Chapter 4 – Journey to Newark

(Final stage pre editor)

“And that’s the soul cleanser,” said Ben as we walked by the main tower, surrounded by dozens of confused demons.

“So, all mortal souls get processed through there before being returned to Ordinal?” I asked as we walked past another extrusion of the large, unnatural machine.  Just looking at the machine caused parts of your brain to misfire, like you were looking at Schroeder’s Stairs.

I had to turn away.

“That’s what it does, you’ll have to talk to the boss if you want more answers than that,” replied the Incubus, who stretched his arm out with a popping sound.  “Great, I’m going to have to take this one to the shop.”

“Sorry about that,” I offered, glancing over at him.

“No worries, we protect the dungeon, you are like the first person who’s ever asked to go to Newark,” said Ben as we walked over to what appeared to be a garage, with medical equipment.  A large, spider-like demon walked out of the garage and looked down at me.  It had 8 legs and was caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise up in unison.

He shook his head, and I noticed his name tag which read Chris. “That is the ugliest body I’ve ever seen,” he said finally. “Want some upgrades?”

“Upgrades?” I asked.

“Yeah, you humans are really poorly built.  Breathing and food in the same tube, you pee out of your sex organ.”

“Or your spine with its pinched disks,” said Ben, nodding.  “The whole human body is a poorly evolved mess.”

“And your bodies aren’t?” I asked.

“We are custom built,” grinned Ben, flexing his good arm.  This caused the bad arm to pop slightly.

“Humans are a garbage tier product, think about it,” replied Chris, rounding on Ben.  “And explain what you did to your arm.”

Ben, the demonic general, looked pained.  “Well, I had to use the regeneration system.”

“Which worked great because you topped off the fluid before you rushed into battle,” said Chris, a mechanical mandible twitching violently.

Ben grinned, “You said you wanted to rework the circulatory system anyway.”

“You can’t be serious, I just tuned that thing up,” groaned Chris as a half dozen smaller spiders ran over and locked themselves onto Ben’s body at various strategic points.  “No, you bent both femurs.  And what did you do to the hip joint?”

“Look, I was fighting Badgelor,” said Ben.

“And you didn’t prepare yourself, that badger is seriously bad news,” said Chris, shuddering.  Then a cold wind blew through the demon’s soul.  “He’s behind me, isn’t he?”

“Hi Chris,” said Badgelor, emerging from the shop. “Long time no see.”

Chris looked as flummoxed as a demon whose bottom half was a spider and whose top half was the offspring of a spider that mated with an ugly hippo, could get.  Badgelor was slurping up something.

“No, my genuine dragon intestines, you bastard,” screamed the demon, rushing past Badgelor and into his workshop.  He started wailing.

Since the door was open, I looked inside the shop.  The handful of medical beds on the outside were nothing compared to the racks of cadavers on the inside.  Dozens of demon bodies hung up like clothing on a rack.  There were at least three that were currently in medical apparatuses being worked on.

· You have learned the skill Flesh Sculpting (demon).  You are unskilled.  This is a Rare Skill.

“Of course,” grumbled Shart.

“I’m guessing this would have come in useful when you were inside out,” I offered.

Shart exhaled.  We’d gone through a lot to get him right side out.

I focused on the skill, getting a general idea of how it worked.

· Your Treatment skill has linked to the Flesh Sculpting (demon) skill.  You now know Flesh Sculpting (human).  You are an Expert at the Treatment skill.  You are now a Journeyman Flesh Sculpture.  Please choose a perk.

That was super interesting.  I was hoping that one of those new perks would be really useful on my adventures so I opened up the menus to check out my options.

“Nope,” I said.

“Did you get a perk notification?” asked Shart.

“Nope, I continued, shaking my head slightly.

“I think you did, there are perks here,” said Shart who paused for a long moment, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Told you nope,” I replied as I heard the demon violently hurl inside my mindspace.

“There are so many choices, and all of them are so gross,” groaned the demon.

Sadly, I could check what the demon had looked at last.  I brought up a woman with massively exaggerated breasts.  “This isn’t that terrible.”

“Look at those huge fatty deposits on her chest, so disgusting,” groaned Shart.

“Seriously, here’s one where you can take off someone’s limb and turn it into a scythe,” I said.

“Really, let me see,” said Shart before gagging again. “You liar, that was a perk to enhance a lady’s buttocks. No one wants to see a woman’s buttocks.”

I chuckled, “Fine, how about this.”

“Interesting, if you take the right combination of perks you could actually make humans look less horrible or at least generate some actually useful organs.  You sad bastards don’t even have a Vloog Gland.”

