As I laid back on the damp stone floor of the cave, I'm sure I was the perfect imitation of a pug in the summer sun. Seriously, 10 out of 10 me, way to go. "Jeez-its that thing stinks even more now that it's dead, I'm almost regretting it.", I managed to squeeze out the words as I inched like a caterpillar away from the now dead swamp ass rat. "Status."
[Name] Aura
[Class] Biomancer
[Subclass] None
[Race] Human(?)
[Level] 2
[HP] 86/100 [MP] 100/100
[Vitality] 10
[Capacity] 10
[Strength] 4
[Agility] 4
[Intelligence] 7
[Charisma] 5
[Fortune] 2
[Stat Points] 5
[Unique Skills] Unsteady Life, Abnormal Growth
[Class Skills] Bio Analyze 1, Flesh Reinforcement 1, Notepad
[Skills] Analysis Eye 1, Storage 1, Dagger Combat 1, Unarmed Combat 1
"Oh nice, a level up, much less exciting that looking at this reminds me of that damn Abnormal Growth though." As I glared at the skill in question I contemplated what to put my free stat points into. "Vitality is always a safe bet, I don't like the idea of kicking the bucket this early after all. Strength is nice to actually damage things, while Agility stands out in particular since being slower than the crawling plague over there sucked serious ass." I sat up and rubbed my chin contemplating. I currently didn't have any magic or much use for MP outside of Flesh Reinforcement, which use 10 MP for 10 minutes of duration. "Ah I should confirm that as well."
Slowly getting up I walked over to the corpse of the Plague Rat and used Bio Analyze on it. [A Mana mutated rat that has evolved to house diseases in sacs along its skin and organs, which it can discharge through its teeth.] Seriously nasty business. Along with that description I got something like a body map of its internals, which got clearer and more detailed as I kept staring at the dead disease factory.
[Bio Analyze and Analyze Eye have Leveled Up!]
Ok, so it seems scanning dead foes can level these skills, sucks that I don't have an EXP bar for skills or myself though. Guess I'll have to wing it. Using the skills again on the rat revealed that the details on the body map cleared up quicker, but that was it, unfortunately I couldn't use it on the diseases themselves, I may need a tool or skill to be able to see them properly for that.
[Body Map of Plague Rat complete! This design can now be used and referenced!]
"Interesting, though I don't have whatever prerequisite skills are necessary for that yet." Shaking my head to get back on track, I continued, "Alright, I'll put all 5 into Agility for now, if I can't beat them I'll run away, and my Vitality is already one of my highest stats after all. It also seems to increase my recovery rate, the claw marks on my arms have stopped bleeding already, haven't healed though." I changed my Agility to 9, and took the extra shirt out of storage and cut off the short sleeves and used them as makeshift bandages in case they open back up from moving.
My stomach rumbling once again, reminding me of my current status as a broke, starving, and homeless bum, I turned to look at the rat and observed its Body Map for anything edible. A few minutes of searched yielded nada however. The whole thing belonged in a damn quarantine for goodness sake. I turned towards the glowing grasses that the rat had nibbled on in hope.
[Low Quality Mana Grass, a grass evolved to hold extremely minute amounts of mana, which it intakes and expels along with a glow.] I guess the mana takes the place of sunlight then? We are in a cave after all. I picked a few stalks and tenderly placed them in my mouth, slowly chewing them and swallowing. They weren't bad per say, just odd. Imagine lawn shavings infused with the feeling of the candy pop rocks and you'll get the picture. I didn't eat many due to worries that'll only appear a while after eating them, but I pocketed the remaining grass into Storage if there were no issues. Also, now with the adrenaline of the fight out of my system, I noticed my MP had finally started recovering since coming to this space, I guess the passage I went through was pretty much devoid of mana, and that meant no living thing would make it their home.
I put the corpse of the Plague Rat into Storage as well, who knows, it could be useful as a weapon or intimidation tactic or something. There was only one path from here besides where I came, back to the capital of Nowheresville, so I slowly walked along the path illuminated by more Mana Grass beneath my boots with a soft blue light, taking care in case of another creature being around. My worries however, seemed unfounded as I didn't find a hint of another rat or anything else for that matter, besides some small insects feeding on the grasses. These weren't mutants like the rat though, as they had no mana themselves so I ignored them. About 15 minutes later of suppressing my stomach rumbling I opened my mouth in silent awe at the view in front of me.
