In a quiet place where no light could ever reach, a content rumble spread out from a mountain of black, glistening flesh.

“Mmmm… Cookies…”

Darkness rubbed her bulging out belly, her tentacles running up and down the curved part of her being that swelled after she ate…

*belch*

After she ate so many cookies. Yeah, cookies.

*burp*

A golden spoon shot out of her maw and after drawing an arc in the air, it came to a stop beside Joe’s foot.

“Oh dear…”

Fidgeting a bit, a cautious tentacle reached for the golden spoon and pulled it away. Unnecessary worry since Joe either ignored it or simply was too engrossed in his work to notice.

He dropped by one morning with heaps upon heaps of cookies and asked her to “stick him in”. Which she did and ever since, Joe just sat there fiddling with his fiddly screen. At times she felt her power being sucked away through their link but it were such minuscule amounts she just didn’t care.

And he brought cookies, so it was okay. Probably.

Well, D warned her not to use the avatar thingy for anything but the most important reasons… Joe did say it was important… and he brought cookies!

Important or not, it was beyond boring. Sitting still and poking that thing. So boring. She never liked it and only did the minimum fiddling required but Joe, Joe sunk in as if the entire world could not offer anything more interesting than those fiddly runes he toyed with.

It’s been four days already since he asked her to connect him. Four days since Joe just sat and stared at a glowing screen. Cookies or not, her tentacle stuck in his soul was getting cramps.

“Joe?”

“Hmm?”

“You know, you never told me what you were going to do.”

“I’m making alts.”

“Alts?”

“Alternative characters. Like in games, one main for quests and the like and several alts for farming, crafting and other stuff. Figured I come here to get restricted options unlocked. This way there’s much more I can do.”

“Uhm, are you sure that is something you should be doing?”

“Nobody said I can’t so…”

Joe shrugged his arms. If it wasn’t forbidden, then it was allowed logic seemed to work well in this world.

“Well, I’m almost done anyway. Just some final kinks to iron out.”

The solidarity eye of Darkness moved to hover just behind Joe’s back. From there she peeked at his screen.

“Oh! How cute! Who’s she?”

A three-dimensional image of a furry eared, well endowed, milk skinned woman with beastly eyes and fluffy tail slowly spun before Joe.

“A dark elf. Your exclusive species, born through your divine blessing of darkness, lots of spare parts we nicked from a demonic cult.”

And lots and lots of copy paste soul code he almost understood. Almost being the key word. Like, he could copy one skill from the donor body he had in his body bag but along the skill, same restrictions moved onto his target body. Like that healing factor he took from some lizard thingy he stole from that cult. That species had insane healing factor. They could regenerate lost limbs within minutes but at the same time when he copied the skill it marked his dark elves as female exclusive species.

Something to do with the way those lizards reproduce. A child would always be a female and they could conceive with a male of any species. Or without the help of one but in that case the child would be a complete clone of her mother.

Those and similar annoyances Joe had been trying to weed out for the past few days. Some without much success.

“M-my w-what?”

“Eh, you know the people you made in your image and the like. They will venerate your tentacles and bring you cookies. Only for you. Exclusive. No other god can touch them without your permission. I’ve been hoping to maximize its strengths as much as I can while avoiding any potential drawbacks. Also, I’m a sucker for eye candy so… anyway, what do you think?”

“Um, well…”

If Joe would dare to look behind his back, perhaps he would see pinkish hue covering the sides of the giant maw that hovered behind him.

“I like it. She does look tasty but, don’t you think her proportions look off? Like here.”

A tentacle pointed at the midsection of his creation and the glaring wasp waist.

“Ah, that. That’s one of the kinks I’m trying to get rid of. If I add any more volume here, she’ll end up with eight teats. See?”

He adjusted one of the many sliders provided by his chop shop and lo and behold, the elf’s waist changed into something more natural but at the same time her chest got swamped by eight mountains of the double D-plus variety, topped with black, pointy peaks. It also caused the part of Darkness one may consider as her cheeks to turn few shads darker.

“I-I s-see. I think you’re r-right.”

Darkness fiddled with the slider Joe used and returned the girl’s waist back to something that didn’t slimer. Just a click away before the octocalipse could happen again.

“Like t-this?”

“Sure, that’s way more natural. Thank you.”

Joe thanked her. He genuinely thanked her! A lot of tentacles went fiddling happily behind Darkness back.

The spinning body did look better now but it bore hardly any resemblance to an elf.

“Em, shouldn’t we call it something different though? She looks nothing like an elf. She doesn’t even have the ears in right place, nor are they pointy enough.”

“I used the soulless elf I had as a template so, she is an elf. Or at least started as one. As for the name, it stays as it is. Anything with an ‘elf’ in the name gets plus one thousand years life span as its base. If you can spare some divine power, we could make it into Ancient Dark Elf. That gets us a minimum five thousand years of prime physical condition and about half as much with waning stats but still none of this elderly crap humans must deal with. It also grants some nifty bonuses to magic and other skills. As for the ears, they were useless. Humans have a better hearing. Their superior senses come from their innate mana affinity rather than actual, physical abilities.”

“As for the ears, I took a pair from a demi. Much better range and amplification.”

And they were fluffy. Joe loved fluffy ears. The only redeeming feature of those damn, perverted demis.

“Then we have iron muscles from something called night terror, around ninety percent more efficient and resistant than anything else I have in stock. Pneumatic bones from a harpy, light, difficult to break and more durable than titanium alloys from the world I come from. Blood adapted from some local marine mammal. Probably. No idea, the jars weren’t signed but it can store plenty of oxygen…”

Darkness sighed as Joe went off, rambling about this and that thingy he used to cobble together the cutie spinning on his screen. He used so many needlessly difficult words. Carbon fibers? Shape shift? Digitigrade? Digestive fluids? Chromatophores? Alloys? Crystaline structure? It had nothing to do with cookies or the tasty looking girl he made.

“… well, using a slime core for that might have been an overkill and may cause her saliva to melt the silverware but at least we won’t have to worry about ingesting something harmful. Heck, I think she could just eat rocks, wood, dirt or grass and still be fine. I made it so any excess nutrients are store within fat deposits located in strategic places throughout the body that also provides a layer of insulation and…”

Letting Joe’s words pass through her mind without really focusing on their meaning, Darkness toggled through settings Joe made. One button turned the elf’s bushy tail on and off. The other controlled how many tails she had. The tails were, prehensile, a word as Joe explained, meant those tails could move and worked just like her tentacles. Something Darkness quite liked about this design.

Another set of buttons turned on and off the elf’s fur and regulated how fluffy she got. From a short, fine buzz up to thick warm coat for freezing, polar nights.

The final set of buttons allowed her to toggle between a mostly human looking girl to a toothy, four-legged predator about the size of a horse.

“I like it.”

She cut Joe’s monologue before he managed to describe how he spent an entire day sculpting the razor-sharp claws.

“Let’s make her ancient-something as you said. It will fit her.”

She shoved one more tentacle into Joe's back and pushed more of her power into his soul.

“You sure? I still haven’t…”

“No. This is fine.”