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Chapter 64 - Meta Essence CYOA 64

Essence of the Negative

 The fluid in this essence looks almost like mercury or some kind of mirror-liquid, but your reflection in the liquid doesn't quite seem to match up to the real you. Drinking it causes a dreadful cold to ensnare your entire body for a moment. 

•You gain a one-time resculpt of your body within human limits. This can affect age, gender, appearance, physical statistics, and remove any physical or mental maladies that you wish gone.

•Upon consumption of the essence, the embodiment of some negative aspect of your being manifests within the world you are in. You may decide what negative aspect this being represents, whether it be doubt, fear, anger or even just all of your negative feelings, or let it be chosen at random. Even if you are a negatively-aligned being, traits that you would consider bad or 'negative' are the ones that can manifest. Notably, if you select the random option there is a high chance that the emotion selected will be a main inhibiting factor in many of your goals, whether directly or not.

•This negative being will always look like a version of you that has been twisted somehow, whether it be a simple color-change, or a demonic version, or some other change.

•This being will try and remove the problems that cause the majority of it's associated negativity, even if it means standing in the way of your goals, though it can eventually be convinced to stand aside with a sufficient show of logic and/or willpower. If you accept the aspect they represent and impress your will to continue on regardless, you might even convince them to join you. Still, with most major issues there will be multiple confrontations between you before either of these can happen, and with the latter there will definitely be some kind of climactic standoff.

•The negative being will have an inverted version of whatever powers and abilities you have, in addition to powers related to whatever negative aspect you have chosen. They will also gain matching powers as you get them, meaning that they will always be naturally stronger than you (but not unbeatably so) thanks to having access to their aspect as well. It will also manage to follow you wherever you go if you try and leave it behind.◦It can also become selectively intangible and imperceptible to everyone but you.

•This negative being is a part of you, and while it can have different opinions or perspectives on things, it will always remain aligned with you in some way. It might try and stop you from going on a quest because it thinks you aren't strong enough, for example. This also means that it cannot die as long as you still have the capacity for whatever negativity it represents; it'll just come right back as though it was just put to sleep instead.

•If you manage to get the negative being on your side, you'll not only be able to act and use your powers in perfect collaboration with eachother, but if your desires align well enough you'll be able to temporarily fuse together into a singular being with a power far greater than the sum of its parts. While this is happening, you will become two beings in one mind, able to communicate with a thought and feel what the other does seamlessly. The time you can spend like this is limited by how in-sync you are with your negative self, but there is no cooldown or tiredness associated with it. Repeatedly fusing is something you could easily do no matter how synced you are.◦If you become so synced that you are able to stay fused for a full day, you will be able to stay fused with your negative self perpetually. This will be heralded by a change in appearance of your fused self and another boost in combined power, to the point where your former fused self wouldn't stand a chance against you in this state. This form is your 'true self' and is considered as such by anything that identifies or uses the concept. You and your negative self will become one and the same, merging thought and consciousness and becoming whole in earnest.

Essence of the Omniscient Internet

 Upon drinking this blue potion with green circuit-like lines and flickering images, you taste what at first seems like poison but turns out to be cheap soda, and gain several effects:

○You can now access the internet from any device that can run an internet browser, regardless of whether it has internet access or proper input devices, and can use it as though it does have them.

○By browsing on the internet, you can find any information or file that you want as long as you search for long enough. The time it takes for you to find you target varies depending on how difficult it'd be to find out normally, but you are guaranteed to find at least something useful before your attention is completely taken by something else.

○If you just browse on the internet, you can find many strange and interesting artifacts and pets that you can buy that don't exist in your current universe in the form of seemingly shady sites that turn out to be legit. These things get delivered through mundane means but are guaranteed to arrive in pristine condition and never take longer than a week to arrive.

○As long as you are browsing the internet, you will never tire, nor will you grow harmfully hungry or thirsty, though you can feel the sensations of hunger and thirst still.

○Optionally, you can choose to immediately have a person-sized mirror delivered to you, which will grant you access to a parallel world in which everything and everyone is mirrored, by means of its mirror-world equivalent that your alternate self has just purchased.

Essence of the Recruiter

 By imbibing this cold ink and paper-flavored essence (based on Post-Apocalyptic Dispatch Company), you gain the following:

○You obtain a one-time resculpt of your body.

○You have naturally good luck, especially when it comes to meeting beings who are competent at jobs that would be helpful to you.

○You have the ability to communicate with all of your Employees, bypassing any language or basic understanding barrier that may be present.

○You can gain points by completing meaningful requests from people and employees. These requests will come in from employees regardless of if they are actually capable of asking or not, as long as they want something significant.

○You can 'hire' living beings as Employees for 100 Points.

