---Richard---
Richard was desensitized to gore. Some time on 4chan – some morbid curiosity and the random junk that pops up in social media was enough to toughen anyone up in modern times.
Richard was also bad at processing death – he didn’t quite get the importance people gave it.
Now sure, if someone close to you died, you’d spend a few days in mourning – that made sense… but he got physically annoyed when people were still sobbing years later over the same old thing. Move on.
Gore was gore – and death was death. Separate linked things that didn’t really mean anything at the end of the day – and were further muddled by the system and game they were playing.
That being said, there was a huge difference between seeing gore and touching it. Huge difference – Richard had been fine but he would understand anyone who vomited while dealing with what he had just had to do. There was a difference between mourning and being glad someone survived a near miss. Richard was glad they hadn’t been ganked yet – even if he knew they could respawn.
His new friend had blacked out again and he had been forced to try and heal the guy – the cream didn’t seem to be functioning as well on James as it had on him. Thankfully, despite blacking out James didn’t seem in danger of actual death – his chest rose and fell quite firmly, and his wound closed over relatively quickly. The bloody scab had slowly flaked off over half an hour.
Based on how the previous shots had sounded like they had come from separate area, there was probably still at least one more fish ‘cannon’ on this floor – probably three to match the game master’s love of that number.
He could go clear them out while sleeping beauty slept off the minor head wound? Head off on a minor adventure to kill the rest of them?
…but part of the reason he had even killed the last one was due to how high his skill had grinded up his piercing defense – a defense that was probably mostly gone by now. Did he want to head off and re-walk through a barrage of shots? He felt so much more damaged by now…his invisible health so much lower than before.
Meh.
Flopping down and taking off the remains of his billboard chest armour, Richard reached over and unzipped James’s backpack. Rustling around awkwardly he found the drinks – he was surprised they hadn’t smashed even with the store’s packaging – then popped a lid and took a swig.
Huh, it tasted both better and worse than he was expecting. Some sort of distilled ale? Closer to sake than beer. Almost like a really really weak whisky but different somehow. Rustling around a bit more, Richard started pulling most of the squashed supplies out. He could get things going while he waited.
If he wasn’t going to be using his tools he could also try ‘slotting himself’ for the first time?
----------------------------------------
---James---
James regained consciousness to the sound of Richard cursing and smashing things together a few meters away. Blinking while sitting up James felt and heard stuff fall out of his backpack – it was open, currently the flap unzipped.
Taking a moment to gather his bearings James quickly felt fully with it. Looking over he saw Richard seemed to be attempting to light a fire around a knotted root – the only wood he could find in this dungeon?
Standing up, James wandered over and stood back watching slightly arms crossed slightly. He felt like how dads stood around someone working on a car – helping through proximity.
“Burn bitch. Burn already you worthless piece of shit.” Richard struck the flint and steel several times, a stream of sparks flying onto what appeared to be a crumpled up bit of paper wrapping – something from the food they had gotten?
Looking around, James began walking as well, looking for supplies. One of the land tentacles curled slightly after him but he dodged the blast of goop – the faint sound alerting him long before it would have been an issue.
There really didn’t seem to be much wood here – the ruins were too old to still carry wooden doors or otherwise. Nearly everything that wasn’t stone or mortar had long since rotted away…what should they do?
James checked one house and found a slab of stone on the ground with an engraving – not an important one just one that was notable due to being carved in English.
“Mk2 foundation for my perfect home. This glue gal will make a palace yet!”
…
James began running back as soon as he heard a loud explosive bang. Richard stood proudly over the remains of a log – a small lick of flames shooting up and flickering light across the surroundings.
“Just had to throw the magical equivalent of a jar of gasoline on the fire and It burned beautifully” Richard spoke as soon as he saw James giving him a thumbs up.
One of his vials lay empty beside him, the contents presumably being used to get the current fire going.
…there wasn’t a lot of wood. Their fire was definitely going to go out soon.
James paused then gave in and voiced his worry.
