Chapter 14: A Very Confident Radiator
EVOLUTION OPTION 1
[MANTIS-PUG PUNCHER (RANK E)]
There’s a preview, that’s handy, I think, or not.
It’s me. My tiny red snake body. But the face is wrong; where there was once a flat, scaled, perfectly functional snake face, there is now a pug face, wrinkled and squashed, with the aerodynamics of a dropped sock. And below that, bolted on like, are two mantis shrimp boxing gloves: neon, spring-loaded, the size of my head each, and bright neon yellow.
[System: Look at this ugly bastard. You’ve got the face of a dropped meatball and the arms of a hyper-violent ocean bug. The mantis shrimp punch is the fastest strike in the natural world, mate, you’d be throwing a hit so fast it literally cracks the air. Tiny sonic boom. Stuns anything in front of you, cracks skulls, punches clean through rat armour. You’d be terrifying. Genuinely terrifying.]
That’s not the whole description. I can tell. The System has the energy of someone reading terms and conditions out loud and deciding to skip a paragraph.
What’s the downside?
[System: ...pug asthma.]
I’m sorry, what?
[System: You’d wheeze. Constantly. Every time you try to move, you’d be snorting and snoring like a little engine that couldn’t. Stealth is gone. Completely gone. You’d be announcing yourself from three tunnels away. Every ambush you’ve ever planned is dead. You’d sound like a very small, very determined freight train with a sinus infection.]
I stare at the neon boxing gloves, and then I stare at the pug face. The boxing gloves are the size of my entire current head.
[System: Solid choice though.]
That’s insane. That is an insane option.
[System: Didn’t say it wasn’t. Said it was solid. There’s a difference. The punch is real. The power is real. You’d just sound like a squeeze toy having a stroke every time you used it.]
My tongue flicks out into the dark wood air, and I coil once, slowly, and try to think about who I actually want to be.
EVOLUTION OPTION 2:
[The Glass Phantom Snake (Rank E)]
The preview shows a version of me that is one meter long and completely see-through, like someone stretched a sandwich bag into a snake. Every organ, every bone, every meal I’ve ever eaten, on display. I can see my own spine.
[System: Glass Phantom. You’re see-through, yeah? Like a vase someone’s taught to be a snake. Every organ on display, every bone, your whole lunch, all of it, just out there for the world to see. Bit tragic, you can actually turn that part off, but I’m not telling you how till we do a quest or two.]
Wait, that sounds insanely op but to get the full look, I have to do some quests? Isn’t that a scam?
[System: Shut up, I’m talking, lad. Your body bends light just by being alive, and when you slap Thermal Camouflage on top of that, you’ve got no heat coming off ya, no reflection, nothing. You simply do not exist. You can slither right up to something’s face, take your sweet time loading a spit-bullet, and absolutely cave its head in from a meter away while it’s looking directly at you and seeing absolutely nothing. It’s not brave. It’s not honourable. It’s just free kills, forever, every time, fucking bush campers.]
Hmm, that one sounds pretty good. I might try that one.
[System: dickhead, stop talking and listen to the rest.]
So what’s the third one?
[System: ...so the third one.]
That’s not a promising opener.
[System: The third one is also a solid choice.]
You already said they’re all solid choices.
[System: Oi, and I meant it every time. Read it.]
[EVOLUTION OPTION 3
[Crimson Dragon-Sprout (Rank E)]
A little hologram shows up in front of me.
It’s me, but my scales have gone tight and glossy, like someone took the original and laminated it. Light moves across them differently. Less snake, more something that gets described in hushed voices later. On my head, sitting there with the confidence of an ant, are two horn nubs. They are very small. They are completely useless and somehow still the second most important thing I have ever grown.
[System: Dragon Heart passive. Right now you’re warm. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You’ve got a tiny bit of healing, and your throat feels like you’ve had a nice cup of tea. Very cosy. Very small. Very embarrassing. Loads of things start like this and then just. Stay like this. They die like this. Nobody cries. But here’s the bit. You won’t. You’ll get big. You’ll get wings. You’ll get legs. You’ll get the whole stupid package, and everyone who picked something else will still be normal-sized and dead. It’ll take forever, though. Like. Genuinely forever. Sorry.]
I sit with that for longer than I mean to.
A god one day, hmmm, horn nubs sound a bit embarrassing. The current payoff is basically nothing. But the ceiling removal that word, forever- that’s cool, but I’m not sure.
So my three options are: a crusty pug, baby dragon with hat hair, or a glass dildo.
[System: That’s the one. Take your time. No rush. Keg’s not going anywhere.]
The keg comment lands in the silence, and I let it sit there while I look at all three previews floating in front of me like the worst menu I’ve ever been handed at a restaurant.
I mean objectively.
The pug one is out. I’m not doing that to myself. I’m not spending the rest of my existence as a wheeze machine with connor mcleggor fists. The power is real, fine, yes, the System isn’t wrong, a mantis shrimp punch is genuinely one of the most violent things nature ever invented, and I would very much enjoy having two of them. But I’d be announcing my location like a broken radiator before I got within striking distance of anything. Every ambush is dead on arrival. Every predator in a three-hour radius turns to look at the squeaky little freight train coming for them. Hard no.
So it’s the dragon or the glass dildo.
I flick my tongue and taste the keg air and think about horn nubs.
The horn nubs are really getting to me.
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