.ʞo ɘd ll'ɈI .ʞool Ɉ'noꓷ .ɘɈɒl ooɈ ɘd ll'Ɉi ˎɘm Ɉɒ ʞool υoჸ ʇI .ɘƨɒɘlᕋ .ʞool Ɉ'noꓷ .ɘm Ɉɒ ʞool Ɉ'nob ɈƨυႱ .ʞo ɘd ll'ɈI
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Double, double toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble. There’s just something so fun about figuring out how a thing works and then making it your bitch.
One thing stood out to me, above the rest. Actions and being exposed to things, in game, activates my ADAPTATION trait no matter what. Getting drenched in acid got me SKIN-DENSITY, swiping at things to attack got me SWIPE, etc. Chances are, especially with my ADAPTATION trait higher than my CANALISATION trait, I’ll continue to get adaptations just by interacting with things in-game and taking damage.
But that’s not the only notification I got.
When I bound all those twitching digits together, made a net out of the hair and acidic ooze to bind them all together, the game gave me a new alert.
SYMBIONT CREATED.
Calls straight back to the reference to organic technology and “reformation” that the SYNCHRONICITY stat talked about. And when confronted by one system that I understand, and another that could be anything at all, I’m always going for the latter.
Ergo, in my case, my latest bitch I’m figuring out is the crafting system.
Character creation went fast- same setup as last time, same general appearance, off we go. There were a few tweaks: eyes further apart, working as a field-of-view slider for the game’s mechanics, as much fur and feathers as I can pick to avoid the acid a bit longer. I didn’t get the adaptations I earned last round, but supposedly, that’s what the EVOLUTION stat is supposed to be for, and considering how I refuse to put points in it yet, that’s fine.
I speedran the opening, better equipped to handle the weird movement-controls and bludgeon a sludgeling to death. From there, I recreated the same process of “crafting”, and found, to my delight, that the results are replicable.
SYMBIOTE CREATED
ADAPTATION ACQUIRED: TWITCHING DIGITS
This time, I went all-out with it.
Both of my arms now end in hands that look distinctly unnatural, molten-wax skin and a variety of darker, sharpened fingers moving constantly from the half-digested flesh. With both, I’ve lost some of the plumage on my forearms, but the increased resistance to acid and higher dexterity of the new digits more than make up for that.
Which has led me to my newest creation.
It didn’t take much to grab another branch, or to get some more twitching digits and slime, which led to a very interesting question. If the trees here are alive, made of bone or not, then do they work with Symbionts?
Turns out, the answer is yes. Which is how I now have a club that can hold my hand!
The twitching digits fused to the club’s hilts wrap around my own, fortifying the grip, increasing the damage, and overall just making the weapon a hell of a lot more effective.
The sludgelings, at this point, basically can’t fight back at all. The added reach and sharp points that the club gives me make the whole thing easy, and they’re clearly the very basic starter enemies. The Sludgelur, elder cousin to the sludgeling, still puts up more of a fight, but they’re not fast enough to avoid harm, and not tough enough to keep the spikes of my club from tearing them open.
I establish proof-positive of this fact as I eviscerate another one of the same. The three-foot ball of slime with spider-limb eels makes a gurgling noise, half growl, half tea kettle full of gelatin, and I can’t help but grin at the way it simply falls into pieces, the acidic sludge melting into the scab-gravel and grass all around.
It’s all very dramatic, but I suppose I can forgive them, considering the goodies they leave behind.
While a sludgelur has the same slime as their lesser cousins, their twitching digits are of much higher quality, longer and stronger, with a darker luster to them. I add them to my woven hair-net, storing them for use later- feels like a waste to use them for the same upgrade I already have, when there are almost certainly other kinds of materials I can play with out there.
And I am, in fact, certain. I’ve been playing another two or three hours at this point, and frankly, it feels like I’ve barely scratched the surface.
The objectives continue to glow in the sky above me.
LEAVE THE VALLEY
GROW
SURVIVE
My loot secured, I get back to walking.
Since I spawned in, I’ve been moving in more-or-less a straight line, but the mountains don’t seem much closer. If anything, it’s sort of driving in a sense of scale- the hills vary, failing to repeat even after minutes of walking. In the real world, that’d be normal, but in a game, especially one made without hardcore support, re-using assets and geography isn’t just normal, it’s damn near a requirement. Yet here, there’s peaks and valleys, areas that look like they were carved by rivers a long time ago, spaces where older, larger trees of bone fell over, the grass growing over them.
On the one hand, while VR tech has been around since the late 2010s, the model I’m using didn’t come out until the mid 2020s, just a few years back, and to make a regular videogame on a more traditional console can take four to six years. To build this game after the console for it was made, without having the specs beforehand, and in only, what, three years? When it has better graphical fidelity, better haptics, and a wider sandbox than anything else I’ve played from the most expensive-ass corporate brands in the world?
