Zach woke up with nothing but a loincloth, a migraine and an identity crisis.
From the instant he returned to conscious thought, his eyes were laden with sunspots and fluctuating bright lights all around him. He'd just gone to bed for work the following day, and it felt as though he'd woken up way too early. There was a distinct lack of restfulness, relaxation and a sun in the sky; his entire body was tense, as if he were trying to tear every muscle in it at the same time. His mind scrambled for a grip on anything nearby, quickly falling into panic upon not being able to see properly. Thoughts melded with instincts that weren’t his own but now were, and the scraps of what could be considered primitive thought clawed about in his head.
He tried to take stock of himself, only to discover something just as confusing as it was concerning.
He both was and wasn’t himself at the same time.
He started to breathe heavily, and unfortunately, one thing that didn’t help his panic was another observation; his voice, seeping out through the panting, sounded more gravelly - less like a 20-something adult man and more like a hyperventilating pug. He tried to move, but couldn’t do much more than roll around due to his body not releasing its grip on… itself? It made no sense, and yet there he was. He did his best to focus, to calm himself, to reason out the situation.
However, the more he tried to think, the more he began to panic.
The more he panicked, the worse the wrongness became.
He tried to beat his chest like choking down a clump of food, tried rubbing his face, even tried to simply sit up. Everything he attempted was greeted with a wave of lightheadedness bordering on vertigo and, suddenly, his mind settled on something it recognized.
Primal fear.
Primal fear in two warring halves.
In an instant, his mind flipped from frenzied to defiant and clamped down on the half of himself recoiling in fear; it was locked, sealed and crushed within itself, a prison of denial and confusion.
He felt his head physically throb with the effort his brain went to in an attempt to rectify the situation, and everything practically tripled in effect. This, in turn, caused his brain to steel itself further. He had sudden and vivid flashbacks to when he was a kid, panicking over everything he did wrong, and a small sense of absolute identity replanted itself in his mind. his brain snagged onto this with a death grip, and like the crescendo of an orchestral piece, everything reached a crux of confusion. It was the single most excruciating experience he'd been through since he was a kid; the thought of those times entered his mind, and all at once, he was thrown back into himself. The colors, the lights, the tenseness; everything just… faded. He felt like puking, and he rubbed his eyes in an attempt to clear out the last of the sunspots. This time, when he took inventory, he wasn’t interrupted.
The first thing he noticed was the odd shape of his fingers; at first, he was afraid they had snapped and bone was protruding from all of his fingertips. It was then that he'd realized a recognition within them; they were simply shaped like that, and a dueling sense of passive acknowledgement and active panic carved its way into his mind. He yelped audibly, once more his voice sounding as though someone was giving a chain-smoking Gilbert Gottfried testicular torsion.
Upon further inspection under the pale moonlight, he realized that the final segment of his fingers were shaped like angled pickaxe heads - not an exact reflection, but close enough to be eerie. This brought him to the realization that his skin itself was far paler than normal, and his arms and legs were at vastly different proportions and weights than they should have been. He'd always had long arms, but they shouldn’t have nearly touched his ankles while resting beside him in a sitting position, though that could have been due to his legs being shorter than normal too. Granted, it wasn’t anywhere near as extreme as the ratios of change in his arms, but it was still noticeable.
He could still feel his long hair against his back, which made him worried that he'd been horribly mutated somehow - his already unattractive self didn’t need help being grotesque. In a mild panic, he looked down.
“Shit.” he tried to mutter, though it came out more like a prolonged, “Zot.”
He still had his damned potbelly.
He didn’t need that thing, and he would’ve been ecstatic to have it vaporized. Unfortunately, there it was; a spherical gut on an emaciated torso that he realized wasn’t his own. Ribs were visible, but to be emaciated, his skeletal structure would have had to be the same. He could tell he had no broken bones - bruised from the tenseness of his oddly potent muscles, maybe, but certainly not even fractured or cracked, let alone broken. His chest should have still been like a barrel if he were simply disfigured somehow.
He slowly began to calm down as more and more details arose, breathing in the practiced 4-7-8 technique that he learned to help with his anxiety. Four seconds breathing in through the nose, hold it for seven seconds, release through the mouth for eight seconds. Rinse and repeat. After a few repetitions of this, he was calm enough to consider what situation he could be in.
