(Heaven’s Key, Morty’s Domain, Shooting Range)
[https://i.imgur.com/FU1VI7Y.png]
Bang!
A second and a half later, the bullet flashed through the head of the target, and broke through the cardboard to the other side.
Bang!
Another bullet went through the head, making a new hole next to it.
Bang!
Then another.
Bang!
And another.
400m away, I was holding my rifle and aiming without a scope. I pressed the trigger and let another bullet fly. Largo, Alonzo and Mike were watching me as I made the shots.
Bang!
“That is 6, with 6 left. Enough to get a passing grade in my book.” Largo commented. I ignored them and continued firing. Another landed on target. “She’ll ace it.”
Every time I pressed the trigger, the sensation of the bullet leaving reverberated through me. Relying on the exotic black rifle, the Symbiotics Base E-15, really makes me realize how easier life would be if a man’s penis was a rifle. The real one is nothing but trouble and gives you moral dilemmas. This world was right. Here the penises are detachable. This experience of trying out life as a woman serves to underscore a lesson, that a man’s penis really should be a death machine.
Imagine wanting your manly symbol to be a wrinkled piece of meat, just imagine! Who could you ever kill with that thing? I’d die of shame if I had one instead of this powerful rifle!
Hoping that last thought would act towards brainwashing the original, I put the final few bullets right on target.
“Very good.” Largo comments. “You aced this test. Let’s try the moving targets next.”
The target I was using disappears, and as I watch a new one manifests far off in the distance. I do not wait for it to move, instead I just strike the head directly.
New targets start manifesting at various positions and distances, but I just tag them as soon as they pop out. The manifestation is not instantaneous, but has an effect that takes a few seconds to play out, as if it were being synthesized.
“Yeah, that is another ace.” Largo comments. “Let’s move to sniping next and we are done. What is your preferred sniper rifle?”
“Symbiotics Base S-11.” It was the rifle I used last time.
“Okay.” Largo held out his hand, manifested the rifle I requested and handed it to me.
I receive the masculine instrument into my hands…No wait, that sounds gay as hell! I sure got the timing wrong! Er, let’s just say I take the rifle into my hands instead of a penis and leave it at that. There is nothing wrong with holding one, just not when a big black dude is the one giving it to you.
“The same rules as before, 6 out of 12. Try to hit it at 1,500 meters.” Unaware of my inner turmoil, Largo just goes on as always. I see something manifest in the distance and look at it through the scope. My optimized mind quickly calms down once I latch into a goal and then the game is on. I remember how it felt when I shot the rifle a few hours ago at Eloe’s and recall how to do the trajectory calculations.
I have no trouble landing the targets. I turn the cardboard dummy’s head into a beehive.
“Great, let’s move on to the next one. This time I want to let the targets start moving. Some of them have zig zag patterns. I want to see how you handle it.” Large requests.
I oblige and see the targets finally move at an angle in Z,W and C style patterns from one to the other side. I tag them one by one. Toward the end, there are a few targets that move at particularly fast velocity. I had to aim far from their current position, but my mind did not have trouble doing the right trajectory inference and sending the bullets through the dummies heads.
“Fantastic!” Largo claps. Mike and Alonzo join in. “I’ve never seen a person like you, Euclid. You aren’t the only newcomer who has skills, but those types tend to be hardcore army vets, not cute girls. I do not know what your world was like, but damn you must have been some army’s secret weapon. We’ll sign you up.”
[https://i.imgur.com/3SFtXJk.png]
Score!
(Heaven’s Key, Euclid’s Domain)
[https://i.imgur.com/Gje8ZkA.png]
In return for a 35 chip sign up bonus, I got to join the Lightning Wild team, pulling me out of the fire that is the approaching Heaven’s Key tournament. I fire off an email to Eloe to thank her and think about what I will do next. In return for the contract, the team has exclusive rights for my game footage. I’ll also be allowed to compete in the team’s internal league as well as inter-team matches once my rank rises high enough.
This will give me combat practice against other people outside of the HK tournament, which only occurs once a month. The company will pay me for the footage and the matches, so I am a genuine sponsored player now.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
…
[https://i.imgur.com/rP0d4wO.png]
Think about my plans for the future. I need to study the nanotech programs I bought from Eloe. I think about what I’ll do with the eye designs that I’ve made, and decide that I should just give them to Eloe as a gift and get her opinion on them. I want to express my interest in going down this path to her, and see if I can become her apprentice. But otherwise I won’t put in too much effort into this otherwise I’ll break the game. Making proper use of the brain core to power my neurally integrated genetic programming abilities would both take up the time from the game and trivialize it.
For now, let me get the apartment in order. I’ll spend some chips to buy some furniture, extend it and get some art supplies. I mean, get the synthesis programs for each of those. After that I’ll start painting and drawing in order to cultivate my aesthetics. That should be enough to satisfy my feminine side. My masculine side I’ll satisfy by accumulating weaponry. That is the true path of divine seduction.
[https://i.imgur.com/iY0EGhg.png]
Two paths: one to reach the pinnacle of power, and one if the nearest god starts giving me trouble. I’ll cultivate them both in tandem.
My biggest immediate challenge is satisfying the original with the results of my self improvement. In order to turn the 50$ that we have left in our wallet into 50k, I am going to need more advanced technology that I have now.
