---Richard---

Zone 1 clear!

Clear description:

A looping path you appeared to be heading in one direction then changed your mind. From making yourself at home in the general's home, to beating your meat and riding minecarts. You were melted and tortured but you didn't break – or did you? You did eat an unknown toxic substance and were reborn in caustic chaos after all. Was the decision to tie the CEO of the Kinetic Corp an act of genius or insanity? Poisoning the police? At least it was all done in revenge.

Your foundation has truly been established – and only you know the direction you will head next.

Clear stats:

Clear time 5 days. 8 hours. 3 minutes. 27 seconds.

Monsters killed: 1

1 Revivals.

Highest stat, body defense

Second highest stat, Body chemical defense

Achievements earned in zone: 19.

Total stats 300

Clear state. Rank 2

Next Tier: 50 stats to go.

Clear Rewards:

1 Slot gained

+1 free stat points

Unique titles x6

+30 free stat point.

Rare titles x9

+27 stat points.

Uncommon title x3

+3 stat point.

Dumping all stats to defense Richard moved on.

Nurture your foundation!

Your decisions and actions have affected results.

Distributive slots:

Though you have gathered up your potential into a single point, your body protests this focus. Distribute your slot throughout your body like the rest of your organs – both removing it as a weak point and allowing you to form an Aether connection from any point in your body.

Each new slot you add will automatically over time drift towards this goal – and every slot you allow to distribute in this manner will give a permanent burst of stats.

Body of chaos addition: Chance of manifesting a decoy slot at a random point in your body.

Go slot yourself:

Form an aether connection between your slot and your body. Will allow the formation and growth of pseudo skills that breaks upon unconnecting said ‘slot’.

Each ‘grown’ and then ‘broken’ skill may release a variable number of stats based on how long and developed the skill was allowed to grow.

Body of chaos addition: Chance of skills sticking around for a random amount of time after disconnection.

Body of chaos addition: Mutation rate of skill increased.

Custom:

Request a different fertilizer, removing bonuses due to actions.

Requested foundation growth will have variable effectiveness based on desire and difficulty of request.

Heavy recommendation to tie both past choices and foundation to request.

Warning: Challenge given will have a variable amount of increased difficulty.

…Huh.

Richard looked at the options. Both actual ones looked good – one would once again remove a ‘weakness’, the other would let him try out different builds breaking his skill again and again till he got one he liked in the almighty skill gatcha.

Eh. That sounds more fun. Also, I like the name better.

Picking “go slot yourself” – the reason Richard had picked distributed in the first place was to simplify things not remove weaknesses – he moved on to the ‘information’.

Richard hit the ‘click here’ button and found himself suddenly floating in space. The silky smooth voice of that one narrator that narrated absolutely everything filled his ears.

What was his name again?

There was a planet below him. One side was completely normal. A sphere of regular old planet.

It was labelled ‘zone 3’.

Roughly two-thirds of the remaining planet was sliced again. This was labelled ‘zone 2’ and, as time progressed, that zone split away from the planet – like a solid works assembly being exploded so you could see all its parts.

This ‘zone 2’ was stacked on top of itself – hundreds of stacks each showing an identical landmass with strange passages linking them together in a nested manner and giant pillars holding each ‘story’ on top of the other. Fake skies were painted on each underside – the scale of things was immense.

A smaller circle slice of the planet pushed away – this one with thousands of ‘levels’ – each labelled ‘zone 1’.

Finally, like a sword what had to be a million tiny disks shot off into space like a tube of flat pringles, the ‘tutorial’.

The narrator continued talking with his buttery smooth voice.

“Roughly 0.1% of the humans on earth accepted the chance at a second life. 0.1% willing to throw everything and everything they knew away forever. That’s more than you might think.

Of just under eight billion humans on earth. Eight million of you moved to this world built just for you.

All physically separated zones are linked together – pushing more and more of you into the same place. An empty planet has been shaped for your arrival.

By the third zone, all instancing will be gone. Those millions of separated disks left floating on this side of the planet will stay until the last stragglers leave them or perish. And, as each zone is disabled it will join up with the main planet.

You’ll be mostly on your own at that point. Your responsibility to maintain a foothold. Your responsibility to live or die – to populate yourself and to create your own society. To deal with monsters. To build a lasting foothold in the universe.

Zone three – the last area – is the goal you are working towards. It's also the start of your journey.” The voice paused for a bit as if giving Richard time to really think about that.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Now, if it was as simple as dumping you off on a planet and hoping for the best, that would be all there is to this story – There’s something else, however. These are the estimated stats for the standard ten rungs.”