On the other hand, I am playing it. Right now. In some ways, it’s like with the moon-landing; it would technically be more effort, and less technologically possible, to fake the landing than to just do the real one. Which is absolutely fucking nuts, but true nonetheless.
It’s like finding out that a brand new company with fifty employees and a single factory somehow outperformed Boeing in the commercial airplane market. Sure, they never fund their R&D departments properly, and they’ll kill anyone who says so, but they still have plain more resources and information than anyone; to outperform that, so late in the game, starting from nothing, isn’t a thing.
So. That means…
Well, I’m not sure what it means, honestly.
Something moves.
By the time it launches itself at me, I’m already moving, my bone club swinging in the direction it’s arriving at.
I’m not much of a fighter, but if you play enough rhythm games, anyone can get a decent sense of, well, rhythm. From the point of rustling grass to the point of impact, a tightly-wound bundle of red crashes into the club, ricocheting back into the ground.
That doesn’t stop it. Rather than being stunned, the entity rolls itself like a ball and spins at me, a bundle of bright red flying at my shins. This time, I’m not fast enough to intercept, and it hits my leg hard enough to jerk the camera-angle and leave my avatar flat on the ground.
It throws itself directly at my face, ready to keep attacking until I stop moving- and I just barely get a hand up in time.
The deadened skin absorbs some more of the impact, refusing to break against whatever this thing is, even though I can feel the feedback on my arm going wild. Before the creature can wind up for an escape or another attack, a half-dozen sharp-pointed digits spear into it, reinforcing the grip and refusing to let it move. The creature lets out a sound like a burp, an exhale of gurgling gas, but it doesn’t stop struggling, not until I slam the club back down on it.
I heave a sigh. It was about time for some enemy variety, but of course it had to be an ambush-type.
Removing the club and my stabbier fingers from the new enemy, I slowly peel away from it to get a better look.
If a diagram of the muscles of one’s arm could be wrapped into a ball, it might look a bit like this thing. On the outside, it is made exclusively of protein fibers, muscle-strands clustered into sections like that of a basketball and woven tightly around each other. Even as it lies dead, it still twitches a bit, each spasm from one muscle group creating a chain reaction to make it jerk one way or another. Only at the very center of it is there a ball of bone, looking a bit like a coral growth, the color of organs and blood leaking out of it.
I’m gonna call it a meatball!
It’s the perfect name, and requires no notes.
It also has exactly what I need- new materials.
It takes barely more than a minute for my avatar and its new and sharpened fingers to start prying the creature apart, taking it to pieces of muscle and clumps of tendon.
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MATERIAL ACQUIRED: Muscle Fibers
MATERIAL ACQUIRED: Tendon-string.
Perfect.
I bring back out some of the longer and thicker digits, the ones that look more like spider-legs than fingers, and get to work. Better to invent something random now than to waste time waiting to figure out some perfect combination- here’s a new resource, here’s a resource I’m not using. Time to go to work.
The spider-digits work as a sort of scaffolding as I wrap the tendon string around them, filling the interior with the clumps of muscle fibers. Just like with the sludgelings, the materials still react with each other even after death, acting more like parts of a machine than living tissue, and by the time I start tightening the whole shape together and binding with sludge, it’s already started twitching more actively, the muscle fibers beginning to flex.
In my avatar’s many-fingered hands is a long, almost tendril-like limb, the individual spider-parts and the weird flexibility they hold making for a many-jointed frame with the bright red of muscle glistening beneath it.
Even looking at it, I can’t help but feel almost as disappointed as I am excited. The tendons are wrapped too tightly in certain spots, the sludge undiluted enough to damage some of the useful tissues… I can see parts where it could be better, even as I wonder at just how much this can do for me.
SYMBIONT CREATED: TWITCHING LIMB
It could be better. It’s a thing of beauty. Both are true.
And I already have an idea of what to do with it.
The haptics on my arms buzz angrily as I take the scab-gravel of the ground and mix it with some of the last of my sludge. The idea clicked a second ago- dilution, mixed with the weird dirt here, just might make for a smoother integration than just dousing myself in acid and sticking things on. Not by much, but some. I slather the gritty, red-grey mixture against my avatar’s (my?) shoulder blade, and the buzzing of the feedback from my shoulder feels different in pitch. Softer than the rest, maybe. I take it as a sign of my genius and move along, reaching the twitching limb back over my shoulder and…
My screen flickers.
Just once. Briefly. Not so much that it felt intentional, but just enough that I wonder if some hidden loading screen or processing issue cropped up.