Vast, massively, endlessly vast. A chamber opened ahead of me so wide and long that the walls besides the one I came out of were too far away to see, and the ceiling seemed like a joke. It simply looked like the twinkling night sky above me, with many different colors of lights dashing across the ceiling in small and large patches. Reds, blues, greens, yellows, I swear every color of the rainbow was up there as I counted. The air circulated with a slightly cold and humid feel, likely due to the small stream right ahead of me. Along the ground were the Mana Grasses I'd grown accustomed to, just in far larger amounts, with the color along the stream being a far more vibrant and bright blue than the others. Craning my head around left and right revealed, unbelievably, a large forest in front of me. The trees seemed only a bit taller than me near this wall but grew in height as they got closer to the center of the cavern, towering like skyscrapers in the middle, with a single gigantic tree in the middle reaching all the way to the top. This tree was the only way I knew that was a ceiling and it wasn't just the night sky. Upon closer inspection, the trees revealed themselves to be far closer to stone, than bark, as if they just grew right out of the ground, with leaves of cyan that clashed with the statue like nature of the bark.
My mouth agape as I tried to wrap my mind around this picturesque view, a stone skittering across the ground to my right drew my view. Quickly readying my knife, I faced off with a new adversary.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
[Water Wolf, a species of wolf evolved to house water mana. It attacks primarily with its stone like claws and fangs, along with water magic.]
[Race] Water Wolf
[Level] 3
[HP] 110/110 [MP] 30/30
[Vitality] 11
[Capacity] 3
[Strength] 15
[Agility] 25
[Intelligence] 3
[Charisma] 7
[Fortune] 1
[Stat Points] 0
[Skills] Fang Combat 1, Claw Combat 3, Water Magic 1
Shit, it seems like this thing had ranged attacks, that was extremely bad for me. Quickly casting Flesh Reinforcement and bring my Agility to 14 and my Strength to 9 and raced towards the wolf. It observed me with its cyan eyes, and stood at the ready with its head about to my chest height. It had light grey fur with blue highlights along its neck and shoulder blades in wave patterns. It growled and lunged at me quickly. Narrowly twisting my body, its jaws clamped shut where my throat had been just a moment ago as I swung the dagger in my right hand at its flank. The dagger met no resistance however as it slashed through the air where the wolf had been a moment ago. It had evaded by lightly kicking off my waist with its rear paws like a fucking acrobat. What was that cool ass shit!? I demand to know where in the hell it learned that!
Now you may be wondering, how did a random person such as me, with basically no combat experience to my name, manage to dodge and then counter attack in such a short time, even if it didn't manage to land? Well the answer of course, is cheating. No seriously, I consider Bio Analyze and the Combat skills to be cheating. I was mainly testing and discovered I was correct on using Bio Analyze on a living target allowed my to see their inner workings, even when moving. Thus I could see which muscles were firing at what times, like seeing its hind legs prep for a leap and opening its jaws for a bite attack. And Dagger Combat basically course corrected my clumsy swings to have a proper edge alignment and some basic movements. As this was the first time using these however it did come with drawbacks, I wasn't terribly competent with either of these tactics, especially looking at its muscles to predict its movement. All the information I had to keep track of was quickly giving me a headache, and I thanked my lucky stars for the Intelligence stat that I presumed allowed me to process this fast enough to be useful at all.
The wolf dashed towards my left flank with a hopping movement, clearly it had decided that the only danger was the sharp object in my right hand. It swung its claws with the same texture as stone at my Achilles tendon to immobilize me, but I hurriedly lifted my foot and transitioned it into a clumsy stomp on its foreleg. With its front left paw trapped against the stone floor it whimpered lightly, not wanting to miss this chance, I stabbed towards its eye, and managed to gouge into the left eye socket. Howling in agony, the wolf opened its maw the widest it could and mana began agglomerating between its jaws as a dense ball of water. "Oh no you fucking don't!"