He considered this might be a dream, but his eyesight narrowed in on his horrifying hand and he realized he couldn’t get this level of detail or conscious thought if he were asleep. He imagined the same would apply if he'd gone into a coma, so one of those was out of the question as well.
Without realizing it, he'd sunk into research mode.
He, as a person, generally enjoy doing research. The stuff he enjoyed most was supernatural in nature; it wasn't that he believed any of it was real, but it was something that had always scratched an itch in the back of his mind. If it were a viable option, he might have become a cryptozoologist in another life, but he never went to college and was five years deep into the manual labor workforce.
He tried going over anything and everything he recalled from his embarrassingly extensive knowledge on mythos and cryptids, trying to identify what the thing he was seeing through the eyes of could be. Nothing came to mind, except maybe a Yokai - those things could look like damn near anything. He tried again to wrack his brain for information, but no more came.
He carefully inspected the body he was in, quickly realizing he had precise control over all movements and wouldn’t shift about if he sat perfectly still and loosened all of his muscles, as was expected. So he was in control of the body, then. His body? Their body, as in the thing he had become? He wasn't quite sure what had happened to him, but he did know he'd need to move around, see what he could do in the body, and perhaps even try to inspect it for any hidden quirks he could take advantage of.
He blinked, halting the thought processes cold.
I’m not me, he thought to himself.
The implications brought him immense excitement, emotional pain and anxiety; was his old body destroyed? Would he still be himself, or would he wind up becoming whatever this creature was over time? Why did this happen to him? Was this a new life with his memories carried over, and if so, is this where people went when they died? Do they become whatever the hell he was now? Was he dead? Did he die in his sleep? Why wasn’t it pitch black-
He froze in place after hearing a branch in the distance snap. He whipped around, only then taking in his surroundings.
He was in what appeared to be a pine forest, at first glance. He corrected himself - those were fir trees. Despite the moonlight tinting them all with a paler than normal color, he could still tell something was very wrong. The trunks, they were too light - the bark practically reflected violet moonlight like snow in the summer, and the small needles were some sort of deep, dark scarlet. As he got closer to a tree, he noticed some holes within it, and he nearly gagged.
The tree’s trunk was filled with dozens of openings, all varying from a millimeter to a full half-foot in diameter, that made it look like a bisected lung’s interior. The holes didn’t move or pulse, at least. That would have, quite honestly, made him piss himself.
He took a deep breath and walked up to the tree before quickly and abruptly realizing an undeniable truth about his new form, whatever it was. It was becoming increasingly obvious.
He was small.
This, however, was not the end of the world for him. It took him a second, but he readjusted to his new legs rather quickly. He used to be an extremely short guy when in middle school - clocking in at four foot eleven and 235 pounds - and he knew how to maneuver around like that. He kept himself from making a full physical inspection, realizing that it would quickly cause him to spiral into a state of panic.
Again.
“This all feels wrong…” He muttered aloud, the words forcing themselves out slowly and incoherently - like shoving his thoughts through a wood chipper. He flinched, still sounding like a chainsaw having an orgasm, before noticing a small white box pop up in the corner of his vision. He blinked, trying to focus on it. The moment he acknowledged its presence, it expanded to fill up his entire vision.
[ANTILINGUAL - 10:15:49]
He blinked in confusion, trying to make sense of the bizarre sight.
“I know I have an active imagination, but damn,” he muttered, the words once more coming out unintelligibly. He wound up making a long series of sounds akin to a murloc speaking German.
He hated the new voice he’d been given.
Immediately after he finished gurgling out nonsensical sounds, something changed on the screen in front of him.
[ANTILINGUAL - 10:19:59
REFRESHED DUE TO SPEAKING]
He cursed under his breath, but before he could stop himself, the ‘Antilingual’ timer reset itself again. He almost yelled in frustration, but decided against it in case that counted as an attempt to talk. He shook his head, sighing.
Then, the full implications of the screen clicked in his brain, alongside the timer and the new body.
Ain’t no way, he thought. Ain’t no fucking way!
