Chương 9: Fish Out of Water (Almost)

Tier 4's evolution menu was the most complex interface yet. Which wasn't really saying a whole lot considering his previous options were, armor, horn or speed, and jellyfish, sponge and jelly colony. It unfolded in layers, each option branching into sub-options, preview data partially blurred. [TIER 4 EVOLUTION: COMPLEX MULTICULLULAR ORGANISM] [YOU WILL TRANSITION FROM A JELLYFISH TO A TRUE MULTICELLULAR BODY. ORGAN SYSTEMS WILL DEVELOP AND SENSORY CAPABILITIES WILL EXPAND SIGNIFICANTLY.] [CHOOSE YOUR BEAST PATH.] [AQUATIC VERTEBRATE (FISH PATH)- Streamlined aquatic body with internal skeleton. Gills, fins, lateral line sensory system. High speed. Opens paths toward: Deep sea fish, Large aquatic mammals, Pelagic apex predators.] [TERRESTRIAL ARTHROPOD (INSECT/ARACHNID PATH)- Exoskeletal body with jointed limbs. Air breathing through spiracles. Moderate speed, high durability, high stealth. Opens paths toward insectoid, crustacean, arachnoid, and myriapod.] [AMPHIBIAN BRIDGE (AMPHIBIAN/ MAMMALIAN PATH)]- Semi-aquatic body capable of both water and land. Lungs and gills, four limbs, moderate capabilities across all environments. Opens paths toward land amphibians, mammalian, equine-type and aerial organisms.] Andy read the options very carefully. Every fiber of his being lit up at the third option, specifically the phrase, "equine-type," he felt something click deep within himself. The final tumbler fell into place. Equine-type organisms. Horses.

Amphibian bridge led to land vertebrates led to mammals led to horses. Horses were four legged creatures with hooves, and manes, and, in the specific case that was currently occupying ninety percent of Andy's cognitive function, the potential for a horse with a horn on its head. A horn on a horse was a unicorn. And unicorns definitely were mythical. His horn. The calcium spike was going to lead him to Mythical and Mythical was going to be magical.

"Oh," Andy thought.

"Oh no. Wait. Oh yes. The System has been building me toward unicorn this entire time. The horn has six-tiers and a horse with a horn is a unicorn. I'm being unicorned. The System is unicorning me." He paused.

"I, a virgin who died on the way to not be one, am going to become Earth's most pure mythological beast. The single most horny creature in all of fantasy. This is a creature famously associated with virginity and purity. I can't make this shit up. If there is a god, System, they are not just laughing, they're definitely making this into a podcast." The fish was tempting. Afterall, he could become a narwhal. But that horn is really more of a tooth. There are far more progressively dangerous megafauna in the ocean.

But fish led to water. More water. And, he thought melancholic, fish don't become horses. Arthropod was the immediate gratification pick. Straight to land, exoskeleton, I'm sure there were plenty of insane predators he could become. Arachnids that would even have an Aussie run for cover and yelling, "Crikey." But once again he felt the pull toward horse. There really was only one choice afterall, The amphibian bridge. It was a transitional form. Lungs and gills.

Four limbs, moderate capability, not the best at anything. But it led to equine and somehow a sixth tier equine with an unprecedented 6th tier horn was the single most absurd, incredible, impossible destination Andy could imagine.

"I'm going to become a unicorn, and I'm going to become insufferable about it." He selected Amphibian Bridge. [AMPHIBIAN BRIDGE: SELECTED] [INITIATING TIER 4 EVOLUTION…] [WARNING: THIS PROCESS WILL TEMPORARILY DISABLE ALL CURRENT ABILITIES WHILE YOUR ORGANISM RESTRUCTURES. ESTIMATED DURATION: VARIABLE. THIS EVOLUTION INVOLVES SIGNIFICANT BODY PLAN CHANGES INCLUDING ORGAN SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT.] [NEW SENSORY SYSTEMS WILL COME ONLINE DURING RESTRUCTURING. SENSORY OVERLOAD POSSIBLE. REMAIN CALM.]"Sensory overload possible? Remain calm!?" Andy's shout projected at the System. Andy's equivalent of deep calming breaths (bell contractions that expelled bubbles at a slow deliberate pulse.) did nothing to prepare him for what followed. Neither did the systems warning. Restructuring was, compared to all of his previous iterations, violent. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Painful.

His new form began growing in the core of his current form attached directly to the base of the horn. His sensory synapses were going crazy trying to keep up with the sensation from his nerve net. His consciousness rode the process like a passenger on a rollercoaster whose track was being disassembled and reassembled around them. His body plan shifted from radial to bilateral. Left and right. Front and back. Top and bottom. He found himself, for the first time in a very long time, oriented.

Bones formed inside of him growing and pushing at the jellyfishes structure. He grew a spine with a head and a tail. He'd spent his entire jellyfish existence as a bell with no meaningful front or back. Limbs budded tearing away the jellyfish from the inside out. Four of them, pushing outward from his trunk like branches from a sapling. Each developed its own musculature and nerve fibers connected to the central nervous system. The nerve system upgrade was the most insane upgrade he could imagine.

