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Obsidian Titan
Chapter 1. A Country Boy Can Survive.

Chapter 1. A Country Boy Can Survive.

When the system world-consolidation hit I was just a redneck diesel mechanic and backyard tinkerer from Tennessee relaxin' after a hard day's work, sippin' a beer on my porch with my coon dog Rufus and suddenly a screen pops up in my face like some sort of VR hologram shit, tellin’ me the world’s population was about to be merged onto a greater plane with other intelligent beings. I done seen movies and books like this so the first thing I did was run inside the house and get my shotgun, a duffel bag that I filled with 100 rounds of high brass OO-Buckshot, and the venison jerky I’d made yesterday. I threw in a cold six pack from my cooler on the porch just for good measure. Just in time too, I was reachin' down to pet my dog when the world shifted, makin' me nauseous, everythin' went bright, and I found myself in a white room with an angel hoverin' in front of me in some sort of nearly see-through dress. Huge ass titties like some kind of flyin mermaid, but without the fins for legs. She just had some damn fine titties. She didn't say anything, just smiled the best smile I ever seen, serene is the word for it I think. Rememberin’ Rufus, I looked around but I couldn't find him. Still had my shotgun, bag of ammo, jerky, and beer though, so I was half good.

[System initializing…]

[Choose your starting template.]

A system window popped up in front of me with a doll-like depiction of myself on it. To the side there was a bunch of sliders for height, weight, hair color etc etc. Like a video game. I figured this was the part where I choose my new body. I kind of liked my old one but at almost 30 and with my beer gut only gettin' bigger.. might as well upgrade.

“Hey system, which one of these here sliders is for my pecker. If I get to change my body I want a huge upgrade. When I whip it out I want the lady’s jaw to drop and eyes widen in fear! They ain't goin' to walk straight for a week.”

[Unknown parameters. Please select from the options in front of you. Narrow your search by focusing on what you desire.]

Well shit, that didn't work. I gave the menu in front of me another glance and randomly swiped around a bit. I'd always wondered what I would do if I could create my own body. I’d thought about various superpowers I’d want and funny things I could do. Like attach a penis on my forehead or somethin' and tell everybody my name’s pecker-head. Stupid I know, but funny, to me at least.

[Random boon has been cast, interrupting character creation. Obsidian-Bone Titan has overridden Human as your race. Random appearance gained]

______________

[Obsidian-Boned Titan.

A race thought long extinct. Obsidian-Boned Titans were engineered for war. With bones of ancient nanotech strong enough to be considered unbreakable. This race takes life from their foes and empowers themselves with it in various ways. Your soul has been scanned and deemed compatible with this race.]

I was hooked when I first seen it. It reminded me of Wolverine and I'm a big fan. And the best part is, judgin’ by the picture, my new race looked basically human except for the horns comin' out of their head like a crown. I just hoped this race didn’t have a micro-penis, or in an innie, like a lizard or somethin'. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense, this race probably did have an innie, nobody wants to get in a sword fight with their pecker swingin' around and it gets chopped off. Whoever made these guys probably designed it to hide away, turtle up to protect the goods. It might not be a bad thing though, horses had innies and look what they grow into. But shit, I'm goin' to be like Wolverine, so I'll take the bad with the good.

[Obsidian-Bone Titan is not eligible for a class. Skipping class selection. Choose your weapon to be transferred to the trial area.]

What the hell? System? No class? Classes are the bread and butter of these stories. Those Titan race perks better be good, else I’m screwed. Another system menu appeared, this time showin' a bunch of animated weapon icons. Varieties of swords, bows, knives and weapons I’d have no name for without the handy tags above them. I could even go sword and board if I wanted to, but that was borin'. I wanted somethin' that packed a wallop and offered defense too, like a two-handed sword or maybe even an axe or great hammer if the handles were reinforced, not somethin' that would break if I needed to block an enemy's weapon. Rememberin' one of my favorite anime, I focused on greatswords and the list narrowed down to one option. Its appearance was simple, without ornamentation, engravings or gemstones, but it was huge, durable and badass. I selected it immediately without a second thought.

[Competitors spawn in a random location on the assimilated world of Terra. Competitors will be placed in 5.6 million clusters of 1000 competitors each. Some areas will be more neutral towards competitors than others. Good luck! System note: If you have any children or pets, they have been placed in stasis and will be returned if your cluster establishes a permanent foothold on Terra. Those humans deemed too old and decrepit as well as all invalids were deemed wasteful to restore to functional status and have been painlessly eradicated.]

