Gripping a scythe in his unnaturally practised grip, Atlas swept forward, felling crops with wide sweeping strokes. Swing, step, swing, step, a smooth rhythm from one end of the field to the other, leaving... wheat, in this field, scattered before him. Ten steps, and Atlas turned, sweeping his scan beam across the field behind him.

ACTIVATE REMOTE COLLECTION Y/N?

Not a single stalk remained.

Every tool he touched, he used as though he’d handled it for years. Everything he gathered was stored without the need for a cart or basket. Blades recovered their cutting edge every time he recalled them, and his scanning beam unerringly picked up and separated every grain from the chaff with the touch of a button.

If he didn’t know better, Atlas would have thought he was built for farming, and in a more literal way than he was necessarily comfortable with.

EIGHT DAYS REMAINING

The notice flashed up, same as every morning. Atlas turned to look at the sun rising over trees.

That time already?

Dismissing the scythe as he stretched, Atlas gazed over the fields he’d helped clear over the last few days, the brown earth denuded of its golden mantle. Only a few smaller fields were left, a few early risers like him already wheeling a barrow over to one of them.

A bird flew overhead. Atlas flicked his wrist up and scanned it in one smooth movement.

Nothing. Atlas clicked his tongue. He’d scanned every pig, every hen, every passing animal, vegetable and mineral since he’d started working here. He’d even scanned Betsy, when Phineus, the farmer who’d hired him, wasn’t around one morning, But his yellow bar had barely budged at all, and only the first of each creature he scanned gave him a new code. Well, except for the people, but the codes they gave him didn’t even show up on his regular code grids.

Grabbing the handles of an empty cart he kept nearby for appearance’s sake Atlas started across the field for the grain silo, whistling a song he’d heard one of the farmhands singing after last night’s supper. It was considerably more tame without the lyrics.

Things had gone surprisingly well. The most excitement he’d had since he started was driving off some lagomorphs with two of the other farmhands, sending the animals scurrying into the woods in a panic. There had been another rain shower, which Phineus seemed to think was a disaster, but for Atlas the only difference was dropping the crops off at the drying ovens instead of the storage silo. Unfortunately “materials” didn’t have a code grid option he could use to dry them en masse.

Propping the thick door open with his foot, Atlas wheeled his cart backwards into the building, leaving it blocking the doorway as he cast a glance around the silo to make sure he was alone. He’d tried to keep a semblance of normality as he worked, at least when other people were nearby, and when the rest of the farmhands found that he worked faster on his own they’d been happy enough to leave him to his own devices. Atlas tapped his inventory menu. Grain dropped into the pit with a soft patter.

But it wasn’t just to conceal the secret of his success that he sequestered himself in the grain silo each morning. Atlas tapped the form menu revealing the sole option within and pressed the scan button.

OPEN CODE GRID Y/N?

Unlike with tools and objects this appeared to cost no MP whatsoever, but the screen was significantly different. There was the code box itself, with a list alongside of his regular codes as well as the codes he’d gathered from the people at the farm.

He’d left this blank so far. Changing his body as dramatically as some of the other things he’d done using codes was one thing, but actually changing his personality with a code like “Patience”, or “Craven” was an even more worrying prospect. Below the code grid was a series of runes, half of which appeared to be labels the other half, and finally, most interesting, a series of sliders alongside a 2D diagram of himself, which had been the source of the majority of his experimentation.

The top slider simply toggled the figure between male and female, while the sliders below controlled his hair, face, torso, and legs, with each new person he’d scanned adding new options to the sliders. He’d spent yesterday with the complete body of the farm hand Arastos, a gangly teen with a wispy beard that had apparently been too young for the military but old enough for his family to send south to work. Today… He cycled through the options to settle on the distinctive body of Kleis, whose squat muscular frame couldn’t be more different from Arastos’. So far nobody had noticed any of the changes he’d made, which was either change blindness in action or part of the same phenomenon that nobody commented on his inhuman complexion.

The runes below changed with every choice. Could they be numerical stats? Some kind of letter grade? Or possibly his three measurements, he had no way of being sure, and no reference to measure against.

He didn’t even know if this would make him stronger or not. Phineus’ wrinkled arms swung the scythe just as easily as his default appearance, while he’d steered clear of experimenting with the female settings entirely. Especially since discovering the default form was a dead ringer for Mrs Damastes.

