If there's one thing I've taken note of in the fifty years I've spent here, it's that gamers stop being any type of specie the moment they arrive here. Sure, we still have perks and skills unique to our species but in the end, that's just flavour text.
From the moment you awaken as a gamer, your specie becomes irrelevant, it's reduced to being mostly cosmetic with some advantages. You essentially wear your own appearance like a skin, trying to hold on to your origins, but the game doesn't care. It has already taken everything from you, it has taken your life, your family and any wealth you once owned and even all of it wasn't enough to satisfy it.
After having taken everything from you by force, the game makes you to give up the only thing that is still your own in a more subtle manner. You do everything you can to keep yourself occupied, you run, you meditate, you learn and you become better. You do all this and one day, you look into a puddle of water and you realize it's no longer your face that stares back.
You realize that the game didn't do this to you, you did this to yourself. Toiling day in and day out to achieve greater heights, not knowing that every step forward takes something from you. Some just want to go insane to escape the pain but the game won't even allow them that.
Others, like me, simply sigh and go on with their journey. When I was still on earth, I chose to live my life following the philosophy of stoicism. To live life knowing that you can't control the world but you can control how you react to it. Where others faltered in the face of the realization, I simply shrugged.
'What can I do about it, at least my mind is still my own'
I'd adapted well to the life of a gamer. Instead of just being a cogwheel in the machine of evolution, gamers become the whole machine. To be a gamer is to adapt, both in body and in spirit. If you can't do both, then there's no purpose left in you living this life. Without the focus on improvement, the only thing you can do is survive.
Most of us live in places where even survival isn't something to worry about, we don't need to eat, we don't need to sleep and we don't need to breathe. Without the focus on improvement, what else is there to do in a deserted wasteland.
So that's what I did. For fifty years, I focused on improvement. I gained new things and in return, I shed my old appearance one step at a time. I hadn't realized at the time but I had already been changed by my environment before I ever got the opportunity to know where I was.
On the day I first escaped the lava, my hair already looked like strands of coal, my skin grey like volcanic ash and my eyes covered by a layer of crystal. That change didn't happen by choice but the next one was purely on me.
Seven years after I escaped from the lava, my legs looked like a mockery of the human form. Like someone exaggerated every muscle and proceeded to rebuild my legs using tree branches made of metal wires. While my legs were changed by my running skill, my extremities were changed by my rock piercer skill.
My hands, feet, elbows and knees were made sharper and sturdier. Like someone took them and tried to make them ideal tools to pierce rock while trying to keep their original appearances and purpose.
Ironically, my legs started looking more human after around twenty years of running. By then, my muscle fiber was so dense that thick legs weren't needed to run fast anymore. At a first glance, my legs could even be mistaken as normal but as I said, that was just a first glance. When looking closer, it became evident that my legs were anything but normal.
You know those little sculptures made from metal wires? Well imagine if someone tried creating highly muscled human legs from that, used wires one tenth the usual size and packed them as densely as possible. That's what my legs looked like.
The rest of my body was much the same, the only parts with clearly inhuman looks were my extremities. At some point, my rock piercer skill reached so high that I received a perk for my efforts. Sharp limbs were my gift and sharp they were indeed.
Besides the wiry texture, my body still maintained the same ash grey color it had since the beginning of my adventure. Before I received that perk, I could've probably still blended in with human society with a heavy dose of makeup. After I received it though? No way.
My fingers and toes were still functional as grasping tools but the perk gave them extremely sharp edges and a silvery look. My elbows and knees looked much the same. Back then, a quick test was all it took to realize my limbs were sharp enough to cut through rock with the same ease as sculpting chalk with a knife.
Not long after that, about twenty nine years ago, I also had my first metaphysical change. Even my sharp limbs wouldn't allow me to go faster. The group wasn't hard enough, the force needed to push me faster was higher than what the ground could take.
My first mana based skill was created at that time. As a reward for being the first to reach level ten thousand on a skill, I received the mana skill needed to progress further. Earthen grasp allowed me to use mana to harden things for a cost proportional to my speed.
