Clarissa

So apparently 'Manually Set Breathing Orifice Position' didn't let me change where my mouth or nose were.

In fact, there wasn't any option that actually changed the shape of my body whatsoever... which I guess could be seen as a positive?

Either way, what it did was allowed me to set where the breathable gasses appeared relative to my body.

So, if I wanted to, I could make the gas appear next to my thigh, or my ear, or whatever else.

I tried to center it on my lungs and it gave an error which read "Warning: Ballooning Fault".

I didn't even want to know what that meant, so I cancelled that change.

After that, I started to wonder what sort of things were considered 'breathable gas'.

As it turns out... whatever you want as long as it's in a gaseous form.

I tested adding water to the breathable gas mixture and accidentally scalded myself a little when steam suddenly appeared... though luckily I had moved the gas a bit away from my nose and mouth, meaning most of it just went upward instead.

The next thing I thought of was summoning iron to finally make some much needed hardware, and I was gearing up to do it when I had the obvious thought.

If water was sent as steam, wouldn't iron also be sent as a gas?

I remembered flipping through the pages of my science textbook once and seeing that iron melted at 2800 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's just the melting point, let alone the boiling point.

With that terrifying thought in mind, I took a deep breath and then set the spot where all the gas would come from as far as I could away from my body, which just so happened to be about a hundred yards or so.

I then, without releasing the current breath from my lungs, inhaled a little.

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???

A notification popped up on my viewer.

[Worldbinder Attention Required!]

I opened it.

[Possible fault detected!]

Reason: Sudden localized heat spike!

Heat spike?

I opened the location data and found a small area with material currently 50% of a star's surface temperature.

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It appeared to be iron of all things.

I looked around for nearby champions and found five.

However, none of them had [Skills] that could produce this effect.

That's when I noticed an anomaly.

[Champion: Clarissa The Curious]

[Gamemaster: Clarissa The Curious]

I stared blankly at that message for a moment before deciding that the fault was the more productive use of my time right then.

I executed a [Quell] command to lower the iron's temperature to something a bit more reasonable... about 10% of a star-surface, as well as put out the nearby ignited trees.

After all, it'd be more work than necessary to deal with if the [Playing Field] was destroyed so early on in the game.

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Clarissa

Immediately after my inhalation, an explosion erupted, shaking the very ground beneath my feet and blowing hot dry air into my face.

I changed back to an Earth-normal breathable mixture and sat back down in my hole to consider the ramifications of this discovery.

The reason I wanted iron was to make tools and weapons, and while I still don't have any tools, I now had a explosive I could summon into existence at will.

I'd like a weapon with a finer point, as I'm pretty certain I can't hunt very well with a bomb... but you know what they say about beggars and choosers I suppose.

Next, I cranked down my apparent temperature and radiation intensity to see if it would be enough to go and check the blast zone I had created not too long ago... I wasn't too sure what it would be like there, and I'd heard once that you could get sunburns from the heat off of a welding torch, so I wanted to be safe.

Worst case scenario, I could always turn around when it felt too hot to handle right?

As I got closer, I quickly found furry-leaved palm trees completely uprooted onto their sides, along with debris absolutely everywhere.

I then realized that some of the debris was wood pulp and that splinters were embedded in other trees as well.

My eyes followed the destruction until I saw ground zero, a completely bald and scorched circle of land with chunks of glowing red iron embedded every which way.

The circle itself had to be about a twenty foot radius just on its own!

As I surveyed the damage, I started to rethink the term 'bomb' I had been going with... maybe 'warhead' was more appropriate.

It was right then that I realized I hadn't eaten for a day and a half.

I looked around for easily accessible food.

I saw a bunch of coconut-like things.

I hate coconuts.

I kept scanning the area around me and not seeing any plants I recognized other than that, foxtails, and poison oak.

I grimaced.

I knew this was going to be hard from the moment I got here, almost suffocating to death was a clear indicator...

But why coconuts?!

A few hours after forcing myself to put the grotesque-tasting substance into my mouth and choking it down, and the break to make my taste buds and brain no longer numb, I decided to check back on the iron to see if I could use any of it.

Even after that much time, it was still red, so I grabbed a stick and poked it.

It was a flaky dust.

I looked closer. "Is that rust?"

The more I interacted with it, the more I came to that conclusion.

I put my hand a few inches above the iron and then slowly increased the apparent temperature, until I felt the radiating heat from it.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was about as hot as a stove burner set to low, whatever that translates to.

I looked around for something to hold it all in as I both waited for it to cool down and figured something out to do with it.

I looked over at the empty coconut shells.

That'd work.

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???

With the heat spike dealt with, I turned to Baroph, who was currently finally coming to terms with his loss.

"Hey Baroph!"

He looked up suddenly. "Sup my quizblexian?"

"Please don't call me that. But beyond that, I'd like you to come look at this for a second."

"Sure my guy!" Baroph said, making his way over to my viewer.

When he had finally arrived, I pointed to the anomalous being. "Is that your champion?"

"Yo! It so is! That babe's got hutzspunk man!"

I clicked my throat twice. "I thought so, thank you Baroph."

"No problemo my quizblexian!"

"Again, please don't call me that."

"Oh yeah, well, later anyway." He said as he turned to leave for his station again.

"See you later Baroph." I replied.

I weighed my options.

First, I could simply purge the anomaly... but I have no idea what will happen to her or the round at large.

Second, I could spawn something big next to her and let the game's systems sort it out, which I had a hunch had a much lower chance of data corruption, but I had no way of knowing for certain.

Third, wait and see.

I suppose the worst that could come of the third option is seeing something I may not get to see again for a very long time... followed by widespread data corruption.

I can always choose one or two later if I was worried something bad would happen.

Three it is then.