He had asked Mato for a location that had PCs so that he could play Legends Rise. She had found him a place for that purpose, but it was slightly different. However, this slight difference made a world of difference for Li Ming.

He was now at the tryouts for the Seoul Gladiators. Mato had deceived him to attend a tryouts event for people who were hopeful to become professional players. If Li Ming knew that this was that type of event, he would have still gone. However, he was not mentally prepared for it, and the fact that he had stumbled in on the tryouts for the team with a record of a rarely picking up foreign talent meant that he was doomed to fail out of this event.

'Welp, since I'm here, I might as well give it my best shot...' he thought.

"h.e.l.lo Mr. Li Ming, my name is Ki Hyeon, and I'll be your examiner for today. You can call me Celeste." the man said as he picked up his tablet, "Use this PC to plug in your gear and create a character. The character will be deleted after your tryout, so don't worry about the appearance too much. You may keep the character by saving it to your gear if you want it as a souvenir from this event. Just sign this form here; it'll give us the permission to record your results."

Li Ming glanced at the tablet. He was able to speak and understand a certain amount of english due to his encounters with foreign players in the game, but he wasn't able to read it quite well. He hesitatingly signed his name in the indicated box before proceeding to the computer and setting up his gear.

"Inside, you'll be fighting against a couple of enemies in 3 different stages. You just need to do the best that you can." Celeste explained, "If you can obtain a score of 95 or higher, you'll probably pa.s.s. You have 20 minutes to set up your character. Best of luck."

---

Li Ming sat in front of the character creation screen. He was debating between two things. He could go with a comfort set up by simply rebuilding his mage character that he uses normally, or he could try what he had discussed with resonance. Li Ming had some experience in Kendo and some chinese spearmans.h.i.+p from his live action role play events that he had attended for fun in the past. He could draw on this experience to play a warrior. In fact, Li Ming used to be a pretty high ranking warrior, but because of his desire to do something that he couldn't do in the real world, he decided to switch to a mage.

"Hey, is there anything wrong? You haven't made a move yet." Celeste commented from within the game, "The timer starts when you start picking out skills, but I'd like you to hurry up a little bit."

"Oh sorry, I'll get on with it now!" Li Ming made up his mind. Since there was already a low chance of him pa.s.sing the tryouts and the fact that he was so anxious to try the build setup that he had spoken to Resonance about, he decided to go for it. He was going to try it out. He was going to try to do what the legendary Resonance couldn't!

He began in the character base select screen. In legends rise, the game setup was quite reflective of reality. If you set your character to have a larger size, you would have more strength and durability, but if you went with a smaller size, you would have a smaller hitbox* and a more speed and agility.

Li Ming opted for a thin looking character. He set the character to look like him in the real world. He chose to bring a spear that looked like a Naginata but with a straight sword as the tip instead of a curve one. He then filled the rest of his inventory with empty spell trinkets and chose light leather armor for more speed and lighter weight. Finally, he brought a empty spell ring that could store a one time use spell.

Moving onto his ability selection screen, Li Ming finally realized why this type of build would be so difficult. The trinkets could only store low tier spells and the ring could only store up to an ultimate spell. Although the trinkets had no cast time, they also only held 75% of the spell's total offensive power. This was why most player used trinkets for defensive spells.

Li Ming scanned the spells list. He had 10 empty trinkets to fill up first. He chose to imbue three of them with a basic "Wind Arrow Volley" spell. He filled the next three with basic "Firelance" spell. With the next four, he chose unique spells for each one. He chose "Gra.s.s Roots Trap" and "Concussive Flare" for crowd control, "Enchant: Static" for his spear, and a pa.s.sive ability called "High Tempo". High tempo was an ability that very few people even touched. In fact, many people found the ability itself useless.

However, for this new playstyle that he was going to try , this ability was perfect. "High Tempo" granted your next spell bonus damage after you landed a physical attack, and your next physical attack more damage after you landed a spell. When this spell was first introduced, many players rushed to try it out, only to realize that it didn't give enough of a buff to a mage to make it worth it for the mage to go to melee range, or for a warrior to back off for a couple seconds to cast a spell.

But Li Ming realized that with his current setup, the buffs would mitigate any of the weaknesses of the trinkets! Especially in a game like Legends Rise, where the characters weren't limited to a cla.s.s, but instead could choose a myriad of spells and abilities from different cla.s.ses

For his own character, Li Ming chose the Mage pa.s.sive "Persistent Mana", which gave him 3% of his maximum mana back after each time he hit an enemy with a physical attack, as well as giving him a 50% boost in attack speed.

He chose a Thief's ability for his primary ability: "Ghost Strike", which would triple his next attack by creating phantom illusions. Li Ming chose this because of it's low cooldown so that he could hopefully spam this ability.

For his secondary ability, he chose the Gunner's pa.s.sive ability: "Crimson Bullets", which dealt 2% of the target's maximum health per physical attack landed, and increased to 8% if the attack wasn't blocked. He chose this ability to hopefully deal with any characters that showed up and proved to be too durable for him.

For his tertiary ability, he chose another thief's ability: "Shunpo", which allowed a character to quickly teleport to another location near an enemy, but with the downside of taking triple the damage if he was. .h.i.t within 2 seconds after using the ability. The ability would reset after each kill. He needed this ability to dodge at crucial moments.

And finally, for his ultimate ability, he chose the Ranger's pa.s.sive ability: "On the Hunt!". This granted him stealth for 4 seconds after each time he landed 3 attacks in the s.p.a.ce of second. He would also gain a burst of speed as well as the a buff that would heal him for 10% of the damage dealt for his next 5 attacks.

At last, he arrived at his character's Name Declaration page. Li Ming considered using his regular name that he used in games previously, but after some thought, he decided to choose a new name. This was a new play style, after all. If it failed horrendously, he wouldn't want it to be attached to his name.

'Hmmm...' He thought, 'Whats a good name?'

He thought about it some more...

"You have 1 minute remaining!" Celeste declared.

Li Ming panicked! He had tried to save some time to think of a proper name, but he had taken too long in the character creation process! But after some thought, he decided to pick a name that was a translation of his own name.

One by one, the letters appeared on the Name Declaration Page. It spelled out:

The Dawn

His character would bring the Dawn of a revolution of the meta!