Chapter 2

A new body

Name: What

Class: Who

Level: 2

Experience: 15/120

Territory:0/64800

Stats:Hp: 20/20

Stamina: 4/20

Mana: 20/20

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 1

Intelligence: 2

Wisdom: 2

Endurance: 2

Constitution: 2

Unspent Stat points: 5

Titles: none

Skills: (expand)

Traits: (expand)

I gained a level which seems like the source of five stat points. I tried to get more information on what stats did but nothing I tried offered anything. It didn't seem hard to gain a level so I decided to spend the stats one at a time and see what changes I noticed.

I started on constitution and worked my way up since strength seemed self explainitory and frankly boring. Constitution raised my health pool and stamina pool by ten making it thirty of thirty and fourteen of thirty respectively, and also added quite a bit to my mass making more to work with when I added parts. Endurance didn't seem to change anything but I did feel like I was recovering faster than before, as my stamina ticked up to fifteen and eventually sixteen, so maybe Stamina regeneration? Wisdom also didn't seem to change anything but going off my rpg knowledge I guessed Mana regen. Intelligence didn't disappoint raising my Mana pool by ten. Finally, while I did think strength was boring, I added the last point to it anyway. I wasn't sure what kind of path I would take but I was fairly sure the things dexterity boosted in rpgs wasn't what I would choose.

With the crisis averted I continued making a usefull body. I liked the idea of a shell and armored appendages, changing my peg leg for a regular leg, albeit a stumpy one, with wooden armor. I repeated that process and made a few more, deciding while I liked being humanoid, being able to huddle down low fully covered in a shell was nice. Following that theory I put my eyes and ears on a retractable neck that I could tuck into the shell in a hurry. The added limbs and neck required adding bones and more spine. The whole process became much easier when I added the retractable neck onto the spine leveling up the spine and the whole shape-shift category.

The fact that my first body became very turtle like with a scorpion tail was interesting to me. The whole process took a couple hours with me becoming faster and more efficient as I went. I ignored the notifications the whole time and eventually when I was satisfied, checked all the changes

Traits:

Shape-shifting: level 3

Eyes (perception organ): level 1

Ears (perception organ): level 1

Peg leg (transportation limb): level 1

Spine (nervous system anchor): level 3

Nerves (nervous system): level 3

Shell (defensive growth): level 1

Tail (combat limb): level 2

Armor (defensive growth): level 2

Legs (transportation limb): level 2

Retractable neck (utility spine extension): level 2

Interesting that it kept track of the peg leg after I changed it out, this list would get pretty extreme very quickly. I was thankful for the collapsing function on the different sections of the status. After checking the quest log again and noting that it didn't have any sort of progress indicator, I considered my next move. I needed to figure out how to see in the dark, or get out of the dark. Vision is incredibly important as I began to realize. Since I couldn't solve darkvision right now I decided to feel my way out. Unfortunately, I didn't really have a decent way to feel around yet. I had worked out standing and moving around, but I could feel with my feet, my tail, and my face, my face was what I was calling my eye and ear probe. My feet wouldn't help much being ground bound. My face would but I didn't fancy tapping my eyes on the walls randomly. The tail was built to swing forward very much like a scorpion's, but that side to side limited range would cause issues, and that didn't mention the lack of nerves I had put in there so it wouldn't hurt when I smashed rats with it.

My possible solutions were to modify the tail or make something else to feel with. The most efficient solution would be some kind of tentacles I could feel around with, but now that I had something resembling a reasonable shape I didn't want to go nightmareing it up. What if I found people or something? I didnt like the idea of making my whacking tail sensitive, so I decided to make a separate, flexible and more sensitive tail. It definitely wasn't a tentacle.

Ding

I ignored the notification, I needed to find a way to adjust those, and began using my second tail. The new tail was far more dexterous and sensitive, allowing me to feel along the strangely smooth wall. The going was slow, and I decided to add length onto my whacking tail to smash the ground in front of me to scare off the odd rat. Finally after a lot of wandering I began to see some light ahead. It still took some time and I couldn't see much with how blurry my vision was, but I eventually made it to what felt like stairs.

The point of finding my way to daylight was to be able to see things and I still couldn't really see much besides light. I suppose it was probably because they were the first thing I made and I had... OK still have no idea how they work. I sat myself down and pulled everything into my shell except my weird neck thing and began tweaking the eyes. Even not knowing how they worked, having some small knowledge of them and being able to see through them to know what helped and what didn't really made things easier. Still it took a depressing amount of time to graduate from light and shadow, to shapes and colors, and eventually definition. There were good things about taking so long to sort out vision. I managed to give myself a resilient lens over them as well as armored eyelids so I had less fear of being blinded. I was also able to make low light adjustments to the eyes as day turned to night, good to know this new world was like earth in that way. Not to mention getting a few more kills as rats tried sneaking up on me as I worked.