He immediately focused on the window before him closing, and in an instant, the screen disappeared. He giggled, which was not dissimilar to someone drowning Tommy Wiseau with liquid helium, before mentally reopening the same window. It took a few seconds, but it popped up once more; he had to focus on the message he wanted to see, but after he got down the proper mindset, it took half a second for the proper window to open, if that. He cackled again before constantly opening and closing the window as fast as he could for roughly three minutes, chuckling and guffawing.
It took him a decent amount of time to catch his breath, then he looked around for a secure location to mess with this new system safely.
He was starting to believe he had entered some portal fantasy situation to some degree, more or less. Whether this was a result of a dying mind, a coma - however unlikely - or if it was truly real, he didn’t know. Quite frankly, he didn’t care, either; he didn’t have much on Earth to look forward to. If this was his life for the next decent amount of time, he'd greet it at the door with a hug and a kiss.
That did leave the question of how everything worked, though.
He sighed, glancing around once again to find a small hollow to inspect his system within. His eyes eventually rested on a small cave nearby with nothing of immediate note going on, save for the slight smell of mold and cold earth. As he slid towards the entrance, something changed.
He blinked.
He could see inside.
In a pitch-black environment, on a night close to a new moon, he could see.
Granted, it was in a full spectrum of shades of green, but he could see!
He giggled again, covering his mouth in case anything was within the nearby cavern. He must have had some sort of night vision, which was extremely interesting to experience. Like someone flicking a switch, or maybe someone turning on a low light camera in a dark room. He reached up to scratch the top of his head, still uncoordinated hands bumping against his mouth.
He paused, lowering them once more to where they’d hit against.
It was only then that he realized just how massive his jaw was.
It had to be half the size of his head overall, if not more. The lower jaw of this bizarre body was extended out a bit further than any average person's would be. The excitement immediately dimmed when he realized that this was most likely why he'd gotten that debuff. He nearly grunted aloud, but settled on a mental huff instead. He wanted the blasted thing gone so he could talk properly.
He rubbed his temples, trying to remember anything possible about how he could have gotten here. He was in his room, drifting off into sleep after a long workday. He had been watching videos, too… maybe something about his phone?
He checked his pockets quickly, only to realize a harsh truth; loincloths don't have pockets. He heaved another silent sigh, shaking his head as he looked around his immediate surroundings. He could see as far as he normally could when it was daytime, at least in his normal body while on Earth, which was incredible to him. Despite this, he couldn't find his phone or any clothes nearby, which meant he probably wasn't scooped up physically.
The thoughts of death that lingered in his mind returned to its forefront, and he began to fight down more rising panic yet again. Had he actually died? It would have explained the lack of any of his things, the sudden change in scenery and all the bizarre feelings. The only thing it wouldn't necessarily explain - at least not directly - would be the night vision.
He shook his head. He could still utilize all five senses, and they seemed to function just fine. He could see the dark green - probably actually dark gray - clouds swirling in the sky, hear distant cracks of thunder, and smell the humidity in the air-
"Zot." he muttered again.
[ANTILINGUAL - 10:19:59
REFRESHED DUE TO SPEAKING]
A large thunderbolt slammed into the ground not fifty meters away from him, which made him put his hands on his head in panic. The thunder from the strike was deafening and made his entire body bristle, ears ringing as though someone had lit fireworks directly next to them. The disorientation lasted only moments, but the panic was vast and primal. Once he was able to begin calming himself again and felt raindrops begin to patter against his face, he paused.
He squished his long, peculiarly scratchy, oddly tough hair.
It reminded him of a certain kind of sponge.
A metal sponge.
He slowly brought the end of his hair up to his face.
It was unmistakably metal, all right. A type of copper, if he had to guess, which made it a conductive metal.
A very conductive metal.
In a thunderstorm.
Outside.
He launched himself towards the cave mouth, and would have made it, too. If it weren't for that pesky lightning bolt.
While he was midair, realizing he had not only leapt a solid thirty feet horizontally, at least ten feet vertically, a massive lightning strike blasted against his back. He bounced off of the ground hard, getting the wind knocked out of him before ricocheting right into the cave mouth. His entire body was clenched, muscles on the verge of ripping themselves apart and pulverizing his bones. It took a solid minute or two for the effects to fully fade, and it was only then that he caught another miniature window in the corner of his vision.