“Yeah, I think we can burn part of the monsters here? The clams seemed flammable.” Richard seemed to have just come up with that on the spot. He did not at all sound convinced.
It was still worth a try?
Grabbing his heavily broken shield – it was less a ‘tower’ and more a ‘dilapidated wall’ by this point – James headed off. He spotted the nearest tentacle and followed it through a door into the remains of some ancient home.
There was a chittering clicking sound and the crab-like variant of the tentacle monsters began crawling out of the ground ready and primed to explode.
James smashed his shield onto it – activating haste as he did so for that extra oomph.
There was a wet squelch and crack as its slightly hardened but ultimately rubbery shell was broken and the crab was killed – still partly entombed in the ground below.
Slowly lifting his bug swatter, James reached down and grabbed the corpse carefully – despite his attempt to grab a clean spot it felt incredibly sticky.
Carefully carrying it out of the building and back towards the campfire, James was just in time to see Richard dragging the remains of the cannon monster towards the fire – where he tossed a broken and partly burnt arm onto the blaze.
There was a crackle and pop – parts of the arm appearing to burn even as parts melted and cooked.
Trying his monster James watched as the rubbery crab almost put it out but the fleshy arm surprisingly caught.
“Fucking A, found something – lets go tentacle hunting” Richard pumped his fist when he saw the spool begin to burn. The spool itself didn’t seem very flammable – it turned out it was the white goop covering it that was burning…but that was a nitpick.
A few dozen minutes of hacking off tentacles actively seeking to trip them up and restrain them later, and the pair had a blazing bonfire that smelled slightly like burnt sugar.
“Alright then! How many hotdogs you want?” Richard spoke rubbing his hands together and pulling out several squished sausages. “Just like…half or something” James said after a moment staring at the mess – they wouldn’t survive long. Best to eat them all now.
Nodding Richard looked around a bit – then walked over and stared at the cannon corpse he had dragged over.
Reaching into the ripped off section he dug his feet in then – after some furious wiggling – popped out a thin looking fish bone. Long and curved like a rib, the slightly pink bone looked kind of like a weapon in his hands as Richard squeezed a sausage on then walked over to the fire.
“Here –“ Richard said, handing James the stick then grabbing his own bare handed and shoving it into the flames.
His eyes winced slightly and then he seemed to ignore the flames, turning to look at James as if this was the most natural thing in the world.
“So how’s your game been so far?”
…the two slowly relaxed to one another. Food and drink helped a lot but the fight they had had did wonders for breaking down barriers.
The fire made the surroundings smell like caramel and after trying a bit of each of the monsters the pair confirmed they tasted much better cooked. The tentacles they were using for fuel tasted like incredibly tough and fibery squid. A squid that had been glazed with some smokey sweet sauce – not the best but edible. The crab tasted rubbery – its insides were one of the only things that weren’t sweet reminding James of actual crab – or maybe even something closer to lobster?
And of course the actual food – the sausages – tasted great. James was once again reminded how much he liked food and how adult life and the grind of work had made him forget that.
When he was a kid he’d help his dad cook meats around special occasions – he’d help his mom bake desserts. Food was something he loved, so it said a lot about depression that it had made him not care about it anymore.
…James’s mind wandered. He wondered how his parents were doing? It felt like years since he last reached out to them…and now he couldn’t anymore.
Kind of sad if he dwelled on that, but James didn’t regret his choices. He was so much happier now than he had been back home – everything felt more real. More important. Everything was more colorful. The loss of family was worth that a hundredfold.
James ended up telling Richard of his goal to break into both sides – something that was going to be a secret but just ended up slipping out when he needed a conversation topic. Richard then taught him more about what he had learned of Aether and how it worked. Slots vs free growing skills and how broken skills could grow instead of remaining the same as when you got them. They both mentioned their trials and truths – Richard had seemed impressed when James told him about eating his own hand and waved away his falling in lava like it hadn’t been that big of a deal.
One of the only dings against the barbeque was probably the drinks.
