Seth licked the last of the vanilla flavored elixir off his lips while looking appreciatively at the empty star bottle in his hands.
Damn, that was pretty good!
He tossed the bottle into the pile of leftover monster parts before assuming a stance similar to a Super-Saiyan. He waited in earnest for an influx of energy to rampage through his body. A minute passed, then two. His muscles slowly unclenched as he realized nothing was happening.
“Was it fake?” he wondered aloud.
He quickly went through his stats to see if anything changed, but nothing had.
No, it couldn’t have been. There was too much energy for it to be fake.
He pondered over the bottle for a second before also ruling out poison. So far there had been no change at all, not even a negative one. With a disappointed sigh, he decided to wait and watch for any changes while he worked on the new challenge.
He thought about fulfilling his daily quota of Fool’s Errand, but then thought better of it. Consuming an unknown elixir, then weakening himself purposefully, sounded like a bad idea. He turned to the nearest wall and began to scour its surface for any clue of how to proceed.
Seth pushed, pulled, scratched, plucked, and even licked almost every inch of the room for over an hour before he found small red puzzle piece that finally did something. There was nothing special looking about it, but luckily, after he gave it a twist, it turned white and sunk back into the wall. A soft click sounded behind him, and he whirled to see… nothing.
He hunched his shoulders in annoyance at the realization that he would most likely have to go through the whole room again to find the next piece that moved.
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Eight breaks, four naps, three pages of Fool’s Errand, and two hundred sixty one clicks later, Seth finally started to feel something.
After hours of nothing, he had caved and decided that losing some blood wouldn’t be that big of a deal. He was pretty experienced with the weakness of blood loss now, so he could feel that the new development was not a result of the book Folly had given him. He halted his search for the next piece and went to examine his hands. A tingling ache had begun to crawl through his bones.
Within only a few seconds, the mild feeling of arthritis took a turn for the worse and he watched in agony as his bones literally roiled underneath his skin.
“Grahhh!” the shifting bone condition drew up his arm just like a rash.
Seth grabbed his shoulder, as if trying to hold back the internal war. His actions were futile as the infection spilled into his chest, then to the rest of his body. He spilled onto the ground as his legs gave out on him, also turning into roiling masses.
Words could not describe the feeling Seth was going through.
Seriously, words couldn’t describe it because Seth’s throat was currently twisted so randomly that he couldn’t speak.
His eyes bulged in their sockets as his whole body spasmed around in different directions, like a spider being crushed. Although now totally unable to utilize his physical senses, Seth felt a wave of dimensional energy seep into his being. It wormed its way through his skull at a snail’s pace.
Unfortunately for him, this meant that his mind was the first to recover.
He mentally screeched for a full minute before the energy finally re-formed his mouth. Then, he promptly began to scream for real as his body continued to thrash around mindlessly.
Soon enough, his initial breath ran out and he choked yet again on the lack of oxygen. At this point, his throat had just barely recovered, so although his lungs were still gone somewhere in the mish mash of his body, he could still drag a small breath in every once in a while, when his trachea opened up.
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Seth sat in a battle of will, as the only thing he could do while the energy worked its way through his body was breathe in tiny amounts. His face moved between purple and red as veins threatened to burst from his skin from the exertion. After passing his head, the energy seemed to slow even further when reaching his chest. This painstaking process continued on for a time unknown to Seth, as the only thing he could think about was getting in his next breath.
Eventually, his chest reformed enough to where his lungs were finally back in place. He took a full, grateful breath before his mind was finally struck with the overwhelming amount of pain that was wreaking havoc through his unformed extremities. A mix of blood and spittle flew out of his mouth as he bit hard down on his lip. He squeezed his eyelids down over his bloodshot eyes in an attempt to focus. The destructive process finally passed all the way through his chest, leaving just his arms and lower half of his body.
Despite all of the horrible agony, Seth’s face somehow curled up in a smile, as he realized that he would actually survive.
Before long, the pain was overcome by the excitement that erupted from him in waves. Days might have passed, but Seth was undeterred as he waited out the infection. The arms and legs took longest of all. They took over triple the time to reform than his chest had. They also hurt quite a lot more as well. The pain even managed to rival his excitement for a short while. Finally, he sat and watched as his finger and toe bones slowly stopped roiling underneath his skin.
Somehow, even his ink black hand appeared to have gone through the exact same transformation that the rest of his body experienced, even though it wasn’t even flesh and bone. The storm of energy that had been previously rushing through his body dissipated into nothing and Seth went to get back up.
He shakily rose to his feet and stood up straight, only to fall forward and faceplant on the ground. More confused than annoyed, he rubbed his crooked nose before trying again. He slowly raised himself this time, making sure to keep his balance as well as possible. After using the wall for support, he eventually found the posture that allowed him to stand. His normal standing position was straight, with pressure mostly on the back of his heels. He usually had a bit of a slouch too. Now, his body weight was mostly held on the balls of his feet, and although he couldn’t see himself, it felt like his slouch had slightly increased too.
Overall, he really didn’t seem very different.
He performed a couple movements and stretches to familiarize himself with the new posture before looking at the rest of his body to see if anything else had changed. He checked every inch of himself, even stripping naked to try and find anything. But try as he might, he couldn’t find a single thing that was different. Besides the new stance, it seemed like the elixir hadn’t done anything. Seth crossed his arms in thought, and then an idea struck him. He quickly opened the body diagram in his Status, only to find that nothing had changed on the picture either.
He was about to continue scrolling through each tab, when he noticed that the colors of his left eye and right hand were no longer blue. They were now both green, just like the rest of his body parts. With a furrowed brow, he went to double check his appearance descriptions, but found that they still hadn’t changed. His hair and left eye were “Undecided”, like always.
He hesitantly closed the Menu before closing his eyes. He began nibbling on his lip as he tried to focus. For some reason, his head felt fuzzy, so much so that he didn’t even realize that his peripherals had been blinking for the last couple minutes.
“What is that?” he questioned while swiping his hands in the air.
It took a moment for him to remember that it was a notification. He re-opened the Menu and went to the Notifications tab.
-Congratulations! You have received the Title of “Absurd Specimen” due to the successful augmentation of an attribute before finishing the Configuring Stage!
Absurd Specimen:
-Effects of attributes increase by 10%.
(Only achievable with one of the following prerequisites: Titles: Little David; Defier: Unfathomable Will; Creator’s Chosen )
Upon reading the notification, the cloud in Seth’s mind began to dissipate.
“Wha- how-… OH FUCK YEAH!”
He went to jump for joy, not realizing how large a ten percent increase was, and unsurprisingly found himself shooting straight into the ceiling before flopping unceremoniously onto the ground. Instead of pain, he only felt pure ecstasy at the new taste of power. His newest title was completely unexpected, yet resulted in a huge boon nonetheless.
Apparently augmenting an attribute is a bigger deal than I thought! He thought to himself, baffled.
Confusion muddled his newfound excitement as he still couldn’t figure out what exactly the augmentation entailed. He navigated to his Status, yet was left confounded when he couldn’t find a change anywhere on the screen. It made sense though, as far as he could tell. The description of the elixir said it gave his constitution some sort of special property, but it said it wouldn’t affect his attribute itself.
Instead of sulking over the undiscovered new change, he cracked his neck and prepared himself to begin clicking puzzle pieces again. The sooner he got out, the sooner he could test his new strength, as well as find out what exactly turning into a human marshmallow had done to him.