Consciousness slowly came back to Peter, as he tried to look around but found himself in a void. His memories of what had just transpired came back like a flood, and in a panic, he tried to lash out at and escape from the pain he remembered so vividly. Even though he remembered being unable to move in the void, he seemed to feel himself moving now. It was slow and difficult, but it felt natural. He kept moving for a while, but he suddenly realized that he wasn’t moving his legs. In fact, he couldn’t even feel his legs, not that they would have helped him much even if he could.

‘Where am I? Why can’t I feel my legs?’ His panic began to subside somewhat now that the pain had yet to return, so he slowed down and began trying to take notice of where he was. He knew he couldn’t see, but he honestly hadn’t taken much notice of his other senses. He became completely still and tried to focus on hearing things around him. He didn’t notice anything at first, but when he started concentrating more, he felt some energy gather together inside him and then pulse outwards, leaving behind echoes of what was around him. He couldn’t necessarily call it sight, but in his mind a small map of what was around him in a small radius appeared. He found himself lying on the ground, outside it seemed, from the rocky and uneven feeling ground, as well as the small bushes and sparse grass immediately around him. Then, he heard a familiar noise as a small notification was displayed in his “vision.”

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‘Okay, seriously, what is going on? Am I dreaming?’ It didn’t feel like a dream to him. In fact, most people dreaming would never think about questioning the dream, as everything in the dream would just be accepted wholesale without a lot of thought. But besides that, everything he felt, limited though it may be, felt real. Just to give it a shot, he tried to wake himself up from the dream by sheer force of will. Nothing happened, and the notification still hung in front of his mind’s eye, as if waiting for him to address it. Internally sighing, he checked the notification closer and read it.

‘Race Skill? Tremor Sense? The ability to either locate moving objects on the ground around you or make a mental map of the surrounding area. Seems useful, but where do I recognize that sound that played and the style of the notification from?’ Suddenly, his mind flashed with memories again, his whole existence up to this point playing in his head. His childhood, the diagnosis of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, high school and college, the fast-destroying work of the disease that caused him to be hospitalized. The game he played there, Eternal Realms: Legacy… that was it! The sound he heard, the notification in front of him, ‘It’s from the game! But why is it here, in front of me? Am I logged into the game?’ Reaching out mentally, he tried to summon the exit command, but there was no response. Thinking of something else, he tried opening his player status.

||Name: Undetermined Level: 1

Race: Earth Elemental

Class: N/A

Profession: N/A

HP: 50/50 MP: 50/50 STM: 40/40

Wisdom: 5

Perception: 1

Willpower: 200

Charisma: 20

Luck: 200

Dexterity: 1

Agility: 2

Strength: 4

Endurance: 4

Constitution: 5

Free Stats: 10 ||

Peter froze for a second, unable to fully comprehend what was before him. His attention then fully focused near the top of the screen, <>. ‘Surely this isn’t real.’ He tried again to exit out of the game but got absolutely no response. ‘Maybe if I open the system message log, it’ll tell me what’s going on.’ Peter thought. Mentally, he commanded the system log to open.

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‘Soul? My soul was merged with an Earth Elemental? What does that even mean? What even is a soul?’ Peter’s head swirled with questions. Calming himself down somewhat, he read the messages again.

‘My soul has been merged with an Earth Elemental, and my abilities and skills were changed to reflect that, I guess. Also, my level was reset. Even though none of this makes sense, at least that makes slightly more sense than this last message. I’ve never seen a warning system message before. What does it mean by soul abilities?’ Curious, Peter checked his stats again. Instantly, he saw the three stats he had missed previously that were abnormally high, to say the least. Well, two of them were abnormally high, the other one was just very high for his level.

||Willpower: 200

Charisma: 20

Luck: 200 ||

‘I guess those are the soul abilities. That would explain the “higher than anticipated.” At least they’re not lower than anticipated.’ He was beginning to put the pieces together now. The pain he had felt, that must have had something to do with what was happening now. Maybe it was just the pain of dying, but he wasn’t fully convinced of that. He distinctly remembered the last thing that had happened to him, where it felt like something was pushing stuff into his being, which must have made him change into this Earth Elemental form. ‘I wonder what that weird space I was in was. I didn't feel my body at all, but was clearly conscious, so something metaphysical?' Peter speculated, but he felt it was all beyond him. He couldn't help but wonder about what had happened in that space though. 'That first sensation, of being grasped and pulled, that must have removed my soul from my body. I guess this means I’m dead. Or, at least, the body I used to be in. Was I dead before I got put here, or would the body have died after? Wait, would it just go into a coma if I was removed before the physical body died?’ Peter’s mind became a spiral of thoughts that led him nowhere conclusive, but after a while he managed to exit the state of reflection.

