Seeing inside of me, left me quite baffled. At first glance, the organs were looking just the same, but the whole order was messed up. Everything seems to have been moved to a different place. To top it off every organ seems to have been covered in a slimy substance. Even though I had a gigantic wound there was no sign of blood spilling out. It was as if it had been regulated to make it easier for me. I made a small wound inside my body to see how the regeneration process is working.
The new wound was covered by the surrounding slimy substance and substantially closed. After waiting a bit I could see that new slime came out of an organ I have not seen before, it was right beside the heart. So this little fella is responsible for the conversion of data into a suitable source of energy.
Touching the slime felt weird, there was nothing tangible. although I should have felt some kind of sensation. All I did feel was some kind of warmth, an energy that was prickling up on contact with skin. After pulling my finger out, I noticed that there was still some slime remaining on my finger. As every good scientist, I just had to experiment with it.
I grabbed a little ant that was coming near me to replenish the energy I just spent and touched it lightly. The little ant began to stay still and did not show any kind of reaction or movement at first. Until it suddenly began to spasms and convulse. It got bigger and bigger until its size had nearly doubled. But under its new body, the ant was unable to move and was lying there helplessly.
What happens if I just cover a specific body part of them in this slime, will the effect just focus on the legs or will the effect spread all over the body? To test what would happen I grabbed the next poor passerby and started to smear its little legs. But after seeing the result I had to admit, that I did not do a proper job. While some of its legs mutated other did not. This abomination could not move as well and was currently laying next to the previous test object.
Looking at my finger I realized, that I was quite lucky or unlucky, that the slime was not working on me anymore. Having just one big finger would look a bit strange and in combat, it would be very inefficient. But overall I am rather glad, that I can decide the way I want to develop. Instead of ending up so like those 2 fellas right next to me. But for the sake of their brethren, a sacrifice had to be made.
An interesting question would be, whether this kind of change only effects "living" beings or if the same kind of concept applies to every other thing made out of data. Covering the rock that was attached to me in slime. There was a distinctive increasing in weight, the more slime I put on it. That is a good way to further strengthen my body. The big disadvantage is the amount of data that needs to be converted before the slime is produced and the big amount of slime that is needed for a significant change like that. The more I know about this kind of ability, the more it scares me what happened during my training session. How much chaos did they cause, by getting me all that resources?
Some things are better left unanswered. But if that things affect "living" and data things the same, they were to happen if that stuff came into to contact with players. Magic in combination with steroids, if they were no threat to my life I would totally mess around with it. Just the pure image of all those mages with a biceps as big as thigh of a grown man running at me was quite a scary thought.
If the rocks were getting heavier, what kind of change would my hair get? With more than enough possible samples being around me, I began several tests to see how the properties would change and what possible use they could have.
After I conducted several tests to vary the extent of each change I came to the following conclusions. The art of the effect is limited by 2 factors, one is the positioning of the slime and the previous properties it had. If you only rub in the root of the hair, then there is no difference between any of the hairs. The whole hair becomes hard. But if you put in on a soft spot of the hair, the whole thing will go totally soft, the polar opposite property gets replaced.
But if this world is just anything like my old world still has to be bound by certain rules. If there is light, there has to be a shadow. On every reaction follows an equal and opposite reaction. Without a fundamental change, a material should be unable to have to exact opposite traits at the same time. That is why it is so reassuring to see, that even mutually exclusive properties do not influence the other effects. For example, hair can either soft or hard. But the ability to absorb liquids stays the same.
It really gets interesting when you use 2 different spots, with totally opposite properties. I had assumed that each of the properties would try and balance each other out. But instead, the properties took over half of the hai. I repeated this process several times, decreasing or increasing the amount of slime on each end to notice different effects. The effect strengthened or lessened with the proportionality of the ratio. This was not limited to the durability of the object, it was the same for the ability to absorb liquids as well.
To test this hypothesis all I had to do, was let one hair absorb a bit of my saliva and put the slimy substance on both ends before the water could spread. The result was a strange equilibrium out of one hydrophilic and one hydrophobic part. The only idea I can currently come up with is, that the slime is working as some kind of small buffer zone keeping both halves separated, while itself functions as a middle piece keeping the whole thing connected.
A connection between two parts that are not able to coexist. This statement stays still true, because even though it still looks to be "one" hair, now it is separated into two different sections.