Despite having an entire case worth of supposed ‘14%’ drinks… neither felt even the tiniest bit buzzed. Turns out three bottles each wasn’t enough with defensive stats – Richard yelled about chemical defense and seemed legitimately upset. James had stomach poison defense which also seemed to be preventing him from getting intoxicated…but he didn’t care as much. No matter how much fun this had been, it didn’t seem smart to actually get drunk in a dungeon.
It wasn’t the most important part for Richard, but James was surprised to see an achievement for their ‘friendly dungeon barbie’ giving him half a dozen stats for barely doing anything.
What happened to achievements being based on effort? Richard had shown James he could gain stats by doing more than just fighting.
Finally their party wound down and they were forced to consider what to do next.
“Been meaning to ask – you notice that yet?” Richard asked after a while pointing vaguely upwards.
“Yeah…seems like it’s where we have to go next” James nodded.
Across the ceiling were several various sized holes. When initially entering the room, they had looked like places giant clams had fallen out of – but now with more time to study them it was clear they were entrances to a second cavern. Directly below the holes you could sometimes see glimpses of the room above.
It was pretty clear really. The only way to progress in the dungeon was to head up.
Picking the hole closest to their side of the room, the pair each grabbed a thick dangling tentacle and began to slowly climb side by side.
It was incredibly easy to hold onto – each of the roof tentacles were slightly sticky so it was almost harder to remove your arms and legs from it than it was to grab a new spot.
The roof tentacles were also not simply dangling ropes – they swung and shifted slightly, each living ‘things’. The tentacles seemed almost too heavy for the clams to move – unlike the ground ones these couldn’t wrap around or grab onto anything – but that didn’t stop the clams from swinging them about swaying back and forth as if attempting to shake them off.
James was having an easier time of things. His arm and leg stats made him feel like he could probably climb carrying a dumbbell while Richard slowly struggled, an annoyed look on his face.
“This is getting harder and harder – I swear my defensive stats are making me heavier or something” Richard groaned wrapping his arms around his trunk to take a rest.
James felt something was wrong – and a few seconds later a distant crack rang out.
Yep – they were high enough to become targets again. Seemed the other cannon had missed by quite a bit – they were probably over a kilometer away assuming it was against the distant wall – but now that it had shot once…yep. A second shot rang out.
With renewed vigor the pair began to shimmy-scramble their way up their trunks – the tentacles slowly but surely getting thicker the closer to the roof they climbed. Underneath James’s hands he could feel rough almost dried flesh covered in wrinkles – it quickly lost its new and sticky feeling, becoming harder to hold onto but easier to climb.
“Fuck!” Richard yelped and began spinning wildly – he seemed to have been clipped by a shot, the dart ripping a gash in his side that flung blood into the abyss below.
“Go. I can tank these better,” Richard waved his hand up at James even as he put in a herculean effort to climb as fast as possible.
Nodding to himself James sped ahead – arm over arm flying up the last dozen meters and finding himself just at the edge of the lip to above.
There wasn’t a dedicated path – no ladder or blinking sign saying to ‘climb here’.
Taking a deep breath James leapt – grabbing onto two sturdy looking bricks above the edge – his feet dangling above the abyss below and his entire lower body swinging from the lunge.
A sharp crack from the stone beside him indicated a near miss from the sniper below.
They were getting closer.
Using nothing but his upper body strength, James clenched and then pulled – throwing his entire body up into the shaft above in a single herculean upwards lunge and grab of a second pair of bricks.
His legs scrambled a bit then dug into the wall finding purchase and instantly making James feel safer.
A few scrambles later, James found himself in the jungle above. Taking a quick look to make sure he was safe – he wasn’t fully but nothing was currently attacking him – he grabbed what looked like a smaller white vine and tossed it into the pit below.
Looking around wildly and grabbing a sponge-looking yellow stone James stood guard at the top a swinging indicating his friend had found it and was climbing up the rest of the way.
The second floor was…easier to describe once James knew one of the themes of the dungeon.
It was a sticky coral reef. The inside of a breached coral cave filled with tide pools of sticky looking liquid.
