After the things that happened with her soul, her minds inability to interpret the information her senses sent her, the nature of the other soul, and basically everything else, she had known that it was very unlikely that she still had her own body.
Having possessed the body of some kind of magic robot had been one of the more likely scenarios, what with the other soul having been artificial and its computer-like way of thinking. Her expectations had been somewhere between the huge, clunky body of a T-70, and the shape changing polyalloy body of a T-3000 Terminator model, willfully ignoring the likelihood of non-humanoid possibilities.
But what she got was just plain weird. She wasn’t exactly a professional on either magic or robots, never mind the combination of both. But even she knew that the shape of a skeleton was optimized to serve as structural support for muscles, not to be the muscle itself. In a way, it felt as if she was simply missing a piece of the body. But then again, if her body was supposed to have muscles of some kind but was missing them, it didn’t make much sense that she had a way of moving without them.
Building contingencies and fail saves into a robot made sense to Annabelle, but it sounded absolutely absurd to have a fail save just in case the robot lost all of its “meat” only leaving it with a skeleton.
However, ignoring all that weirdness, there was a big problem. Thanks to common sense, and in the light of the“A body of potential” quest, it wasn’t hard to come to the realization that her body would be anything but inconspicuous. If she didn’t want to inform anyone who knew what they were looking for of her presence, she would have to find a way to disguise herself. Something that would have been difficult enough to achieve under mundane circumstances and with access to an internets worth of materials.
But with nothing at hand but the things she could find in nature? Never mind potentially having to go up against magical powers like her own whose purpose it was to uncover such disguises? Saying that it would be difficult was quite the understatement.
All of a sudden, the hundred, or rather, ninety nine days she still had on her Stability timer before she would run out seemed like far too little.
Then again, maybe she could use her own Skills to disguise herself?
She shuddered at the thought. There was currently only a single way for her to do that, and all it would achieve was to turn her from a skeleton into a cosmic horror. Never mind the insane [Regeneration] she would need to pull it off.
But for now, none of that really mattered. Before she could even start to consider those things, she would have to free herself from the ground. And so, she went back to digging.
It was about another hour into her work that she finally got the first message from the System in a while, a message she had long anticipated and that even came with a nice surprise in addition.
[Level up: Main-Skill: Summon Tentacle Lv 5]
[Skill: [Summon Tentacle] has reached level 5 and is available for (1) one upgrade]
[Tutorial: Skill Upgrades
Every five levels a Skill can be upgraded. To do so, please use the command “Upgrade [Insert Skill]”.
If more than one Upgrade is available, you have to choose the lowest level Upgrade first.]
Seeing that she wouldn’t be able to hold back to get herself out of this monotony of digging, albeit temporarily, Annie decided to take this as her cue to start her break a little earlier than usual. She had already made pretty good progress, having focused entirely on her right arm. She was pretty optimistic that, if she activated Basic Mobility at High-Power, she would be able to pull her arm out of the first, and from there use it to help with the work. Not that that would actually be the most effective use of her Mana, as it would suck her dry far faster then her tentacles did, but she dearly needed at least a small success to keep herself motivated to move efficiently.
Between the upgrade and that, she was positive that she could keep herself going.
Upgrade Summon Tentacle
She gave the command after turning her senses back off, allowing her Mana to regenerate.
[Please choose one out of three possible Upgrades for [Summon Tentacle] Lv 5]
From what the System had said earlier, Annie had assumed that whatever she got for an upgrade, she would be stuck with. So she was understandably happy when she realized that she actually had a choice for what she got. And on top of that, the second alone made it obvious that they were influenced by Annabelle’s own actions and how she used her Skills and for what. That way, the option of using her Tentacles as a disguise became immediately much more viable.
Upgrade: Coordination
Effect:
Increases your coordination with your tentacles by 5% for each point of [Speed].
[Speed] +10
The first option was great, an immediate upgrade to her ability to control tentacles. It was a little questionable what a “50% increase in coordination” actually entailed, but she found it reasonable to assume that she could control 50% more tentacles with the same proficiency and coordination. Not that she currently had the leeway in [Regeneration] to even consider controlling a large number of Tentacles.
Upgrade: Shovelhead
Effect:
You can summon tentacles with shovel heads
[Power] +10
The second upgrade was nice. Perfect for her current situation. However, the viability afterwards was questionable. She might be able to use them as some kind of weapon, but she doubted that it would be a very good one. With such a static effect, especially since she didn’t know how many of these upgrades she might get in the future, it seemed a bit wasteful. Although, the Stats it would give were tempting, as it would significantly increase the strength of her Tentacles. But then again, it would be much better if she could get [Regeneration] instead.
