A rancid air blew out of my lips, a feeling of weakness and weightlessness came over my body as I seemed to float in a mucus that covered my body. Everything felt stiff from head to toe, my eyes being heavier than stone as I somehow breathed in and out. A deep white mist was coming from my mouth as each breath was highly labored, this phenomenon was happening to my body here as well as my physical body that was laying down.
Memories flashed into my head from time to time, a painful experience as shelves in my memory palace were forcefully created. Each bookcase falling on the current ones mixing together into a mess of books before they started to organize themselves. Thousands of books filled areas that were previously empty, imagery and smells that were unfamiliar to me started to gradually become my own as books removed themselves from their shelves, opening as the pages quickly turned.
My memories were being forcefully organized and cataloged like some godly librarian was going through each book and placing them where they needed to go. Each second was confusing as two identities slowly merged into one through an excruciating process.
"My name is Alexander/Nikolai, my father is an inventor/general. My mother is dead/alive!"
Two voices yelled out in defiance inside my head until they slowly started to become a harmonious piece. It felt like the beginnings of an orchestra that had just added a new instrument to the group, eventually settling into a beautiful piece of sheet music resulting in a new sheet from the first. Complete and incomplete in a beautiful symphony that only I could hear from chaos came order.
"We were Alexander, we are now Nikolai."
The process was painful beyond words, but in the end, the new memories felt like a continuation after my first death rather than someone else's memories. It felt as though my past life was always with me, and that something somewhere had triggered their awakening at this very moment. That something was probably the high amounts of poison flowing through my body at this very moment. It was a link, an ending point of both sets of memories that tied them both together.
Nikolai was a child that in the end couldn't live in a world such as this, his studious nature had made him rather book smart but he lacked common sense. In this new world strong overpowered the weak, no matter how smart they were, as was the case here. Both lives he had been poisoned, he was supposed to be dead by now but his body that he been slowly adjusted to poisons from his own testing had merely fallen into a deep coma, only to awake as someone with two sets of memories, two existences tied by the red string of fate.
In this state my mind had slowly adjusted, shifting through each memory digesting each moment as it was a huge mess at first. Unlike before, now Nikolai's and Alexander's books were separated and categorized by the mysterious force from before. This process took a lot of time but when I was done my mind felt clear once more as the last book hit the shelf.
Two sets of memories to make one person, I am Nikolai now since that's what people perceive me as in this world. To refer to myself though, I'll continue doing what I had done in the past when I was in the game, I am Crowley. This is what the system called me either way, and it felt right to call my dual existence another name.
As soon as I made that declaration in my mind a screen appeared in front of me glowing a soft blue.
'Welcome Crawley to the Progenitor System.
Rewards are being calculated from first life:
Conversion: Able to convert poison in one's body to a more suitable form, uses will come with later with expansions to the System.
Memories: You have access to the memories of Alchemist Artephius's work dealing with his alchemical work.
Book: The content of the Book of Herbal Medicine will be added to your memory palace and available to read at any time.
Starting Package: You have gained an S ranked starter package that will be opened once you finish selecting attributes for your Subjects.'
A new bookshelf slammed itself into existence in my memory palace as these words started to appear in front of me. A harsh wind coming from the collision as the bookshelf groaned in annoyance. These books were however highly organized so I didn't have to spend time working them into the current system. It stood out amongst the dark redwood that the other shelves were made of, as this seemed to be some sort of ancient yellow oak, dried by years of little to no care. Each book seemed worn, their leather bindings barely holding them together, every page dyed brown or yellow with age. With it, it brought the smells of mold and time, reminding me of the attic of my grandmother's house which I played.
Before I could walk to them however a light flashed and there was a pedestal added to the scenery as well. The prestine marble looked like it should be in some theater somewhere for a play about Julius Caesar. In stark contrast to the book shelf it looked new, sparkling with a radience that only layers of polish could provide.
On it was an even more impressive book, with golden edges to each page, and about three foot in height. The leather bindings were stitched with golden thread and an amount of glue that would make an elementary kid sick. The cover of the book was black polished leather with silver letters, "The Book of Ultimate Healing written by a mortal god for lesser people to get confused by his insights into herbalism."
'Poison Conversion in process, estimated time until revival of body 2 months, 4 days, 10 hours.'
My face scrunched up as I saw the numbers, and I sat down in my memory palace. Being a bunch of bookshelves in a nondescript place this place could make one go insane if you spent too much time here, if not from isolation then from boredom. People had had irreparable damage done to their minds in just days when they were subject to solitary confinement and I didn't like my odds.
Humans, even the antisocial ones, were animals that required a community to function. From what I had seen from videos on the matter the only way to not break down in an environment like this was to keep yourself busy and occupied so you didn't lose yourself in isolation.