It looked like there were tide pools of honey – thick murky puddles of yellow filled with shapes that shifted right beneath the surface.
There were dozens of paths everywhere – crawlspaces beside the ‘yellow, white and pink coral’ blended together – and in the darkness glubs and drips and occasional splash trickled through the background.
“Fuck I think one of them got me in the balls,” Richard spoke even as he crested the top of the hole behind them.
“Thanks for the rope – I don’t think I could have done your parkour shit at all.” He continued – standing up and giving James a double thumbs up.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“No problem.” James answered in a distracted manner – still eyeing the surroundings.
“Nice rock” Richard pointed down at the chunk of coral still held at the ready in James’s hand.
“Don’t name it or get too attached – I’ll throw it away at a moment’s notice” James tossed back only slightly awkwardly. Richard seemed to love the response, turning to look about as well.
“Nothing to say which way – Lets go thattaaway,” Richard pointed towards one side and as a pair the two began to walk.
They strolled in relative silence for a bit – the constant drip and glub of sticky liquid fading into a white noise as they walked.
Finally Richard stepped too close to a tidepool while rounding a corner and with a loud splash a spike was suddenly embedded in his side.
He jumped a bit then played it off reaching down and snapping the brittle rod – it shattering into chunks as he did so.
A second spike shot out incredibly fast but this time James [haste]ed then jumped forward and pushed Richard to the side just out of range.
Grabbing the spike – carefully ducking down in case a third was shot – James attempted to pull it out. There was a slight give and then with a ripping sensation it was out and held in his hand.
The spike’s tip was pure white – the rest of it fading to a greyer muddy colour, faint veins running up and down its length. Grains like that of wood – increasing its strength in the spike direction but weakening it in any other.
The end shifted from smooth to looking like the bottom of a tooth – nerve endings and bloody pink bits of gum included.
There was some type of monster hiding in the tidepools turning them into deadly traps – makes sense. Avoid the pools of liquid.
Turning to look at Richard, he had a strange look on his face.
“What’s up?” James asked – Richard was staring at the hole in his side. Was it poisoned?
“I feel…stiff?” Richard spoke stretching a bit as he answered.
Moving his body about with hardly a problem he nodded.
“It’s like a sticky poison. I feel like my insides are steadily being gunked up as it spreads…it isn’t too strong or my defense is letting me ignore most of it but its annoying. How the fuck does it even work? I can feel it spreading and then stiffening in its wake.”
Richard paused then shrugged. “Don’t get stabbed”.
James gave him a double thumbs up holding it until his friend laughed.
They continued on completely lost as they continued to reach passages and randomly pick a direction. Could probably have used the generic ‘always walk left’ style thing but that was fine.
As they walked the environment steadily got stranger. The tidepools began to shift into angles – some looked like congealed blobs on the walls surface tension making it look like a sack or a pimple on the wall.
It started to get harder and harder to dodge the spikes when they came from hidden nooks and crannies above their heads. James dodged every shot and Richard grew steadily more poisoned, the gumming up of his body getting worse with each shot and then steadily better – something about a skill reducing its effects? His face began looking pale after a few hours – the last wounds refusing to close over as they leaked sticky blood slowly across his body.
The pair found a relatively safe looking room hidden around a corner in the wall and took a small nap and drink from its fountain. They spent quite a bit of time in this floor – over a day if James was estimating it right – but nothing important seemed to happen. As if agreeing with them, the system only rewarded Richard once for getting hit too many times and James once for trying to eat a spike – inedible he did not recommend.
Finally – feeling like they hadn’t completed this area correctly, but not knowing what they were supposed to have done – the pair came across a door.
A solid double door in the midst of the path – incredibly out of place in the fantastic coral surrounding them.
On the door, a single picture displayed what looked like angry rain attacking someone hiding underneath an umbrella. Staring at it, each other, and then shrugging. The pair grabbed each handle and pushed stepping into the most fantastical looking setting yet.
