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My first night of sleep in Survival of the Fittest was a real head trip. I hadn’t expected to dream, but the whole night was one extended psychedelic flashback. Flashes, flickers of the past. The clearest memories were conversations I’d had in ASL with my sister and her friends. In between, scenes of violence. Blood and drugs, pounding dancefloors, brawling with the faceless man in Sam’s kitchen. I could almost see him. I felt like I recognized him, that he was close to me. Almost like a brother.
Anyway, when I woke up, I felt like a million bucks. No, I mean, really: I felt RESTED. Even though my memories of the life before were patchy, I knew I hadn’t been an easy sleeper. But now? I felt like I was ready to take on the world. Rolling to my belly, I clambered to my feet, yawned, smacked my jaws a couple of times, then stretched. Front paws out, back arched, tail up… ahhhhh.
The sun lingered below the horizon, a pale blue line the only sign of impending dawn. The jungle was dark and humid, a knee-high mist hanging over the forest below. Angel was still sound asleep, bundled in her bedroll under her lean-to. Lulu was goobering around, curiously engulfing and examining the tools Angel had left around the camp. As she passed over them, she left them clean and spotless. No dirt. Definitely no food scraps.
“Okay, Lulu.” I shook myself out and stretched the tentacles. “You and me? We’re gonna go hunting.”
“Ooh?” Lulu stopped hoovering bits of organic detritus off Angel’s cutting board, her mass twisting back toward me.
“Yup. We need to find a wild Legion and kill it.” I paused for a moment. “Assuming it isn’t a cool guy or gal like you and me.”
Lulu made a miserable sound, and hunched back. She shook from side to side.
“Look, kid: I know you’re not exactly a stone-cold killer, but our survival depends on us leveling up. You remember what a VR is, right?”
Tentatively, the slime nodded.
“That means nothing here is actually alive-slash-real,” I said. “Most of the Legions and all of the dinos and other animals have never even been people. They’re just lines of code in a server somewhere. A server run by some kind of organized criminal outfit who gives approximately zero shits about whether we live or die.”
Lulu hunched into herself more. “Nuuu.”
The control collar didn’t give us two-way telepathic conversation, but it increased my sense of what Lulu was feeling. She was scared – really scared. Not just anxious about our current circumstances, but about something she wasn’t able to verbalize. Not with her limited ability to communicate.
“Look, I get you’re stressed out. Believe me, I get it.” I sat down, tucking my tail around myself like a cat. “I woke up in this green hell as a monster with a letter from some psycho telling me he murdered me for being a cop and is now after my family. The problem is-”
Before I could continue, Lulu gasped. She bounded toward me and sprang up to hug me around the neck and chest, cooing reassuringly.
“Foo…moo.” She tried to sound out ‘family’. “Moo toooo!”
“You too? You got family on the outside?”
Lulu quivered violently, clinging to my scales. “Uuu.”
“Then it’s even more important we beat these fuckers at their own game. Whatever happened to us out there is the past. We’re here in the now, and we have to play by their rules until we find our way out of this mess,” I replied. “That means we gotta become the toughest motherfuckers in this jungle. The faster we do it, the sooner we’re out of here.”
I felt her steel herself. She dropped to the ground, and gave a determined little wiggle. “Oo-huu!”
“Let’s go hunt a Legion and see what we find. Maybe they’ve got human minds in monster bodies like you and me, in which case, we’ll skip the killing and try to negotiate. But if they don’t, we kill ‘em and see if we can work out our sync moves,” I said. “Maybe we can get you to Absorb an ability or something?”
“Absoo!” Lulu seemed happy about this.
I crouched down, and she hopped forward to mount, winding her mass along my limbs until she perched on my back. She was cold at first, but quickly warmed to my own body temperature. I crept off to the ledge and anchored myself into the cliff wall, climbing down as quietly as possible. All things considered, that was pretty damn quiet.
“So, hey. What do you think Angel was gonna ask us last night?”
“Uuu-woo.” ‘I dunno.’