There was only one thing that I could think of doing inside of my mental palace and that was to build upon it to create something more comfortable. Make myself believe that I was somewhere else rather than stuck in my own mind since I doubted that reading books would keep me distracted for two whole months.
I raised my hands like I was preparing an orchestra with a baton, imagining even finer details into the world around me. Smells, images, and sounds flickered momentarily across my mind as things started to take shape around me.
Walls started to appear out of the ether, the shelves moving by themselves against the walls making everything the same dark rosewood of the shelves in his father's study. This was the most vivid memory I had of anything close to a full library I could think of, and it was years old.
Two large slabs of wood fell down making themselves into giant doors, filled with images of Apollo, as he was the God of intellect. Orbs of light shaped like miniature suns to praise him as well, with rotating glass to make it seem like superheated gasses.
Candlelight flickered in areas where I could sit on cushioned seats to read upon the polished wood tables. All in all it gave a feeling of an old library, a second floor filled with blank books gave the feeling that there was much more to explore. Tapestries around the place featuring ravens across all of it, the materials being red, gold, and black for the ravens, started to uncurl from the guard rails.
Turning around with my hands held high, I yelled out, "Praise the sun!" As the last tapastry fell into place.
Nodding in approval at the professional interior I walked to the door, pressing them outwards into a forest from my memories. The library is the only building around, the entrance to the library was very grand with polished marble and two stone pythons standing at the entrance.
The forest itself stretched for as the eye could see in an intimate sea of green and browns, their leaves oddly still since I could not imagine every leaf affected by the wind. It was beautiful, like a painting but just as lifeless as one which made me sigh.
'Small World Established +50 resources'
'For making part of your mind palace into a temple of Apollo he calls you an idiot but gives you his blessing in return. Your ability to learn new things is increased, doubly so for ranged weapons, but you will never be able to hold a discus, and your beard will never grow.'
'Favorability with Apollo: +10'
"What? Why did Apollo curse me so?" I touched my chin, frowning as it would always be just as smooth forever.
'Favorability of Apollo: -1'
'From the Soil Program Implemented'
The forest in front of me suddenly became alive, the sound of insects filled the air, as birds slowly started taking to the sky. Movements from out of the corner of my eye could be seen as small animals darted through the shadows. The stagnant air around me now crisp with a breeze and the smell of fresh soil, and vegetation around me.
In awe, I took a look around me, and it looked as though the forest had been here thousands of years. Dead leaves across the ground, moss upon their bark, old trees, and new spouts as far as I could see. The scene was truly breathtaking, a perfect image of natural beauty around me that was ever expanding with new things as I watched.
'Racial Menu Open:
Pick Attributes for Starting Race:
150 points available.'
With a confusion I saw a list appear in front of me of traits that this race could have. A seemly endless group of words that encompassed every word I could think of to describe something living. Everything from single-celled costing one point, to the most expensive option of 30,000 points being Omnipresent. There were negative traits as well, one of them caught me off guard as just being called 'Useless' which had the same negative value as Omnipresent did positive.
"I can make something useless that is omnipresent? So something living that is everywhere at once that can't do anything.." with a doubtful look I ignored the most outlandish things on the list. I didn't know if I was going to get a second chance at this, nor what influence it would have in the future. With a serious look over the traits, I slowly started to narrow down my selections to a few dozen.
Manifesting a piece of paper I started to list out positives and negatives of each feature that interested me. Narrowing down each took some time until I had a fairly comprehensive list for optimizing the race that would be created. This was something like the swarm that I was once in charge of as Crowley, and I took heavy influence from them.
Adaptable (50) - Their bodies can easily adapt to different environments, and roles.
Larval Birth (-50) - Unlike having a parent protect them, or an egg to defend them they are defenseless against the elements and creatures at birth.
Big (-10) - Downgrade of Larval Birth, this makes their bodies large and vulnerable making them targets for predators.
Evolution (25) - Able to evolve into higher forms. Discounted since most races have this in this world.
Consuming (25) - Upgrade to evolution, able to gain traits from eating other creatures and use them for evolutionary paths.
Fast Growth (25) - Upgrade to evolution there is no cooldown between evolutions.
Hive Mind (5) -Share a hive mind structure taking orders from a specialized creature.
Controlled Evolution (45) - Upgrade of the hive mind, the hive can choose the evolution path of the subjects.
Genetic Storage (10) - Upgrade to a hive mind, all traits gained will be sent to those in control of the hive mind, allowing them to share it across the species.
Fast Reproduction (0) - Making the birth stage more vulnerable you can increase the output of children.
Insectoid (0) - Known for their outer protection, this has been breached they suffer greatly.
Psionic (5) - Have increased capabilities of the mind, able to lift and pull things half their weight with no training.
