In contrast to the austere, minimalist whiteness of Immersion Arcade's Main Menu, once First Person Spellcaster finished loading up a central level hub, Jon found himself in a nice, homey, comfortable common room, one with fire in the fireplace, sun in the windows, actual nonholographic wood doors in the walls, NPCs on the couches, and plush comfy rugs here and there on the castle floor. Of course, there was still something inherently intimidating about suddenly finding himself in a huge fucking castle hall, but still, insofar as it was possible for a Late Medieval Military Fortress to have a comfy space, this was a comfy space.
Jon himself was still mostly incorporeal save for some floating disembodied gauntlets where his hands should've been, as he had been out in the main menu, but he got the sense that that wasn't going to last long: once the game had finished loading up the level hub, it had plopped him down right in front of a set of three weapon racks, one labeled Flanks, another labelled Frontlines, and a third labelled Backlines, and above the group, written in a glowing runic script as befit the fantasy aesthetic, was this telling instruction:
- Choose Your Class -
There were 10 classes to choose from in total: 3 Flanks, 4 Frontliners, and 3 Backliners. Whichever weapon on the racks Jon's hand hovered nearest showed the apparent name of the class, in that same fantasy script, abruptly appearing on the wall above the weapon. When he briefly considered what seemed to be a short pink magic wand on the Flank rack, for example, there appeared a script informing him the Wand apparently belonged to the Magical Girl Class. Jon ignored that one. More appealing was a Staff on the Frontlines rack, far longer and heavier-looking than the wand, with more ornate crystal work on its end, as befits the more powerful Wizards of a generic fantasy world; this evidently belonged to the Warlock class, he saw, as his hand drifted nearer to that weapon. Over on the Backlines rack was a gnarled ironwood shillelagh, still with leaves and living flowers branching off the trunk, that belonged to the Druid class; A kunai on the Flank rack, small and easily concealed, belonged apparently to the Shinobi class; A huge, fierce looking Warhammer belonged to a Fiend on the Frontlines; a Longbow belonged to the Ranger in the Backlines; and so on. After a moment, Jon chose to grab the Warlock's staff off the rack.
And then, Jon regrew a body.
Runes briefly appeared at his feet, and his avatar flashed as a formless white light for a moment; when it dissipated, Jon finally had proper flesh and blood again, or at least some simulation of it so accurate he couldn't tell the difference. Part of him had hoped that he would just have reappeared as himself in his own body, except maybe with a big pointy hat or something, but of course that hope was squashed immediately when Jon looked down and saw tits hanging off his chest. Big tits, technically hidden by the rich, velvety fabric of the robes Jon was now wearing, but straining against their prison hungrily enough that they and the new bra that held them were fully countered and perfectly visible to the ogler's imagination despite the ostensible modesty. They didn't really look huge, if Jon was being honest, but they certainly felt huge, squished and straining against a body that had never felt anything remotely comparable hanging off its torso.
It was strange. This was strange. Becoming incorporeal earlier had been surreal, a little tingly and oddly numbing, but Jon still felt like himself somehow, like his body was still floating out in the void somewhere intangible and unchanged. Going from that to this, on the other hand, felt deforming; like he was a round gelatinous ball pressed hard into an unfamiliar square hole, squeezed too tightly here and hanging out too loosely there. On the one hand, his boobs, flabby and sensitive and much too present; on the other hand, his groin, pinched small, pressed flat between his legs, and then forced inside him. It was such a bizarre experience abruptly becoming a woman that it took a long moment to even begin comprehending that he'd also become a witch.