“I figure she was gonna ask me if I’d let her clap her collar on over mine.” I dropped down to the damp forest floor. “To be honest, I don’t know if we should stick with her or not. The plan was to split from Angel once we delivered her to her guild. She’s a nice gal and everything, but damn, is she ambitious. Gives me the feeling that she’d stop at nothing to get ahead of the pack, you know what I mean?”
Lulu hummed noncommittally.
We stalked the jungles for over two hours before we picked up the spoor of something that wasn’t a dino, a reptile, or a prehistoric mammal. Something big, something that smelled like wet dog and mushrooms. I lifted my head, scanning the terrain. I could see in infrared: there was a cooling trail leading away from the spoor site toward a dark, close, swampy area of jungle. Unlike the human trails, this one was blue, not red.
My eyes narrowed. “Okay, Lulu. Here we go. Let’s get our dermal armor on.”
Lulu soundlessly spread out over my skin, extending herself and flowing over my hide. It kind of felt like wearing an all-body condom. Found it hard to believe she’d be alright if we were hit.
I followed the trail for nearly a quarter of a mile until we spotted the Legion. It was some kind of weird turtle-like thing. Stocky, round, with stumpy armored legs, a round shiny shell, and a flat, horned head. The legs, claws and head were built more for digging than fighting, but they looked sharp enough to do some real damage.
[You have studied new Greater Legion: Testudo – a common Legion in the Jungle, it is capable of tunnel through solid rock and leap out of ground to surprise the opponent.]
There was the Engrish again. I flicked my tail, crouching low. As I focused on it, a Level indicator appeared. [Testudo Level 8]. The description hadn’t given me an element combination key, but if I had to guess… I’d say Body, Earth and… something else. I didn’t even know all the Legion types yet. Hopefully not Metal. I watched it for signs of intelligence, but there wasn’t anything even remotely human in the way it acted. It had the placid, dumb mannerisms of a cow.
“Hey buddy!” I called out telepathically to it. “Can you hear me?”
The Testudo pulled up some cattails, munching away with no sign of recognition.
My eyes narrowed. “Okay, Lulu. Me and you, we’re going to take this bad boy down. You ready?”
Lulu shuddered. “Nuu.”
“Well… sorry. Anyway, on the count of three. One, two… DESTROY!” I shot out from the underbrush.
The startled Testudo reared its head as I leaped in like a panther, tentas raised, claws outstretched. We collided like linebackers: I snapped at its stubby neck as it brayed and twisted, taking a punch to the gut from one of its smoothly armored forelimbs. The shock of the impact diffused through Lulu’s mass. I barely even felt it.
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[You take 112 reduced damage.]
[Lulu takes 38 reduced damage.]
[Testudo takes 0 damage.]
My teeth and claws scrabbled fruitlessly over the Testudo’s slick shell. “Shit! Is it immune to slashing damage?! No… wait. It’s the damn armor. Can’t slash through the armored bits.”
Big Daddy Turtle knocked me off its back, batting me aside. Bellowing, it turned and dived headfirst into the earth, spraying mud as it vanished.
“Okayyy…” I trailed off. My instincts told me to freeze. I rooted my feet as the clearing fell eerily silent. “Shit, how does that old dwarf song go again? Uhhh… something something, skin made of iron, steel in our bones! Dah-dah-dahh…”
“Nuuu!” Lulu squeezed around me, tugging back toward the shelter of the trees.
“Shh. I’m trying to feel the Force while he diggy-diggy hole.” My whiskers began to itch – a feeling that grew stronger as the ground trembled under my feet. I waited until the tremble became a shake, and jumped straight into the air as the Testudo came up underneath me like Jaws.
“All together now! I am a dwarf, and I'm digging a hole! Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole!” I twisted in the air and rammed all four tentacles down, this time aiming the bladed points into the unprotected bits. The Testudo squealed as one tenta plunged into its eye; one skidded off the collar of its armor shell, and the other two jammed into either side of its neck. I dragged it toward me by the head, using the tentacles like fishing lines to pull the Testudo out of the earth. It roared furiously, landing another futile punch as I locked my jaws on the soft part of its throat and crunched down. Sweet, rich blood burst into my mouth, flowing between my teeth as I hung on like a pitbull. The Testudo began to honk with terror, backpedaling – then collapsing to its knees as its HP hemorrhaged in tandem with its severed carotid artery.
