5.03

“You expected my strategies to make sense? My dear Chancellor, that was your first mistake.” - Madelyn, then moniker: The Conqueror to Chancellor Chekov after successfully subjugating the Western Empire.

*Squelch*

“Utoqa, pin that flap of skin for me,” Dustin said, pointing at a flapping piece of flesh.

He nodded, peeling it away and pinning the skin onto the ground.

*Squelch*

“Make an incision here,” he pointed again, “open up the head more.”

*Squelch*

It was a simple thing. Utoqa had dressed many hunts before, but the mushroom wanted it in a way that revealed its internal organs. Strange, but intelligent in a way. Utoqa only vaguely knew where his organs were. Perhaps he should open up another Tequalan to check.

Though things felt different now. The room was light even where it was dark, his sight felt stronger, wider somehow, as if there were also eyes on the side of his head as well as front. And very lightly, he could sense the movement of something. Something that stirred within Dustin’s cap, like the stirrings made by fish inside a still spring. A fish that ever swam, chasing the top of the waterfall, before it fell and died on the rocks.

He felt something like that within him too, but it was weaker. He couldn’t distinguish it from the other stirrings he felt. It lacked distinguishing patterns. Where Dustin’s felt like the territorial markings of a beast, his own were small. Almost unseen. A benefit perhaps, the small beasts were easy to hunt, but the greatest beasts ignored them.

As Utoqa helped the mushroom pull apart his own corpse, an old question appeared in his mind. One Naukoth had brushed off as weakness in other races.

“Dustin,” he said, getting the creature’s attention.

It answered absentmindedly, “Yeah?”

“Tell me why the soft-skins dislike me eating their kind.”

Not that he ever did it of course. The powerful soft-skin that gave him the bones of Gift displayed visible distress when he brought it up and Naukoth warned him off of it.

The dozens of interlocking brown tree bark and fungus shifted, doing something akin to an eyebrow raise. It answered as it removed some thick blood vessels and examined them. “I suppose I could go into prion based illnesses or perhaps how cooperative culture evolution works. But would you get that?”

It turned to him, something Utoqa knew it didn’t need to do to see him.

“I think the simplest explanation is that if you express a desire to consume their body, then they see you as a potential threat to their life, or at the very least, not an effective ally because you would not mind if they died. So they would not see you as a ‘friend’ but as a potential enemy. Say, for a hypothetical situation, if a human said they would eat you if you died or would make weapons from your bones, then would you trust them with your back if they did? Especially when they explicitly told you that they would be benefiting from your death?”

Dustin spoke, with more sense and clarity than others had given Utoqa. The lizardfolk did not think such things were a problem, it is the way of nature after all. But in the scenario the mushroom posed, Utoqa would not trust such a soft-skin with his back. He needed his spine to function after all, they might not give it back if they could make weapons of it. He wouldn’t need it if he perished, but if a creature sought to specifically acquire lizardfolk backs then they may seek Utoqa’s demise. He would not call such a being a friend while he lived.

Was this how the soft-skins thought of him asking to eat their corpses? It was wrong, he wouldn’t seek their deaths, only to not waste their bodies. Was this how the soft-skins thought? Not understanding natural order, worrying about the most inconsequential things?

What a sad life they led.

“I understand,” he answered.

“Good, now help me with this leg…”

This body shouldn’t work.

I pulled out an unknown organ, likely some rudimentary processing organ, but it felt too small, too simple compared to a human brain.

My dissection yielded some… interesting things.

First off, the simple parts, my structural integrity. My body utilised something similar to an exoskeleton, with the exception that it was covered by a thin layer of ‘skin’. As expected of an exoskeletal structure, my musculature utilised a hydraulics based system, similar to arachnids. Muscle ligaments served to close joints whilst hydraulic pressure pushed it apart in a way similar to inflating a balloon. It explained my rapidly coagulating blood, along with the valves at the edge of major areas which I believed were purposed to shut off in the case of a major injury. A hydraulic pressure based system would be extremely vulnerable to bleeding, in a similar way that cracking open a compressed oxygen canister would.

The nervous system I possessed seemed ‘normal’ relative to a mammalian. A centralised processing organ located right behind my eyes with nerves running all across my body. The only notable difference is that I did not seem to possess a spine or spinal equivalent and my nerves seemed significantly thicker than what I would have expected.

My digestive tract appeared extremely rudimentary, similar to mammalian with the exception it ended at the stomach area, with no secondary opening leading to an anus. This suggested two possibilities, either that my digestive system was efficient enough that it didn’t produce waste, or that any waste I produced should be vomited back up by the mouth.

It was past that point that things got strange.