Upgrade: Agility
Effect:
The Speed, flexibility and precision of tentacles increases by 5% for each point of [Speed].
[Speed] +10
While the first upgrade had been due to her practicing to use two tentacles in a coordinated manner, and the second had been due to what she used them for, the third could have only been due to the digging work being rather precise work at times, the form of the tentacles making it often difficult as her digging consisted less of scooping the dirt, and more of pinching small amounts and then throw away.
The big question was now which one she should take. She spent quite a while waffling about the advantages of all of them, more or less intentionally wasting time while making the important decision before she would go back to boredom. Though, after half an hour when she was about halfway done recharging, she decided to go by process of elimination.
Immediately, [Shovelhead] was the first to go. It promised the biggest immediate gains, but that was it. The upgrade was Static, while the other two would make her tentacles scale in power even as her other Skill increased in level.
That left [Coordination] and [Agility]. Her first reflex was to go with the latter. Speed, flexibility, and precision had been the most important aspects of her parkouring, so the upgrade spoke to her. However, she hesitated. Under normal circumstances, she would have taken [Agility], no questions asked. However, she couldn’t be any farther from normal than her current situation. So she decided to rethink her options.
She still decided against [Shovelhead], the upgrade to narrow in its usage and shortterm in its power.
However, she took [Coordination] under closer inspection. Her first assumption had been that it would increase the amount of tentacles she could use in a coordinated manner, but that wasn’t actually what the upgrade said, wasn’t it? From the time that she had just started parkour, she could still remember how important, and difficult, coordination of just her own limbs could be, of which she had just four. But tentacles, she would be able to have much more than that in the future, but even if she didn’t, just a single tentacle had a freedom of movement leagues above normal limbs, be they human or robot.
Despite the practice she had gotten, she couldn’t deny that she was pretty clumsy with just two of them. What did she need more speed, flexibility, and precision for, if she couldn’t even control any of them? And what about if she did indeed end up disguising herself with her tentacles? She would probably need somewhere between twenty to a hundred tentacles just to cover her whole body. Even if all she had to do was hold them still, with that many, she couldn’t help but wonder how difficult it would be to hold them all in place and not accidentally reveal what’s underneath.
And with that, her decision was basically made already and she logged in her decision. But before she could even take a look at her new Status, another message appeared once again.
[Tutorial: Skill Upgrade Cost
Please be aware that after choosing a Skill Upgrade, it won’t be available immediately. To activate a chosen Skill Upgrade, you have to pay a price in Stability, equal to Main-Skill level at which the Skill Upgrade was gained. The price can be paid immediately, or in fractions as small as (1) one, but the Skill Upgrade won’t have any effect until the price is paid in full.]
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If she had them, Annabelle would have rolled her eyes in annoyance. This was one of those things that would have been nice to know head of time, though, the more she thought about it, the less she could say. Not just because she was literally incapable of speech at the moment. But because it did, in fact, make absolutely no difference. It didn’t force her to pay the Stability immediately, and the price wouldn’t increase over time. It didn’t even force her to pay it all at once.
Something it did explain though was the reason she had been given this much Stability. She didn’t trust the System enough to assume that it would give her this much Stability out of the kindness of its heart. Not after what it had done to her soul. However, it still gave her the Stability and more. As such, she could only assume that it was benign at least in some capacity. And that lead her to the only logical conclusion. That it had given her enough to survive, but no more.
However, in that case, the scale had seemed off. People could travel on foot across America from coast to coast in about six months. And sure, she was currently rather disadvantaged, constantly needing to recharge her Mana and all that stuff, but as more time passed, her Skills would more than make up for it, she was sure of that. Sooner or later, she was pretty sure she would be able to keep walking day and night without need for sleep or even food.
And sure, the possibility that this System expected her to travel such a huge distance was possible, but somehow she had her doubts about that.
But the Skill Upgrades? They explained this a little more. If she also needed Stability to purchase these Upgrades, things started to make a lot more sense why she got so much. Rather, the amount she had suddenly looked much smaller, knowing how quickly she got to the first Skill Upgrade, which supposedly came up every five levels, and how much Stability she was supposed to pay for it. Just getting both her Skills to level twenty and getting all the Upgrades would use up the entire 100 Stability she had gotten at the start.
The amount she got could, in that case, be explained not just by needing all of it just to stay alive long enough, but with a better vision on the value of Stability as a currency, it became much easier to come to the conclusion that the System might have actually given her a small bonus.