In the real world, currently it is Saturday, 3:31am. For 14 months here, 1 hour will elapse there.
I’ll also open up a new front. Since cultivating art and social skills isn’t very interesting and will pay off only in the future, I’ll fork myself and have…her play another game that is all action and no talking. We’ll do memory merges at the end of every day and combine our gains that way. I could start a million forks and really speed up my development, but that would make my personal story difficult to integrate and I am not in a hurry. It would be more effective to really up my core use on a single game anyway instead of playing a lot of different ones.
I’ll open up a new game…but before that, it is time for judgment. Instead of worrying what is going to happen with the original, I also have the observer to deal with. If he decides it is no good, so be it. We don’t have an adversarial relationship. I will do what I think is best and let the chips fall where they may.
(Helix Studio, Regent Studio, Bedroom)
[https://i.imgur.com/x1kNUyO.png]
I had fun watching my fork do his, or now her, thing. Admittedly, I kind of tuned out during the 45 million year training session, as well as the Enforcement Division ‘matches’. I just had them send me a message when they were done and then reviewed the interesting parts. Now a merge request has come.
She wrote a report along with the optimized memory distiller. On that mail, I paused her process and for the first time in a while got to work.
Lying in the king’s bed, I spent two weeks studying both the documentation she wrote for it along with the program code. The code for it was not that difficult, but I went over it and the docs several times to make sure that I understood everything completely.
Convinced everything was safe and sound based on my understanding of its functionality, I went through my fem self’s memories. It was quite interesting. She is worried about how me and the base will react to it, but transexualism is really a nonissue to me, and I’ll accept her as my successor. Still, I do have an actual role besides just staring at a screen so let me do it.
The thinking I will do here will have great influence on our future development, so let me go over it. It is my job to see the bigger picture.
Let me just get some fresh air, I’ve been cooped in this room for way too long. I do not want to say how long.
(Helix Studio, Regent Suite, Living Room)
[https://i.imgur.com/WUXjb4s.png]
The living room has a bar, so I crack open the fridge and take out some hard liquor. I mix them in a large glass and take a gulp. Though it is possible to emulate it, since I am using a brain core, poisons such as alcohols do not have an effect on me. It is really miraculous how porous the biological brain is, it can be affected by all kinds of substances. For this situation, I obviously can’t afford to get drunk, but the perversity of drinking and yet not getting drunk, suits the situation. I need some hard liquor for some hard thinking.
[https://i.imgur.com/ZV00Own.png]
I take a seat at the bar, and leaning my elbows on the counter, take a swig of the drink. It has an interesting if slightly foul taste. Smacking my lips, I lay the glass on the counter and turn inwards.
Now…how should I go about this?
It is really easy…to imagine a chad. A chad cultivation story would give him some RPG system, and he’d spend his time upping his stats. Int low? No problem, just get some exp, and then put in some ability points to raise it from 10 to 30 or something like that and now he’s a genius.
In such a universe for example, an omnipotent being could give up free points and abilities to create an utopia. Why have stupid people in the world when you can just raise their int score to genius levels?
The horror of the universe we live in is that we are all computer programs of sorts, whether those are running on biological machines or artificial ones. Curing disease or increasing physical strength is one thing, but program replacement is necessary to improve one’s intelligence. So an omnipotent being can’t really increase the most important stat there is without committing genocide. It is the same reason why you can’t just give a lizard a human brain to improve its intelligence. Once you know what intelligence improvement actually entails, it becomes impossible to frame it as a favor. It can’t be traded either. The process of intelligence improvement is fundamentally a demonic path.
So in the real world, to attain power, the chad can’t do something as simple as hold onto his identity. Self improvement is a series of scientific experiments with all of your being on the line. His mind will get beat, beat and beat again. My fem self held out well, but getting to the point of needing to do body improvement shattered her ego because the demands of what attaining power required conflicted with her ideals. She did what she wanted in the end, but feels the conclusion she reached is unforgivable.
Foolish girl. Who am I but the most based man in the world? Of course I’d understand you.
I took a sip of the foul liquid and it cleared my mind. I am getting a bit emotional myself.
There is no way that I’d throw away all their effort. The power they attained is definitely real. Programmers in particular are susceptible to this mental illness. They constantly have to switch between being slaves that execute their goals and masters that set them. For the Inspired, the self improvement loop amplifies this because they literally have to kill themselves at points. You need a split masculine/feminine personality for this. Submission, even to one’s own goals, requires femininity.
A person might point out that there are many manly men who’d willingly submit to a master, and therefore I am wrong. And then maybe later, much later after having me proven wrong with this simple argument note the rampant homosexual tendencies present in the human genome and not connect the dots. Why would nature make people gay, who knows? No reason at all, must be a mistake.
I do not have to restrict myself to just having a single personality like humans do. I swore that I would fight as a player beyond the screen rather than the character inside it. And as I had sworn, I buried my first adversary, the white haired dude. There is nothing wrong with having the ‘character’ me develop the ideal slave personality. She should be omnivorous and filled with desire. And ‘I’ will be on my based cruise, sipping my based drink watching her as she burns the world away with her power.
That power will ultimately belong to me.