For certain aspects, I was a lot harder to kill than I gave credit for. As far as I could tell, this body utilised a distributed cardiovascular system, meaning instead of a centralised ‘heart’ organ pumping blood throughout my veins, I had dozens, if not hundreds of separated simple tightening tubes spread throughout my body fulfilling the same role. Unlike a heart, damage to one of them should not fail the whole system.

Strangely, I still couldn’t find any eye or sensory organ equivalent.

And no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t recognise something that resembled the capillaries. Tracing the various veins and tubules, I deduced that the air I breathed through my mouth split into three directions. One went into my cap, towards various tubules before ending in the fluorescent blue sacs. These were filled with fluids, and were spread throughout my entire cap, not just the surface. Assuming the air I breathed was oxygenised into my blood here, then that posed some dangerous liabilities. If the most identifiable and exposed part of myself was my respiratory system, then that posed an extremely obvious weakness. The only saving grace was that I identified more of these blue sacs inside my chest cavity, right where my lungs should be, along with directly behind my face, giving it that ethereal blue glow. Meaning I had several contingency respiratory systems.

It was one of the ‘lungs’ in my chest cavity that gave me pause.

“From a purely evolutionary standpoint. This biology makes no sense.”

Indeed. For one this body used bilateral symmetry, a feature that shouldn’t occur in fungi. The humanoid form itself was suspect. A mushroom was more likely to evolve to something closer in line to starfish. Utilizing radial, spherical or no symmetry at all. There were aspects of the biology that suggested it was going this way, a distributed cardiovascular system along with multiple respiratory tracts. However certain aspects of its biology appeared too conveniently parallel to simian, or even mammalian in general. My respiratory tract had aspects of this with the capillary equivalents located in my chest, and my nervous system as far as I could tell was completely centralised.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I began dissection, half of me expected this wouldn’t make sense at all or I would find nothing, the other half…

“Believed it may make sense in retrospect, when considering the world you’re in.”

Whether or not this body would function in the real world was a moot point, something clearly put a lot of thought into this body plan. Something that either didn’t understand evolutionary biology or didn’t care about it.

“To be fair we don’t either. You’re just going off what my few hours of googling has to offer.”

Regardless, a mushroom evolving bilateral symmetry was highly unlikely yes?

“Given what we’ve learned, yes.”

So we had to see it from an alternative perspective. Not from an evolutionary biology perspective, but from the perspective of the system that made it. Whatever Giles programmed, we should have a basic understanding of.

Declan snorted in laughter, “I don’t claim to understand anything anymore.”

“You have the memories of what the Historian showed us,” I calmly returned. So we both should know the basic modus operandi for the beginning of it.

The system took data in and spewed out something that would make it work. I had no doubt that the basic idea for a myconid race existed in fantasy for a long time. “As early as the twentieth century actually.” Regardless of how erroneous the biological assumptions are, someone fed that idea to the system and it created a biology in retrospect of a mushroom humanoid body plan, rather than it being the natural result of ecological pressure.

I would need to experiment with other races to make sure, but it should be the same with dragons and all the other fantasy races someone would find improbable.

And that was without accounting for the fact that past a point that sapient species started actively altering themselves literally with belief and imagination… I needed to procure a human corpse for examination and compare it with my own world’s. Theoretically, there should be dozens of minor- if not major changes to the base human model!

Even if they are far from the purview of normal physics and logic, the fact that it was created from potentially millennia of intelligent tinkering posed potentially even greater advancements than genetic and biotechnical engineering from my own-

You have fulfilled the unlock conditions for Magic Myconids.

You may invest your level in either Fungalmancer or Priest (Domain of Discovery) or Magic Myconid.

Note: Investing in Priest (Domain of Discovery) will remove the [Et Non-Discent] skill

Note: Investing in Magic Myconid will unlock the [Age-Type Heteromorph] skill along with more accurate and powerful racial features.

Warning:

Investing a level in Magic Myconid will result in the shut down of all Humanoid Integration Programs. (This includes Pain Modifiers as there are currently no suitable programs for True Fungal archetypes.) Iteration shock will become more apparent as you will no longer operate under Modified Homo Sapian controls when in this body.

Note: You have been mentally evaluated as compatible with this process. Permanent mental damage is highly unlikely, thus you were presented with this option at all.

I paused, an eyebrow raised.

‘System question,’ I thought, ‘What does [Age-Type Heteromorph] do?’

And it answered.

Age-Type Heteromorph [Passive]: This race has natural power and its growth only represents this.

Every 200 hundred years which you spend in this body, you will gain a Magic Myconid Level until you reach the maximum of 5, after which you may undertake Racial Evolution. You may not invest levels in this class past the first. Every level gained in Magic Myconid represents a significant increase in power. You will not gain progress in this skill until you have obtained it.