I nodded off after a while, curling up in my shell to sleep, I didn't seem to need food or water but I did get tired, and quickly. When I awoke the sun was blazing over the top of the stairs and I made my way up them to the outside... or I tried to. Either these stairs were huge, or I was... just the size of a big turtle. I hadn't thought about it but the rats were about the normal rat size compared to these stairs. I had assumed they were giant rpg rats and I was a person size Shape-shifter. Now that I was thinking about it, if people populated this world who says they are the size of earth people. I had no frame of reference.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Well I still wanted to see the world and I was a shape-shifter dammit. I spent a while working on several major changes. I lost the shell, reclaiming the wood back to a fleshy material. Added proper hands and feet on my legs, changed one set of legs to arms, I shortened my whacking tail, unwilling to lose my combat option, but still wanting to look relatively normal I added a mouth, smoothed out the weird shapes, and... managed to twist myself into a rather ugly toddler thing. I managed to look human as long as I could hide the tail and you didn't cut me open to look at the bones. I still couldn't get those quite right.

I used my toddler body to climb the stairs. I had the typical toddler clumsiness, and the reason was actually similar, awkward body, unpracticed and unused to moving like this and without the strength to move easily. With great effort I made it to the top and got a look at my new world.

Well that was disappointing. The sky was very earthlike, so that's good. I recognized sandy beaches all around, even palm trees, though those were larger than I remembered from earth, but that may be my toddler size. Even a few seagull like creatures were too far up to be able to tell how big they were. I still had no proper frame of reference for size. That was all, a clear sky a few palms and ocean all around. In fact... there was no way the dungeon like area I came from would be as dry as it is. Even if it was watertight, one storm would bring the sea high enough to fill it like a storm drain. Was there some kind of drain or something at the bottom?

It was good that I didn't seem to need food or water. There was none, but that didn't make sense either, what did the rats eat? Hopefully this wasn't a Waterworld situation, I want a proper adventure not... this. I was properly stuck now, I was definitely not going back into the flash flood zone that had no light sources, and I didn't have any way of leaving the island. Even if I did have some means of leaving where could I go, it could be ocean for thousands of miles.

I was going to go insane from boredom here. At least the weather was nice. I laid back on the sand and looked into the sky watching the gulls. It took far too long to realize I was a shape-shifter. I could make my own wings and fly off, at least I hoped I could. I was still quite small and there were large birds on earth. I could do it.

Turns out I couldn't do it. I know that birds are light for their size, using hollow bones and such to be lighter, as well as feathers for catching more air with their wings, but there was just no way. I was missing something because all I managed for the rest of the day was making myself into some sort of feathered abomination with too many wings and nearly drowning fro, flying practice until I remembered my mouth was for show and I didn't have lungs.

Finally I gave up and picked a spot under a tree to rest for the night in my far less horrifying turtle shape. When a notification woke me up I finally decided to spend some time working on muting them or filtering them at least. Several minutes of guessing random words bore fruit when "preferences" opened a window of what looked like general settings. I could change any number of seemingly useless settings, color of system windows, font of text, the sound the notifications made, the list went on. Finally I found a filter setting and changed it from all notifications to full level ups and quest notifications. Several of the filter options were locked on and I couldn't read what they were but at least I wouldn't be spammed every time I changed a body part.

The option to mute quest notifications reminded me of the quest I had days ago. I opened up my quests.

Ative Quests:

Newborn survival:

You have been born into a new world, the producers have seen fit to

allow a 24 hour grace period of safety for new body acclimation. That

grace period has expired and you are now as vulnerable to the cruel

world as any other newborn.

Objectives: survive another 24 hours without protection

Reward: zone map

Complete

Zone conquest:

After surviving multiple days in your new body the time for playing

around is over

Objectives: claim a seat of power with at least 1 zone under its influence

Reward: Ruler authority level 1

I mentally clicked the complete button on the first quest and a piece of paper fell on my face. After examining it I tossed it into the ocean. A zone map huh? It showed an almost perfect circle of land in a map of only water. On the spot where the dungeon was on the map there was a star. Very helpful...