Not simply because it was especially kind, but simply because, in all likelihood, anyone who grew up in this place could have easily earned far more Stability than that before they reached Annie’s age.
For a few moments, she took another look at her Status.
99 Stability
-1 Stability per day
212/1500 Mana
+21 (-32) Mana per minute
Mana
15
Regeneration
21
Power
5
Speed
3
Toughness
0
Abilities:
* Dungeon Compass
* Communication
Main-Skill: Summon Tentacle Lv 5
* Upgrade: Coordination [0/5]+
Main-Skill: Golem-bound Lv 3
Looking at it, however, she decided against using any Stability on it for now. She chose the Upgrade because it was the one that would be the most useful in the future, not because she needed it immediately, besides, she didn’t know how high her Skills would level before she ran out of time. Until she found a reliable way to get more Stability, she decided, she would only use it on Skill Upgrades if those upgrades were absolutely necessary, or if they were likely to safe her more Stability if she bought them than she would safe if she didn’t. Like, if she got an Upgrade that decreased the Mana cost to keep her body running enough to make it sustainable.
— — — — —
She woke up to an unfamiliar ceiling. If it were white, or a hospital ceiling of any other color, she could have put everything behind her as a very vivid coma-dream. But it wasn’t.
The ceiling she saw was that of a cave, barely illuminated by slightly fluorescent moss that seemed to be growing everywhere. On the upside, she wasn’t stuck in the ground anymore. On the downside, she was now stuck inside a cave without the knowledge on how to get out. Also, there was the slight issue that she had been added to a rather sizeable collection of bones arranged in a giant pile, with herself at the very top.
It was as such that it was basically impossible for her to move without causing the mountain to topple over and cause a lot of noise. Which would, in all likelihood, wake up he reason for her current predicament.
She could barely see the creature in the dim light, its body covered in craggy, gray and black scales that would have perfectly camouflaged in front of the rocky cave floor had it not been lying in such a prominent position on top of a soft bed of glowing moss. Despite its scaled form, its body looked gracefully feline. But that was where the similarities with the cats she knew ended, even the giant ones. Its hind-legs were disproportionally long and powerful, almost doubling the length of its already enormous body as they lay there, stretched out behind it, making it easy to imagine this creature lunging at its prey from incredible distances at unavoidable speeds. Meanwhile, its front legs almost seemed stubby in comparison. But as if to make up for it, it had four of them in exchange. Two were positioned relatively normally, ending in soft looking paws. The others, however, sat on top of its shoulders pointing upwards and reaching above its head. These were by no means meant for movement, looking more like a pair of arms, with three long and slender fingers each, all tipped by a set of vicious claws meant to rip into and hold down its prey.
It’s head too didn’t look feline either, instead reminding her more of that of an alien xenomorph with its elongated shape, though its maw was standing open in its sleep, showing off its finger length fangs lining both sides of the vertical orifice. Though, by far the most disturbing part of this alien creature were the set of four tentacles lining the sides of its body. Even if you managed to evade the creatures charge, its jaws, and claws, these undulating appendages promised to catch you with the large, meat hook-like claws on their tips.
This was a creature not meant to hunt unaware, helpless prey. It was a being designed with contingency after contingency, ensuring that it could catch even the nimblest of dodgers or restrain the strongest of preys.
And for some reason, this creature had brought her to its lair.
It was a good thing that Annabelle couldn’t move without consciously activating the function of her body, or else she would have tried to run away that very moment, and who knew what that creature would do to her then? Probably rip her apart and eat… Wait.
Within seconds, all her fear dissipated. The creature looked more than just terrifying, but that was actually all. Annabelle realized that, if she played her cards right, that would be all it would be. At least to her.
After all, why hadn’t it eaten her already? The reason was simple. Her pair of tentacles had been chomped off cleanly, leaving only stumps behind, but aside from that, there wasn’t anything to eat on her body.
So, either the creature considered her fully eaten already and threw away her “remains”, or it tried to eat her, but realized that she wasn’t actually made of bone, but metal instead.
Either way, it didn’t seem to recognize her as a living being. Did Annie have the confidence to sneak by the creature without waking it up and getting away? No. Did she actually need to do that? The answer was “no” to that question too.
As long as she didn’t do anything stupid in the meantime, or got exceptionally unlucky, she could simply wait for the creature to go out to hunt, or whatever it did all day when it wasn’t sleeping, and then go right out the front door.