For the legs Atlas went with his original pair, as he did for his head. He had no desire to share a height or a face with the unfortunate Kleis. He couldn’t grow the man’s beard anyway, all of the faces he adopted were completely clean shaven, much to his consternation. Every single man he’d seen so far had facial hair. Even Arastos tended the stubby growths on his cheeks with pride, marking Atlas as the lone outsider.

Finally he took the Rock code he’d recycled from what were now his [Used Scarecrow Clothes], which were at least moderately close to the outfits worn around the farm, and dropped it onto the vacant code grid, watching the runes change. One of the runes turned into two identical runes side by side.

Atlas tapped his lips thoughtfully, swapping hands to cancel the changes. He couldn’t remove a code without replacing it, and he wanted to understand exactly what he was getting into before trying anything. He’d need a pen and paper, or whatever their equivalent was in this weird tech level, to try and figure it out. He simply couldn’t remember an entire library of runes without-

“Atlas?”

Atlas jerked in surprise, slapping the button on his bracer quickly as he looked up to see Arastos peeking his head over the cart, squinting into the dimly lit silo.

SAVED

Wrong button.

Muscles bulged across Atlas’ body as the code change was finalised, rippling into place beneath his flesh. The world shrank in comparison as he grew an inch, and his tattered tunic bulged at the seams trying to contain his newfound bulk.

“Y… yes?” Atlas gave a nervous smile.

“Phineus wants to see you in the mill.” The teen ducked away, his face a picture of idle disinterest.

...He didn’t notice?

Atlas let out a sigh of relief. Either he’d got supremely lucky, or there was some kind of perspective filter obscuring his appearance. Possibly a function of his Aegis?

Wait. He’d left the rock code on. Atlas peered at the skin on his arm. It… seemed normal enough. For him. He prodded it. A little rigid, like he was pushing against tensed muscle, even where there was none, but he seemed flexible enough.

Well great, he grunted, straightening and adjusting his clothes before heading for the door. Now he’d never be able to know what the figures were without a code.

The mill was a cylindrical building with heavy sails attached to a wooden barn filled with burlap sacks of flour and grain piled together seemingly at random. At far as Atlas understood it, it was the undisputed territory of the woman Phineus has introduced solely as “The Wife”, a stout grey haired woman with a lined face and a quick temper who alternated between baking the tastiest, and only, pies Atlas had ever tasted, and manhandling heavy grain sacks over the endlessly turning millstone.

Atlas loitered at the barn’s entrance, beams of sunlight piercing through the thick haze of flour that hung in the air of the windowless barn.

“Come on in, boy.” Phineus’ voice came from inside.

Atlas complied, carefully threading his way between three grain sacks heaped by the entrance. Phineus stood inside, flanked by The Wife.

Was he in trouble? Atlas glanced from face to face. Was this routine? His job was harvesting, but maybe they wanted him to carry some things? He settled on a universal opening.

“How can I help?”

“Well for starters we’ll be needing you to load the cart.” Phineus leaned heavily on his cane, not looking at Atlas as usual.

Atlas raised an eyebrow. Harvest had been going more quickly than expected, but surely they weren’t ready to go already?

“Don’t get your hopes up, boy. I’ll be heading west, down to New Astros.”

Back the way he’d come? “Why?”

“It’s the Charon, deary.” The Wife interjected. “It wants two talents this season and it don’t take change. We were expecting the peddler to call in by now to trade, but we haven’t heard anything about her. Anders is the closest one as has the coin and we can sell some stock at market to recover our losses too.”

The destroyed wagon. Atlas winced. In the end he hadn’t mentioned the boar to anyone. He didn’t have anything to prove his story anyway, so he’d decided talking about the looted wagon and the massacre surrounding it would have made him look even more suspicious. Now they’d been waiting for days on someone he could have told them was never going to arrive.

“How long will this take?”

“Don’t you worry about that, boy. Should get back by tomorrow evening, earlier if you want to come and help us unload.”

“We could use an extra pair of strong arms on the road, deary. We haven’t heard from the guard patrol in days either. You’ve been such a big help that we might even be ready to head to the city by the time you come back.”

Atlas bit his lip. Heading back the way he’d come? It wasn’t logical - he had no way of progressing either way - but backtracking felt almost like defeat. At the same time, even if the boar was dead and gone, and he tried very hard not to think about how or where it had gone, the forest was still potentially dangerous and if Phineus never made it back he’d be stuck here at the edge of the water waiting for his doomsday clock to run out.

“Alright.” Atlas nodded. “When do we head out?”