Using it, I could spear my feet through the ground and then harden the rock into a durable foothold. Having nothing better to do with my time, I tried finding alternate uses for the skill. The main limitation of the skill is my lack of control on the output, I can't just dump all my mana into an object to make it indestructible. The hardening is only proportional to my speed.
My saving grace was the fact that the hardening effect lingered for a few minutes after I stopped using the skill meaning that I could use the skill to launch hardened projectiles at ranged targets.
That discovery gave me my third favorite skill to date, the precision throwing skill. Grinding that skill lead to my second major change. After fifteen years of almost nonstop grinding, my arms had experienced a similar albeit differently focused change.
Where my legs had first become thicker and more muscled before slimming down after a certain point, my arms started responding to me with unbelievable precision and I started being able to differentiate and control different muscle group independently. That was just on the inside. From the outside, the placement of my muscles changed and my arms got slightly thicker. Just like the running skill affected my whole body, the throwing skill gave me more control over my limbs and pushed my senses to greater heights.
The perk I received for my continuous dexterity training had a similar effect to the extremophile and living punching bag perks. Instead of boosting skill gain for endurance, vitality or resistance type skills, the muscle control perk gave me a skill gain boost to dexterity type skills.
About five years ago, I got tired of throwing rocks. My progress with the throwing skill had slowed down because of my use of improper projectiles, rocks aren't the best in terms of aerodynamics after all. By then, I'd already started exploring crafting skills using my own body parts as materials.
Doing things like weaving heat resistant fabrics out of my hair had become a minor pastime so I decided to finally take the leap forward and directly craft my own projectiles using some of the metals I collected.
I didn't exactly have access to any crafting tools but I made up for what I couldn't buy using my own skills and clever uses of my inventory. I bought a metal hammer to shape the metal and I used my own thighs as an anvil.
My own strength was enough to break the hammer but I solved that problem using earthen grasp's hardening properties. Swinging the hammer downward produced enough speed for the skill to work. What really made the process lengthy was the need to change locations every time I wanted to heat up or cool down the metal.
To make the metal hot enough to forge, I needed to go to the volcanic areas of the planet to use the lava as a source of heat. Once the metal was hot enough, I needed to put it in inventory, run to the side of the planet cool enough for seas to form and hammer it while it was hot then repeat the process once the metal was cold. When the shape was good enough, I would make the projectile pointier using my sharp fingers as sculpting tools.
I streamlined the process quite a bit over the last five years. Instead of only heating up a bit of metal, I heat up hundreds of metal rods at a time and I found the shortest route between a volcano and a lake. Forging is fun but I like throwing much better, it's just so satisfying to hit a target from far away by throwing a metal dart at Ungodly speeds. I've also recently started making disks to skip on water which is another good way to spend the time.
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Level: 1029(1425/10,300)
Age: 88
Class: none
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HP(health points): 2400/2400
MP(mana points): 12,160(364,800)/12,160(364,800)
SP(stamina points): 144,200/144,200
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DEX: 2,298,280
AGI: 2,963,020
STR: 16870(506,010)
END: 20650(72,100)
VIT: 1200
INT: 125
WIS: 3040
Internal clock ( 6:1 )
Maximum movement speed: 296,302 meters per second
Average movement speed: 1500 meters per second
Points: 5,145
Perk points: 1024(from discovery bonus)
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Skills
[stamina regeneration (passive) Lv14853]
(endurance type)
[grade F]
This skill defines your body's ability to regenerate stamina.
You regenerate 2970.6 stamina point every second.
[mana regeneration (passive) Lv30809]
[grade D]
This skill defines your mana reserves ability to replenish itself.
You regenerate 6161.8 mana points per second.
[efficient running (passive) Lv14853]
(perception/endurance type)
[grade F]
This skill defines your ability to run with a minimal waste in stamina.
Running requires 148% less stamina.