Damn, killin' off grandpas, grandmas and gimps; this system’s a real asshole. Darkness crept in on my vision before I lost consciousness.

I woke up in a daze, somehow standin' up, held in place by some sort of energy field which released as soon as I could stand on my own. Looking around, I found myself in a strange forest surrounded by giant mushrooms that towered above me, their caps flarin’ like umbrellas, some wide enough to shade houses. I felt the weight of my new sword on my back, but my gun was gone and the ammo from the pack. Luckily, I still had the jerky and beer in a new pack, a newer, thin leather replacement. I guess technology wasn’t allowed durin' the transfer or teleportation or whatever happened. Back to the practical stuff though. People often don't suspect this of me, but I am a reader, I know how stories like this go; there were monsters somewhere in these here woods. Glancin' down, I noticed my favorite t-shirt and jeans and work boots had been exchanged with crude leather armor coverin' my torso and legs with rough linen clothin' underneath and a pair of leather boots. On the positive side, I still had my grandpa’s hand-me-down fixed-blade belt knife. I never went anywhere without Old Trusty strapped to my waist, I guess it didn't count as higher technology. I decided to search the area, get the lay of the land. I walked as softly as I could, as a hunter this came naturally. I didn't get far before I noticed people appearin’ out of thin air, lookin' around scared half to death, eyes big as saucers. I was about to be friendly and go talk to some of them when the floodgates opened and a shit-ton of people started appearin'. When the flood ebbed, another system message appeared.

[Your thousand have gathered, now is the time to familiarize yourself with the system menus and your various abilities. This area will be a safe zone for the next 24 hours. After this period ends, be prepared for hostilities. It is suggested that competitors fortify themselves and their locations. To access the system menu, say the words ‘System Menu’ out loud or in your mind. Other intuitive commands exist so be sure to explore the system menu thoroughly.]

Followin' the instructions, the menu appeared. It was standard stuff: tabs for character stats, inventory, racial skills, minions, general skills, currency(empty), and surprisin'ly, even a shop tab. My survival depended on my racial abilities, so I selected that first and holy shit I was blown away.

[Name: Bud McLain. Rank F. Height: 6’6”. Weight: 380 Lbs. Pale-blonde hair. Blue eyes.

Race: Obsidian-Bone Titan. Description: A race of being thought long extinct. This race was engineered for war. With bones of ancient nanotech strong enough to be considered unbreakable. This race takes life from their foes and empowers themselves with it in various ways. Your soul has been scanned and deemed compatible with this race. Titans currently active on Terra: 1.

Racial Traits.

Life Steal, passive ability: 1 percent of slain enemies’ life is absorbed into your Bone Vault. Prolonging your life as well as fueling your abilities. Percentage increases as your proficiency at manipulating life-energy rises.

Bone Vault: A vast spatial storage space within your bones for storing and processing the harvested life essence of defeated foes. Compatible biomass can be harvested at will outside of combat and stored in the vault. These materials can be used to restore lost flesh and blood at a significant cost of stored life. Clones are created and stored in this space and can be healed here.

Personal Dimensional Space, P.D.S.: Essentially a pocket dimension that grows according to the stored life within your invulnerable black bones. Growth rate: 5 cubic meters per 1000 years in Bone Vault. Can be modified as you wish. Modes: Some or all of the storage space can be set to stasis or returned to the natural passage of time. Current capacity: 5 cubic meters.

Level One Forever: Bad news; you don’t start out with Godlike Superman powers or level up as if in a game. Good news; for every 1000 years of life you store, you gain +10 in every stat.

Bone Walk: In the case of loss of most, or all, of your flesh and muscle, the nanotubes and nano muscles connecting all your bones can be utilized to continue locomotion at a cost of 20 percent of remaining stored life per hour.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Predatory Slumber, Bone Walk secondary passive trait: While Bone Walk is active The Titan can enter a dormant state, conserving energy while remaining aware of their surroundings. While the Titan is in hibernation, nano-tentacles automatically attack and siphon nearby sources of life and biomass. This ability can be refined and controlled with experience and power growth. Tentacle Range is 10 meters initially, increasing by 1-meter per 1000-years stored life. Control is initially automatic but can be manually controlled with practice. Siphoned materials can be used to replenish stored life. While in hibernation, the Titan’s body slowly regenerates lost flesh and muscle, using available resources and stored life energy. While Predatory Slumber is active the Titan’s presence is harder to detect by enemies, as their life signs are minimal. Cost: 1 percent of remaining stored life per week.