[You have killed Testudo and gained 144 EXP. You are Level 16.]
I bore the Legion down to the ground, the muscles of my jaws straining. Only dropped the heavy corpse to the ground once every twitch had stopped.
Jesus. I was starting to see why my viewers had been screaming at me to take out the Hyperboar. After what Angel had told me about Legions being tougher than normal monsters, I’d expected more of a fight. But this had been… well… EASY.
At Level 8, the Testudo had given me about the same amount of EXP as the Level 22 T-rex. That meant Legion kills gave nearly three times the amount of experience as dinosaurs. That seemed crazy, until I remembered – the challenges in this game were made for human gladiators, not finely-turned murdermuffins like me. Humans couldn’t jump twenty feet in the air to avoid the Testudo’s earth swimming attack. The crude stone and bronze weapons Angel used would shatter on the Legion’s hard shell. They couldn’t smell the Legion’s position, sense the tremors through their whiskers. For a human, the Testudo would have been a difficult, maybe even fatal fight. For me? It was just different prey.
The weirdest part was that I didn’t feel strange about that any more.
“How’re you feeling, Lulu?” I asked the slime. “You okay?”
My turtle-proof vest quivered, then condensed into a giant teardrop that plopped onto the ground. Despite her lack of discernable features, she looked kind of sad.
“Yeah, I know. Hate to say it, but killing gets easier the more you do it.” Tail lashing, I went over and levered the Testudo’s shell up, cutting with my claws to free it. With some sawing, I was able to get it off. “Let’s make sure we didn’t kill this thing in vain. I’ll take the meat and parts, and you hop on and start Absorbing. I’m pretty sure this is a medium-sized Legion, so you should be able to get an ability out of it.”
Lulu made a mournful little noise, but determinedly bounced off the ground. She fanned her mass open and landed on the corpse with a splat.
[Lulu is Absorbing Testudo (Level 8).]
Absorb took a while to work, so I padded around the battle site, sniffing, scratching and chewing at various interesting smells. There were some other Legions around – or had been. They’d cleared out during the battle.
Ten minutes later, the Testudo corpse was gone. There was only Lulu, pulsing up and down thoughtfully. Maybe I was hallucinating, but I thought she looked a little bigger.
[Lulu has Analyzed Testudo. For… what it’s worth, Lulu has gained an ability with Absorb: Quicksand.]
[View results and new abilities in your Legion and Knowledge Base menus.]
“Thanks, Chorus.” I moseyed over to her and opened my Menu to check out this mysterious Knowledge Base. Mentally querying the term brought up a database that listed all the animals and Legions I knew. The depth of the knowledge was ranked by stars, with 0 stars meaning that I’d seen the creature, but knew nothing about it, and 5 stars meaning that I knew everything there was to know. Animals I’d eaten or killed had 4 stars. The only 5-star entry was the Testudo. I opened the entry and got a page with a rotating 3D figure of the Legion, as well as a very detailed breakdown of its strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and elemental types. It was a Body/Earth/Water Greater Legion, ranked C for ‘Common.’
The most useful part of the Knowledge Base entry was the Abilities section. All the Testudo’s abilities were listed there in detail. At Level 8, it had three abilities: its Prime Ability, Burrow, plus Quicksand and Hard Shell. Lulu had absorbed Quicksand, so I focused on that Ability and got a pop-up explanation of its effects:
Quicksand
Induce the earth to soften into a sucking mire that traps humans and small Legions and slows Medium and Large Legions. 30ft targeting radius, 20ft circular area of effect.
“Yeah… this is good. This is very good.” I leaped to my feet. “Alright, Lulu. Quicksand! Give it all you got!”
Lulu vibrated intensely for several seconds… before a small two-foot patch of soil turned to a sucking mire of liquid mud. Three feet away from her.