■Employees must be Willing or in a Vulnerable position to hire, must be alive (undead and sentient inanimate beings count), and must be humanoid or capable of taking on a humanoid form. (Vulnerable means subdued or in a position to be subdued immediately (i.e: Unconscious or Weakened and Grappled))

■Hired Employees are compelled to listen to your orders when given, and are given a baseline level of loyalty that means they won't try and escape your employment or attack you without you ordering such or the under 20% Affection penalty activating.

■Employees gain enough intelligence to understand speech, and have a partial mind restoration that allows them to function if their mind has degraded to the point of being unable to function correctly. Note that this only include enough ability for them to function as an Employee, meaning if they are mentally inhibited from doing other things such as speak then they won't be granted the capability from this alone.

■You can gain loyalty from Employees by completing requests from employees and doing good things for them.

■Affection and Promotion both positively influence the Employee's relationship with you, within reason.

■Employees that would be unable to feel emotion will be granted a basic level of emotion, even if they don't comprehend it.

■Affection can reduce if the Employee is neglected and/or mistreated, and repeated or continuous mistreatment can sever the Employment entirely.

■Employees undergo a slight 'fix-up' transformation to make their bodies stable and fully functional, which can cause cosmetic changes. (i.e: zombies have weak spots and weak limbs stitched up, bodily damage restored and life partially restored to prevent decay)

■If an Employee's needs are neglected, their physical statistics and skills may weaken (or, in the case of certain skills, be completely unusable) depending on how severely the needs are neglected.

■'Employee Meals', a special item that satiates all of an employee's needs regardless of what they actually require, can be earned through quests, as a prize in the gacha, or by exchanging 100 points.

■Employees have skill slots, of which they start with one, and gain one slot per 30% loyalty.

■Upon gaining a skill slot, 3 options will be given for skills to fill it. These skills can be passive or active, but will always relate to their nature or abilities in some way and will always be a significant boon.

■You may have the Employee showcase the effect of each skill once before you decide on one, even if it's a passive skill.

■Once you have more than one Employee, you will gain Employee Perception, allowing you to detect the locations of all employees and read both the minds and emotions of all Employees with over 20% loyalty.

■Employees that haven't undergone Promotion and are under 20% loyalty can sometimes misidentify you as a target and attack when ordered to attack.

■Upon reaching 100% loyalty, an Employee will undergo 'Staff Promotion', transforming into a more powerful state, and their loyalty will reset to 10%, but they will keep previously gained skill slots. This may or may not cause physical changes, but if it does then it will be entirely positive changes that are acceptable to the Employee.

■Promotions that affect the form of the Employee can also affect the skills that they gain afterwards, depending on what has changed about them.

■Prospective Employees, upon deciding to agree to work with you temporarily, can be placed in a Temporary Employment Contract. This doesn't modify their mind in any way, it doesn't allow them to increase in loyalty, nor does it let them gain any skills after the first, but it grants them the fix-up transformation, their first skill, and allows for Employee Perception and Collaboration Mode to be used with them as the target.

■The Employee can leave the contract at any time they wish.

■The fix-up transformation stays even after the employment ends, but the skill does not.

■You can, at will, activate Collaboration Mode, allowing you to use the physical attributes and skills of any one employee. In a situation where you are in serious danger, this mode will activate automatically with the Employee best suited to escape the danger.

■You can assign a long-term, overarching goal as a 'Main Questline', and smaller goals that meaningfully contribute to that long-term goal will be the individual quests in that questline. These quests will always be avaliable to complete unless there is a time factor in some of the goals set, or it has been failed entirely, and will always grant at least 100 points.

■The Main Questline can shift and change depending on your knowledge and priorities, especially if the overarching goal changes.

■The Main Questline quests, in addition to points, can also grant Gacha Tickets.

■100 Points can be converted into a Gacha Ticket.

■Gacha Tickets can be spent in order to roll an item gacha, which can grant any item or item group, but is slightly biased towards items that are considered helpful but not overpowered, such as decent quality weapons, crystals that grant insight into the memories of your Employees and let you receive a new quest or favorite foods that may boost loyalty with certain Employees.

■Items obtained through gacha can have modifiers that add, change or boost attributes of the items.

■The item's rarity is dictated by a color that is shown as the item is summoned: White for common, Yellow for uncommon, Green for semi-rare, Blue for rare, Purple for epic, Orange for legendary, and Red for unique.

■You can unlock other features as you advance along your Main Questline; A Map, Inventory, Personal Shop, etc.

■Once you drink this Essence, you may choose to Reincarnate into a chosen setting, or a generic supernatural apocalypse setting.

Essence of the Sophont Power

 By drinking this pink liquid in a brain-shaped pitcher, you can modify certain other essences.