Battle Form: Battle Form is a powerful transformation ability that allows a Titan to double their stats and manipulate their invulnerable black bones to create various enhancements and weapons such as claws, bladed elbows, additional height, or other skeletal enhancements. This form is a last-resort option due to its high life energy cost. Lasts as long as the Titan can sustain the life energy cost. Life Energy Base Cost: 5 years of stored life per minute. Significant additional skeletal changes increase the life energy cost proportionally. Caution: transformations may cause intense pain.

Blood Clone: Blood Clone allows the Titan to create and summon clones from corpses or stored blood and genetic material. Corpse-Based Clones requires a fresh corpse to infuse in the Bone Vault, absorbing one year of stored life energy. These clones retain the skills, spells, and traits they had in life, making them formidable allies in battle. Clones consume their infused life energy to use skills, spells, and traits. Blood-Based Clones, created from blood and genetic materials stored in the Bone Vault, also require one year of stored life energy. Compatible abilities from enemies in stasis or Bone Vault can be mixed and matched, creating unique clones. The number of abilities per blood clone is capped by Rank. Rank F clones can contain 3 abilities and each rank above that gains +1 ability slot per rank. Clones retain 50 percent of their original stats and gain 50 percent of the Titan’s base stats, and stat boosts from buffs or abilities. Final stats are rounded up to the nearest tenth digit. Clones can be equipped and gain full stats and use of equipped items. Clones grow alongside the Titan as they would naturally when alive, via feasting on enemies, gaining experience and leveling up, etc. Clones can be overcharged with additional life energy to extend their operational time and gain a 20% of base stat bonus. Clone kills grant the character stored life at half the rate of the Titan’s current highest achieved Life Steal percentage. Maximum of 2 stored clones per 1000 years of stored life. Maximum of 1 summonable clone per 1000 years of stored life. The Titan can synchronize with the clones, allowing for coordinated attacks and strategies. This synchronization improves with practice and experience. Upon reabsorption, clones transfer their recent battle experiences and memories to the character, providing valuable insights and potentially unlocking new abilities or upgrades. If a clone is not reabsorbed or recharged in time, it will decay, losing effectiveness and eventually disintegrating.

Harvest Potential: You can harvest one ability permanently from a slain enemy per 1000 years of stored life. Abilities can also be harvested from Blood Clones, leaving them weaker but operational. Abilities can be discarded or upgraded at will. Maximum of 10 harvested abilities per 100,000 years.

Sense Life: You can sense the life around you. You can also see people’s Aura and sense if they harbor ill intent towards you.

Diamond Mind: Diamond Mind grants the Titan additional facets, or lines of thought, for enhanced multitasking capabilities. As the Titan stores more life force, they unlock more facets, allowing them to process multiple streams of information simultaneously and perform complex tasks with ease. Additionally, it grants resistance to mind-altering and mind-control effects. The Titan gains 1 facet for every 1,000 years of stored life force. Each facet allows the Titan to focus on an additional task without any decrease in efficiency or performance. Enhanced Cognition: With each facet, the Titan’s cognitive abilities, such as memory, problem-solving, and strategic planning, are significantly enhanced, adding +10 to mind, intelligence and perception per active facet above base.

Titan’s Growth: Titans grow as they store more lifeforce. For every 1000 years you store you gain one inch in height. Additionally, you can alter your height from base to maximum at will by shifting mass either to or from your Bone Vault.

Ancestral Memories: Titans were produced with the aid of ancient, long forgotten nanotech. The nanotech stores information and learned languages that can be accessed by progeny down their line.

Titan Progenitor: As the only living Titan on Terra, you are the Progenitor of the race. At the cost of 5000 years of stored life, you can upgrade a person’s race to Titan. Note: this will remove any classes and abilities from the person upgraded.

Next, I checked my character stats tab.

Base Stats:

Strength: 20.

Constitution: 10.

Agility: 10.

Dexterity: 10.

Perception: 10.

Willpower: 10.

Intelligence: 10.

Soul: 10.

Fantasy: 10.

Charisma: 10.

Luck: 10.

Health: 110.

Mana: 110.

Life Stored: 1000 years.

I kind of expected higher base stats, but I’d grow vastly stronger over time. My strength was lookin' sharp, but then again, I weighed 380lbs, I probably needed that boost just to get around without a struggle. Scannin' my body, I didn’t look like I weighed 380lbs, more like 180 to 200, I guessed my bones weighed me down.