[PARALYSIS IX - 00:00:00]
Before he could interact with it, the window closed on its own and he could move freely. Despite this, he was very stiff, very sore and very anxious. If his hair was metal, did that mean it would rust? If it was actually copper, would it turn that mint green color? He could live with that, but it'd never go back to normal. Would it be a reversible process? Would his hair turn green instead of gray with age? Was it even hair to begin with, or was it a kind of fashion statement or symbolism - like those big hoops people shoved in their ears? Maybe something like acupuncture with wires?
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
He shook his head as the pain began to fade, and he noticed something else in his peripheral vision move. At first, he thought it might have been blood trickling down the bridge of his nose; upon closer inspection, however, he realized that it was a bar. It had a small, pixelated heart next to it, and the heart was a beet red color. The bar - clearly a health bar - was nearly empty and, wishing to avoid any other injuries that could cripple him further, he decided to huddle up against the cavern wall deeper inside. He was not about to die here, regardless of what situation he was actually in. He would just treat this like it was all real, even if it wasn't; that sort of thing was usually fun for him, anyways. Plus, if it was somehow improbably real, he didn't want to perma-die just yet. He'd barely broken through into his twenties, and he still had some stuff to work on.
Alongside this thought process, his brain was nagging at his body - probing it to discover how he'd just leapt so high and so far in one fluid motion. The numbers ran through his head, boggling his mind and making his head spin. He grasped his chest, panting heavily. What sort of force could he output if he really tried?
On top of all that, him surviving a lightning bolt was something he couldn’t fathom. Sure, his health was almost gone, but the fact that he had even a little bit left felt like a miracle. He inspected his legs, hoping to find an answer within them for his miraculous physical prowess. After a minute or two of exploration, he discovered that the joints within them didn’t bend normally. The ligaments were omni-directional, which made him want to gag - he bent his legs into configurations his brain said shouldn’t be possible, but they all felt natural. That lasted about five seconds before he had to stop or risk spewing all over himself.
He closed his eyes for a moment, regaining control over his gag reflex. When he opened them, he noticed motion in his peripheral vision once again.
He refocused on what he assumed was his health bar; he watched the bar slowly tick up, one single segment turning red, and realized there were two more bars beneath it. One had what looked like a cartoon cloud next to it - fully empty and grayed out, but present - and a bar with a lightning bolt next to it. The bar and bolt were both green at the moment, only a sliver of it left unfilled. That, much like his health, jumped up a small portion at a time until it was topped off.
He almost pondered aloud before catching himself, and he glared at the debuff that kept him from talking. He scratched at the back of his head, familiarizing himself with the texture of his new hair. It was most certainly hair, too; the feeling of tugging on it was identical to how it felt when pulling on his own hair in his normal life. That, mixed with the lightning a moment earlier, had him feeling more convinced by the second that this was all genuine.
If that's the case, he thought, then I need to familiarize myself with whatever this 'system' is. I've played enough games before. I can do this easily.
…Mostly easily.
Before sunrise, maybe?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It had been seven hours and sixteen minutes of blessedly uninterrupted trial and error before he realized how to properly use the system. It seemed to function on something like old text-based rpgs, where you had to use specific words to open specific things, or to do specific actions. Fortunately for him, the commands were all mental, so he didn't have to refresh the Antilingual debuff every time he tried to utilize the OS.
Status was the first thing that worked for him, seven hours in. He tried all sorts of sentences, but it would apparently only accept the solitary word 'Status'. He scoffed at such a ridiculous setup, but if that was how it wanted to play, then he'd play. He made it a habit of learning all of the rules of any game he came across before utterly annihilating it using intricacies within said rules. It's how he got so bored of so many games; they became too easy once you found the loopholes that basically let you cheat without cheating.
When the Status screen popped up, he yelped. His eyes immediately flashed to the Antilingual debuff.
[ANTILINGUAL: 2:49:12]
He heaved a relieved sigh in his mind before looking over the information laid out in front of his eyes. It had spooked him so fiercely due to it taking up most of his field of vision, and unfortunately, there was plenty of stuff; more than enough to justify that much of a visual hindrance.
