Ash And Silence

As the euphoria of evolution faded I took a second to look over my new body before checking out my new stats, marginally less phased by the unexpected mutation the second time I'd gotten one.

I was only marginally larger than before, though I had become sleeker by far. My claws were longer and sharper, the evolution seeming to have restored me to full health and brought my broken claws with it. My wormlike tail now ended in a sleek, three inch blade. My fur was just as infinitely black as before, though now it seemed to almost have an unnatural depth to it the longer I stared at it; I only realised I had been staring gormlessly into my own fur for nearly a minute when the distant twinkling of stars began to dance in the endless dark of my form.

Shaking off the stupor I nearly fell into, I took a look at my new stats to see exactly how I had mutated.

Name: Whitetail

Race: Star Lit Ninja Plague Rat (Blight)

Level: 6/50

Cultivation: Restless Darkness

EXP: 22/50

HP: 20/20

SP: 12/12

MP: 19/19

Strength: 21

Agility: 22

Endurance: 97

Wisdom: 13

Intelligence: 30

Charisma: 2

Will: 14

Perception: 22

Fortune: 35

Points: 300

Perks:

Blighted: Your very essence is infused with pestilence. While this soul deep corruption influences your mind towards darker pursuits and actions, it can also be brought to the surface to add the Blight to your magical and physical attacks. It corrupts your flesh and blood, making your every cell deadly to consume. Godsblood runs through your veins, and now it has noticed you. He is watching.

Sociopathic Tendencies: You have muted emotions. Resistant to emotional attacks.

Unnatural Empath: You have been bathed in the projected feeling of others and have picked up the ability to detect the emotions of others to an extent. Increased vulnerability to emotional attacks.

Paranoid: You are suspicious of everything, even yourself. Total awareness of your own condition and access to the passive skill: Paranoia. Stealth bonus to enemies nullified; you cannot be taken by surprise.

Cast Iron Stomach: You can digest almost anything with no repercussions.

Shadowy: Fur appears as if made of shadow and even in direct light your outline appears blurred as if you were hidden in shadow. Improves darkness affinity.

Black Eyed: Your eyes are pitch black and capable of piercing even supernatural darkness as if it were bathed in the light of dawn.

Ninja: Cannot be seen when concealed in darkness. Grants the skill: NInja Vanish.

Star Lit: Bathed in the power of a star, you forever carry the essence of starlight within you. When gazed upon for long, the viewer will begin to see bewitching stars within your visage.

Skills:

Death Roll: Lvl 1: Can shake bladed attacks to inflict wider wounds and cause bleeding. Increase wound size and damage by 5% and adds a 10% chance to inflict bleed. Blade must be embedded in target flesh for 1 second to activate. Costs 5 SP

Night Vision: Lvl 10: You can see perfectly in near no light conditions.

Dark Vision: Lvl 10: You can see perfectly in absolute darkness.

Piercing Dark Vision: Lvl 10: You can pierce even the strongest mystical darkness effortlessly.

Stealth: Lvl 5: Increases your ability to move quietly and conceal your presence. 200% damage bonus to unaware enemies.

Bend Shadow: Lvl 1: You can exert slight control over existing darkness, primarily to further hide yourself or distract others. Cost 2 MP per second of use doubled by every foot of Shadow manipulated.

Scent Scrubber: Lvl 10: You can mask your scent for one hundred minutes.

Scent Killer: Lvl 1: By scrubbing yourself down thoroughly you can remove your scent completely. Lasts ten minutes.

Observe: Lvl 5: You can see basic information about a subject simply by staring at and observing it.

Throat Ripper: Lvl 1: Attacks aimed for the throat and neck deal 10% more damage and have a 25% additional flat chance to cause bleeding.

Gnaw: Lvl 1: Rapid bites that gradually tear away at just about anything. Allows you to bite twice for every actual bite at a cost of 1mp per bite.

Sprint: Lvl 1: Increases running speed by 25% at the cost of 2 SP per second.