Well I don't know what a seat of power is but I can't do anything here anyway so it doesn't matter. I spent some time working on new body parts eventually finding a good set of limbs for climbing, a good body for swimming, a set of legs that let me lunge forward very fast, and a mouth inspired by alligators and sharks that can only be described as a horrible fanged maw. Eventually I decided to gather fallen palm fronds and make some sort of mat to sleep on out of the sand. I really needed to come up with something to leave this island soon. I did not want to try swimming even if I didn't have to breathe. I noticed the sky to the east, which I was assuming based on the path of the sun, getting darker.

It seems the storm I was expecting to flood the dungeon was coming. Even not being in the dungeon, just being on the island where there wasn't even a hill to climb to avoid water was worrying. Being able to make up your own body parts had perks though. I climbed about halfway up a sturdy looking tree and wrapped myself around it. Hooks made of bone and anchored to a weird skeleton of some sort dug into the bark. If the tree survived, I wouldn't be going anywhere.

The storm took quite some time to show up. I nodded off while waiting, only to be woken by howling winds. I sprouted an eye to take a peek and was thankful for the protective lens I made before. Forget the dungeon, I wasn't sure the island was going to survive. Surely the trees meant the island had been here a while and the roots would prevent erosion. In no time the waves had filled the dungeon and rats both alive and dead came floating out. There was nowhere for them to go as the sand was being blown and washed away as well.

I had to quickly make another shell as they tried my trick of climbing the trees to escape. I was able to fend them off, killing a few and knocking several into the water. My focus was on rat combat though and so I missed my tree slowly tilting. When I realized the water was just inches away I didn't have an island left to flee to. I took my swimming form, which was a ball with a wooden shell, a pair of fins on the sides and a cross between my whacking tail and my feeling tail. I was able to just keep myself near the dungeon entrance as the island, the trees and the rats all were washed away.

Eventually the wind and waves began to settle down and I was able to climb into the dungeon itself. Now that it was flooded I didn't have to worry about getting blasted by a sudden flood. Somehow having lost my island was incredibly depressing. There was nothing on the island and I had no way to leave, but now that it was gone I felt even more alone than before.

I spent some time on the top of the dungeon entrance looking at it from the outside. It looked as one would expect, a strange stone building that went down further than I could see into the water, tunnels twisting and turning into one another with no regard for structural stability. It reminded me of one of those old screen savers with tubes running about randomly. Eventually I gave up trying to put any logic to it and began descending into the dungeon.

I quickly found that my wooden shell and fleshy body of my turtle form were dense enough to sink, but only just. That sparked some inspiration in me. When I was trying to fly I was aiming for low density, with hollow bones and feathers. I was able to make just about whatever I could think of though. So I changed my wooden parts, my shell and armor plates, for stone. Except It wasn't quite as easy as that, I had to make the stone from my own understanding of it, meaning almost none. I gave up going for granite or something extra sturdy like that and settled on sandstone. It was a pretty simple stone and fulfilled the tasks of being stone and dense quite well. As for protection I knew there were some very solid woods out there but didn't know how various types of stone and wood compared.

With my new stone armor I sank, well, like a stone. Thus began my exploration of the dungeon. It only took a hundred feet or so to remember why I left. I could not see anything. Looking at the dungeon from outside I knew it would be a chore to explore it blind. Once again I was back to the first problem, dark vision.

I had managed low light vision through trial and error. I knew in theory several ways to manage. I could try to work out an alternative. A better feeler system? Maybe it was time to revisit tentacles, I was underwater after all, maybe an octopuss body. A form of sonar or echolocation.? That would be usefull in all sorts of ways in the future but I had really no idea how to begin there. Making light was my first idea but the torch thing didn't work then and now I was underwater. There are bioluminescent creatures, fireflies, anglerfish, some mosses and other fish as well but I didn't know how to work that out either.

In the end my solution was to make tentacles. I spent alot of time trying and failing to come up with a way to generate light and even if the place wasn't flooded I just didn't know enough about how something in each of my ideas worked to recreate it. Instead I made what amounted to four extra long versions of my sensitive tail, one for the ceiling, one of the left and right walls, and one for the floor in front of me. Like this I crept along exploring each nook and cranny of the dungeon. I found more rats, all dead. Most of them were gathered in groups at dead ends presumably smashed into the wall by flood waters. A few hours exploring found me at the top of a flight of stairs leading down deeper. The second floor was much like the first, the main difference was several pockets of air with still living rats swimming in them. I decided to try gaining some levels and used my tail tentacles to wrap and drown them careful not to go near the mouths or claws.

Checking my status as I went told me the rats were worth seven and a half experience each. Eventually I leveled up and decided to lean into constitution to gain more mass to use. After that each rat was only worth about five and a half experience and the required amount for level four went up to one hundred fourty four. I decided to try and keep track to see how the math worked.