“System question,” Declan began and I finished, ‘What does it mean to be mentally evaluated as compatible?’

Below 1% chance to suffer long-term debilitating effects.

Warning: This prediction uses predictive models that may not fully represent real world possibilities. A 5% degree of error should be assumed.

I paused and thought.

Declan was silent, but he was me and he came to the same conclusion.

The only risk was a less than six percent chance of potential discomfort. The only downside was the extreme late game scaling.

“Pfft, extreme feels like an understatement. Unless time dilation occurs then I’d be an old ass man by the time you even got the second level.”

This seemed practically designed to entice me, which it very likely could’ve been. Long term benefits, not a lot of visible downsides and even some initial benefits I can get as well. This was very much a put-down and forget type of level.

Though this was very similar to the dragon racials, this was a significantly different thing than me switching to another race. For one, I would not lose all the progress I had on this body, which, if my Impact Points were anything to believe, was rather significant. Secondly, Myconids can actually take normal classes, as opposed to dragons who’d just have to beast through everything with their racial abilities. Not a bad option, but one severely lacking in utility. There could only be so much subtlety a fire breathing flying lizard can do.

Perhaps the better question was, was I going to be here for a full two centuries? Was this world going to be a significant enough impact on my life that I choose to take this?

“Even if it isn’t,” I said, looking up at the blank white ceiling, “if the description is correct, then just the first level would be beneficial.”

Was that the first time I saw the system highlight something in Italics? For plain descriptive text, then it was probably a yes.

A system where level up requirements exponentially scaled would eventually reach a point where it would be impossible to progress. Even if this was a whole new world, there was only so much you could ever experience.

A system like this greatly favoured front-loaded power gotten early on and alternative scalings that did not rely on experience gain. This racial offered to give both.

Right now, it was not a consideration of the benefits and negatives, but of things we were lacking.

Currently, the biggest potential danger in this system was the lack of information. Just not knowing how the EXP system works could lead to hours of wasted time trying to grind mobs. Even things like Feats, taking up the wrong one could leave a build as completely mid-tier. For one, proficiency Feats were nigh worthless, since most were basic skills you could just train and practice with and get naturally, all you were getting from purchasing such a feat was the time you might’ve spent learning that proficiency naturally. They were shortcut options for people not willing to put the time in. “Lazy asses like me.”

Feats like Jack of All Trades seemed good with their extreme cost efficiency, but that was assuming a Proficiency was actually worth two SP.

The only situation where I could see a Feat like JoAT being useful was when you were handling a completely alien weapon, and that sort of situation assumes you’ve lost your original, more proficient weapons. It was preparing for the worst outcome. Not knowing things like this meant a person could waste valuable SP for suboptimal decisions.

That was why I did not expect my build to be a strong one, right now I was one of the first players, and it gave me the opportunity to be the first to take a lot of things, but it came at the cost that I lacked information.

Even if I was the first to complete a great quest, be the first to obtain the strongest items and the first to reach the highest level that can be reasonably achieved, eventually someone with the benefit of hindsight, with information. They will know what the best Feats were available, what levels to take, what Paths they should walk and they will craft a min/maxed build that can kick mine into the ground, it wasn’t a question of if, but when.

I knew that taking Magic Myconid right now was the best choice out of my current options, but was it the best choice out of all possible options? Am I currently making a suboptimal choice, similar to taking up a proficiency Feat?

That was why the most valuable thing I could obtain in the future was a full respec of my build. To be able to redo it all, just slightly more efficient than the first time.

I had to consider this seriously, my declaration to Matt and myself, I was no longer just playing. Was the chance of more efficient classes enough to still my hand? Am I making a beginner mistake here? If only because I lacked some critical piece of info?

‘Yer problem is dat ya don’t take initiative.’

I opened my ‘eyes’ again. Strange I keep using that term when I just empirically found out that I did not seem to have any sensory organs at all. At least, anything that would resemble my definition of a sensory organ.

“I’m fine with whatever decision you make. You’re the one behind the wheel and since we think the same, any advice I give you would’ve already thought of.”

Regardless of my feelings, I was one of the first. Like the first people that landed in the New World, the first man on the moon, the first colonisers of Mars, the first to leave the edges of our solar system. I do not have the benefit of hindsight here, I was one of the people stumbling into the dark, not knowing where it would lead me. I was the one making the path, I was the one who decided I should take the lead.

“Fuck it,” I muttered. “Utoqa can you protect me for a few moments? This might get strange.”

Let’s hope a full respec existed somewhere.

And I put my level in it.