void space?"