Natural Healing (10) - Each point invested will increase the healing speed.
Magic Potential (10) - Able to grow a core, this core will improve the body and allow access to magic with training or evolution.
The race was meant to be weak during its beginning stages like a caterpillar, but be easy to replace. With explosive growth in the first couple of stages to make up for their very weak start. This would allow me to create many different starting stages for the creatures to be specialized in very unique tasks. If I could find a way to implement it, I need to find out how to evolve them into biological weapons to be used by others if their race as well.
With a satisfied nod, I look over my options a few more times before finalizing the results. Four grub-like creatures plopped in front of me as they wiggled around, seemingly playful like puppies as they pressed up against my leg. Their bodies were the size of a fully grown chicken that had been rolled around in lard just to make a white gelatinous mess of flesh and fat.
The grubs started to wiggle, and clumps of dirt started flying in the air, worms and other small insects flew into their slimy mouths which they crushed between two muscles masses gumming the smaller creatures to death into paste. Honestly, it was the most amazing and disgusting thing I had ever seen, a mixture of magic and Lovecraftian horror in its own right.
'Traits Acquired: Mandibles, Wings, Multi-Legged, Eyes, Building, Hardened Shell, Poison, Photosynthesis, Plant, Water Absorbtion.
Death: One Larva has died to poison.'
Looking at the four wiggling grubs I noticed one had stopped moving, he had died eating a plant that was around it. Not even two minutes since birth and one had already killed itself, their flawed nature even worse than I thought. Noticing the death of their brother/sister, they immediately began a war with the defenseless plants around them.
Clumps of dirt and plants were thrown about in an angry psionic tantrum, this lasted a good five minutes before they all tired out. One of them was even resting on the corpse, slowly munching on it, getting bigger than the rest at a noticeable speed.
'Opening Starting Package!'
A message appeared, and a box appeared in front of me wrapped up in a beautiful red bow, as the bow unraveled itself a progress bar started. As it unraveled the sound of trumpets slowly got louder in a very festive tune.
It ticked forward but froze at 99% the bow now in a complete knot, the knot trying to untangle itself several times before falling flat, the trumpets stopping abruptly.
Wondering if I should help untie the knot, the box started to shake around before finally a pair of scissors appeared cutting the ribbons. In a flash, the scissors vanished like they were never there in the first place. I gave a doubtful look to the box as blue boxes started popping up one by one.
Before I could read the boxes they all closed, and a game show voice started yelling at me from the once ribboned box. It's body jumping around in excitement which scared the grubs, their little bodies trying to wiggle away from the horrifying box.
"Gained Ability: Fusion!
Gained 2 Evolution Templates
Gained 1 Queen Upgrade
Gained 1 Pair of Observation Goggles
Gained 1 Companion Upgrade
Gained 1 Weapon Upgrade Voucher
Fusion: You've seen some useless skills out there, like the ability to open cans. Now with this option, you can trade away those useless abilities and in turn, make a fused one! Each trait can only be fused once, this does not get rid of the starting traits. Individual results may vary.
Evolution Template: Add traits together to make a customized evolution for target creature. A new evolution path will be added based on your choices. Act now supplies limited!
Queen Upgrade: What's a hive mind without a Queen? Upgrade target creature into Queen, gender not guaranteed.
Observation Goggles: Over 9000? Now you can check! See rankings of certain aspects of creatures.
Companion Upgrade: Create a creature that can be your buddy or pal. Notice: Please don't name him Dogmeat.
Weapon Upgrade Voucher: Creation magic makes you the master of kitchen cutlery! Make those knives sharper, or your spoon rounder with the weapon upgrade voucher!"
The Evolution Template was the item I was most interested in, looking through the traits I found that I might be able to create a harvester unit with the right manipulation. First, though I'd have to take a risk.
'Fuse Building and Evolution.'
'Structure Evolution Trait Gained!'
'Fuse Big and Hardened Shell'
'Gastropod Shell Trait Gained'
'Fuse Psion and Mandibles'
'Mental Mandibles Trait Gained'
'Structure Evolution: Evolve unit into a living structure made for a specific purpose. Role is chosen during construction. Sacrifices the creature to create the living building.'
'Gastropod Shell: This is a heavy shell that is held upon the back of most Gastropods, this shell protects against many things including dehydration.'
'Mental Mandibles: Body and mind at work, able to lift a hundred times their body weight.'
Since I didn't want to create a queen just yet until I had more traits, I needed something to be able to breed more offspring. Once numbers stabilize I'd be able to work on the other issues, like having my first attacking unit. I currently didn't have the traits to make a proper attacking unit yet though.
'Gastropod Shell, Mental Mandibles, Structure Evolution, Eyes, Multi-legged added to the template.'