‘Well, I guess what’s done is done. I probably won’t miss that body anyway, though this one doesn’t seem much better. I hope my family is doing okay. I wonder… if this is the actual game I’m in, does that make me an NPC? If so, could I maybe interact with other players and maybe find my friends? That would be awesome! But wait…I’m a mob right now. I used to hunt weak earth elementals for levels in the early game. Won’t that make me a target for other new players? I should probably hide for now; I don’t want to feel the pain of dying again anytime soon.’ Peter shuddered when he remembered the experience. ‘Yeah, let’s try and avoid that for now. If I want to connect with my party members and friends again, I need to get strong enough so they won’t instakill me, and I also need some way to communicate. And somehow a story to make them believe what happened to me.’ With that in mind, Peter once again opened his status and looked at his abilities.

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‘Hmmm… let’s see. Very high willpower and luck. Willpower increases my mana regeneration, and at this level it might very well fill up my whole mana pool in seconds if I run out. Luck won’t affect anything right away, in fact I’m not super sure how it works. Increased chances of nice loot drops and special encounters, but I didn’t pay much attention to it for my Wood Elf. It seems like a passive thing I can’t control, so I’ll ignore it for now, unless I get a chance-based attack or something.’

Looking at his ‘normal’ stats, it seemed constitution and wisdom were the highest, followed by strength and endurance. Constitution made a lot of sense for an Earth Elemental, as did strength and endurance, but why was his wisdom so high? Actually, where was his intelligence? Looking intently at his status screen, Peter tried to find his missing stat. ‘Well, that’s slightly insulting. Then again, Earth Elemental’s aren’t known for their abundant intelligence. So maybe that is a part of the ability change the system message talked about. I suppose if I don’t have intelligence, even though I can clearly think like before, then wisdom is a must have to be able to operate the body, or do anything. Maybe that’s the explanation.’ Nodding to himself, Peter rationalized the absence of his intelligence.

His Perception was super low, along with his dexterity and agility. Having his 10 Free Points, he decided to bring those up almost to the level of his other stats. Mentally commanding his free stats to be assigned, he added 4 points to Perception, 3 to Dexterity, and 3 to Agility, bringing PER and AGI to 5, and DEX to 4. ‘If only there were a few more, I could get all the ‘normal’ stats up to 5. Oh well, we do what we can. Now let’s see if I have any skills to speak of.’ Thinking this, he mentally commanded his skill sheet in front of him.

||Skills:

Race Skill: <>, <>, <>

Class Skills: N/A

Profession Skills: N/A

Learned Skills: N/A ||

‘… Well that’s depressing. Almost no race skills to speak of. The skills don’t seem terrible, though, but hopefully I can get a class or profession or something soon. That will help with skills and stats both. Now let’s see what these skills do.’ Peter mentally selected <> and <>, opening their lengthened descriptions.

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‘Okay, so they’re kind of basic, but who cares? I’m sure I can make some decent moves with them. Earthen Mobility will allow me to make quick escapes underground in case I need out of a tricky situation, and I might be able to create an attack with manipulate earth. Though I could just bash stuff with my hands. Wait, do I even have hands?’ With this thought in mind, Peter let out another vibration to check his surroundings and see if he could see himself. He could, but it was getting annoying to have to send out a vibration every time he wanted to see around himself. Taking a closer look at his body, he noticed it currently just looked like a mound of dirt on the ground. Trying to move himself, as he continued to send out vibrations, he found a strange energy move in his body, and he could suddenly feel the shape his body took. He felt lumpy, and his body was just laying on the ground, but he willed it to move, and eventually the strange energy he felt changed shape slightly and he got a notification that <> had activated. Slowly the dirt that was his body began to move and formed a ball about 40 cm in diameter that hovered just off the ground. He tried to will arms to form, and the skill seemed to respond as his internal energy changed slightly again and his form began to move. Small stumps began to form out of the side of the ball of dirt, that eventually made small appendages that… sort of resembled arms.