○You can choose to grant any energy, ability or item that you own, even ones that are provided by other essences, true sentience, as well as decide the nature of that sentience (e.g.: Artificial Intelligence, Bound Souls, Manifestation of Power, etc.).

■The relationship between you and the sentience(s) is whatever you want it to be, and you can choose for them to have any knowledge that you want them to have even if you don't have that knowledge yourself.

■If you wish, they will be irrevocably loyal and incapable of abandoning you.

■You may choose how the 'ownership' of your powers works between you and the sentience(s), whether they have the authority to deny you access to certain powers or slow/halt their growth, whether it's you or them that controls the direction that certain powers grow in (if they can be directed), and you can even give them the option of fleeing your grasp entirely.

■You may also give the sentience(s) partial authority over your body, but not complete authority as you will always be able to reclaim it even if the sentience(s) take over completely.

■You may grant the sentience(s) authority over parts of the ability that would normally be out of your control, such as making them able to direct an automatically adaptive ability towards certain adaptations or halt the process entirely.

■If you have an inner world, you can also choose how much influence the sentience(s) have over it as well.

■You can give the sentience(s) a way of manifesting an avatar for themselves, whether that be a partial manifestation through expressions of the granted power (like Undine and Necro from Guilty Gear), a human transformation, or some other method.

■You may also choose to have an inner world that you may enter and exit at will. If you have this, then all of the sentience(s) you have made with this essence will be present within, as long as you still have contact with them.

■You may choose what contact the sentience(s) have with the outside world, whether it be through your own senses, through the sensory abilities of whatever power or item they represent, or other methods.

Essence of the Streamer

By drinking a vial of blue liquid with golden streaks running through it, you've set yourself up as a Streamer.

●You gain a one-time resculpt of your body within human limits. This can affect age, gender, appearance, physical statistics, and remove any physical or mental maladies that you wish gone.

●You can now choose to Livestream certain moments in your life through an autonomous, ethereal floating camera that can't be interfered with by anything you don't wish for it to be and can record any interface. It automatically assumes the ideal positioning and angles based on what you would want and/or what would look best to the viewers, though you can control it manually as well.

○You control when the camera records, what the camera records, where the recorded footage is saved, what filtering/censorship is placed on the stream, when advertisements play, and any other options you could control on a standard livestream. These options can be changed in real time, or you can set up conditions that will trigger changes automatically when met (e.g: automatically censoring gore or nudity when present).

○You are able to see through the camera whenever you wish, as though it is an additional eye.

●You may have the metrics of the Streams (e.g: Viewer Count, Like/Dislike Count/Ratio, Ad Views, Subscriptions, etc.) have tangible benefits, whether they feed into power sources such as Ki or Magic, grant money or items, give temporary or permanent bonuses, or other benefits.

○You can have different sources give different benefits, with linear, non-linear or milestone progression, and also decide when and under what conditions these benefits are granted (e.g: Viewer Count only being active when Live, and granting Ki directly proportional to the number of viewers currently present).

●You may choose to have any livestream you record placed on any site that allows for livestreams, and even have your own site accessible from places outside of your current world.

○You may choose the worlds that your site is avaliable to, either by picking specific worlds (including creating your own and choosing that), applying it to any world with a general descriptor such as 'fantasy', or placing conditions on access to the site itself.

○You can choose who is able to stream on your site (or how such a thing is decided), what functions of the site they have access to and place rules on when and what people can stream on the site. These conditions may be enforced by direct punishments, account penalties, or by restricting or removing access to the site entirely.

■You can also make your ethereal camera a native function of the site if you wish others to be able to use it.

○You may influence the demographics that your site is popular with within the settings it is avaliable in, as long as it makes feasible sense why it would be popular (or not). This is not an absolute effect, but works well with other factors to build up from.

○You can choose how the donation system functions and what is eligible for donation; you could have a coin system that allows the streamer to boost their attributes, allow certain viewers to send in useful artifacts (or convert said artifacts into a monetary donation directly), or even let the viewers pay to interfere with the streamer in various ways.

○You decide how the server infrastructure of the site functions, whether there exists physical servers somewhere or if its hosted somewhere non-physical like in the background radiation of the omniverse, the collective unconscious, the very concept of livesteams itself, or some other potentially omnipresent existence. You can also replace this infrastructure with all of the data saved if it is somehow damaged or destroyed.

■Of course, this server infrastructure decides things such as server capacity, but you may adjust an otherwise infinite, untouchable infrastructure down to more normal levels or force stability onto an inherently unstable infrastructure whenever you wish.

○You may actively browse the entirety of the website you are hosting on in your mind as though you are logged on from a computer, with all of the functions therein.