Letting go of the knife stuck in my prey's skull, I slammed its jaws together as forcefully as I could just as the ball of water mana was about to be launched. The wolf's remaining eye shot open in panic as it quickly succumbed to what was essentially a cutting rapid flowing through its organs and orifices as the water had no where to go except back through the wolf when its jaws where clamped closed. The knife was forced out of the eye as water shot out along with blood through its ears, nostrils, and eyes, destroying whatever brain matter had been rumbling around in its skull. Unfortunately for me, that meant I was covered in a parting present from dear old Mr. Wolf, a fuck ton of blood and gore. Mysteriously, I felt no aversion towards this kind of sight, which should by all rights leave me nauseous and dry heaving everywhere. Maybe it's the effect of my class, since it has to deal with all life objectively? Chalking it up to that for now, I quickly put the wolf into storage and grabbed the knife with a new chip in the blade from being hydraulically launched into a stone wall, and retreated back into passage I came from for a small ways. I also changed my clothes to the spare in Storage to weaken the scent of blood as much as possible.
Now that I've seen that cavern, I'm far more worried about being tracked then I was before. I had thought I was just in some cave and I'd find the exit eventually, but that's a whole damn ecosystem out there. That meant bigger things than just one wolf without even a pack. And one way to find prey is to smell them out, so I was trying to cover my tracks as best as my amateur self could. "Ahh fuck, this is such a pain, combat is so exhausting. I'm sure that damn tiny god did this on purpose, at least the things here aren't like level 50 or something, then I'd really be fucked sideways."
I sat back and leaned against the wall of the passage catching my breath. My win there was basically luck to be perfectly honest. Listing it out made it seem much simpler than it really was, if I hadn't tested Bio Analyze I would have had my throat ripped out right away, and without increasing Agility I wouldn't have even been able to move fast enough to counter attack. Just goes to show how much stats mean I guess. However now that I could rest a little, I looked over my spoils of war. "Status."
[Name] Aura
[Class] Biomancer
[Subclass] None
[Race] Human(?)
[Level] 4
[HP] 86/100 [MP] 100/100
[Vitality] 10
[Capacity] 10
[Strength] 4
[Agility] 9
[Intelligence] 7
[Charisma] 5
[Fortune] 2
[Stat Points] 10
[Unique Skills] Unsteady Life, Abnormal Growth
[Class Skills] Bio Analyze 2, Flesh Reinforcement 2, Notepad, Self-Modification 1
[Skills] Analysis Eye 2, Storage 1, Dagger Combat 1, Unarmed Combat 1
I leveled up twice through this, which was nice, and got a new class skill unlocked as well. I first looked into the new skill withe Analysis Eye.
[Self-Modification 1, the first Modification type Biomancer skill available. It allows the user to add organs and tissues discovered through the Body Maps of other organisms to their own bodily structure. The skill level changes the level of modification, how long it takes to fully mature, and the amount of nutrients and mana required for any given modification.]
Holy, fucking, shit. That's so goddamn cool! Wait a minute, didn't Abnormal Growth have something to say about this? Maybe it'll say more now that this skill is unlocked.
[Abnormal Growth, a Unique Skill of Aura, it prevents stat growth through level ups, but allows Aura to gain the full effects and stats of Modification type skills, which would normally be halved and not fully compatible with the Biomancer. When this skill is used all Modifications will be permanent and fully compatible, this may change the race of the Modified.]
Ahhhhh so that's why there's that question mark on my race, I'm basically a human right now, but my way to growth is to change all my parts to the monster equivalent. Again, I'm struck by a feeling of oddness within myself, normally a human would be very adverse to becoming a monster, or something not themselves, just like they would avert themselves from blood and gore, but I felt none of that. And I'm starting to think it's Abnormal Growth causing that, not my class. My class is just something to give me knowledge and abilities, it doesn't change my personality or behavior, but Abnormal Growth literally made me into a 'fake' human, a human being but not. A monster in human skin. And I was completely okay with that, why wouldn't I be? Like it or not, this is my new reality, and I plan on enjoying it, who gives a shit about being human when that won't help me survive this beautiful hellscape. So I'll become the biggest monster here and then go to the surface and then figure out my next actions.