[NAME: N/A*
>RACE: UNKNOWN*
>CHROMA: N/A*
>VYR: N/A
>SIMULACRA: N/A
>STATS*
>ABILITIES
>MUTATIONS*
>TRANSFORMATIONS
>INVENTORY
>EQUIPMENT
>SETTINGS]
That was a lot of information to go through, and his mind reeled with the implications of it all. He shook his head, gathering his thoughts and reassuring himself that he had all the time in the world to get to know this system. Deep down, he knew it was a bold-faced lie, but he pushed those considerations aside just enough that they couldn't resurface anytime soon. He shrugged, mentally selecting the Name option.
[NAME: YOU HAVE NOT GIVEN YOURSELF A NAME. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?]
He thought for a moment. He did have a name, but it never did feel quite right when someone used it to refer to him. He thought about it, feeling the gears in his head beginning to turn. The moment he had the thought of gears, he knew what he'd want his new gremlin-esque self to be called. He mentally entered in his new name. Goodbye, Zachary-
[HELLO, {Cog}. WELCOME TO ÆTHOUN!]
He nearly laughed out loud as the system seemingly read his thoughts, though his apprehension at the situation seeped from his voice. He closed the pop-up, confirming his new name, and took a look at the rest of the menu. He shrugged, going down the list.
[RACE: UNKNOWN
YOU HAVE BEEN PLACED INTO A HOST BODY, SEEING AS YOUR OWN BODY COULD NOT BE TRANSFERRED INTO AETHOUN. ON YOUR ORIGINAL WORLD, YOU WERE {Human}. HERE, YOU ARE {Pech}. CONFLICT: UNRESOLVED. RACE: UNDECIDED.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO REMAIN AS A {Pech}, OR RETURN TO BEING A {Human}?
>{Pech}
>{Human}]
It… knew he used to be human? And what did it mean by a host body? What even was a host body - was it not really his own? He rubbed at his temples, another migraine taking hold.
I never liked being human, and if this isn't my body, then I have no real right to change it, now do I? He thought to himself. In a vain attempt to reduce the building mental agony, he selected pech, hoping he wouldn't come to regret it later.
After a few moments, nothing more happened. He shrugged, closing the window, and the asterisk was gone. 'Unknown' was replaced with 'Pech', and he smiled. He remembered the Scottish mythos for those little goblinoids, but not much beyond the story of an elder on his deathbed. Cog didn’t remember exactly how it went, but the elder’s sons gathered around him to stay by his side as he passed. He asked for one of his sons’ hands, and they instead gave him a metal cup as a joke. The old pech crushed it like a tin can in his bare hand. He couldn't recall any more details on the story.
Zachary - Cog now, he reminded himself - looked over the rest of the menu options with asterisks next to them: Chroma, Stats and Mutations. He had no clue what Chroma was, but he assumed it had something to do with customization. That would come last; before that, he selected mutations because he wanted to apply stats once other possible modifications to them had been made. He suspected that a mutation or two could make him backtrack a bit.
[MUTATIONS: 1/5 BEFORE RACIAL EVOLUTION
> SOUL-DENSE]
Again, he was taken aback. He expanded the Soul-Dense information.
[^SOUL-DENSE
Your body has developed its soul to a point well beyond its normal capabilities. It has gained excessive amounts of both Vyranthe and potential. This could be due to a variety of reasons, but remember: never look a gift horse in the mouth.]
He grunted, concern settling in his mind. He had no clue what Vyranthe was, though he suspected it had something to do with Vyr. Was it a religious kind of magic or something, relating to souls and stuff? He could understand the potential part, at least, but the last line had him concerned. Was it just because his soul was in a bigger body back on Earth, and now this smaller one had to somehow fit fifty pounds of soul into a five pound meat sack?
Once more, he shook his head to clear it. He needed to find someone to communicate with, and he couldn't do that for another three hours, give or take a few minutes. He opened up Stats next.
[^STATS
>MIND: N
>BODY: N
>SOUL: N*
>AURA: N
>UNSPENT POINTS: 0
>ABILITY ANALYSIS AVAILABLE]
He immediately expanded Soul, in the hopes of finding some answers.