‘There’s no hands, but it might work as a weapon for bashing,’ he thought. Looking at his mana consumption, he realized it wasn’t using as much mana as he naturally regenerated with his absurd willpower, meaning he was able to control his body at-will, which was nice. When he had noticed the skill kick in, he feared he would only be able to move a small amount before having to stop and recover his mana. ‘Let’s see how far I can take this.’

Focusing hard, he concentrated on a humanoid shape, and willed his body to change. His skill responded, and his ball shape started to elongate down, legs only beginning to grow before he ran out of dirt to manipulate in his body. ‘Well, that’s not ideal. Maybe if I mix more dirt from the ground with my body, I can forcefully adopt a fake larger body.’ He willed, and some of the dirt on the ground slowly lifted off the ground and started to merge with his body. Fully merge. As more and more dirt attached to his body, he felt his senses expand to encompass what was being added.

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Seeing the skill, Peter was ecstatic. ‘Two skills unlocked in one day! Let’s go! And this one scales with my best stat too. Makes sense that you can only get as large or as small as you can concentrate on, being able to control something super tiny or super large takes a lot of mental power… or maybe soul power in this case. I wonder how much the MP consumption has gone up with the amount of dirt I added.’ By this point, he had accumulated enough dirt to make a roughly teenager sized humanoid, and it had taken rough limbs and head, though there were no toes on the lumpy feet, hands on the arms, or features on the head. Turning his attention to the MP bar, he noticed it still wasn’t going down. ‘Nice! I can form a roughly humanoid size and shape. With time I might even be able to add features, or at least opposable thumbs. I miss those already. Hmm, I wonder how small or big I can make myself at this point.’

He tried to focus on the energy flow in his body, wondering how much there was and how much was being consumed, since his MP bar stayed the same due to his insane regeneration rate. It didn’t seem like very much at all, but he decided to play it safe and go smaller first. He released the mental hold he had on the dirt he had added to his body, allowing it to fall to the ground in a small pile beneath him. Then, he focused on allowing specific portions of the earth that formed his ‘natural’ sized body to fall away and join the rest of the earth on the ground. His form began shrinking as he focused on the task, from 40cm around to 20, then 10.

Feeling no strain yet, he decided to push it further and continued shaving off parts of earth. 5, 3, 1cm, he knew he was much smaller but still didn’t feel the pressure. He had to focus much more on the task, but his sensation of control over the remaining 1cm of earth was incredible. He felt like he could control every single piece of dirt, every grain was connected fully to his senses. Using this, he focused on just a singular grain of dirt, and focused as hard as he could. He allowed every other sensation to fall away as he sought to only become this singular speck. The rest of the earth making up his body suddenly lost its connection to him and fell to the ground, and he felt a headache coming as all the information about this single speck of dirt flooded his brain. He felt the exact contours of its shape, the exact weight it was, how every air molecule interacted with it. He also felt a sensation like claustrophobia, as if he was stuck in a space too small for him. That made some sense, as he had artificially made his body many times smaller than normal. Relaxing his concentration, the earth beneath offered up what had fallen as he reformed his ball.

‘Next, I’m gonna go big.’ Trying to get a good feel of the space around him, he let out a <> and got a feel for the dirt all around him. He began willing it to gather, and a whirlwind of dust was kicked up around him as all the dirt in a 3 meter radius began rushing toward his form. He grew larger and larger, and looking at his MP bar, and the energy flowing through him, he thought he could take it a step further. Reaching out with his mind as far as he could, he mentally commanded all the earth he could to form into his body. The whirlwind got faster and larger as all the dirt in a 10 meter radius began to merge with his body, making him grow humongous. Suddenly, all the energy in his body disappeared as he could no longer keep up with the consumption of the form, and a splitting headache assaulted him as the form collapsed, leaving only a small mountain of earth behind.

‘Crap… I may have overdone it a little.’ Peter thought, as his whole mind continued to be consumed with pain. ‘Maybe I’ll just take a nap now… yeah, that sounds good. I sure hope… nothing… comes … by….’ His final thoughts drifted off as he fell unconscious.