But then- alerts.
ADAPTATION ACQUIRED: TWITCHING LIMB
ADAPTATION ACQUIRED: MULTILIMBED
I laugh, delighted by the double-alert. The first one is obvious- any Symbiont I equip counts as a mutation, apparently, which begs the question of if I can spawn in with them later- but the latter is particularly promising. I hover over it and watch as the words metastasize into a description.
MULTI-LIMBED: While most entities possess multiple limbs, through modification or accidental mutation you have acquired an addition which exceeds your conventional limit. Fleshlings, usually possessing the bare minimum amount of humanoid limbs, are usually incapable of acquiring this mutation, and your brain has been modified to integrate this movement directly into your skillset.
A substantial upgrade. On top of that, a big boost to the next time I wake up, if only I can find how to increase my stats outside of character creation. I really want to see if EVOLUTION can let me carry over equipped Symbionts- that would add a whole new level of replayability to the rogue-like nature of the game.
I stand my avatar back up, watching as the black, spiked tendril I’ve created reaches over my shoulder, its movements jerky and awkward. It looks intimidating, kind of like a shittier version of a xenomorph’s tail, but without any sort of spike at the end, just sort of waving a few digits around. It’s weird, and probably just because I’ve been getting constant feedback, but it’s almost like I can feel through it, too. Haptics on my ribs and shoulders tremble ever so slightly as it moves, but they do so constantly, non-stop. And then-
Huh. How do I… control it?
I try to use the controls, but they just connect to my two “normal” arms, which bump awkwardly into the new limb whenever it wobbles too low. There’s no button or option to select it- it seems to just kind of hover, moving out of the way occasionally and occasionally towards anything I point to.
Hmm.
I focus in on the haptics.
The sensation jitters against my skin, the left-hand side of my torso feeling downright weird as my body adjusts to the constant vibration. I can’t help but give my ribs a little scratch, but it doesn’t really do anything, just makes me reflect a bit more on where the tingling sensation is coming from. It’s kind of around my back muscles? Kind of around the side?
Almost as if in response, the new limb twitches.
I clench up and stretch to one side, trying to ease the discomfort, and-
…almost as if in response, the new limb moves.
It stretches forward, its range a good foot further than either of my other limbs, the end of it awkward and pointed.
I shift back a bit, letting the movement to step backwards run up my body and adjusting my center of gravity-
And it moves again, drawing back in close.
That…
That’s not how things should work.
I can feel something in my gut, like a bit of cold.
Modifying my avatar like this, gaining a badass new limb… it feels awesome, honestly. It feels right. There is a slight but unmistakable connection to the moment I first tried on a woman’s top- like it’s not quite right, but it feels better than normal anyways.
But VR controls don’t work like that. You can’t flex your muscles and make something move, or- well, technically that’s exactly what you do, but in a specific context! With controllers and buttons and shit.
It’s hard to tell if it‘s on the edge or well past the point of not being something the game should be able to do.
In theory. In theory. It’s theoretically possible that someone crazy enough, or more likely a group of people truly insane and being paid six figures (or chained to their desks) could code this. If it’s a one-in-a-million product of a one-in-a-million supergenius game designing team, it could have the crafting system, the haptic coding, the graphics, and the smoothness of the game’s movement. It could.
But then there’s the non-repeating landscape. The mountains off in the distance. There’s only so much space in any one program or, in this case, game cartridge, and eventually there has to be a hard-coded wall where the game ends. Or at least a message, telling me that I can go no further, or a glitch to fall through the map, or something.
Which is, in some ways, convenient. Because that means that my objective and the game’s objective line up perfectly.
LEAVE THE VALLEY.
So I get back to walking, now alert for sludgelings and meatballs.
But then-
Bzzz.
Feedback from a torso-pad, the one on my left shoulder. Tied to the new limb, at least, in theory. I turn to look at it and-
It’s pointing at something. Something behind me.
I turn, and-
Nothing. Just the trial in the grass where I’ve crushed it down, a clear line showing my path from the start of this run to now.
The feedback comes again, and this time I swear it’s like it’s only on part of the haptic pad, as if just the front of my shoulder is tingling. I ready up my club, looking around, trying to track where the vibration and my new limb are pointing me-
Getting closer. Louder. It’s actually starting to hurt a bit, going from “uncomfortable massage” to “actual honest-to-fuck kneading” of my shoulder, and-
BZZZZZZZ- CRACK.