So, with a strange mix of anxiety at being in the same room with a dangerous predator without a fence in between, and the assurance stemming from the fact that she wasn’t actually edible, Annabelle settled in to wait, activating and reactivating her senses at regular intervals so she would know when the beast had left as soon as possible while also maintaining her mana as high as she could, wasting away the hours in boredom.
In the past, she had watched a few cop movies, and often enough, they had mentioned how utterly boring stakeouts were. Annabelle could only agree now that she experienced it herself. And even worse, she didn’t even have coffee and donuts. All she could do was to use her new ability to remember things to rewatch old memories. Not that it was especially fun, considering it wasn’t much different than rewatching an already boring movie. Though, at that thought she actually started using her memories to re-watch actual movies.
Sadly, it wasn’t actually as fun as one might think since they were still only memories and often not exactly perfect, and missing the right mood and ambience.
[Level up: Main-Skill: Golem-bound Lv 4]
Still, it was a way to pass the time, and somewhere halfway through, she even gained a level in her [Golem-bound] Skill, until finally, she checked the cave, only to notice that the beast was missing.
Still, Annabelle didn’t immediately try and get away. She didn’t know where the monster had gone, nor for how long it would stay away. For all she knew, it was still close enough that it would hear if she tried to get of the mountain of bones. Or maybe it was just taking care of some business in the next cave over and would be back before she could actually get away.
So Annabelle waited. One minute became two, then three, then five. At the ten minute mark, she finally decided that it was time.
With her last Skill level, her [Regeneration] had reached a value of 23, reducing the mana drain of keeping her senses active down to seven mana per minute, out of one thousand and five hundred. As long as it was just her senses, she could by now keep them running for over three and a half hours if she was fully charged. However, activating the Basic mobility, even just at low power, would cost her another sixty mana per minute.
After the mana she had spent waiting, that meant she had a little over twenty one minutes to flee from the monster before she ran out of mana. It was neither a short, nor a long time. In her own body, she would have been able to get about four kilometers away in that timeframe.
She quickly realized a problem, however. This wasn’t her body. Well, it was now, but not only were the proportions absolutely not what she was used to, the… “handling” for lack of a better word, was also very different. She hadn’t actually gotten a chance yet to test the bodies mobility, and it was only now that she had to run and hide from a monster, while on a rather short timer, that she had the opportunity.
Her first attempt at movement immediately resulted in a very loud slide down the bone pile.
Immediately, she shut of the mobility again, and watched, waiting. The beast didn’t return.
After a few minutes, she got back to work. Over the next five minutes, she slowly figured out how to move what, getting to her feet slowly. She was still rather wobbly, but she got more secure with every step she managed to take successfully. Not that she managed to do so without tripping up at all, though it was surprisingly less than she had expected at first.
Part of the reason for that was a surprisingly precise proprioperception she hadn’t realized she had before, the ability to precisely sense where her limbs were, in what position, and how she was moving them. She was confident that she would be able to touch the tip of her fingers with her eyes closed every single time now. And while that ability didn’t sound too great, she was also confident that, once she figured out how to move everything the way she wanted it to, she would actually move exactly the way she imagined as long as she paid attention.
On one hand, it only took her only about ten minutes to go from baby crawling to walking safely. On the other hand, she had now spent half the time she had on practicing to walk. But soon enough, she found the entrance of the cave room she was in, and went on her way.
As carefully as she could, she moved from shadow to crevice to corner, trying her best to stay out of sight of any potential creatures as she navigated through the narrow, winding tunnels of the cave system.
The only light came from the softly glowing moss that clung to the walls, casting eerie shadows across the jagged rocks that littered the ground, and within moments, she became much more tense, her previously relaxed attitude disappearing into thin air like so much smoke.
Stumbling through the tunnels, she immediately froze, and not for the first time.
Her mind raced as she tried to figure out whether the sound she heard was actually that of another being, or if she had just kicked another rock on accident herself. Or if the shadow she saw moving actually wasn’t just her own.
The tunnels twisted and turned in every direction, and soon, she completely lost her orientation. It was only then that she realized that she actually had no idea where exactly she was, or how to get out in the first place.
Sure, the cavern from before had been dark. But somehow she had expected that she couldn’t be too deep, maybe only a passage or two away from the exit. However, she soon realized that that was not the case. The tunnels stretched on and on, one intersection after another, winding and bending around and above and below one another.
And then, in the middle of a cave that looked just like the three before it, her time was up. Her mana ran out. Her senses turned off and her movements stopped.