Ring/Tier Rank Total Rings Pop in each ring Total Pop 0 0 198101 40 7924056 1 1 49525 80 3962000 2 1+ 12381 160 1980960 3 1++ 3095 320 990400 4 2 774 640 495360 5 2+ 194 1280 248320 6 2++ 49 2560 125440 7 3 12 5120 61440 8 3+ 3 10240 30720 9 3++ 1 15200 15200 10 4 1 7300 7300

A panel appeared in the side of Richard's view as the narrator began to explain them. “These numbers show your final estimated population without interference. Less than 0.1% – amusingly close to the number of humans that accepted this colonization effort, but incredibly wasteful from an efficiency standpoint. A minimum population that’s viable for reproductive purposes but not one with a good chance of thriving.”

Moving around the planet, the view pointed towards a moon then zoomed in. On it, a massive black building lay nestled between craters.

Continuing to zoom in till the screen showed off the inside of the facility, a wall of massive computers met Richard’s sight.

“Due to these sobering stats, we have decided to introduce a controversial new system. Your attempted colonization is being aided by some helpful guides.” The voice continued.

One computer was labelled R-001. A second G-002, a third B-003. Several smaller computers rested in the back their codes too small or non-existent to see.

Several lights on the supercomputers blinked rapidly and the voice began to fade.

“They all have their own jobs to help with your colonization effort – to provide information, tests and ‘training wheels’. After they ran some simulations, they decided to combine each rank into three zones – Linking them gradually while operating life-saving measures. I don’t want to jinx the results but using them your life expectancy has jumped massively. There's quite a bit of controversy with this decision – many are of the opinion that their changes may reduce or bias your results in some way, but a majority is for this setup.

"Remember, we want you to succeed. Every source of Aether pushing back the chaos in the universe is a boon. The amount expended to set you all up is immense – and will only truly be paid back if you gain a permanent foothold and survive.

"Good luck and in the system we trust.” The narration finished as the last of the illusions vanished.

Richard stood there in the darkness. A faint buzzing filled his ears even as everything shifted once more.

Trial: Escape the mountain.

Description: Reach the bottom of the trial.

This…this wasn’t an illusion. At least if it was it was an incredibly convincing one.

Richard stood on top of a truly massive peak. Below him almost a hundred meters down, a cloud layer lay.

And, in all four cardinal directions, the affinity shifted.

One side was full of flames and fire – another a swamp with toxic green mist obscuring his sight.

The third direction seemed to be a windstorm – swirling air that shot boulders and sharp spikes about.

The final direction was empty.

A normal path.

“Fucking not falling for it” Richard yelled up into the air.

No way that direction was safe – R was a troll.

So ‘R’ – was he really a computer? Just some AI having some fun as it made everyone dance to its whims?

What…what was Richard to think of the exposition he just received? Ignore it as lore for the game he was playing?

Richard looked at his offerings. If he was ‘smart’ and ‘safe’ he would probably pick the toxic swamp – Acid and some variation of ‘chemical resistance’ were his highest stats.

If he wanted to be surprised he’d take the empty path – throw caution to the winds.

If he wanted to break the mould he would pick a different option.

Richard started down the fire path. The air started to grow dry – his mouth becoming parched as he stumbled down the steep path.

Heat built as he half slid half strolled down the rocky slope.

If he was doing this, he might as well have some fun of things – Richard didn’t usually spend much time for PVE in games. He liked the interaction. He liked when things were ‘real’.

…but this was reality, right? Just one after some aliens and their pet AI’s went ham on it?

Richard jumped over a bubbling pit of what had to be magma – sorry lava this was above ground – a blast of fire wafting over his side as he finished.

It hurt – but not as much as he would expect.

His skin blistered and his clothes burned off but…that felt less and less important the more time he spent here.

Skipping across a black strip of rock, Richard hop skip and jumped along some rocks – the rocks were overtop of more bubbling lava.

Richard was naked – all that remained of his clothes some blackish-grey ash across his blistered skin.

He could feel the metal of his slot beginning to melt. His skin was heavily heavily damaged but…it should be getting worse and it wasn’t

Body of chaos. The more time he spent here the higher his fire resistance got.

“Wish someone were here to watch me streak through their challenge – Hey Mr. System. You’re here, right? Like what you see?"

Undulating his hips slightly and wiggling his eyebrows at the sky Richard stared about.

Fuck it was hot.

“If you give me a toboggan and dare me to use it, I’ll ride down the hill in it. Like a reverse winter sport. Can call it Hell Sledding.”

Crouching and hopping down a small cliff hand sizzling as he touched off the hot stone, Richard continued talking.

Partly because turning the trial into a joke helped lessen the impact somehow. Fake bravado that gave real results.