“Oooh.” The slime deflated sadly.
I scratched my nose with the tip of one tentacle. “Well… good try. Maybe…uh… maybe you’ll get better at it with practice?”
Lulu twisted from side to side, as if she were shaking her head.
“C’mon, Absorb HAS to get better as you get stronger.” I was kind of trying to pep myself up at this point. Much as I hated to say it, Angel was right. Lulu wasn’t exactly swinging like Sugar Ray Robinson. Didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to help her… but if we had to battle to advance here, there was a good chance she’d die.
Lulu inched toward me. Then, almost sadly, she extruded the edge of her Lesser Legion collar toward me.
“Huh?” I looked down.
“Coowoo.” She jabbed it at me insistently.
I growled aloud. “No. Nuh uh. If I take that off, you’re dead. Besides: Your damage reduction by itself is worth its weight in gold, kid. Let me take a look at our abilities and see what pairs up.”
“Mmmm.” Lulu hummed sadly, poking around the edge of the tiny quagmire she’d made as I squinted at our sheets.
“Let’s see here: Dermal Armor and Toad Skin? That might make some dual Poison/Acid type armor that works on Metal-type Legions. Drown and Poison Cloud? Maybe.”
Lulu paused, and I had the distinct impression she was looking at her own HUD. After a couple of minutes of not moving, she began to blob up and down with excitement. “Chuuu! Uuu!”
“What?” I cocked my head at her.
The blobbing intensified in speed. “Suuu… duuu!”
“Sudoku? Sushi?” I narrowed my eyes in confusion.
“Suu duu!” She squeaked, gesturing wildly with several small pseudopods. Mimicking my tentacles.
My eyes widened with sudden realization. “Soul Drain?”
“Suu duu!” She hopped up and down in agitation. “Suu duu… absoo!”
Soul Drain and Absorb. I reread the descriptions. Then it hit me.
“Reapers can drain abilities from other Legions…” I repeated to myself. “Uhh… ohhh. Shiiiit. It doesn’t say anything about draining abilities JUST from enemies, does it?”
Lulu responded by bouncing over to me. She swarmed up my leg and onto my back, vibrating with excitement.
“But if I Soul Drain you, I’ll hurt you.” I looked back at her.
“Su Du!” She repeated, firmly.
“Well… okay. Brace yourself.” I drew a deep breath, reared the pud squad up, and drove them down at Lulu’s mass. The obsidian-tipped points sunk into her squishy body, and she quivered briefly as the Soul Drain engaged. As they did, time warped to a near standstill – and I got a list of abilities to pick from:
* Analyze
* Drown
* Absorb
* Water Saber
* Liquid Armor
* Quicksand
I picked Quicksand, and time warped back to normal. Heat flushed through my synapses – and with it came a rush of knowledge.
“HRRRAH!” A wave of psionic energy pulsed from my body and blasted out into the ground ahead. Thirty feet away, a much larger mire opened up in the soft earth, gurgling and popping. A small tree near the center slumped, toppled to the ground, and began to sink.
I stared at the scene of deliciously moist carnage, stunned by the implications.
“Lulu,” I thought back to her. “You’re a motherfucking genius.”
“Ooo huu!” She crooned her agreement.
My Lesser Legion could permanently hold up to ten Absorbed abilities of any type, any element, from any Legion. As her trainer, I could pick and choose which abilities she had in her roster, plug into her, and use any of those abilities during a fight. Any element. Any Legion-type move. It gave me access to almost any move in the game, and made us almost completely unpredictable to our enemies. And I was going to abuse the ever-living shit out of it.
“If we train up, level up, and work this strategically…” I licked my chops in satisfaction. “Come on: Let’s get back to Angel. I wonder if we can sign up for any of those Iron Centurion training classes she was talking about?”
CRACK!
Lulu and I both jumped out of our skins as the blast echo of a rifle firing rolled through the forest like a shockwave. Birds and small flying dinosaurs vaulted into the air in clouds, screeching. Bellows rang out, followed by a second and third rapport from the south-west.
The direction of the grotto. Our camp.