Jon had actually been right about the big pointy hat, for whatever that was worth. Of course his sleeves were way too big for his newly feminine hands, too, hanging winglike off his arms in the way that stereotypical witch robes do for some reason. Those weirdly giant sleeves, together with the much-smaller-and-thinner waist and the long ankle-length skirt, were all one piece as his new robes. Don't let that give you an impression of modesty, though; apart from a few straps and belts, including his new bra straps, the robes were almost entirely backless above the hips, and said new wide, matronly hips, together with a belt cinched firmly around his little waist, caused the skirt to flare out obscenely around his plump peachy ass. Of course the skirt just had to have a long vertical slit in one side, too, since it just wasn't scandalous enough until an onlooker could also glimpse Jon's thick, creamy legs up to the thigh, and behold an interesting absence of shoes, apparently. Overall, most of the look was so stereotypically witchy that Jon would wonder after a time why they even bothered to distinguish the class as a Warlock.
Jon hadn't expected the reading glasses, though, nor the shortsword dangling from the belt around his teeny new waist, nor that he would turn out just so ghostly pale of skin. Running his tongue over his teeth after a time led to another odd discovery, in that apparently he had a set of very long, thin, sharp fangs in addition to his regular teeth. Later on, when Jon finally found a mirror for a look at himself as the Warlock class, he would discover... well, actually, he wouldn't discover anything, since by then he'd have figured out that the Warlock character was a vampire and didn't actually have a reflection. BUT, he would still have gotten a good guess at what he looked like before then by observing other Warlocks. In particular, he noticed right away that one of the 10 NPCs lounging around in the level hub looked just like him in his witchy new body; same pointy hat, same robes, same over-the shoulder braid, the works, and SHE looked an awful lot like an older woman, softer and squishier and gently aged more than the other NPCs. Her eyes looked especially old, somehow; they wore that constant, habitually weary expression of profoundly burdensome intelligence, like their owners had seen too many things they'd never be able to unsee in the darkest parts of the world. Of course, that they had black sclerae and red irises helped give that impression, too.
At the moment, she was sitting at a table in the common room, a book propped up in her hands for reading. Jon had no idea what it was, not being able to read the language on the cover, but given that some short, writhing tentacles were somehow emerging from the pages as she read them and disappearing as she turned them, Jon guessed it was probably better not to ask. Icons and floating text did appear around the Warlock as he looked at her, though, obviously meant for him: The informative ones all said things like "Rank: Initiate", "Hours Played: 0", "Avg Points per Life: 0", "Record Points per Life: 0", and so on, and other more interactive ones, probably meant to be accessed with the Master Controller, said things like "More stats", "Change Cosmetics", "Class Specifics", "Erase Data", and so on.
Similar icons and text appeared around the other NPCs when his gaze lingered over them similarly. It wasn't hard to guess who they were. One of them in particular was a tomboyish elf with a bow almost as long as she was tall, firing arrows into a target dummy at the far corner of the castle hall, apparently for practice. Jon put back the Warlock's staff, grabbed the Ranger's Longbow off the Weapon Rack, and sure enough, his ears got longer and pointier to match the elf's pair identically and almost instantly.
Switching classes wasn't nearly as much of a jolt as abruptly materializing as one, which is to say it was still an overwhelmingly powerful sensation, for the moment or two Jon's body flashed to the formless white again. All the Warlock's padding, all her soft gentle fat, Jon felt it melt away and shrink inward like his skin was being vacuum sealed, and give way to hard, lean, muscle. Jon's bra disappeared, and he felt his breasts shrink down and became much firmer, much perkier and more supple, bouncing in response to his powerful pecs underneath and little else; his hips narrowed, his bubble butt tightened into defined, rock hard glutes; he felt the skin on his abs tighten around a six pack; his thicc, soft thighs constricted into rods that could crush a melon; and so on. The Ranger was a little shorter and considerably smaller than the Warlock, maybe a few dozen pounds lighter; but Jon felt like he hadn't lost an ounce of power or strength in that transformation. He couldn't feel what his eyes and hair were doing, but it was easy enough to just look at the Ranger NPC and confirm that said eyes had become big, golden, and hawklike, and the hair had shortened to a straight, boyish cut that ended well over the shoulders. Nicest of all for Jon, though, was the transformation of his clothes: Knee-high boots, a proper wool cloak, bona fide trousers (albeit a bit tighter than he would've liked) and a bona fide undershirt (albeit MUCH tighter than he would've liked) tucked into his swordbelt; it still felt like it was making a show of his new body, but less so, and much more so like this was an outfit made to get to business.