Partly because…he didn’t know what to think. This was reality. Not a game. That meant…that meant he had really killed some people, didn’t it? Not NPCs. ‘real’ people?

…that made him feel a bit ‘off’ in a convoluted way he couldn’t describe. Cold for some reason despite the heat of the environment. He didn’t feel guilty – they were all POS's…but then he felt guilty for not feeling guilty and slightly angry that he had been ‘tricked’ but also…not? He had already decided it was real so he hadn't been tricked had he?

Why was he threating the information he received as fact. Just cause it felt real? He could just keep pretending to belive this was a game couldn't he?

Richard slipped on a rock his entire foot dipping into a tide pool of magma – he screamed.

His foot as it came out was absolutely coated in white hot liquid fire that continued to burn like the world's worse sunburn – somehow both 'on' and 'inside' his body. It seared straight to the bone…but Richard’s leg wasn’t normal flesh and bone anymore was it?

Like a blender had been taken to his insides, instead of a solid core of bone surrounded by weak flesh he had a single material – a lattice of tiny bones and tiny muscles and tiny capillary veins.

The burning began fading – his foot was still covered but it didn’t hurt as much. It was still red hot but the stone was no longer molten. It cracked as he walked dying into a stone cast.

…this was an empty world we were given. The computers then came along and set everything up to help us acclimate. Gave us resurrection and stuff – it also means they made the NPCs…so the things I killed were fake.

Richard’s foot and leg were slightly stiff now. He was limping slightly. Not because of the injury but because of the imbalance.

…you know what would be a dumb idea right?

Richard punched his unharmed foot into another magma pool, hissing slightly through the pain – this one was definitely easier than the first. Less painful.

…talking himself into having regrets for his spring cleaning of villainous fake humans was a pretty weak move. He had already decided it was real. He had already decided they were fake – no fucking regrets.

Richard’s feet clomped slightly as he moved. This was...better. Less imbalanced even if he was a bit stupid for that second hit.

He was now butt naked but sporting two fashionable stone boots. This was probably someone’s kink, wasn’t it? “System, sign me up for alien onlyfans. I want to profit off of this.”

He found himself laughing despite himself. It wasn’t funny – his joke wasn’t that good, but it made him feel more in control. It wasn't a joke for others, it was for himself.

The slot in his arm had completely liquified by this point – surprisingly it seemed to be fusing to him even better. It was like his arm was growing through the foreign object. The lattice of bone spreading from one side to the other, whatever had become of his nerves slowly knitting themselves through it while it was molten.

…it was starting to get cooler. The heat was less suffocating, and it wasn’t just his skill adapting him even further to it.

“How far is it to the bottom? The challenge is making it through the environment, right? Not walking for ages?”

Peeking over an edge Richard groaned slightly. “Phase two, got it, got it. Guess we need the full range of thermal damage, don’t we?”

Below him was a solid thirty foot drop the bottom of which was snow. Down from it – in large jumps – there was mound upon mound of snow, a blizzard growing stronger as the path went.

Leaving the lava lands behind Richard dropped into snow – a huge sizzling sound announcing his arrival.

It burned – almost more than the magma had in that initial moment but slowly the freezing cold became nothing more than a slight chill.

Standing up, Richard turned and burst into laughter.

He had made a snow angel – one with his cock and balls fully melted into its bottom.

Turning once again still giggling Richard jumped down a ledge rolling slightly and then falling off the second and third.

…this might be a problem.

Around him, snow slipped and snowballed. He was starting a mini avalanche as he fell down cliff after cliff.

With a crack, his arm shattered after landing wrong.

...that shouldn't have happened. What broke? Did he still have bones?

Richard’s chest was pounded – he didn’t know how much of his lungs were still there but he was fucking winded from that hit.

Hitting a solid expanse Richard panted slightly then slowly pulled himself up out of the snow.

His skin was white now – pink tone leeching out of him leaving nothing but what looked like a corpse behind.

The molten slot in his arm had cooled. It felt more a part of him now. All its changes from his growing into the molten pit, solidified.

Seemed like the reward had been given – did it really have to be done so violently?

Slipping and sliding as he made his way across an icy strip Richard continued until he found a sign.

'Trial Tundra Terminated' it read.

“Really? You had to write that just because it rhymed? Or has three T’s or something? Alliteration, Alliteration, Alliteration. I swear you have something for threes mate. Should get that checked out.” Richard commented.

Stepping past the sign Richard continued on – the cold rapidly fading.

When it was nearly gone for good, the world faded as well – and a glowing blue box appeared in his vision.

Trial complete: “Go Slot Yourself” Aether mutation gained.