The year was 2040, and it had been 20 years since the start of the era of virtual reality. Though VR games had first started to appear in 2015, it hadn’t taken off until 5 years later.

  In this new era, many services were hosted via the virtual internet, or “VNet” as it was called, a network of virtual hubs and spaces. While accessing the VNet, one could also access the original internet, which was now known as the “INet”. When logging onto the VNet, a user would either access their personal space or a main hub.

  A personal space was just as the name implied, a virtual room for the user’s personal use. It was furnished and customized based on the user’s wishing by using graphics and furniture that was either bought from shops or, for users with programming knowledge, coded themselves.

  Hubs were similar to malls of various sizes, serving as both a place to shop and as a socialization ground. A main hub was one maintained by the government. Each one was lined with doorways that were rented by businesses to link to their virtual shops with the larger companies linking the door to their own hubs, known as sub hubs.It was in one of these shops that our story starts, with a certain young man buying his first VRMMO, the recently released hit TransForm Online.

  TransForm Online, or TFO for short, stood out from the rest of the VRMMO crowd in an unusual way. It only had a single starter race, human. Instead, it introduced a transformation system, in which the player’s race and appearance could be altered by items and in game events.

  The young man quickly retreated to his personal space and for a little while just stared for a little while at the sphere of data he had acquired. He had recently turned 18, and with that he was finally at the age where he, as it had been with his older siblings, was allowed by his parents to play VRMMO’s. He began to load the sphere into his data library, eager to play the new game.

  After a few second, the transfer finished and he started the game. He was engulfed in darkness before a window popped up.

  He quickly selected “Yes” and he was transferred to the character creation screen. Too eager to play to bother with appearance, he let the game base his appearance off of his real body. This left him with a rather plain male standing about 5’8”, with short brown hair. His body was on the scrawny side, with neither muscles nor fat visible to speak of. The only thing that stood out was his green eyes, a rare eye color that he was proud to have, even if most people didn’t realize it’s scarcity.

  He gave his character the male name “Isaac” and the female name “Isabelle” along with the last name that his siblings used for this game “Lazulu”. For his nickname, he went with “Ignix” after a bit of after trying a few other and finding out they were taken.

  Since he had read online that all stats started at 10 and the starting location was decided from a lottery, he thought he was done. But a new window proved him wrong.

  After reading through it carefully he selected the “Continue?” button. As soon as he did a new window with a pair of rapidly changing numbers appeared. Over the left number was a label the read “Charisma” while a label over the number on the right read “Luck”. After a little while, the numbers began to slow down. When the stopped completely and his charisma and luck stats were revealed to him, his jaw dropped.

  “100 Charisma and 1 Luck?! W-What the…?”

  He didn’t have much time to dwell on it as he was suddenly transported to his starting location. He closed his eyes at the sudden light, and when he opened them, he found himself in the middle of a clearing surrounded by forest. As he was taking in his surrounding, he heard a several pings, each accompanied by a system message.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  After looking over everything, Ignix just stares at the windows for a few seconds.

  “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!” he suddenly yells at the top of his lungs. He takes a few deep breaths to calm himself, before a rustling behind him cause him to freeze up. As he slowly turns around the rustling gets louder and more spread out. Then, various creatures to step into clearing, and after noticing him, began to give chase.

  In the face of such a large mob of enemies, Ignix did what any badass warrior would do in such an occurrence: Run screaming in the opposite direction.

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  Meanwhile in a white void somewhere, what looked to be a male human and a female demon were sitting in a pair of lounge chairs while laughing their heads off. In front of the duo was a projection depicting a brown haired human male running through a forest and screaming like a little girl while being chased by a hoard of monsters.

  “Oi!”, a female elf sitting at a nearby table shouted at them. “What the hell was with the name of that trait, you idiots?! Stop reading so much manga and take your jobs seriously for once!”

  A female fairy, also seated at the table, sighed at this. “Leave them alone Irene. Clarissa and Lucas are just trying to have some fun.”

  Then elven woman, Irene, turned to the fairy woman. “But Wendolyn…!”

  A male dwarf standing nearby gave a hearty laugh and stated, “Ye need ta learn ta live a little, lassie! Ya don’t see ma race goin’ around all bent outa shape like that!”

  A treant standing on an out of place looking patch of grass nodded his head. “It’s a wonderful thing to be so lively.”

  Clarissa sticks her tongue out at Irene. “See that you frumpy prude! Even Dalmar and Victor agree with me!”

  Lucas smirks before turning to a male dragonoid resting his head against Victor’s trunk. “What of you, Silas?”

  The dragonoid, Silas, groggily opened an eye. “As long as it doesn’t disturb me, I don’t really care what any of you do.”

  “Looks like you’re the only one who objects to this, Irene.” , said a cat beastkin who was also sitting in front of the projection, a smile on her face that gave her the impression of a Cheshire Cat. “I for one hope end ends up as a really cute girl” , to which both Clarissa and Lucas nodded.

  “You’ve got my approval, Aurora!”, Clarissa said excitedly.

  “I’ll see what I can do to lead him down that path.” , said Lucas with a chuckle.

  Irene pouted. “What is it with you three manga-loving idiots and cute things!”

  At that, Clarissa, Lucas, and Aurora all turned around with smiles and exclaimed “Cuteness is Justice!” in perfect unison.

  As you may have guessed by now, these were the eight AIs that were responsible for maintaining the game, and the patron deities of the major races.

  Clarissa, the Goddess of Charisma and patron of the Demon Race.

  Lucas, the God of Luck and patron of the Human Race.

  Irene, Goddess of Intelligence and patron of the Elven Race.

  Wendolyn, Goddess of Wisdom and patron of the Fairy Race.

  Dalmar, God of Dexterity and patron of the Dwarven Race.

  Victor, God of Vitality and patron of the Plantkin Race.

  Silas, God of Strength and patron of the Dragon Race.

  Aurora, Goddess of Agility and patron of the Beastkin Race.

  Together, the eight of them managed every aspect of the game system, and so far two of them and marked the new player Ignix as their toy.

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  Hello and welcome to the Author Corner!

  This is the prologue of my new story TransForm Online (TFO) , staring a MC based off of one of my favorite rp characters! This is my first story and first time posting on Royal Road so I’m excited for any suggestions you can give me to help it improve.

  For those wondering about the Ignix’s Logbook entries, anything nessacary to the story will be explained in the story itself, while the Logbook will contain extra info for lore junkies.

  Each chapter of TFO will be structure like this prologue: The MC’s POV first, then the AI’s POV, and finally the Author Corner.

  GrandFinale, over and out!

  P. S. CUTENESS IS JUSTICE!