Prepare yourself for Mind Transfiguration!
"Fuck!" Searing pain shattered Adam's mind. Instantly, He passed out.
{}
When Adam returned to full consciousness, the first thing he noted was the absence of pain. Over the past few weeks of fighting and killing, pain had become a constant companion to Adam. He had learned to live with a level of constant agony that would have had him crying or throwing up back on Earth. Thanks to his magic bed, he hadn't had to live with any of his injuries for very long, but that didn't make them less painful. His most recent fight had been worse than most, with a lacerated back and crushed leg, but it wasn't the worst.
Through all that, he had come to appreciate how resilient his body was now. He hadn't noticed at first since everything around him put his physical abilities to shame, but he was faster, stronger, and tougher than he had ever been. He was also in much better shape in general. Especially after he went through a second body transfiguration days ago. What that had meant in actual practice was that he went to bed every night with a slew of minor to major injuries all over his body.
All of which led to moments like this, when he went to bed in severe pain, only to wake up feeling like a million bucks. These small moments were what made him truly appreciate his magical new reality, more than the superpowers or anything else. Being able to go from injured to healthy with wounds that would have taken months to heal was truly magical. In both the literal and figurative sense.
The second thing he noticed was the lump of reddish-brown, squishy meat sitting on his chest.
"What the fuck?"
Then the lump twitched.
"What the fuck?!"
Then it grew four tiny, bony limbs like little white spider legs and started to walk along his body.
"What the fuck!" Adam flung the meat wad off his body into the void as hard as he could. "Ahh, gross gross gross! Why did it have to be a goo monster?" Some people thought slimes were cute. There were anime and video games with friendly, lovable slimes. Adam thought they were gross. The whole, liquid, body-transforming thing was extremely creepy. Plus, being dissolved by an amorphous unthinking mass was the essence of horror.
"Where did it come from?" Adam inspected the creature. It hadn't gone far. Whatever weird rules governed Confined Chaos gave it the same control over its tiny, baseball body as he had over his. The thing was floating its way back over to him, morphing to look like a worm made of ground beef slithering through the air.
World Blister: These little boogers pop up wherever chaotic magic is found and slurp it up to balance out the ambient mana. They have tragically short lifespans, and soon after they consume whatever chaos is present, they die. Isn't it just the cutest thing, though? Look at that huggable little lump of flesh and bone. Don't you want to keep him?
Apparently, his skill was a slime lover.
"No, I don't want to keep the flesh abomination, you psychopath. How the hell do I get it out of here?" Adam wasn't too excited about having to touch the squirmy thing.
Congratulations! You have learned the skill: Taming
"What? How? When?"
Name: Adam Mac Cuill (Unintentional Outsider*)
Mind: Slayer
Tier: 2
Level: 1
Cognition: 50
Retention: 70
Inference: 95
Skills: 1/7
* Know the Unknown
* Taming
Body: Outsider's Body
Tier: !@)I#(
Level: 20
Muscles: 110
Bones: 110
Organs: 110
Abilities: 2/10
* Unusual Attraction
* Form of Chaos
* Pass WIthout a Trace
Soul: N/A
Magics: 0/0
* Confined Chaos
Taming:
You can make monsters into friends! Like a certain World Blister, for example. *nudge nudge, wink, wink
Adam stared at his stat sheet and his new skill, unsure which one was more alarming. Finally, he settled on being worried about the skill. This was the first time his messed up sentient notifications had shown any kind of agency. To make it even worse, the first time it got invested was with a gross monster. Which it wanted him to keep. As a pet.
"This is so fucked up." Adam sighed. "Look, if I do this, you're going to have to be a lot more cooperative, ok? None of this pretending you can't hear me bullshit. I'm fighting for my life, and you need to be a lot more helpful about that." If this was how he could get Know the Unknown to work with him, he was willing to risk it. Even if it was super gross.
World Blister: These little boogers pop up wherever chaotic magic is found and slurp it up to balance out the ambient mana. They have tragically short lifespans, and soon after they consume whatever chaos is present, they die. I would do literally anything for one. I would flay you alive for this little ball.
"Why do you have to be so weird and threatening?" Adam whined as he dug into the new knowledge he had gained. Taming as a skill was essentially magical. Anyone with a pet knows how hard it is to get them to listen to you consistently. With his new skill, all Adam had to do was feed the little booger, and it would form a bond with him. Which led to a problem.
"Hey, you said this thing eats chaos," Adam held the World Blister in his hand. It had a soft, dry surface and was slightly squishy. Almost like a stress ball. It was wriggling in his grip, but not really attempting to escape. "How do I feed him that?"
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Confined Chaos:
Your soul has been to a place beyond existence and survived. This magic allows the accessor to gain a small pocket dimension born from their experience. Warning, anything inserted into this dimension will experience a portion of the conditions the user's soul has. As in, it's full of chaos mana.
"Ok? Go ahead and eat, little guy." The second Adam addressed the ball of meat, it stopped wriggling. Then, what Adam could only describe as a bone proboscis came out of it. There was a series of wet sucking noises, and the proboscis undulated and sucked at the void around them.
"This is the single grossest thing I have ever seen. And I watched a Deerdritch eat. With its face tentacles." Adam stared, horrified but unable to look away. The rhythmic pulsing motion was almost hypnotic.
Taming successful! Please name your pet!
"I'm not naming it, dude. Call it whatever you want. I'm fine with it."
Name accepted!
Name: Meatball
Species: World Blister
Mind: N/A
Skills: 0/0
Body: World Blister
Tier: 1
Level: 4
Muscles: 55
Bones: 55
Organs: N/A
Abilities: 3/5
* Chaos Eater
* Endless Mass
* Partial Mimicry
Soul: N/A
Magics: 0/0
Chaos Eater:
You must consume chaos mana to survive. This ability allows the incorporator to sustain an extreme biology with nearly limitless potential.