[^SOUL
General Information: SOUL is the measure of your metaphysical might. It determines your base stats upon birth, the efficiency and power of your Vyr, how quickly your abilities undergo Ability Evolution, and most of the basis for your Transformations. Advancing your SOUL score will not inflict pain, but will make you less comfortable in your own skin for a few minutes.]
He nodded along as he read, admiring the stat. The thought of improving your soul's effectiveness through any sort of training made him wonder what it would feel like to be in the presence of someone with an impressively high Soul score. He shrugged, closing the description and checking the Ability Analysis Available tab.
[^ABILITY ANALYSIS AVAILABLE
Your abilities will have undergone immense changes throughout recent events, and this should help to realign you with your new physical alterations by bringing your life experiences into your current body.
Begin ANALYSIS?
>Y/N]
He cocked his head to the side slightly. This was the exact kind of thing he'd always had a massive interest in - being able to summarize things about himself into easy to understand tidbits. Bonus points if someone else did it, so it would be free of personal biases. The idea of having whatever sort of machine ran this system convert his life’s experiences into stats for him was something he could barely contain his curiosity over.
He held off, however; he still had two more tabs to look through. He figured he'd look at the Chroma tab next, but when he tried to open it mentally, a small pop-up appeared.
[ATTENTION: YOU MUST DECIDE ON AN ABILITY ANALYSIS BEFORE SELECTING A CLASS. YOUR STATS WILL DETERMINE YOUR OPTIONS, AND HAVING THEM CHANGE DURING OR AFTER SELECTION TO A LARGE DEGREE IS ILL ADVISED.]
That meant it had to be something beyond just customization - something with substance behind it in this world. He shrugged, mentally rerouted to the Ability Analysis tab and selected ‘yes’.
Immediately, he felt himself become light-headed to a degree he knew he couldn’t pry himself out of. His eyelids immediately began to droop, and he wanted to sleep for a good, long while. Instead, he focused on the bright white screen in front of him, generating a solid block of text. Reading it was difficult at first, but when he really tried to focus on it, the words seemed to flow lazily into his mind with perfect clarity.
[MIND: 13
Throughout your life, you’ve thoroughly enjoyed puzzles and research. You stretched your mind well beyond its normal limits, utilizing its unique form and function to the best of your ability. While your mind is hindered in some crucial aspects and far too comprehensive in others (that perhaps aren’t as important), it is absolutely capable of converging on any issue and finding any solution that presents itself, assuming one exists.
Average Æthounian MIND Score: 12
BODY: 16
Your body is one that was built out of one half titanium rebar, one half roman concrete. Genetics has been your friend, as has been the six years of manual labor jobs; it has caused your body to be able to achieve things no one thought possible for such a bookworm. This, paired alongside your unique mental situation and discoveries about your nearly anomalous body, has led you to learn not only how to make best use of your physical traits, but also how to use them in ways they aren’t normally used. Between oddly impeccable balance, precise movements and proper rhythm, your body couldn’t have started out better. What’s more, you managed to make it hold onto its strength for longer by constantly putting forth incredible effort before sitting for months on end. This is a trick that has properly prepared you for this realm.
Average Æthounian BODY Score: 15
SOUL: 13
Your childhood was not even close to living up to its title; you were never really a kid, at least not that you can remember. Early trauma, mid-teen trauma, later trauma; you withstood abuse unlike anything you’d experienced before, and you used it to grow instead of as another reason to give up. Despite wanting to, you forged onwards in life, unwilling to yield to anyone or anything, and your SOUL has become truly mighty for that.
Average Æthounian SOUL Score: 11
AURA: 10
Unfortunately, while your mind, body and soul were forged through hell and high water, your presence is not something many people feel; however, your absence leaves a small something to be desired. Not much, granted, but it is more than enough to harbor concern if one is an acquaintance of yours.
Average Æthounian AURA Score: 10
CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR STARTING MIND SCORE IS HIGH ENOUGH TO TRANSLATE A NATURAL ABILITY OF YOURS, NOT YET LISTED WITHIN YOUR SYSTEM!
ABILITY: {Selective Memory}
CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR STARTING BODY SCORE IS HIGH ENOUGH TO TRANSLATE A NATURAL ABILITY OF YOURS, NOT YET LISTED WITHIN YOUR SYSTEM!
