Version 2.01: Monster Life Improvements (Peregrine x neptune)

Peregrine

Waiting for Wit
Original poster
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
  1. Looking for partners
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per day
  2. Multiple posts per week
  3. One post per week
  4. Slow As Molasses
Online Availability
On fairly regularly, every day. I'll notice a PM almost immediately. Replies come randomly.
Writing Levels
  1. Adept
  2. Advanced
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Primarily Prefer Male
  2. No Preferences
Genres
High fantasy is my personal favorite, followed closely by modern fantasy and post-apocalyptic, but I can happily play in any genre if the plot is good enough.
Small flames still lingered in the area, lapping at fragments of broken, twisted wood that were scattered around like refuse. But even the flames themselves seemed to shy away from the structure that rose in the middle of the smoldering clearing. It was a twisted monstrosity that rose from the ground like feelers, twisting and twining together in some chaotic, instinctual attempt to hold itself up. Occasionally, the purple and black feelers would pulse with red light, looking as though they were carrying something through them.

And right in the center of the pulsing, twisting amalgamation lay a pile of simple, black orbs.

This was the scene to which Alayla opened her eyes.

Or, at least, that’s how she would have described it if she’d had any eyes to open. Instead, perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it ‘coming to awareness’ or ‘suddenly perceived’. She knew it was all there, even if she couldn’t describe how or why.

‘Is this what it’s like to control a monster character? This… doesn’t seem like what the ad described.’
 
The updates had always left him disoriented. When Jael maneuvered his chair onto the interface platform that evening and donned the headset, the game he’d grown to love offered a simple message: Version 2.01: Monster Life Improvements update queued for installation. Like so many other updates, he selected ‘okay’ and closed his eyes, waiting for the virtual world to continue to take shape around him. It was a chunky update, one that required more than ten minutes of wait time, but despite his eagerness to play, he remained patient.
The clearing that he found himself transported to was unlike anything he’d ever seen in the game before. A tower stretched above him, twined with vein-like tendrils that wrapped around one another in a chaotic mess. Steady intervals of pulsing red light lit the area at the bottom of the tower, the wide outcropping that he found himself in beside a pile of shiny, black orbs. It was then that Jael realized his lack of eyes.

And a lack of hands.

A lack of anything, really, except for a mouth. His new body, slightly more useful than his real body, was bean-shaped and fleshy, warm to the touch and covered in a fine layer of slime, as if he were fresh out of some monstrous womb. Jael swiveled the stump of his neck, looking for any kind of objective, any indication of what he should be doing. There was no information bar in the corner, no task list despite how many times he pressed the designated button on his physical keyboard. The only thing that did pop up, however, was a proximity message.

Apparently, someone was just as confused as he was.

> I find the lack of character creation underwhelming.

The orbs beside them pulsed.
 
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Alayla hadn't realized she'd spoken out loud. Or, well, not spoken—her character didn't currently have a mouth and seemed incapable of producing any sound other than uncomfortable squelching—but used the system chat. However, the appearance of the familiar text box her strange, sensory mind's eye was unexpectedly comforting. It was a bastion of familiarity in an unexpectedly confusing situation.

> This all seems a bit strange to me, but at least it's different? Maybe this is some sort of beta integration quest?
> Not that I recall signing up for beta.
> But I suppose it might help with adjusting to controlling a non-humanoid character. And we get to character creation after?