----------------------------------------
---Richard---
At first glance it was a field of grass, some strange trees, and a low orange sky. It was the sort of setting that looked weirder and weirder the longer you looked – like some artist got fucked on shrooms and painted the beach while standing on their head.
The sky was an upside-down sea. A massive amount of sticky orange liquid about twenty to thirty meters above the field – somehow held up without falling on the pair below. Strange upside down waves that ‘dangled’ rather than ‘crested out’ drifted across – and deep below the liquid, bright lights lit it up a warm yellow. The filtered light cast shifting patterns across the ground as waves refracted the source above.
The strange trees first looked like mushrooms but upon closer inspection were closer to jellyfish – legs dangling down and holding them to the ground as they attempted to ‘fly away’ into the sea above. Like helium balloons mixed with rubber?
The grass was actually a sea of spiky barnacles, kelp and other random sea junk – it looked like a low tide that had just been removed – the plants glistening with sticky sweat in the air.
It stank. It stank of burnt sugar and brine – a sickly sweet bitter burn that made Richard annoyed and sick of this ‘adventure’.
Behind them the doors made a click as they shut – and, as if waiting for the sound, the sea above began to boil.
Drip by drip the sticky sky began to rain – its glue filled payload falling with a glop, glop, glop upon the pair below. Running towards the nearest jellyfish Richard jumped underneath before too much shit got on his body – looking across it seemed James had done the same. He had reached his own ‘umbrella’ incredibly quickly but seemed to have been hurt by the spiky ground Richard hadn’t even noticed.
Yeah, defense was much better than speed.
Checking his pouch, Richard stared slightly sad at his dwindled supplies.
All he had left were some normal cannon shots and some shotgun rounds. A bottle of poison and bottle of ‘confusion’ he hadn’t used yet – he’d already run out of acid, explosive and burning rounds. Even sadder he’d run out of all the healing goop he’d been able to buy. He needed to find a better supplier that shit was lifesaving.
He had barely anything as far as he was concerned. His multi use gun and stone scooper were still working perfectly on his belt…his stone underwear was fine…
Grabbing a handful of the jellyfish ‘arms’ Richard ripped popping the suction cups up off the ground and holding his umbrella high. Looking at the suction cups for a second, he attached them all to his stone diaper then held his arms out and jumped a bit.
“How fucking stupid do I look?” Richard called spinning around. Where had James gotten to? Oh! He was currently dashing from umbrella to umbrella, jumping back and forth in a swerving pattern to avoid the worst of the ground.
“Rude” Richard muttered and began giving chase.
His umbrella moved behind him as he ran, and he was forced to hold it in front of him one handed.
His shoes…now would probably be a good time to mention they had changed a lot since the start of the delve.
Earlier – back at the first big cavern – he’d slotted himself without feeling much of a change then unslotted to make sure he could. A process that took an annoying minute or two and made his gun less useful (switching from his body to his gun was too long to do in the middle of a fight).
Something that wasn’t the best to experiment with when he only had one slot but…partway through the coral caves he’d switched back because it didn’t seem like he was using his gun.
Now almost a full day later, he had what he thought was a skill on his feet. His stone shoes were slowly but surely changing and melding better with his flesh – a constant stream of aether fixing them ‘somehow’. The mix of cooled magma and ripped off white stone swirled into several spiral patterns, the bottom had better traction the lumpy bits became decorations…
Either way maybe with more time to grow the skill the results would be better, but right now Richard thought it best to switch back to his gun. There was supposedly a final boss in every dungeon and he wanted to be prepared.
Breaking the budding skill felt like yanking out a cable embedded in tar. He slowly ripped the slots tether out of his body – it felt like the tether passed down his arm down his chest and split before going towards both feet…which made sense but gave a physical view of how far he had to slowly pull them up and back towards his source – it snapped back at the end settling into a familiar feeling of potential.
Whatever skill was changing his shoes was still there – just starved of aether now, its already slow growth began slowing down instead of steadily speeding up. The shoes were also still changed – the skill had been what was changing them after all they were still physical materials on his feet.