Tunnel Sense: Lvl 2: Allows you to somewhat orient yourself whilst in tunnels and kinda remember where you've been.

Paranoia: Lvl 15: Passively gives total awareness of space fifteen feet around you.

Pain Resistance: Lvl 8: Your sense of pain is lessened noticeably and you are able to operate as normal even when under marginal duress. Does not affect other physical senses such as touch.

Poison Resistance: Lvl 1: You have a one percent resistance to all poisons.

Fire Resistance: Lvl 8: You have a eight percent resistance to burns and high temperatures in general.

Danger Sense: Lvl 3: Allows you to sense threats in the area and get some impression of how dangerous they are.

Ninja Vanish: Lvl 1: Allows you to teleport one foot in a poof of smoke. Smoke does not appear when concealed in darkness.

Hate Engine: Lvl 1: Allows you to empower your body with the flames of rage and hatred, driving you forth even through debilitating injury or exhaustion. Energy boost lasts one minute and leaves you cripplingly exhausted for ten minutes after.

Titles:

Cannibal: You have consumed the flesh of your own kind. Others of your race will feel uncomfortable around you but you now gain a permanent 10% bonus damage against your race.

Giant Slayer: You killed something at least thrice your size and at least two evolutions above yours. 33% damage boost against those higher level than you and those larger than you.

Self-Named: You chose your own name. 10% damage resistance from all sources and immunity to mind binding magic.

Saboteur: You killed something by strategically destroying the environment. 20% increased damage to secondary effects and shrapnel.

Deathwalker: You have died before, and came out the other side colder. Your soul is forever chilled by the void and your hold on your body is much tighter yet much more distant than ever before. You can survive being below 0 Health for some time before the void reclaims you and you actually die. Your body is forever colder than natural. Grants an affinity for the Void.

Plague Bringer: You have deliberately infected another with a disease. 20% increased potency of biological weapons and 10% increased potency of chemical weapons.

Glancing over my new skills, I contemplated how I could best utilize them to keep me alive for a short moment before turning my gaze back to the top of the list. I focused intently on my new race, pondering what exactly this meant for me for a long moment. To my surprise, the racial description presented during evolution popped back up.

Star Lit Ninja Plague Rat: A true master of rat stealth, these are the closest thing to deadly most people would ever consider a normal sized rat; even managing to rarely kill lone adventurers. In shadow they simply cannot be seen even by the keenest of eyes. They can teleport short distances in puffs of smoke (puffs do not appear when traveling from one shadow to another). Their teeth and claws are razor sharp and their long tails end in a short (roughly three inch) blade. This one has bathed in the power of a star and been forever stained with starlight, those who gaze too long at it may find themselves lost in that field of bewitching stars trapped within.

That is a much more esoteric change than I was expecting. Stained by starlight, eh? I glanced down at my restored paw, tearing my eyes away when distant lights began to appear in the dark once again. This could be a very useful distraction, though I don’t intend to fight anyone head to head long enough for the effect to kick in.

If I get my way, most of my “fights” will end in the opening strike.

I’d be concerned about starlight dancing in my fur giving away my position if it didn’t seem to be more of an optical illusion and didn’t take a few seconds of consecutive staring to activate. Besides, I’m supposedly straight up invisible in darkness.

Not that I’d ever trust something like that.

Paranoia +1

Fuck off.

Setting aside my concerns of forever losing the ability to be stealthy, I set my eyes on that delicious stack of points sitting pretty under my stats.

Apparently, the Experience I had gained while unable to level further had been automatically applied after I evolved. Convenient, I suppose. More importantly, I had gained the points of all those levels.

All three hundred of them.

I nearly drowned on my own metaphorical saliva thinking about having that many points available at once. The thought of saving them for a desperate time or for when training became difficult flashed through my mind for an instant before the pleasure of improving burned such concerns away.