Speaking of business... wasn't he supposed to be playing a video game?
Now that Jon had a class chosen and a new body to use for the moment, he finally turned his attention away from the weapon rack for a more proper look over FPS's level hub. He could tell immediately it was just a level hub and not actually the game proper yet, most obviously because of pair of two huge double doors at one end of the hall, one of which was labelled "PLAY CASUAL" and the other of which was labeled "PLAY RANKED". The latter was padlocked and obviously not ready to play yet, which was a shame; apparently the actual Trial Goal he was working towards to log out and go home was to reach the rank of Eldritch Knight with 9 of the available classes, and the rank of Witch Queen with 1 other class of his choice, or so said a terminal message on a bulletin board elsewhere in the castle hall. On the end of the hall opposite the big doors, unhelpfully, was just the game's title and logo, in a huge, stylized, indulgent font for Jon to stare at. It had a door labelled "EXIT" too, dwarfed under the big, boisterous letters satisfying First Person Spellcaster's vanity; of course, that door was padlocked even more securely than "PLAY RANKED" was.
Much more promising than any of those doors, though, were the much smaller and more utilitarian doors along the length of the hall. These were labelled with such things as "TUTORIALS AND TRAINING", "CHANGE COSMETICS", "GAMEPLAY SETTINGS", "MAPS", "ACHIEVEMENTS", "TO DARK LOUNGE", and so on. The only door of which Jon couldn't immediately make some guess about the evident function was the "TO DARK LOUNGE" door; naturally, Jon tried it out first.
The "Dark Lounge", it turned out, was exactly identical to the level hub Jon had just left, only it was rotated 180 degrees, had a swap to its color palate, some cosmetic changes, and a door that read "TO LIGHT LOUNGE" closing behind him instead of the dark counterpart. It was exactly the sort of light/darkness palate swap you'd expect if you played way too many video games, really: blues, whites, and royal golds turned to reds, blacks, and royal violets; the bright lively pine of the wooden doors and furniture was swapped to a deep, rich mahogany; cast iron replaced silver; the sunshine and blue sky filtering in from the big overhead windows had somehow turned to moonlight and stars in the time it took to cross the threshold; the target practice dummies became much more lifelike, and the one the Black Ranger was shooting actually seemed to be bleeding; and the 10 NPCs around, exactly the same in shape and activity, wore different colored outfits and had changed appearance slightly.
... Come to think of it, Jon had also changed appearance slightly when he crossed the threshold, and hadn't even noticed. The White Ranger he had been just moments ago looked like some kind of Wood Elf, with lightly tanned skin and sandy red hair, but now, he was definitely a Dark Elf, with chocolate brown skin and silver hair. The tan of his boots had turned black, the green of his cloak had turned black, the beige of his trousers had turned a deep maroon, and the white of his tight undershirt had turned... well, it was still a tight white, that hadn't changed, but the skin just barely visible under it had. The change caught him off guard, but he was already getting the feeling from this game that his body was going to be changing a LOT, and this was a more minimal change.
That last thought scared him a little, so Jon's next destination was the "CHANGE COSMETICS" door. Hopefully he could change his body or at least his clothes into something more comfortable for the teenage boy he really was.
... It was just an empty closet. "No cosmetics unlocked yet", a notification said. All that was there was (un-impossibly) a door to the Light Lounge's counterpart closet, a lot of empty clothes hangers, another weapon rack, and a mirror. Jon thought about the mirror; maybe he could examine himself long and hard enough to fill another several paragraphs with indulgent purple prose about the appearance of his unfamiliar new female body? He decided against it. He was wasting time out here just bouncing around in the level hub when there was a game to be playing. Accordingly, he decided to give Tutorials and Training the Skip for now and just head right on into Casual Play.
This was a mistake; Casual Play soundly whooped his unprepared ass.