ABILITY: {Muscle-Dense}
YOU ALREADY HAVE {Hypertrophy}. YOU WILL INSTEAD GRANT {Hypertrophy} EXTRA EFFECTIVENESS.
CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR STARTING SOUL SCORE IS HIGH ENOUGH TO TRANSLATE A NATURAL ABILITY OF YOURS, NOT YET LISTED WITHIN YOUR SYSTEM!
ABILITY: {Survivor}]
Wow. The Aura comment was... passive aggressive. Especially for a hunk of magic pixels, Cog thought. I wonder if it gives everyone this much backtalk.
The first couple of paragraphs were eerie to say the least, but the moment the system brought up trauma, he froze in place. What had been settling panic was now erupting into a full-blown frenzy of cacophonous wrongness. A primal urge to flee overtook his mind, but it didn’t quite feel like his own. He steeled himself, took a shaky breath and kept reading until the end. A part of him had known he'd come across something like that if the system could read his life experience, but it’s one thing to know something. It’s an entirely different situation when you actually experience it.
He felt the repressed past bubble for a few moments before it once more settled itself deep within his subconscious, where he wanted it kept. If this was a new world, he doubted it had therapy.
If it does, he thought sourly, then I'd be willing to bet health insurance won’t cover it.
This got him thinking, in a string of familiarly sporadic ponderings, of what the currency of the world was; as if on cue, a new window popped up in his vision. By now, he had realized he could move, resize and minimize or maximize any window at will; this one started out small, but after a quick check around him to ensure he was still alone, he expanded it into full screen.
[CURRENCY
> DROPS
> TREASURES
> CCS ]
Well, that’s new, he thought. He hadn’t expected more than one tab, let alone the bizarre addition of 'Drops'; he would have thought that would tie in with Treasure, regardless what they were Drops of. Tentatively, he opened the tab for Drops first.
[^DROPS
RD: 0
OD: 0
YD: 0
GD: 0
UD: 0
PD: 0
UVD: 0]
He had no idea what the different units meant, but he assumed that he could find info on them later. The bottom line was, he didn’t have a single coin to his name. Sighing, he opened Treasures.
[^TREASURES
COMMON: 0
UNCOMMON: 0
RARE: 0
EPIC: 0
MYTHIC: 0
LEGENDARY: 0
DEIFIC: 0
UNIQUE: 0 ]
That tab at least made sense to him. It probably meant anything he found that he could sell would rest there. Maybe magical weapons or the like? Maybe some relics? He shrugged, finally opening the CCs tab, fully expecting confusion.
Instead, he got something relatively comprehensible.
[^CHROMA CAPSULES
AIR: -
DARK: -
EARTH: -
FIRE: -
LIGHT: -
WATER: -
ETHER: - ]
Elements? He thought to himself. That must’ve meant Chroma was related to magic, nature or the like somehow. He really wanted to look more into it, before realizing he had a Chroma tab that was going fully unexplored. He was about to open it, when he heard a noise to his right - something akin to a sniffle.
He turned around slowly, eyes widening, vision aided by the rising sun barely halfway past the horizon.
Before him was the ugliest-looking panther he'd ever seen; it had patchy fur, no eyes and a snout similar to a star-nosed mole’s, except with a far taller all-around bone structure.
Then, it opened its jaw.
No, not jaw.
Jaws. Six of them, one after another, opening and unhinging like a paper fan until the bottom of its final mouth was resting against its neck. It released a sound that seemed like the worst possible in-between of a typical panther growl and a rodent’s screech, and its tail - tipped with a barb that looked like an underdeveloped scorpion stinger - flicked about in an irritated fashion. Its four legs ended with claws that fit together into an upside-down trowel shape, and it flexed its feet, spreading the sharp bone apart and, after relaxing them, brought them back together once more. What he thought was a meager mane turned out to be a frill, skin flaps resembling velvety bat wings rising from behind its head in what could only be described as a set of macabre mohawks; all of this was cast in a level of dramatic lighting from the sunrise.
Cog tried to run. He really did.
His body, however, decided that it was a far better idea to finally vomit instead.