…Richard took a moment to be glad his melted to his flesh shoes were what were changed instead of his stone diaper. That would be embarrassing to have fused to himself.
A few minutes into the passage across the planes – it was hard to tell how far they were, the distant wall hidden by a cloud of rain – when suddenly something changed.
With a crash the ‘boss’ appeared. A giant shark the size of a bus and covered in a dozen frog-like legs ‘jumped’ out of the sky above.
Its mouth was open slightly as it turned to face Richard giving a peak at its maw. Its nightmare inducing maw – row upon row of needle-sharp teeth each literal spikes instead of simply being a pointed mound.
The shark jumped – launching across the distance, its many legs being used in a weird sort of hop.
Richard flipped his cannon up – already loaded with poison rounds and shot twice – the two shots disappearing into the mouth in front of him even as it attempted to bite down on his body. With a whistle a block of stone came flying from the side also entering the shark mouth even as Richard lunched to the side his front getting scraped up badly by the ground below his innards barely leaking out due to how congealed they were. Richard had almost forgotten how glued up his insides were currently from hours of poison. His skill prevented him from being as affected by it but it didn’t stop his insides from being sticky and not leaking out when they should.
The rain continued to fall, and Richard struggled to push himself up – he was stuck to the ground slightly to his dismay. Barnacles and strips of seaweed stuck to his front as he literally peeled himself off the sticky ground and felt the drips land in his hair and across his back.
His umbrella had floated away – slipping into the sea above out of the corner of his sight.
Once again, not nearly as fun as Richard would hope. The shark frog had hopped away again and was just now turning to face him for another lunge.
James ran past and hurled a rock at the shark’s eye before dashing back to the safety of a umbrella.
Richard looked down loading in the confusion shots as he considered the distracted boss. Should he try and get eaten? Jump in its mouth and attack it from the inside? That seemed like the standard way to beat something like this…
James ran past again blurring as he jumped just out of the snap of the shark’s jaws as it whipped around.
The sharks teeth looked like they just kept going all the way through its throat. Richard was pretty confident if he got chomped he wouldn’t survive more than a couple seconds. Not without first grinding up piercing defense or breaking all that fucker’s teeth.
Staring down the barrel of his cannon he aimed from just over forty feet away and shot.
Hard to miss such a big bastard wasn’t it? Thankfully the shark didn’t seem to have too tough hide – Richards bullet sunk into its side the confusion round hopefully doing something.
Back to regular bullets.
Richard was tired of running about. Firing the gun felt satisfying so he’d continue doing that.
Walking forward slowly he reloaded and fired a second massive bolt sinking into the creature as it thrashed and attempted to eat his zooming friend.
Swapping to a shotgun round Richard aimed towards the wall in front of him and let loose – shrapnel peppering its entire length.
The shark spun and lunged at him faster than he was expecting.
It also missed – for some reason flying just past Richards’ side instead of hitting him dead on the rustle of wind pushing past his bare chest. Confusion poison seemed to be doing its job?
Richard spun and aimed once more. He felt calm. This wasn’t something he thought was too exciting – it was just a job.
Fun in its own way – it was so satisfying finally having a target to unload on – but…also muted somehow.
It didn’t feel like it mattered in the end. He was brutalized by this point – most of his torso covered in scratches and stab wounds, a dull pain constantly thrumming through his body by this point.
If this were actually a game his health bar would be in the red – a blinking indicator all around the outside of his screen.
…but he didn’t feel the urgency this situation should honestly be invoking.
He had already died dozens of times in the tutorial – he still had lives left.
A safety line.
And the boss was drugged and poisoned and it felt like only a matter of time before they beat it.
The boss jumped – missing Richard in terms of eating him but very much not missing him in terms of its body.
A shadow fell across Richard before with a massive impact he was thrown downwards and squished into the ground. Spread the contents of his body dragged as the shark continued on. Everything hurt – more than Richard thought possible since his upgrades – and then sticky insides were squeezed out of the holes in his body – his low health flicked to ‘literally dying’ his vision going fuzzy and dimming for the first time.