I still find it quite strange, that the slime is able to strengthen the general properties on the surface, but is not able to change the properties on the macroscopical level. Because inside of me he was even able to do that, why is it unable to do the same for those bugs? Is that due to the effect of me and the bugs being in a symbiotic relationship? If that is the case, then their development is limited to the previous state the material was in. But if I were to coat, small skin particles on fine hair and use that tool to put a minuscule amount onto a small particle inside of the subject, if the process gets finer and finer I might be able to even influence the genes and genomes.
But that is all still up in the air. What I can say right now, is the that the slimy substance inside of me is going against the natural order, the same as my existence. My body is still a walking treasure trove, full of unexplained problems and possibilities. I get to know so much about this world, yet it feels like for each answered questions gets replaced by 2 mysteries. But all those problems and ideas will not get solved in just one day. So it is enough if I can keep them in my head and come back to them whenever I gather new useful knowledge later on.
What I have to do right is now, is improving my whole body and arsenal of weapons. Before I go and kidnap an NPC to dissect it, I need to be able to withstand a lot more damage or be able to deal a lot more, because it is nigh impossible to avoid fights with the way I am looking currently. If an NPC looks small rather petite grown adult, then I am just sticking out, no matter what I do.
Even if they think that I am an NPC and not a humanoid monster, I will end up getting attacked anyway, because those nutjobs live out their fantasies and toy with the NPCs if they find some in the wild. I have no clue, whether they feel the need to relieve their boredom or are just savouring the feeling of superiority, quite frankly I could not care less about the reason behind it. It is the same thing we humans would do in a gaming world. In their eyes, this world is not real, so bother with the feelings of data, if it can be replenished by pressing some buttons.
The biggest threat is that a village is the respawn point for the players, so no matter how many heads you got off another one will pop up sooner or later. My options to deal with that problem where a bit limited. I could either force a restart of the server if I cause enough mayhem, but that is just the last resort. I could try to sneak in and kill everyone that I see, but sooner or later I will have to have an all-out fight. As soon as anyone or anything saw me on the earth I get attacked.
The future was looking really grim, but still, there was a giant grin plastered on my face. Luckily I am not bound to be "on" the earth, with the help of my fingernails I can dig a nice tunnel. Though I have to test some ways, to stabilize the tunnel otherwise I will have no sense of direction down in the darkness. Furthermore, I need to find a source of light to secure my path otherwise I will end up going insane down there sooner or later. I do not want to end up having a friend called Wilson.
So first things first, where the hell does one even find a village of NPCs. Google Earth does not exist in this world, nor am I able to communicate and ask for directions. My best odds are to just think logically or to track the movements of players. This might be the famous needle in a haystack if I were to search for it normally.
Each fucking problem I solve I find another thing hindering me from accomplishing it, my previous life was really in easy mode. After venting a bit of my anger, I started being productive again and thought about possible solution while training my body once again. During the whole process, I Increased the weight until it reached double the weight. With a weight of nearly 90 kilogrammes, it was packing quite a punch once it is accelerated.
I did not increase the weight any further, simply due to the reason that amount of slime I had to put on it, was getting ridiculous. The expenditure got so high that as far as I can see, everything was gone for the production of new slime. And secondly, I need to have developed my muscles enough so I am still mobile enough.
It does not help that my body is getting bigger and bigger and I turn into a walking target. In all those stories the protagonist is able to suppress their muscles and remain looking like Greek gods. Instead, I am more and more turning into a monster rather than a normal human being. And I am not yet ready to lose my form.
Before I repeat the embarrassment of my eyes I began to pull out all the hairs that were keeping my body from healing and without any interruption the wound began to slowly heal. To end this training, I began another session of rock your body.
After my body once broke the limit of reason, I watched my surroundings and was quite shocked. Why did the surrounding soil look like a bloodbath took place here? No matter where I looked, everything was dyed in pure red. Looking back I did not remember causing such a mess after my last training session or did my metabolism increase once more?
I had a sudden flashback to the videos of childbirth and was reminded that those psychos would probably take a liking to this upon seeing it. But if I leave tracks like this every so often, I can throw caution in the wind and just invade a village. Sooner or later this will come back to bite me in the ass, but as long as I keep moving I hope that moment comes when I can defend myself against magic.
Until that moment comes I will be proficient in digging. So let me start by digging a hole.