I don't own anything, other than myself.
This will be basically an isekai in the Hollow Knight world, with a very OP mc, kinda like A Not-So-Hollow-Knight by FreakOfYourNature on Ao3, which I highly recommend. Anyway, it's also probably going to be gory. Idk yet. Also this is going to be a cross over fic, eventually the mc will leave the Hollow Knight world for another (like Ultrakill. Because I already have like 2 Ultrakill fics).
I gain awareness, sharply, like I was just violently jostled awake from my sleep. I try to look around, to see what woke me up, but instead of seeing my bedroom, I could see only black. I thought for a moment that my blanket was covering my eyes, but when I tried to move my hands to get it off I couldn't. I couldn't move at all actually, no matter how hard I tried to my arms or legs, I couldn't. And soon I realised it was because I didn't have any. Somehow I didn't have a body to move anymore.
I slightly panicked as I realised that. Was I dead? It was very confusing and worrying, but I couldn't actually do anything about it, I could only panick and eventually settle down.
Oh well. Guess this is the afterlife, kinda? Kind of what I expected, but I didn't really expect to be, yknow, aware. I thought that once I died my consciousness would go Poof, and I would no longer exist. Much more convenient than being here, aware of my surroundings, but unable to actually do anything at all. This was more akin to hellm, though not really. Better an existance of endless nothingness than an existence of endless pain as I'm imagining hell would be.
Now what to do? I guess humming a song would be one of the things I could do to stave off the boredom, so here I go. Time to do some singing~!
Hem-hem.
Indistinguishable humming because I forgot most of the lyrics.
My body's a poison~!
I'm breathing in pure chlorine~!
It stifles my voice and I'm finding it. Hard. To. See~!
Indistinguishable humming continues for who knows how long.
An indeterminate amount of time later, because I didn't have a method to keep track of time in here, something unexpected happened. Blinding white text appeared out of thin air in my vision, telling me something.
You have been selected for reincarnation. Thank you for your patience.
Not like I could have gone anywhere, but thanks, you white letters.
Indeed. Now, for your choices. Not very many of them, but extremely important.
And what are these choices about? I mean, what do I choose?
You will make three choices that will determine a number of things, including the first world you end up in.
First?
Yes, first world. Now, let me continue without interruption
Sorry. Go on.
Good. Now, these three choices will be the following:
1. Race
2. Class
3. Specialization
First is Race.
Now, to explain how this works. You can select anything you can think of to be. You can be a human, a demon, a dragon, a goblin, a God, but if you choose something strong you won't begin that way.
For example, if you choose to be a Dragon, you won't start as an adult dragon, because you would be too strong. Instead you would be a new born dragon, same with being a God. If you pick a weaker race you will start directly from adulthood, no need to grow up. If you select something very weak, like a goblin or a human you will be given a bonus to aid you, so you don't die immediately after you reincarnate.
Second is Class. The race you select won't affect your class, there will always be the same classes.
1. Warrior: Melee fighter focused on doing damage and being strong, with less than stelar speed and durability. No magical capabilities.
2. Guardian: Melee fighter focused on having incredible defense and durability, with not very good strength and speed. No magical capabilities.
3. Spell Sword: Melee fighter that focuses on using spells and buffs to fight. Very strong, but very mana intensive. A majority of damage is dealt by magic, so running out of mana in a fight could quickly lead to defeat.
4. Ranger: Ranged fighter that uses ranged weapons. Fast, but very weak in close quarters.
5. Rogue: Melee fighter that focuses on speed and sneakiness to outmanouver enemies.
6. Mage: Magic focused fighter, with control over an element. Very weak in close combat, durability and speed, if doesn't have spells to mitigate these problems.
7. Conduit: Divine focused magic user. Through prayer, pact, sacrifice or other methods channels divine power of otherwordly beings. Gods, Angels, Demons, Eldritch Beings.