Although, he could imagine very little at the moment. If his nerve net had been a bicycle he was now in a bullet train. A brain was coalescing at the front of his body, and as it came online, one region at a time it felt as though each activation was a radio station carefully being tuned while the static faded into the background. Touch came first. This was far superior to the broad pressure awareness or temperature sensitivity of the nerve net. This was localized touch.

Water against his back registered differently than the water and sediment against his belly. Sediment between his forming limbs had texture, was grainy, he could tell when it shifted beneath him. Then proprioception. He knew where his limbs were. Their exact position, what they were doing. The difference between rest and motion. He was a body in space and for the first time, he truly knew the shape of himself. Then something new. Something so novel it took his breath away. Breath that he now possessed.

Input that his nascent brain struggled to process because up to this point he really had no frame of reference. Light. [VISUAL SYSTEM: ONLINE] [PHOTORECEPTIVE ORGANS (BASIC EYES): FUNCTIONAL] [NOTE: VISUAL ACUITY IS LOW. COLORS LIMITED. DEPTH PERCEPTION REQUIRES CALIBRATION.] And then, Andy could see. Inadequate. What he experienced was shapes, surfaces, light and shadow, a world that had been waiting to be seen. It was blurry. But he could see almost entirely around himself.

Water something between amber and gold, shot through particles that caught the light from above and scattered it into slow, drifting constellations. Below him the thermal vents glowed with actual visible light, that he's spent his entire aquatic life without knowing. And his horn. Andy looked at his horn for the first time. It was on top of his head, centered, projecting upward and slightly forward from his newly formed skull, a rigid and white protrusion that emitted a soft blue glow. He could see it. His horn.

Sitting on top of his head like a misplaced party hat made of calcium. Source of thirty percent of his internal monologue's material and the basis for his entire autobiography. The sight of it was both ridiculous and so moving that Andy felt if he were not underwater a tear might have formed in his brand new eyes. He was a horned frog-thing. Some mix between frog and a lizard.

A proto-amphibian with a spike on its head and four stubby limbs and a body that looked, he suspected, like someone had described "salamander" to an artist who had never seen one and also hated them. Then they gave that drawing to a child who added a shiny horn just for funsies. He felt like he was much much larger than he'd previously been. He turned to ask Bob, when he'd discovered that Bob wasn't there. How long had he been evolving? He went back to examining himself.

He had lungs(untested as he was still underwater), gills, a mouth (which he immediately began flapping open and closed), and at the other end he had a butt. A whole butt. This was the first time in his second life where eating and excreting were separate activities. After several lifetimes of organisms that absorbed food through their bodies, having a dedicated entrance and exit was somehow the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

[TIER 4 EVOLUTION COMPLETE] [NEW SPECIES: AMPHIBIAN (TRANSITIONAL, SEMI-AQUATIC)] [SIZE: APPROXIMATELY 9CM] [BODY PLAN: BILATERAL SYMMETRY. FOUR LIMBS. LUNGS AND GILLS. BASIC VISUAL SYSTEM. ENHANCED TACTILE AND PROPRIOCEPTIVE SENSES.] [ABILITIES UPDATED:] [EXIST] - Good job, you. [ACTIVE HUNTING] - Further enhanced. Visual tracking enabled. Multi-sensory detection. Range: Long. [LIMB LOCOMOTION] - Walk, swim, climb, and grasp with four semi-articulated limbs. Moderate speed on land and in water.

[PARALYTIC SKIN (PASSIVE)] - Dermal glands secrete mild toxin which paralyzes smaller prey. It also tastes bad to predators. [REGENERATION (MINOR)] - Slowly regenerate damaged tissue including lost limb segments. Rate: Slow. [CALCIUM SPIKE: RETAINED AND ENHANCED] - Horn relocated to cranial position. Hardened. Integrated with skull structure. Functions as primary melee weapon. [IMPROVED THERMAL TOLERANCE]- Just don't sit in any boiling pots. [HORN LIGHT] - Maybe you'll find the dimmer. [HORN MORPHOLOGY: ACTIVE. TIER 4/6. TRAIT CHAIN: UNPRECEDENTED. GROWING.] Tier 4 of 6. Growing. That word seemed new in the notification. Also was the System getting snarkier. It felt snarkier. [THE SYSTEM CANNOT EXHIBIT SNARK] [XP: 0/1600] [NEXT MILESTONE: TIER 5 EVOLUTION] Sixteen hundred! The numbers were getting bigger but that just seemed excessive. Well then, he'd just have to keep getting bigger too, and so would his horn.

Somewhere at the end of this chain there was something waiting that involved a horse, a horn, the word mythic and a dead virgin's sense of cosmic irony. He looked up. Through the blur and the particles and the warm amber light he could see the surface. A shimmering boundary between the water he had known and the air he had not. Beyond that blurred in a golden haze was the world above. He kicked his new legs clumsily and without grace. Anyone who may have seen it would describe it as less swimming and more flailing.

Nevertheless, Andrew Snodgrass had eyes, the world was beautiful and he was going to need a much bigger horn.