[total points granted by the skill to the agility stat: 1,516,100]
[momentum manipulation (passive) Lv8401] (perception/dexterity type)
[rank 8]
This skill defines your ability to manipulate the direction of momentum.
[total points granted by the skill to the dexterity stat: 391,590]
[rock piercer (passive) Lv14301]
(Perception/dexterity/endurance type)
This skill defines your ability to perceive the best way to pierce rock.
Extremities have 143% more endurance than the rest of the body.(extremities are hands, feet, knees and elbows)
[total points granted by the skill to the dexterity stat: 1,405,700]
[high speed running (passive) Lv14301]
(Composite skill of rock piercer and momentum manipulation)
This skill defines your ability to run at high speeds.
User can run 143% faster than gamers without rock piercer and momentum manipulation.
[total points granted by the skill to the agility stat: 1,405,700]
[precision throwing (passive) Lv8225]
(Perception/dexterity)
This skill defines your ability to precisely throw objects at an intended target.
User can hit any target in a eight kilometer radius with perfect accuracy. Accuracy for moving targets is dependent on the dexterity stat.
[total points granted by the skill to the dexterity stat: 375,750]
[earthen grasp (active) Lv8230]
(Mana)
This skill defines your ability to harden substances using mana.
Skill cost is reduced by 8%.
Costs 2 mana points per meters per second the gamer is moving when the skill is activated.
[weaving (passive) Lv500]
(Dexterity)
This skill determines your ability to weave.
User can weave 5% faster.
[total points granted by the skill to the dexterity stat: 1500]
[smithing (passive) Lv4126]
(Dexterity)
This skill determines your ability to shape metal.
User can forge 40% faster.
[total points granted by the skill to the dexterity stat: 101,800]
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Perks
[heightened stamina regeneration]
[rank 2]
Your stamina regeneration skill is 20 times more powerful than what is normal.
This is an acquired perk gained from intense regeneration training, this skill will rank up after 100 years of constant, uninterrupted stamina regeneration.
[heightened mana regeneration]
[rank 2]
Your mana regeneration skill is 20 times more powerful than what is normal.
This is an acquired perk gained from intense regeneration training, this skill will rank up after 100 years of constant, uninterrupted mana regeneration.
[muscle control]
You have achieved great control over your muscles.
This perk makes dexterity type skills level 2 times faster.
This perk is obtained by reaching level 10000 on a dexterity type skill.
[dense muscle fiber]
[rank 3]
Your muscle fiber has 30 times the normal density of human muscle fiber.
This allows your body to generate more force with less muscle fiber.
Multiplies every stat points to the strength stat by 10
Higher muscle density also allows for higher endurance to damage.
This perk grants the hard flesh talent and gives a plus one multiplier to the talent for every rank up of the dense muscle fiber perk.
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Racial perk
[persistance hunter]
This is a perk that defines the human species extremely high stamina.
The title holder gets a 50 point bonus to the endurance stat per level.
Points given by the title don't contribute to exp.
Points given by the title: 51,450
A.N: to put things into perspective, one point in strength equals one kilo of lifting power from any part of the body. One point in endurance means you can survive one kilo per square centimeter of pressure. When calculated with all the bone hardness multipliers, his leg bones can endure pressures of up to six hundred and thirty five tons per square centimeters. What's even more impressive is his speed, he can throw a projectile at over eight hundred and fifty times the speed of sound. Paired with his precision, being in his accuracy range is the equivalent of standing in front of a dreadnought's main gun. As you've probably seen while reading, most stat growth comes from skills which means that the stat gain slows down drastically after a while unless you act like our protagonist and grind pretty much twenty four hours a day, everyday of the year.
A few of the gamers that are stuck on hellworlds are the same, they are hyperfocused on one skill above all else and nobody can rival them at that particular skill. Our protagonist is mainly focused on running and throwing, the asari gamer has spent all her time training biotic skill, the krogan has spent most of his time meditating, the yahg has spent all his time training strength and the rest trained much less and spread their training over many different skills.