Endless Mass:
Your body can contain an endless supply of biomass without an increase in weight.
Partial Mimicry:
You can copy portions of the abilities and form of any creature you consume. This transformation can be sustained indefinitely. Creatures with greater or lesser mass cannot be copied.
"Wow. That's honestly a lot more impressive than I thought. But, what kind of name is Meatball?" He looked down at his new companion. "Looks like you're stuck with me, little guy. Sorry, my skill gave you such a terrible name."
With a little hop and wobble, Meatball kicked out its little spider legs and stood on his palm. Another few hops and it was standing on his shoulder, where it nuzzled his cheek affectionately.
"Aww. You are super gross." Adam cooed. "But I'll try my best not to hold the fact that you make me want to throw up against you."
{}
Adam continued his march up the mountain, new companion riding on his shoulder. While he walked, there were several problems he needed to address. First among them was his class change. Slayer had cleared out all his previous skills, leaving him with six open slots. That left the issue of how to get new skills, which he wasn't very clear on. Luckily, Know the Unknown was now being cooperative. Sort of.
Slayer:
You have killed every creature you have hunted, letting none escape. This class forgoes all other aspects of the hunt to focus on the kill. Skills can be gained by performing actions related to this class. Duh.
"But then why do I automatically get skills sometimes but have to actively choose them other times? And how am I supposed to know what's related to my class?" Adam's frustration with his skill grew steadily as it berated him for not understanding all the magic in a world he only joined a few weeks ago.
SLAYER: AS IN SLAY.
"I guess that's fair. So, what? I kill stuff, and I'll get a skill?" He got no response for that. Unfortunately, finding something to kill was going to be a lot harder now without his tracking skill. Plus, because he was carrying Meatball around, he couldn't use Pass Without a Trace. So, for the first time since his first day in this new world, Adam was walking around completely exposed. He wasn't overly concerned. He had killed pretty much everything he had encountered here, and he was much more powerful than he had been yesterday. Gaining Form of Order unlocked a lot of the potential of Form of Chaos he had been ignoring. He would have to encounter something more powerful than anything else he had seen to feel overly threatened.
Interrupting Adam's contemplation, Meatball slipped off his shoulder and hung from the back of his jacket, shivering.
"What? Something wrong?" A sharp leg pointed aggressively upward. Looking up, Adam saw something hovering in the air. It had to be miles up, barely visible from his location. "What is that?"
Sarien Daytau (World Protector)
Species: Human
Tier: 6
"Oh shit, that's people! Thank god there are people here. I was starting to wonder. Tier six, though. Man, that's way higher than me." A worry that had nestled in the back of Adam's mind vanished. "Are they flying? They have to be, right? Man, I should figure out how to do that. Maybe Form of Chaos? Anyway, how do I get their attention? They should be able to point me toward a town. Or maybe take me there."
Before Adam could come up with an answer, a blue light as large as the floating person shot from them toward the peak of the mountain. "What…"
Light of Judgment:
A tier 6 magic made for destruction of the unclean. RUN FUCKER RUN!!!
"Oh, shit."
The light hit the mountain.
The mountain shook.
Adam was nearly tossed to the ground as the entire mountain quivered. There was a massive roaring, grinding groan coming from up above. Adam could see a huge plume of dirt thrown into the air. It was hard to see what exactly the damage was, but it felt like the whole mountain had been cored out by that magic.
While he was still trying to stabilize himself, Adam noticed that the forest above him was starting to look like it was moving. "Oh, what now?"
Landslide: You're fucked now.
"Shit shit shit shit." Adam threw open a portal in front of him as the roaring sound grew louder and louder. It rapidly opened wider, becoming larger than his entire profile in seconds. Once it was the size of a minivan, it started to slow its expansion.
That was when the wave of earth hit.
There were trees and boulders mixed in with the waves of dirt, but it was all caught in the portal. The main problem now was the ground under Adam's feet beginning to move. "Sorry, buddy, but this is probably safer." Adam chucked Meatball into the portal and Activated Pass Without a Trace. He desperately wanted to retreat into Confined Chaos, but he was concerned with what would happen if the portal was buried underground.
Now that he was intangible, it made standing easier on the shifting earth and protected him from random bits of rock that were being thrown around the sides of the portal. A bigger issue, the amount of rock was actually increasing, and the wave was growing faster than his portal. He had seconds to come up with a better plan or be buried, and Adam wasn't sure how that would work with being intangible.
Looking around, the only thing he could see besides the writhing earth and felled trees was the river he had been following up the mountain. It was still there, filled with debris. Adam looked at the portal. More and more dirt was making its way over the top. Adam thought the dirt under his feet might be fading away, dropping him into the ground. "AH, fuck it."
Adam jumped into the river. However, his intangibility kept him from falling through the planet seemed to get very confused, and he slipped sideways into the water. He could breathe just fine, but everything was rocks and dirt and water and fish.
This continued on for several long, confusing minutes of incomprehensible nonsense. Then Adam fell. He fell out of the river into a tunnel under the river that the water, and dirt, refused to fall into with him. "Oh-"
He hit the bottom.
"-Shit." He looked around at the large cavern he was in. "Guess I'm fine. Chalk it up to another use of Pass. Negates falls. Sweet." The cavern was small, the only notable features being the hole he fell through up above, and another passage ahead of him. "Where the fuck am I?"
With no other options, Adam headed into the passage.
You have entered a dungeon: Waterways of the Corrupted Citadel.