The very first thing I did was bring my Endurance up to one hundred, taking a moment to revel in the sensation as my body became more durable. I was only mildly surprised to receive a perk for reaching that milestone; I had been somewhat expecting such rewards at fifty, but one hundred was no true shock. Honestly, I was more inclined to believe a system like this wouldn't be likely to reward such things at all.

For attaining 100 Endurance, you have gained the perk: Like Sand

I raised an eyebrow and took a look at the new perk. A quick read through the description was enough to tell me this wasn't the generic perk I was expecting; it was far too personalised and very blatantly based on my own actions.

Like Sand: Your every cell acts as a grain of sand in some great desert, absorbing and redirecting blunt force trauma. You take thirty percent less damage from blunt attacks but feel the pain over more of your body.

Sand… I rather think I hate sand. It seems these attribute based perks function similarly to the mutations of an evolution, apparently being based on notable events. My mind flew back to drowning in grey sand that leeched the heat from my bones, that same panic ever so briefly shuddering down my spine.

Yes, I'm decidedly not fond of sand.

Throwing off the nasty memory, I raised my Strength and Agility to one hundred each. I don't think I'll ever get tired of that feeling, the surging, burning power that reshaped my flesh and made me fundamentally better than before. It left me with a lingering, pulsing feeling of indescribable energy, a fading pleasure I desired more than any drug I'd ever taken.

Two more notifications drew my dazed thoughts back to reality.

For attaining 100 Dexterity, you have gained the perk: Bones Of Mist

For attaining 100 Strength, you have gained the perk: Heavy Weight

Mist and weight, huh? I’m beginning to think this system is deliberately antagonising me, probably trying to drive me mad by never allowing me to forget my trauma.

Paranoia +1

Telling me I’m being paranoid when I question you isn’t going to convince me I’m wrong to do so.

When I didn’t receive yet another point for paranoia I shrugged off my discontent and took a glance at my new perks.

Bones Of Mist: Your bones are like mist and you may bend as such with an effort of will.

Heavy Weight: For the purposes of melee attacks, you weigh tenfold as much as normal.

Reading over my new perks a few more times just to be sure, I took a glance out the few holes in the rubble sealing my hiding place before settling down to distribute my remaining points. I brought Intelligence up to fifty and, when the white hot pleasure faded from my brain, I was unsurprised to receive no perk for it.

With one hundred points left I spent what may have been several minutes debating whether to raise one skill to one hundred or to try to balance out my stats a bit more.

Deciding that minmaxing was a good way to wind up deficient and dead, I brought Perception up to fifty and reveled in the proverbial white fire remaking my senses for a long moment before moving on. After a moment’s thought I boosted my Fortune up to match Perception, feeling each upward tick of that strange stat seemingly increase my ethereal weight upon something I don’t yet understand.

Of all my stats, I’m the most… concerned by Fortune. Focusing on it, increasing it, feels as if I’m sitting atop a sheet of plastic above some depthless and utterly impenetrable sea; I cannot see the bottom, I can’t even see a single foot into this metaphorical sea; but I can tell that ever point of Fortune increases how deep my section of that plastic covering sinks into the blackness. I feel as if I’m tangibly increasing my density against the fabric of this invisible world, and I have no idea what could happen if I draw the gaze of something within or gain enough mass to puncture the veil.

I’m not sure I want to know, truly.

With a faint shudder, I put concerns I can't do anything about aside for now. I’m getting disquietingly used to doing that, but the only other option is to go insane worrying about it; as welcoming as madness is, it isn’t particularly conducive to survival.

Wisdom +1

I stared at the notification until it faded away, processing the apparent fact that the system seemingly agreed with avoiding existential concerns (or at least those I can’t deal with) for a moment. While avoiding issues and pushing aside existential dread was something I have decades of practise doing, being outright encouraged to do so was a new experience.

