A hand pushed up into the open air it flopped down onto the still solid lid, it was like someone was pulling themselves out of a hole in the ice. Another hand and then a head burst through the heavy lid of the pit like the parts she wanted to move through were made of sand.
She emerged from the pit, dust cascading down off of her and filling the void she left in the pit. She coughed deliberately as she brushed the dust off of her naked form.
Then she had an amusing flashback of technicians freaking out when she wandered around the lab naked. Blushing stammering, blasting her with crazy purple knockout gas and having a female lab tech cloth her. Amusing, but the unpredictability of people meeting a naked person was a potential obstacle between her and information and potential allies. More tidbits of social knowledge with scraps of memory hidden away in her Basic Information skill.
She felt little need for the protection of clothes in her new form: she instinctively knew that basic kinetic weapons like swords, clubs, guns, or even a shotgun would do her no harm. And basic clothes or armour would offer little protection from the kinds of high-grade energy weapons or enchanted guns that could still maybe do her permanent harm.
Still, she sighed and she reached into the dusty pit behind her and pulled out a black lab coat made of the lesser Matter Manipulator Nano-Golems and materials under their direct manipulation. She didn't need to use the lesser nanites as apart of her body. They could, however, make a useful programmable matter substance, so she had left most in the pit, converting steel and lead walls and magical concrete into more of the lesser nanite design, and the component dust.
Together she was thinking of calling the mixture Smart Matter, she could only shape large objects while controlling the swarm directly, she could, easily deactivate them after a shift to keep an object the desired shape. Also turning matter into more nanites and components seems to be an automatic function of the nanites. So it does not take conscious thought, only limits of who, what, where, or when she may want them to stop, or ping for new instructions.
She shifted the excess Smart Matter of the lab coat into a purple T-shirt, jeans, and underwear underneath the coat. The final blob landed between her feet quickly turning into a Black pair of combat boots. She Stopped shifting the clothes and deactivated the golems within until she wanted to “change outfits”.
She viewed the Smart matter as separate from her core self because unlike the nanite AI, she had no desire to become a wave that sweeps away the world, she still at her core viewed herself as a human-ish person. So a substance that can become anything you need seemed useful. Even if she didn't want to become a giant nanite monster.... at least not today, she was not ruling out any options just yet either.
She looked around, she saw 2 more pits, just like the one she just crawled out of. The middle one looked largely untouched, just scorch marks from a recent blast. This was probably the nanites containment pit, as they had escaped into her pit.
The third pit was ripped open, no magical concrete inside, but the interior metal walls mostly intact….
Besides the claw marks of dozens of different sizes scratched into the walls. Maybe another poor shapeshifter like herself. She tried to read the warning on the lid but the chunk she found was badly damaged from the poor creatures escape.
Failed Project #3 TH-_=@!NG
___ Log Engraved by Oroboros ___ “summon__ing, no ___ others dead, ___ kill ___ __ hide ___ ___ ___ you die, kill ___ __, never ___ __ the thing It ___ FeAr ___ become. No ___ __ escape.
The rest was completely shredded in #3s escape.
The only information she could glean was to maybe not let them fear her. and that they were either summoned or could summon, both things her Basic Information said were supposed to no longer possible as of a few hundred years before the Omni-Scale System took hold across the universe.
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It happened back when every world we used to summon things from was folded into this reality. Also known as the Apocalypse, Ragnarok, the Rapture.
Every end of the world scenario anyone in the universe had ever imagined became reality within the span of 500 years, but worse then anyone had ever imagined. Every world in the human collective unconscious dumping parts of itself onto the earth, not just all the Heavens and Hells and fantasy worlds, sentients ever dreamed up, but the video game worlds, children's cartoon worlds.
Anything anyone had the slightest sliver of faith in had a chance to become a real part of the Earth during that chaotic time: not just 1 zombie outbreak, but hundreds, all different strains, some fast, some slow, some could evolve, some couldn't. some based on magic, some science, some radiation. Plus every other horror; Vampires, Dragons, Fey, Alien Invaders, ghosts, your personal childhood nightmare under the bed. All getting ripped from their homeworld or their place in your mind and then dropped onto the earth.
Not just living things, but whole chunks of other worlds got mashed into ours, 13 versions of Atlantis tried to form in the same spot in the ocean creating a whole new content, while other continents were ripped apart to make room for the new oceans, cloud cities, and lakes of ever-burning fire.
Gods and demons cast out of their eternal empires and dropped into a world where they had to fight for every spec of Faith. A dozen versions of Jesus with a dozen different sets of priorities trying to save people while 3 versions of Zeus have a literal godly dick measuring contest. The flying spaghetti monster wrestling A giant Lizard in Tokyo.
She, of course, missed it all in the lab, but she learned to trade information on what the scientists did to the Lab AI in exchange for Basic information of all kinds, like the state of the burning world outside.
She dropped the chunk of warped warning sign and shook off the memories. They helped her figure out who and what she was, but her Nanite systems told her the data was about 2500 years out of date and the world had nearly stabilized by the time they were working on the swarm. so there should have been no summoning after the swarm was frozen and they were working on #3.
She needed more relevant data.
She Looked around the Blasted basement. There was a doorway on the left side of the room and ripped open wall on the right side. Which was most likely where the creature in pit #3 escaped to.
As she looked into the gap in the wall she saw movement, she shifted her eyes to get a better view. Out of the tunnel emerged a Giant Ant, 150 centimetres tall and maybe 3 or 4 meters long. The Insect was huge, covered in heavy armoured chitin. Its antennae waved around briefly before it charged her.
Oh, frack! She thought.
She jumped back and dodged the insects' attempts to bite one of her arms off.
Why does everything think I am food. It probably wouldn't do much damage if it bit me. She continued to ponder as she lazily moved a leg out its mandibles before they could close on it.
Even before she became a nanite swarm this creature would not have been much of a threat.
The next time it tried to bite her arm she let it. the surprisingly sharp mandibles dug deep into her forearm, damaging several individual nanites, but just pushing most aside and shattering her Ulna and Radius bones.
There was no pain, she had mostly disabled that function, integrating the data into a mental heads up display she created. beside her view of the world was a paper doll picture of her body and the damaged arm flashing yellow. she mentally detached the damaged arm at the Elbow letting the Ant have it. She saw the arm of the doll go black and a new image of just an arm appeared separate from the doll-like image.
The severed arm appeared to melt as it flowed into the ants mouth, covered its eyes and quickly disappeared into the creature. Seconds later it shuddered and curled up into a ball to die.
She used her good arm to drag the body over to the pit full of nanites she came out of. She also had the Smart Matter swarm widen the hole she came out of.
At the same time; the nanites that had moments before made up her lost arm dissected the giant ant from within sending a constant stream of data on the creatures biological makeup. she compared the data to her Basic Information on pre-end and early end insects.
This seemed to be A giant radioactive Polyergus Lucidus AKA the Shiny Amazon Ant, A species of ant whose workers raid other ant colonies to steal larva and raise them as a slave workforce. She hadn't noticed the shiny carapace, but light to reflect off of was non-existent down here. This meant there would be a species of Formica Ant Slave workers in the nest this one came from as well.
When she tossed the corpse into the pit, a stream of liquid metal flowed out of its body and reformed into her lost arm. she flexed the fingers experimentally to ensure the arm was functioning properly. checked the damage indicator to make sure all systems were green.
She began pondering what she should do next.
Then she heard the applause behind her.