No wait that was just his eyes getting squished.
…
Richard should have been dead. His body of chaos skill increased environmental resistance by rapidly raising his defense to continuous damage in the short term.
It did not – it could not – protect him from instantaneous damage.
Simultaneously Richard had a majority of his stats in defense – maybe if it was entirely bludgeoning defense (instead of being split between so many different sources), maybe then that would have mattered…but he just wasn’t a high enough level to shrug this off yet.
He could probably survive being hit by a car on the freeway but not survive being hit by a semi into a brick wall. There were ‘levels’ to these sorts of things.
And finally, his body…his distributed body. A body that made wounds to individual spots less important while increasing how fragile his body as a whole was. With zero defense he’d have died to a finger being cut off – or more conservatively a hand – and with over two hundred defensive stats – almost three hundred in total…well it still shouldn’t have been enough. Maybe if he had more than 20 stats specialized in bludgeoning. Maybe just some less specialized in chemical – maybe if he had a specialized body with defensive stats more efficiently placed.
Maybe then his stats would be enough to handle more than 50 tons of blubber pushing him into and sliding him slightly through sharp gravel.
By all logical and natural means Richard should now be dead – his transient spirit shoved into a new body, his memories being re applied, his system connection returning stats to his new body.
One life less – a lesson in maintaining vigilance. In not underestimating a boss in a dungeon rated slightly higher than your tier.
…and so all that was left to protect him would be a fluke. ‘fuckery’ as the individual in question would have described it.
His body – although heavily squished – was mostly held together in the same general area. Glue filling the paste, a unique skill constantly fighting and jumping around every part of the pancake that used to be Richard.
On his soles – the two parts of his squished body that were completely intact – a pair of mutated stone shoes protected his feet. It conveniently provided two small pinpoints to base his body off of.
They also held a pair of skills – a pair of identical skills, the aether patterns shifting without the link that had been growing them. Bits and pieces ‘died off’ in different ways – diverging and changing as they shriveled up and became separate.
Richard had also had an active ‘link’ to a weapon. A rudimentary kinetic cannon violently shattered into pieces – the slot’s tether flying about wildly and latching onto the shoes they had just been fueling before.
The dying and mutating aether patterns spluttered back into life. A single split skill that had diverged from itself, attempted to re connect – attempting to heal itself…attempted to relink itself through the mushed up body to reform a connection.
It dragged the feet together – dragged the most intact part of its being conveniently connected to its source of food towards it as well.
Shoes drifted together – coppery flesh now flattened and drifted together as the slot drew closer and attached to the shoes sinking into their surface
A second item broke. An experimental tool – one that was irreplaceable in a sense as no one used anything like it or knew how to remake it in the area Richard was in.
Dozens of miniscule lenses and wires – as ‘complicated’ as an old clock instead of the ‘simplicity’ of a digital one – all broke apart. They mixed with the sack of sticky flesh – they mixed with the rebuilding skill whose base nature was to twist stone-like materials into something better. Broken improving stone shoes mixed with general stone manipulation.
The skill saw its body – its tomb of stone and felt part of it change while adapted in different ways. The boots that sought to better themselves learned and adapted – incorporated what would help it while breaking apart what wouldn’t.
The exact mechanism for purposeful aether mechanics was complicated.
Aether could act like a wave or a beam or a particle – could act like a current as it passed through a wire or like sound as it bounced off drums. Could turn solid or jump across a distance depending on thousands of interactions or techniques some known some unknown. Throwing things together and hoping for great results was usually not the recipe for useful results – aether required much more care. More knowledge. More purposeful manipulation than throwing stuff together. Nothing here could be considered enough – and nothing said they should interact.
And yet all the random things continued happening in tandem. A skill linking and reforming, tiny enhancing bits and pieces of esoteric technology more granular – more analog – than usual, a blend of mutated cells and sticky glue – resonating chaos rooted in magic and forcefully caged to aether. The metal that comprised a slot – physical matter drenched in aether closer to a source of it than usually simple atoms were usually able to get.