Taking the point I gained as decent advice, I raised Wisdom up to join the other fifty point skills. Once more my brain exploded into electric pleasure as my mind was reworked in a way that, were I not enraptured by the sensation, would probably terrify me to my very core. As it was, I put aside such completely valid concerns of having my mind altered in any way and the implications of such and just let the indescribable sensation wash away my fears.

Which, come to think of it, is exactly what you’d want the victim of mind altering procedures to do…

Paranoia +1

The sound of a nearby building collapsing and causing my own makeshift shelter to shift and groan ominously told me it was time to hurry it up and get out of here. I dumped sixteen of my remaining points into WIll, the incredible feeling of increasing it tempered ever so slightly by the imminent danger I was probably in.

I stared at those last five points for what felt like a long time but was probably only a few seconds. I could put them in any of my skills, but none of them would reach anything approaching a milestone from a mere five points.

Well, excluding Endurance. Five points would, presuming the math didn’t change after breaching one hundred, give me a single point of health if placed in Endurance. Considering how often I’ve been near death, it would probably be a decent idea to keep the only method of self determined healing I have on me at all times...

...even if it was extremely tempting to just dump it into a stat just to feel it increase.

Wisdom +1

Even with the system telling me the decision was wise, the urge to use those points nearly had me twitching, unable to tear my eyes from them until I closed my status screen entirely. Even then, the pulsing need to feed those flames danced through me and my own thoughts whispered rationalizations to me; wouldn’t it be better to have that health point now? Come on, what’s the harm? Do you really need to worry about dying that much, why not just use them?

I dismissed such thoughts with an effort of will. As much as I absolutely do want to use those points, I can’t dismiss the possibility of needing a fresh point of health to keep me from dying in the future. Having a single extra point right now would be less useful than being able to heal in case I’m one shot at some point.

Will +1

The groaning and shifting of my hiding place reminded me it was time to be anywhere but here sooner than later. Unfortunately, while the building's partial collapse had hidden me from sight, it had also left me trapped in here.

One might think I should have thought of this minor inconvenience earlier, but I was rather preoccupied evolving and leveling; that kind of pleasure tends to drive minor concerns like long term survival out of one’s mind. Come to think of it, that’s a rather dangerous trait…

I grimaced, glancing around for a way out as I put thoughts of dangerous addiction out of my mind. The entrance I was thrown through was filled in by rubble, but a few thin strands of orange light pierced the veil where the shattered stone didn’t perfectly align. For a brief moment I considered putting my new strength to the test trying to burrow my way out before the rubble groaned ominously under its own weight, shifting ever so slightly.

Yeah, making this unstable mess even more unstable seems like a remarkably bad idea.

Waiting for a rescue is an obvious no go; not only is no one coming, anyone that did find me would probably just kill me anyway.

Fortunately for me, I wasn't completely out of options just yet. Sidling up to the wall of shattered stone, I peered out one of the many gaps; after a moment looking through I judged it was slightly farther than a foot and moved on. It took six tries before I found a hole close enough to the surface and the one I did was far two narrow to fit my organs through even if my bones wouldn't get in the way; fortunately, I didn't need to.

Skill gained: Range Finder.

With a poof of smoke I found my senses violently revolting at suddenly receiving radically different stimuli than a moment before. I sighed heavily as my brain readjusted, scattering ashes all around.

Yeah, that's gonna take some getting used to.

A field of lava dozens of feet wide shifted quietly as it slowly cooled, the crisp air slowly killing its molten fury. What few husks of buildings that jutted out from the molten mass and weren’t completely melted leaked choking black smoke into the sky, the haze swiftly fading into the night.

The largest pile shifted minutely before the top burst open in a cloud of releasing gasses, a black gloved hand jutting out. Cloth wrapped fingers flexed rapidly, dislodging lava and small bits of stone as it did.

After a few seconds of wiggling and groping blindly at the surrounding lava, the hand managed to find enough leverage to begin pulling the body free. Immense strength swiftly brought a bird masked head above the surface and finally the plague doctor's laughter was free to disturb the silence.