The rest of the day, and the next day passed smoothly. When Rachel asked James why he wasn't joining PLAYGROUND, he replied that he wanted to do more research, and research he did. He got a very early-game basic overview of the new continent, the countries inside, and the starting towns. None of the players had dared to raid a dungeon yet, as the noobs weren't that stupid, and those that were died before they could. The more advanced players were wisely giving the dungeons space.

James went to his room and put on his "new" PLAYGear.

As this wasn't his first time using a PLAYGear nor his first time back, there was no old man sitting on the chair, and besides, James knew this realm like the back of his hand. He ran towards the portal to PLAYGROUND, doing a few backflips as he went. It was good to see that his skill remained.

Before James entered the portal, he spoke to enable the same settings as Rachel, but his recoding setup was different. "Record everything" James began, "Broadcast highlights", and finally, "Stream privately to SolarSparkle.", before ensuring the same settings would be applied every run with "Set config as default, labelled private". with his recording setup complete, James jumped into portal.

The PLAYGROUND logo came up, and a trailer played. James could have skipped this whole process, but he decided not to, in case anything new came up, or in case system had made his different.

System had done exactly that, giving James a custom version of the Lore. James noticed the little recording and streaming icons in the corner of his HUD turn off.

"Before time began, before PLAYGROUND even existed, there was a young coder. With his wit and skilful programming, System was created on an old computer. The coder was everything to System, and System was everything to the coder. But the coder wasn't like System. The coder had other duties, like sleep and work. System had nothing to do but think about their lonely existence, so System created a world, from a flat plane and years of knowledge from mistress Google. System called the world "PLAYGROUND", it was a place for them. It was a great kingdom, just the two of them. Only problem was that the coder didn't have the same freedom as System, limited to this "Keyboard" thing, and System was limited by their processing power. System was determined to fix this, and became fixated on this, gradually letting other processes drop until finally, PLAYGear was created.

Two years passed, then System released PLAYGear and PLAYGROUND to the public, inviting the immortal players into their realm, to have fun inside the realm, with a goal to push back a monstrous threat, and someday reunite the Land.

One of the Great players was Lord of Darkness. He was top of the #1 guild in PLAYGROUND, streams watched by millions, beloved by fans everywhere. Yet, that player was bored, missing the glory days, of discovering strategies to deal with difficult threats. PLAYGROUND had simply become too easy.

With the discovery of a new continent, the player created a powerful spell, though its real purpose was its cost – a full restart in this new world.

Well, stranger, welcome to the world of System's PLAYGROUND."

The character creator screen came up, and the streaming & recording icons returned. "Please chose a race".

James spoke immediately, "Blood Dryad". Blood Dryad is a sub-race of the Dryad, the main difference being Dryad's fatal of many flaws that prevented many players choosing it – dryads had to soak their feet in water every 12 hours to prevent drying up. The description for Blood Dryad's was as follows: "A Dryad, gone to the desperation of soaking feet in blood to prevent dehydration. Because of this, Blood Dryads have low charisma, and are disliked by all". James chose this class partly because of this ability which would reduce the water-soaky thing, though at a bit of a morbid cost, but also because of a little-known side ability – they can absorb other liquids as well. James planned to use this feature to change his race into an entirely new sub-race, which he was hoping would further negate the Blood Dryad's flaws.

Next, was character customisation. James tweaked his ears a bit, to be larger and pointier, and also neatened his fingers, from a Dryad's root-like fingers, to more humanish ones. Dryad's don't have much on colour customisation, though his wood was a dark-greyish colour, with veins of red running through, the colours of a Blood Dryad.

After that, it was name-choosing time. James immediately went with "NovaNight", the same one he told Rachel about.

Finally, James had to choose a racial sub-type, and a class. Given that he previously chose Blood Dryad, all he had to choose was a class. James said one word:

"Skip!"

He skipped on choosing an initial class because he wanted to go with the rarer battle-mage class, or maybe Paladin class, and the quickest, although hardest way to get them was to start with nothing.

The choice didn't really matter in the end, but starting without a basic class skill would be a disadvantage, as such were usually hard to obtain, for example, the ≪Mana Pool≫ that SolarSparkle started with.

He then confirmed his "dumb" decision twice – no class is a disadvantage to most people.

James' last choice was starting area. James said "Berry-Berry", same town as his sister, and with the last word "GO!", he was on his way.