The ground in front of me breaks open, the haptics spiking and then diminishing to nothing, as if the warning has already been delivered. Maybe a feature of the meatball, an ability to sense things getting closer? Doesn’t matter- think about it later. The hillside in front of me bulges forward, stretching almost like skin and beginning to tear at the seams. Blood comes with it- thick and arterial, a brighter red than anything else I’ve seen in the landscape. If anything, it reminds me of the glowing carmine of my menu’s colors, the character creator’s brightness appearing in a darker and more subdued palette. The scab-gravel muddies the crimson as it flows, the grass bends away from the point of eruption- and then the ground pops open.
And there’s… a bean. Kind of.
It’s shaped almost like a kidney, but also not, the roundness of it growing fast, fed by a tendril that goes much deeper into the dark red of the damage it emerges from. It grows out further, like watching a plant grow in fast-forward, and it lifts the organ into the air, hoisting it off the ground.
And for a moment, things are quiet. The tearing and crumbling of the hillside morph into an oppressive silence, broken only by the creaking of the polyp. It groans a bit as it continues to grow, the sound low and echoing over the hills, and as it gets larger it hangs over me. An alien vine (vein?), bowed under the weight of its fruit, hanging like a crimson droplet ready to fall.
In the brightness of the crimson, I see something shift. Inside the organ. Darker shadows twist and squirm inside it, reaching forward, pushing and straining at the skin of it. It begins to bulge, like-
Like a pregnant belly. Like a womb, holding something inside that is trying to tear its way out.
There is a sound like the tearing of leather, wet and thick and harsh, a gushing of fluids from out of the wound ripped into the world. The organ dims, the crimson losing potency and color in real-time, with a final heave, something tears its way into the world and lands on the ground before me.
It looks just human enough to look wrong.
It shares the strangely waxen skin of my avatar, of a Fleshling, but it has massive, bulging musculature, malformed and misshapen but rippling with power. It looks like there are cancerous shards or miniscule shark teeth growing out of every inch of it, like malformed scales, and its head is massive, almost half the size of its body.
As it slowly lifts itself off the ground, twisted frame seeming to move in precisely the required ways to raise its massive skull off the ground, that same head slits open down the front, revealing eyes clustered like pomegranates. The pupils are-
The pupils are all wrong. Like camera-lenses, zooming in and out with a whirring noise, even as their form speaks of nothing but meat.
A hand comes up as that horrific head stares at me. If there is a mouth, I can’t find it. Just a pillar of meat atop a body that looks like a bodybuilder was grown wrong and entirely out of shark-skin. It pushes against the ground, raising itself higher, and the way that the muscles move beneath the skin is wrong, like they’re connecting and disconnecting in sequence, as needed.
A moment later, it has one of its feet under it, and it stands up tall.
At least eight feet. Maybe more. It towers over me, three times as broad, screaming with physicality alive with the threat of violence. From between its legs, growing from its tailbone, I see a long, serpentine shape, a tail that looks borderline obscene- until it really commits, splitting open at the tip and unzipping itself. Three different lines of teeth spiral down its length, serrated fangs in a mouth almost wide enough to swallow a person whole and dripping a strange black liquid, like petroleum and leaking rubber.
What the fuck is that.
Did I hit some sort of fucking checkpoint? Is… is this a boss? A random mob? Something designed to show up before you reach the edge of the map, a more immersive way of blocking progress?
And then it appears. Floating above the creature’s head, a smaller form of the words that float in the sky above me, a larger form of the words I get when I pick something up.
{MANIFESTATION OF [00000000]}
GREATER FLESHLING
The line above draws most of my attention.
It’s not just a fleshling, it’s a manifestation of something. Something blurred out, replaced with black bars and hazy lines, kept secret.
…Another player?
Slowly, I raise a hand… and wave.
Seems safer than trying to fight, anyways.
The pillar of flesh replacing a head tilts to one side, like its looking at something curious. It gives off an impression of… amusement?
And then it raises a distended, hypermuscular arm… and waves back.
And then there’s a pixelated blur on my screen, and then there’s a twitching like the headset just moved, and then there’s something like a camera-eye blinking-
My entire body screams with a sudden burst of feedback that sprints past uncomfortable and right into outright pain, and then everything goes dead.
Very slowly, feeling the carpet on my back from when I must have fallen over without realizing, I reach up and pull the headset off.
It sticks for a second, the grunge of sweat against plastic straps fighting me, and then I’m free, staring at a dark room that feels unfamiliar to me. It’s lit by a lava lamp in the corner, a regular lamp on the far side, and the hint of streetlights coming in through the blinds, and I have lived here a full year, and yet it feels like I’m a stranger in my own room, my own body, my own world.
I stare at the headset in my hands.
It’s almost dark enough to disguise the way the screen blinks at me.
I very gently put it down on the floor. Slowly.
I sit myself up, edging away from it, inch by agonizingly slow inch, until I feel the cool of the far wall hit my back.
And then I stare at it for a while.
Waiting to see if it moves.