Chapter 567: Racial Options
A slight bit of time passed as the 'pair' finished their chess game. Lily nearly won because of a mistake Kat made in the placement of pieces a few turns back that Sylvie had overlooked at the time. Still, the little girl had come out on top and was now preparing for a second match. The group had moved though. Now the chessboard was set up on a pillow placed on Kat's lap with Sylvie and Lily taking an arm each so they could both be hugged. Kat found her tail drifted over to Lily and wrapped around her at some point without her notice but didn't move it afterward.
As the opening moves played out Kat asked, "So Lily… why did you want to go with Memphis in the end?"
Lily glanced at Kat and then back down to the board, "Quite a few reasons. I had initially discounted the beast races because they just weren't worth it for the most part. Everything they did something else did better unless I was specifically looking for animal appendages. Sure they are actually quite decent all rounders. They have slightly different stats of course, but I could pick one for whatever I wanted but it would never be the best.
"Like say… if I wanted to go with Elephant beastkin for their longer lives. I would be better of picking basically anything from the elf faction. Sure the elves have really long formative years, but as my mind is fully formed I would avoid a lot of their issues with that. Also the low fertility rate is completely irrelevant because even if I didn't manage to become your girlfriend I still have no interest in men"
"Surely there are species that can reproduce with the same gender, right? I imagine that has to be a thing?" said Kat, jumping into Lily's explanation mostly just to participate in the conversation. Seeing Lily's smile, she knew she made the right choice.
"Yes and no" said Lily "Of course there are some races that do. The issue is… that I know there are options to get around it. I know that magic and likely some technology could solve that problem. I mean, we're already nearly there. I digress though. Yes there are a few races that can do it, but most of them only have one gender. I might appear female, but I'd be just as much a man. Or I guess neither? The point is I would be both or neither depending on how you want to count things…
"Like Dryads! They don't actually have a gender, not really. I'm not even sure why the stereotype is that they look like women. They are still trees at the end of the day. They come into existence in a few ways. Now, not all dryad species are related. Some can use both ways, others only the one. Anyway that's not super important.
"The first way they come into existence is pollination just like any other plant. If two dryads cross pollination, they create seedlings that they spread around and eventually, once those seeds grow up into proper trees, they develop into a dryad. This might seem like the best method… but it actually isn't great from what little information I found about it. The issue is they take a really long time to gain sentience. Nothing can speed it up. More higher energy does mean that they will be more powerful when they gain a body but it doesn't speed up the centuries it takes.
"The next way is for sufficient mana to gather in a tree after a certain amount of time. The tree needs to be both old, significant in some way, and contain an abundance of higher energy. I don't really understand HOW the tree can tell its significant but they just sort of… can somehow? They might have been the largest in the forest for a millennia, or the only tree on an ancient battlefield or something. I don't really understand it, and D.E.M.O.N.S didn't give me any more information on that."
"Huh… that does explain Thyme just sort of… picking whatever for a body" said Kat thoughtfully. "What about species that are female only?"
Lily cringed at the question. "Yeah… the issue with those is that most of them still need men. There just aren't many races that are actually female and can reproduce with each other. At BEST it's a last ditch effort to replenish the population but it is never the ideal solution. Like… there was this one bird race… I can't remember what the name was but they were basically the fire equivalent of a siren. They attracted men, slept with them, and then ran off for the most part. Harpies do it as well, but I wasn't thinking of them. Oh and Harpies have rather short lifespans."
Kat nodded, "Well that explains those options I suppose. Carry on."
"What was I saying?" asked Lily as she pushed the next piece into position and leaned slightly more heavily on Kat, which of course was no issue for the demon.
Kat scrolled back in her mind. "You were talking about low fertility rates not being an issue in elves"
"Right right" said Lily, "I'm remember now. Ok, so elves. I was looking into them for a while actually. They have a bunch of good options and live for AGES. The issue came when I started to investigate how easy it was to extend that lifespan and it turned out to be really quite difficult." Kat raised an eyebrow and Lily continued. "Well, I had to double check what the maximum lifespan was if I got really into mana.
"I was therefor surprised to find that… their lifespans don't really change. They live however long that species of elf lives for… and that's it most of the time. I'm not sure why that is, and the info blocks didn't say, just that they really struggle with it for the most part and I discarded them wholesale as an option. I have no doubt you'll get to the point you'll never die of old age without issue so I needed something like that…So of course, I looked into vampires."
*Now… do I ask if she has a vampire fetish? This feels like important knowledge to have where my girlfriend is concerned… but I don't know how important. And I don't really care what the answer is now that I think about it. And Sylvie's here. Ok that settles it.* "Why vampires as the next option? And why did you discard them?" asked Kat
"Well, the short answers to those questions are, because they're known for longevity, and I can't drink your blood specifically," seeing Kat's look of confusion Lily elaborated. "Your blood contains too much demonic energy. Vampires aren't really equipped to filter it out, in fact, they are designed to get as much as possible from the blood. It means they would never be able to leave such a potent source of energy… 'on the table' so to speak.
"Of course, this would mean I'd need to go find other things to drain for blood. I didn't know if you'd mind because of your regeneration, but as I mentioned, that doesn't matter. So I basically discarded the idea then and there. A young vampire simply requires more blood then we could easily get on Earth without you helping to substitute for some or all of it and I had other options" said Lily.
That led a thought to occur to Kat. "Wait… did you actually remove dryads as an option already?"
Lily shook her head, "No that happened later, they are still on the shortlist but you wanted to know why I didn't just go straight for a female only race." Kat nodded and gestured for Lily to continue. She was about to, before glancing at the board and then up at Sylvie. "I've lost already haven't I?"
"Basically," said Sylvie calmly. "You got a bit to involved in your chat with Kat and made a few big mistakes."
Lily sighed and started to reset the board. She didn't really mind, this was mostly to have something to do with her hands and she was trying to concentrate on the game as well… but leaning on Kat felt great and she did want to talk about the options she'd had for transformations. Perhaps Sylvie would pick one for herself when she got older. "Right. Yeah… so… I moved away from vampires with that. The instincts that came with it weren't great. I don't know how long it would take for me to be ok with the drinking blood thing… and it just wasn't feasible.
"Next race I looked at were the slimes. They were a surprisingly interesting choice and one I still don't mind. The biggest issue with them is actually the additions I can do with other things. I can choose to add extra affinities to other races. Slimes can only have one for a long time because of how they're made I guess. They are also very squishy… er… I mean they are easy to kill. While they cannot die of old age, and can gain power decently fast and even resist Demonic Energy extremely well… they are so easily killed for quite a long time. You probably wouldn't have allowed me to come with you on Contracts for decades at the very least"
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