Chương 31: What I turn out to be

Next is the bloodline. What are my options? As before, there's a huge menu in front of me. And not just one menu, but a bunch of sub menus. Elf has at least six options under it, and so does dwarf. But there's also one with a sub menu for goblinoid, one with a sub menu for bestial, for demon, and for dragon. I look at the goblinoid sub menu first. Orc, goblin, hobgoblin, or troll.

No details about any of them, and when I pick one, I'm prompted with a choice to make sure I'm certain, but still not given any explanation. Okay. I back out of that menu and look at bestial. Tiger, wolf, rabbit, lizard, leopard, and bear. Right, so those are the furries. Beastkin. Anthropomorphs, if you will. Don't want to be one of those, though it is a bit tempting to be part wolf. I've always wanted to be a werewolf. Demon has five different sub species.

None of the names mean anything to me, so that would be random chance. Looking under dragon, there are options that seem to make no sense. Drake kin is one of them. Aren't all dragons drake kin? Then there's dragon blooded. Again, aren't all of these choices bloodlines? Next is wyrm touched, which makes no sense on the face of it. I'm tempted, but I wish I knew what those three meant. I wish I knew anything about my selection before I chose it. I go back and look at elf.

The options there are strange, as they seem to be location and biome based. Forest, prairie, desert, tundra, mountain, and sea. Dwarf isn't that much better, as they seem to be separated by types of rocks, which I can only gather from the second and fourth names on the list: Adakite, Basalt, Dacite, Granite, and Latite. What are the others going to pick? Ash won't pick elf or dwarf. I don't see Gigi picking dwarf either, and El definitely won't.

Vincent might, but for some reason I see him more likely to pick a bestial bloodline than dwarf. He might go elf, though; they're traditionally pretty powerful magically. I could see El choosing bestial. It would fit her vibe. Maybe I should go that route after all. Werewolf is tempting. So tempting. I don't want to go demon.

It's not that I have anything intrinsically against the idea of being demon blooded, but I feel like I have even less of a hint as to what anything means with them than I do with the other bloodlines. There are a lot of Xs, Zs, and Vs in the names, but no hint as to whether I'd be picking a demon that was good at hiding or one that was twelve feet tall. Forget about what the others might choose. What do I want? I want a random chance, just like I was born with as a human. No, wait.

I want a lucky random chance, a privileged one, like I was born with as a human. I want the one that will be best for me. But which one is that? I don't want to be an elf, even though they seem to be the ones who get all the best perks. They're basically supermen in Tolkien, and in just about every gaming system they get all the advantages. So elf would technically be the best choice if I want a privileged background. But still, something about elf makes me want to choose something else.

Maybe elves are easy mode, and for once in my life, I don't want to play on easy mode. Not dwarves. Look, I've got nothing against the idea of a dwarf. I just don't want that for myself. Dwarves are underground dwellers, and while I have dark vision for that sort of thing, I don't want to spend all my time in caves. That one night with El when we were trapped in the shadow wolf cave was enough for me. I'll go into caves if I have to, but I'd rather run free. I'd rather be under the sky. So not a dwarf. Not a demon.

Been over that. Do I want to be a goblinoid? I'm not sure tusks are for me. Plus, those races tend to be seen as the'evil' races in fiction, and I don't want to get to the world and find out that everyone hates me as soon as they look at me. That seems like playing on hard mode, and I don't want that either. So really, it comes down to whether I want to be dragon or bestial. There are only three options under dragon. That makes me think that they're rarer, and possibly more powerful.

But that wouldn't be fair; if the dragon types are more powerful, then they're probably more numerous too. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I think I want to go with the bestial blood. I don't want to be a furry, but maybe that wouldn't be the worst thing. I mean, having the power of an animal in my blood would be pretty cool. I just have to hope I won't look too much like a wolf to be taken seriously. I don't want people to think of me as some kind of savage. And I don't know if I want a wolf head.

Will I still be able to speak normally? Or will my attempts at language always come out as whines and growls? Will my polyglot talent end up just being for when others speak to me? Will I be like Chewbacca, and understand what others are saying but still making growling noises when I try to speak? I don't know. There's a bit of a thrill to not knowing. I select the wolf bloodline. It prompts me to make sure that I'm certain. I select yes. I feel a tingle through my whole body. I look down at my hands.

They are still hands, not paws. That's good. I didn't even think about being able to fire a bow with wolf paws. I guess I assumed that at most I'd have claws, but I don't. And feeling my face, it's not a muzzle. It's still a face. Still my face. I'm still me. Something is different though. I can't be sure what, but I know that something is different. Maybe I'll figure it out. Maybe for once the system will just fucking tell me. I take another step forward. Another set of prompts shows up.

Highest skill achieved: Bow 25. Equipment bonus: Ranger's Bow (rare). The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Highest attribute achieved: Agility 60. Equipment bonus: Spacial Bag (soul bound). Highest secondary skill achieved: Smithing 14. Equipment bonus: smithing hammer (rare). I'm standing in front of the portal.

I'm currently carrying all the furs I could bundle up and tie together, both of my bags of water and trail mix from the store six days ago, and my backpack. I have a bow on my shoulder, a sword at my side, and a stuffed quiver on my other hip. I have very little that reminds me of this world with me. I don't have anything tying me to it anymore. Behind me is the world of my birth, the world I grew up in, the world I've always lived in. In front of me is a new world that I know nothing about.

A world full of danger and adventure. A world I'm going to have to figure out on my own. A world I'm going to have to learn to understand. I step forward without hesitation. The light clears, and I'm standing in a clearing. The sun is shining down through a break in the trees; looks like I'm in a forest. The clearing has grass that comes up to my knees, and I'm alone. Makes sense that I'm alone; I was the first one through. Just wait a few minutes, and someone else will come through. It'll be okay. Take a breath.