The one that had completely consumed the dead larva was the only one currently that could evolve, without any cooldown I immediately selected to evolve him. Three choices were available, the first allowing the larva to become an even bigger larva that could spit a sticky web at people. The second turned the creature into a large floating blue shell that could slam its body into things and explode with a mass of mana.
Choosing the third option which was the evolution template, the larva made a cocoon around itself with sticky blue mucus that slowly hardened around its body creating a crystalline shell. With its coiled body, the crystal was about four feet in length, and two feet high meaning the creature that came out would be rather big. I was hoping that the creature would have very powerful survival capabilities, as without something to protect them they'd be rather useless.
I had noticed birds of prey flying through their air, and I could only imagine what was inside the forest. Bears, boars, wolves or worse, could be there that would just tear into these little guys, and if I'm going to be doing anything in these two months besides taking care of them I need them to not die to the next flower that they eat.
Not knowing how long the evolution process would take, I started to try and work on my creation magic. Known as one of the crappiest affinities when it came to magic due to the need to split time and resources on multiple types of training. One only had enough time and talent usually to master one or two things in their lifetime, and mages always needed to experiment to grow their spells and mana pools.
Creation magic was very simply the creation of items with magical properties through the mixture of various elements. These objects couldn't be lent to others as they required a constant draw of mana from the body to work or they'd merely be a regular object with no magical properties. Even with just that, many crafters in the world were actually users of creation magic since they could forge a sword in minutes as opposed to hours, though fine craftsmanship still took knowledge and ability.
Later stages of creation magic allowed the magic to stray further away from the magician. This allowed them to create things like golems, or bows with enchanted arrows, but this outlined their weakness, ranged ability and their reliance on the physical body since they needed to be in the middle of the battlefield to be of any use.
Creation magic was on the same tier as buffing magics that enhanced one's physical body to most magicians, a universal set of spells that anyone could learn. They enhanced, and eventually improved the human body through a constant flow of mana. This was the same technique as monsters used, so while they called themselves warriors, magicians simply called them tamed beasts.
I didn't see this as worthless as they thought, they just didn't have the right mindset to utilize the full capabilities of this power. With a bit of experimentation, I started to make what would be one of my main weapons since ranged abilities would be increased under my blessing. Without the ability to create arrows that were enchanted I thought of a novel idea that people from my world had used to create their own sort of magic.
Since my proficiency with creation magic was low I had to create a series of parts, and I needed to use materials that were around me. Luckily I didn't need to mine for them or filter through various things, I placed my hand on the ground and let my mana flow through it.
'Materials available: Iron, Bronze, Granite, Obsidian, Pumice...'
The list went on for quite some time, but I got what I needed making them into small cubes of material around me ready to turn into the objects I needed. Adjusting carbon, and manganese content I created flexible durable steel to be used as a spring. Adding more carbon, I made a less bendable version of the steel to be used for a pressurized container with a pump.
Various bits and pieces started to line up around me as I moved my hand to slowly assemble them. First, the handle with a realize mechanism, followed by a series of tubes and pipes. Screws were unnecessary I found out, as I could just fuse the two materials together. After what felt like several hours of work a stance looking rifle was in my hands.
Sadly there weren't any of the necessary ingredients for gunpowder around me, but I did have knowledge of airpressure. So air pressure and metal pellets would have to be my go to until I find something more suitable.
Adding certain properties to the weapon through magic supercharged the device, an enchantment of air allowed the pressure to build up much higher than it should, making it easier to make each pump of the airgun. Along the inside, it gathered up a static charge slowly a light turning on every few seconds until fully charged. A button against the handle would allow the full charge to be added to a pellet before it left the chamber.
My days as Crowley when I was gaming actually gave me familiarity With a variety of weapons. Even though I ended up going with blades, in the end, I still practiced with guns since they were part of the world. Most weren't as useful as you increased in level though, as when your body got more powerful a gun didn't, but a sword or bow would.
The gun was what made the weak able to kill the strong, but once your body was overwhelmingly strong the weak are just weak once more.
"Now, once the first evolves its time to get these two to evolve. I can't sit here watching them until they all choke their own saliva." I created a holster along my back and slid the rifle into it, smiling at the forest in front of me.
A sharp breaking noise was heard behind me as a set of mandibles broke through the outer crystal. Pushing through the crack the worker shook off the last of the shattered pieces before roaring into the sky. Sadly, as tough as it wanted to be since it was still an insect with limited lung space and no vocal cords it came out as a high pitched whine.
The drone, standing tall was about four feet in height, and looked much like a hermit crab. Much of its larval fat had been burned off into a coat of armored exoskeleton, and its legs looks much like a spider's. With a shake of its body it looked around at the other two larvae and snapped its mandibles as it jumped from side to side as if to gloat, it's two small bead-like eyes shining with happiness.