8. Summoner: Minion focused magic user. Create, summon or use other methods to gain minions to command.
9. Crafter: Crafting focused class. Instead of one, you can choose 2 specializations, one magical and one non-magical.
The third, Specialization can only be chosen after choosing your class.
Now, back to the start. Time for you to select a race.
I thought about it for a time. While there were plenty of animals, real or fictional to choose from, I liked one much more than the others, the spider. Because spiders are pretty cool, and I'm curiousabout being one, I decide on being reincarnated as a spider. Doesn't matter if I can just be stepped on and I'd die, if I can just magic my enemies away.
Spider, hmm? Unusual choice, and weak one as well, so you will get additional abilities so you don't get erased from existence.
Cool. I wonder what those will be?
Now choose a class.
I quickly decide on summoner. I always liked the idea of creating an incredible amount of minions, and it sounds pretty cool. I could be a necromancer, or something cool like that!
Now for Specializations:
DruidCraft: Create wooden creatures brought to life by magic. Dryads, treants, wooden creatures, living plants, there are many possibilities.
Elemental Summoning: Summon and create elemental being to do your bidding. Fire, water, earth, air, lava, and many more elements.
Demonic Summoning: Summon demons from various hells. Doom, Warhammer, Kingdom Rush, and other realitites. Be warned that many of them will try to kill you if they think they can kill you.
Abysal Call: Create or call deep sea abominations into your service. Most of them will be ineffective on land, with very few actually being able to go on land. Overall not a good option if you aren't close to the sea or in the sea.
Necromancy: Reanimate the remains of the dead, wether in corporeal form in their dead bodies or in a ghostly form by reanimating their souls.
Flesh Crafting: Change and weave the flesh of creatures to your liking, changing them as you like. You can also create creatures and change them as you fit, though this is more taxing than changing normal creatures.
And other options. But I was already really interested in these ones. All of these seem potentionally interesting, but the ones that interest me the most are the Necromancy one and the Flesh Crafting one. What can I say, some things are just cool, and Necromancy is super cool. And the flesh crafting also seems cool.
I don't really know which one I like more, or which would be more useful, so I eventually just choose randomly. They both seem good and I don't think I'll mind either choice.
Hey system, can you randomly choose between Necromancy and Flesh Crafting for me?
Very well. Randomly choosing between Necromancy and Flesh Crafting. *Roulette wheel spinning*
The result is: Flesh Crafting!
Cool! I can't wait to create some horrific flesh abominations! But now what?
Now you get sent in your new world. Have fun! I'm hanging on to you by the way. You can ask me questions, and I may deign to answer you if I feel like it.
That's nice.
And then my awareness slipped, and I was once more asleep, or the equivalent of sleeping in the void.
I slowly woke up from my sleep. Soon enough I was awake enough to see that I was in a cave. I rose unsteadily on my 8 legs, trying to figure out the dissonance of knowing how to walk on eight legs while never having had more than two legs in my legs. It was quite the mental whiplash, but I got used to it in a few minutes of walking around. While I was going on around the cave, I looked at the skills granted to me by the System.
Name: [None]
Race: Small Spider
Skills:
Evolution: Grow and change your species, evolving and growing stronger. To evolve you need to do many things, like practice your class skills, killing things and killing very, very strong things. Evolutions usually have more than one evolution paths.
Dungeon Creation: Create dungeons to explore, with enemies, bosses and treasure. These enemies are not always stupid, but they rarely are actually sapient.
Available Dungeons: Zombie Dungeon.
Observe: Gain a small amount of information on the target. The stronger the target compared to you the weaker the Observe
Flesh Crafting Novice: Change, improve and manipulate biological matter, with the limits being your skill and your mana. Not very good at flesh crafting yet, manipulating flesh isn't easy and the end result creatures aren't always stronger than before being flesh crafted. The Flesh Monsters created are always loyal to their creator, never disobeying.
Create Flesh: Create a blob of fleshy biomass to do something with. Very mana intensive and created flesh minions will be weaker than usual.