I take a deep breath, in through my nose, and the world explodes. Not literally, but the sensations that come to me are much more intense than any time I've ever inhaled through my nose before. I can smell everything. Including myself. I can smell my own sweat, and the fact that I haven't bathed in a few days. I can smell the blood of the spiders on me, but also the powdery remains of the skeletons. But my sense of smell doesn't end there. I can smell the soil, the rocks and the dirt. I can smell the grass.

When I close my eyes, I can still tell the edge of the clearing through smell. It's like my olfactory glands are super charged. I smell the bark of the trees. I smell animals nearby, well enough that I can smell which of the little trails going off into the woods was used most recently. That must be from my wolf blood. Enhanced sense of smell. That's a good perk. I wonder what else came with it. First, though, I want to see what those bonus pieces of equipment are and what they do.

I put down everything I'm carrying and look for the spatial bag first. It could be that my backpack became a spatial bag, but I somehow doubt that. I feel like the spatial bag will be something new, something that fits into this world better. Sure enough, I find a satchel inside my backpack. Spatial Bag (soul bound). Legendary equipment. Bag contains an extradimensional space equal to your Manipulation in cubic feet. Items placed within the bag are reduced in weight by 90%.

Any item that can fit through the opening of the bag can be placed within the bag. One extradimensional space cannot be placed inside another. The extradimensional space does not have breathable air. That's easily big enough to put everything I own into. And big enough that I'm pretty much never going to have to worry about having storage, or of what I'm carrying slowing me down. That ninety percent reduction in weight is huge. I could fit entire animal carcasses in there. I wonder how long they'll stay good.

There's no breathable air, so they won't rot as fast, but that doesn't mean that things will maintain integrity indefinitely. It's not a refrigerator. Still, it's pretty awesome. I would've killed to have something like this at home. Though I imagine it would make travel interesting when the TSA went to scan what was inside it. That's a funny image. On to the next. The bow. Ranger's Bow. Rare weapon 20/20. Damage: 60-72. +20% firing rate. That's better than the scout bow I already have.

I might keep that one, though, for the armor piercing benefit. And the damage should be pretty similar when I fully upgrade it. But this means I do 120 damage minimum when I shoot with it. That's awesome. Smithing Hammer. Rare tool. Allows improvement of weapons and armor without the use of a work table or forge. More effective when used in combination with a work table or forge. Also super useful. I put the smithing hammer in the bag, along with the scout's bow and everything else.

It hangs at my side, so I test how quickly I can pull things out of the bag. Sure enough, I just have to reach in and think about what I want. It's a little bit slower than a regular quiver, where I don't even have to think about it, but it might be a good idea to fill it with extra arrows so I don't run out in the middle of a fight or something like that. I can carry the bag so that the quiver hangs right in front of it, making it just a little bit of an adjustment to reach into the bag itself.

Enough of an adjustment that I'll be thinking about arrows. While I'm playing with my new equipment, Gigi steps out of nowhere and looks around. She looks the same. Makes me wonder what bloodline she chose. Then she turns around with catlike grace, and I think I know.

"Caleb!" she says when she sees me.

"You're here! Good. We were debating what would happen if we ended up different places. Where's Vincent? He went in after you."

"You're the first one to come out," I tell her. There is something different about her. Or is there something different about my vision? She looks more vibrant, more colorful, but not so much that she stands out around me. More like she makes me realize that the world around me is more colorful than I expected. Deeper greens in the trees and more shades of brown and green in the grass around me. My vision feels sharper. That's the best way to describe it. Like I can see more nuance, more subtlety.

Part of the wolf blood, I think.

"Hm." She bites her lip.

"I wonder if we ended up different places based on our bloodline. What did you choose?" I blush a little. I don't know why I'm so hung up on the idea of furries and about how I'm not one. There's nothing wrong with being a furry. I get it. It makes sense. Tails are sexy.

"I chose wolf," I say, clearing my throat as if ready to refute any insult she decides to throw my way. But she doesn't throw an insult or a tease in my direction. She just nods as if that makes sense.

"I chose leopard," she says. She looks down at herself.

"Do I look like a leopard?" I look at her. Same dark hair, same bearing, same pouting lip, same resting frown.

"I don't see any spots," I say.

"Do I look any different?"

"Just your eyes," she says.

"Were they blue before?" I shake my head.

"Brown."

"They're blue now," she says. As she does, she moves a little, and the light shines on her eyes. I thought her eyes were hazel, but as the light hits them, I see that they're actually closer to yellow. Or gold, I suppose.

"Your eyes are golden," I tell her. I step closer and get a good look at them as she blinks at me. Sure enough.

"And they're slitted like a cat's."

"That's kind of awesome," she says.

"I bet it gives me an otherworldly look."

"Otherworldly and vaguely threatening," I confirm.

"Awesome." Just then, El stumbles into being. It might be my imagination, but I think she got bigger. More muscular. And her hair looks thicker. Not any longer, but thicker, like each individual strand just got bigger. She sees us and smiles. Then she looks around.

"No Vincent? No Ash?" She asks. I shake my head. Then El points at herself.

"Bear," she says.

"How about you guys?"

"Leopard," Gigi says. Then she gestures at me.

"And wolf."

"So we all chose bestial blood, and we all ended up together," I say.

"I guess that means Ash and Vincent chose something else. I wonder if they're alone."

"They're still on my friends list," Gigi says.

"So they're not dead. Maybe we can find them."