I didn’t ask.

“By making humans look more like demons?” I asked.

“Duh,” replied the demon, “You should take Grafted Weapons, it allows you to replace limbs with less disgusting options.  Or Organic Armor, you could change a human’s skin so that it's less saggy.”

“Those are the ones I have problems with, some of them are just cosmetic,” I said glancing at Dermal Adjustment, which allowed you to radically alter someone’s skin.  I could do comprehensive plastic surgery with that.  If I skilled it up, I could also basically turn someone’s skin into body armor.

“You could take Bio Essence Realignment,” said Shart pointing to another choice.  That would allow you to change the attachment points of your mana network on your physical frame. You could change your mana cores to other sections of your body.”

“This is the reverse of what you did to me,” I said, examining the choice.  Shart had adjusted my Mana Network once when I’d taken both the Sorcerer and Mage class.  Due to my unique talent, the conflicting mana networks had nearly killed me.  “You have the Mana Essence Realignment skill.”

· Error Mana Essence Realignment skill is locked, it requires Rank 5 admin access.  You have rank 3 admin access.  Alert filed with controlling authority.

My eyes shot wide when I noticed Shart brushing away an on-screen notification before shaking his head.  “You are going to get spotted if you keep doing that shit.”

“There are admin locked skills?” I asked.

“Of course, that skill is dangerous even if you know what you are doing,” said Shart.  He was past asking me to not pick up skills, not that I ever had that much control over it.

“You could have fixed Fenris,” I said after a moment.

Shart said nothing, then sighed, “I may have been able to fix Fenris, but he’s stupid and I thought you guys liked him like that.”

“That’s Sir Dalton, I meant the man with the shattered spine,” I said.

“Oh, maybe,” said Shart, considering the situation.  “I mean there was no bone there so there is no point where it was fixed in the first place, that’s why he almost died.  Your core mana network still needs to be attached to something pretty durable in the body or you’ll get a lethal level of feedback.”

With my Mystical Lore, I knew what he meant.  Your Mana Network controlled how magic worked in your body and even non-magical classes still made significant use of magic on Ordinal.  In technical language, the mana network connected to the occipital bone, which was where your spine attached to your skull.

That was literally the only part of the human body that could actually absorb that much mana.  Hooking it up elsewhere would cause that part of the body to become significantly imbalanced and would cause what amounted to a mana clot to be kicked through your network.  I knew what an actual stroke looked like, I didn’t want to think about a magical one.

It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but that was as close as I could get as a human from Earth.

Fenris didn’t have a spine anymore.  What he had was a piece of organic steel that had been installed on the outside of his neck which functioned in its place.  The problem was that the steel was not as effective at conducting magic as his regular bone had been.  What I desperately needed was a way to restore bones, I’d have given practically anything to learn that and repair Fenris.

· Bone Sculptor:  You can sculpt bones as easily as a sculptor sculpts clay.  Your skill at bone manipulation is vastly enhanced.

“How did I learn that,” I asked showing Shart the notification.

“Whining probably,” said Shart. “Look Dum Dum, if you get really desperate your request goes up to the system and sometimes it decides to grant your request if you qualify. That’s how you got your power lift skill. You really needed it.”

“Does that happen very often,” I asked.

“Feck no,” said Shart. “You have to be so desperate that it actually pops up a notification, and those almost never get approved.”

“Michael approved power lift,” I said, that was actually good to know. Charles talked about him frequently and I didn’t actually know what happened to Shart’s counterpart.

“Or it timed out, but there is no way that happened,” said Shart. “That would be a total dereliction of duty.”

With that resolved I started playing with my new skill. I stared at my arm, causing it to adjust to the left and right as the bones warped.

“Careful with that,” said Chris walking back out.  “Hard to do anything useful without a Sculptor's bed.”

“Good point,” I said, resetting my bones back to their original positions.

A short, malformed demon walked out of the barn and stood next to me.  “I still need to show you the way to Newark.”

“Ben?” I asked, the demonic general had changed bodies.  This one looked like it had seen a few miles. His idolized body was replaced with a stumpy thing with two legs of different lengths.

“Be careful with my loaner,” grunted Chris.

“Whatever you say, but how anyone could tell if I damaged this jalopy is beyond me,” said the demon, “Let's go, Newark is waiting.”

I continued staring at my forearm for a long moment before slowly following after him.  Verifying with my new skill that both limbs were exactly as they’d been before I started messing with them.

“Ordinal is so fecking weird.”