Next on my list, I checked the general skills tab. Two lonely-lookin' skills awaited me. Greatsword and Identify, both at skill rank 1. I wanted to check the Shop tab but it was gettin' noisy around me; people were talkin' and yellin', others cryin' out about their children and where they were. Needin' a distraction from the chaos and jibber-jabberin', I reached back over my right shoulder, grabbin' my sword's handle. It took a minute to figure out how to unsheathe it quickly, it was nearly as long as my height, but feelin' along the scabbard, I noticed it had an open groove along its upper edge allowin' for a one-handed release once I learned the trick of it. I walked a fair distance away and started practicin' with my sword. It felt goofy, clunky and kind of heavy, but I continued while imaginin' various types of enemies and how I would need to swing the blade to land a significant blow against them. As a connoisseur of action, sci-fi, and well, movies in general, I was a bit of an armchair warrior at heart. There was a flow to battle; attack, defend, attack, defend, occasionally you might get an opportunity to unleash a combination of strikes, but defense should always be a simple well-practiced movement away. As I practiced, I gave my mental opponents weapons and imagined how they would attack, then altered my attacks to block theirs. I lost myself in the movements and the imagery. Sometime later I was shaken from my trance by a loud voice callin' out to me. I stopped mid swing, sweat drippin' down my brow, I turned and found a bulky man observin' me with friendly, yet sharp eyes. He had a handlebar-mustache and a curly mullet, makin' him look like how I’d imagine an Australian pornstar looked. The mullet was majestic, nearly a rival to my old self’s. I took a moment to check a blinkin' notification.

[Your skill with greatswords has increased from 1 to 6. You have gained +5 Freepoints]

The man walked up to me, holdin' out a hand. “Hey stranger,” he said, grinnin'. “Seems like you know what you’re about with that thing.” He pointed at my sword as I struggled to find the scabbard’s open groove to sheath it.

I belly laughed, shakin' his hand firmly. “Ha! Never held a sword before in my life. I’m just wingin it. Name’s Bud. How about you?” The man had chosen a huge badass two-handed double-sided weapon, one side a hammer for smashin', the other side a wicked half-moon axeblade. If I had noticed it in the menu I might’ve chosen it for its versatility.

“You gotta be shittin' me,” the man said, a disbelievin' look on his face. “My name’s Bud too! Bud Wiesner.”

“Well how about that, bet the kids had fun with your name in school. Bud Wiesner, Ha!” I said, scratchin' my chin. “What do you say to us partnerin' up? Seems like it might get crazy here.”

“My grandfather was from Germany and my father ‘thought’ he had a good sense of humor. I caught a bit of hell until my would-be bullies’ chins caught my fist. As to partnerin' up, that’s what I was thinkin' soon as I saw you whippin' that sword around. I wasn’t sure if you knew what you were doin' or if you were about to lop off a limb.”

“Oh shit I forgot! Innie check!” I said, turnin' away from Bud and the mass of people. Pullin' the waistband of my trousers and hardened-leather leggings out, I checked out my new rig. I had been wrong... it was an outie after all and above average for sure. I whistled in admiration, not bad, not bad. Then I remembered the crown of horns on the picture of the Titan and reached up, feelin' my scalp. I felt two small horn tips hidin' in my hair a few inches above my ears. Maybe the horns were like a buck’s horns, growin' to full for matin' season and then fallin' off afterwards? Time would tell.

“What the hell are you doin'?” Bud asked, chucklin'.

“Somethin' happened durin' character creation. I got turned into an alien.”

“What?!”

“Yep, somethin' called an Obsidian-Boned Titan. I was just makin' sure my pecker wasn’t weird or anythin'. One of those innies.”

The other Bud shivered, “That would be weird.”

A thought occurred to me, “How bout we use our last names? It’s gonna get confusin' if people call out ‘Bud’.”

Wiesner shrugged, “I’m used to that already, I went by Wiesner back in the Army. You didn’t tell me yours though.”

“McLain,” I replied. “I have a feelin' we’re goin' to be the best Buds in this crazy mess.” I opened my bag and pulled out two still-chilled beers, handin' Wiesner one. “I came prepared.”

“Now we’re talkin’! To the best Buds!” Wiesner cheered, openin' his beer with obvious delight.

“The best Buds!” I replied, poppin' the cap on mine and tappin' it into Wiesner’s can.

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