First Richard's feet became pseudo cores.
His foundation was too deep to turn them into true cores. His generalized choice, too strong to change now.
But having your entire body become more important wasn’t too far a stretch from the generalized body – not when a pair of feet were all that were left. If you lose half your body you don’t have 50% health left – a pair of legs was now 100% of the body – 100% healthy.
Such a trick shouldn’t work but aether drenched the results and chunks of skill forced result.
Next his shoes buckled in a spasm of still growing potential – tiny tiny straw like arms ripping out and gathering bits of its owner – sometimes shaping stone into a scoop to do so…sometimes accidentally mixing stone and Richard mush together and then rehardening it into new.
Sometimes growing arms with bits of Richard rock and using that to improve its functionality. Mixing more of its body with its owner.
Over the course of a few minutes a small dome of stone formed on the sea field – blocking off the constant rain of stickiness and protecting it from the light. Dozens of small sticks dragged their shoes around ushering what scraps they could together.
The shark was gone by this point – off continuing to fight another – a large chunk of Richard still smeared across its front.
The pancake continued to do what it could with what it had. Tiny autonomous claws frantically trying to put something together which could not be put together.
Mushing stone into stone was easy – at least if you could liquify and reform such a wide range of materials at will.
Mushing flesh into flesh was hard. Even if there was carbon in It, the carbon was in too complicated a form to count – even if you simply mushed it together. Somehow fused bits and pieces into a whole, some structure somehow lost.
There was nothing the arms could do. The arms were beyond fused in Richard’s matter – the stone originally burnt into skin and the hands mixed in with his DNA the stone becoming an extension of his flesh.
All they were in the end were cognizant enough for some protocols to consider Richard not ‘dead yet’. To prevent his extraction by forces far beyond the realm of this ‘closed room’.
… still not enough to prevent Richard from dying.
Body of chaos on the other hand! The wholly primal skill rooted in the unknown considered the current state of its body entirely damaging. A continuous form of damage! A long drawn-out death that slowly became less and less certain – until finally there was no chance of such a pesky thing happening not without more damage.
But of course such a simple skill was just life support – it couldn’t possibly regrow and reform Richard’s body. Just prevent further decay.
And so it was left up to the simplest of things in the end really. Stats and a body foundation.
An understood but uncommunicated fact of the two body foundations was how they directed stats.
Defensive stats were some of the most affected – the most changed based on your roots.
A specialized body became better able to resist damage. Stronger and harder armor. A way to prevent weaker damage from even affecting someone – a stronger path towards becoming as hard as a diamond and as resistant to shattering as rubber.
A generalized body became better able to spring back from damage. It had a much worse ability to prevent the damage from happening – worse than a regular body with stats – but in exchange it pushed towards regeneration. As long as they were still ‘alive’ the barely understood bits of potential would attempt to reform their body towards peak form.
The technical description was long and poorly misunderstood by most. The colloquial term was that generalized bodies had better void defense.
The pancake slowly, slowly ever so slowly regrew itself.
Bits that had been lost were remade – digging for calories that didn’t exist and being fed aether instead.
Hours past – the stone shell finally cracking open as a completely naked man stood up confused and feeling like ‘absolute shit’.
☘️ Achievement get: Reborn from a single body part. (Unique)
Description: Something common in high ‘ranks’ achieved at one impossibly low. Your body has been remade – what was gained and what was lost?
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Stat: +81 Void defence.
🥇 Rank 2 dungeon cleared. (Rare) 🥇
Among the first to clear a rank 2 dungeon and among the first to clear this specific dungeon, you have done so with a small party. At the very end your party beat the main boss with a massive portion of your body smeared across the boss itself!
Clear stats:
15 monsters killed.
Time taken 71 hours.
Party size 2. (new record)
State entering dungeon. Rank 2, Tier 1.
Free points gained 40.
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Main Reward:
Active skill: Damaging Shared body.
Share a small amount of 'damage' with creatures coated in 'you'.