These all seem very useful, especially the dungeon one. I quickly decide to head into it, to see how it is, and soon enough instead of being in a cave I found myself on a sidewalf and I suddenly realise how small I am, staring at a car wheel that is twice as big as me. But nevermind that, I need to look around.
What I saw was not too surprising. The usual post apocalyptic city, with streets filled with broken down cars and ruined homes, with broken walls, windows and doors. Overall a very depressing view. But no zombies in sight yet. Which is actually a good thing now that I think about it, considering I'm just a teeny tiny spider and zombies are human sized, and could probably kill me just by stepping on me. Not my smartest idea, but hey, time to test out my new skills!
I focus on a point in front of me and try to focus on creating a blob of biomass. Sloooowly, ever so slowly a blob of meat as small as a meatball appears, and begins growing bigger and bigger. A minute later and I'm left with a blob of meat much, much bigger than me, about the size of a completely round beanbag. Completely red, with different textures running along its form, blood red, brownish and lighter red. I also felt relatively tired, like I just ran for a couple minutes, but without my muscles actually hurting, only the tiredness. But it wasn't too bad, and now to try to create a minion.
I put one of my legs onto the giant meat ball and tried to use magic on it. Slowly and instinctually I manipulated the flesh. It was already technically alive, in an anomalous sort of way, considering it doesn't have any organs, but it wasn't very useful as a ball of meat, so I slowly shaped it and gave it some more useful features.
I slowly manipulated the flesh ball and added more and more features until my new creations had about 5 eyes, 4 stumpy legs and a gigantic, sharp toothed maw that made up at least a quarter of its body when wide open. The creature looked kinda like a Drippler from Terraria, only instead of just eyes on its body it also had a maw and legs, and walked on the ground instead of flying through the air.
I ordered it to move forward a step, and it did, its stumpy, fleshy legs making a gross squish noisewhen they touched the ground, but it was functional and pretty terrifying. And suddenly a screen appeared in front of my eyes, suprising me with its appearance.
Achievment:
Created your first minion!
Reward: Upgrade Quests
Hmm? What is this upgrade quest? I think I can guess, but elaborate please.
Upgrade Quests: Choose an upgrade for yourself and gain a quest for improvment. Only one active quest at a time allowed.
Upgrades: Body, Magic, Flesh Crafting, Flesh Crafting Spells
Huh. This seems pretty useful. And very neat. I would like the Flesh Crafting upgrade
Flesh Crafting Upgrade Quest:
Have your Minions kill 50 enemies. [0/50]
Create 10 Minions. [0/10]
Very cool. Now I just need to find some zombies and see if they are a valid target for my flesh crafting. I climbed a house to get a vantage point and try and spot some zombies. After a couple minutes of slowly crawling up walls I was on top of the house, and I looked around, trying to see if there were any zombies around, but after a minute of looking around I couldn't spot any, so I had to ever so slowly climb down from the roof of the ruined house and move in a random direction to try to find some enemies to have my minion fight.
A couple of minutes later of walking around the ruined city and I finally found the first zombie. I didn't think about it too much, but I am so small that moving around a city is an incredibely slow task, because I am just slower than a walking human, nevermind a running one. Anyway, I spot a zombie in the distance and I decide to climb on the nearest house while my flesh monster waited in place for me to order it to do something.
After climbing on the roof of the house and gaining a better view of the road where my minion and the zombie are, at a reasonable distance from each other, I decide to use Observe on both of them.
Decaying Zombie
Race: Undead
A weak and slow zombie, already nearly destroyed by the rot and decay affecting its body.
Very Weak Flesh Abomination
Race: Flesh Creature
A four legged, many eyed creature. Weak and slow, its saving grace is its maw filled with dozens of sharp teeth that can easily shred through flesh and bone
Now that I look closer, and pay more attentions to the zombies body I can tell that its rotten. I can see bones showing, rotting organs, most of its face is missing, and it just generally looks disgusting.
I order my minion to go and kill the zombie. Telepathically I guess, which is pretty neat.
And it does so, it goes forward towards the zombies, each one of its steps accompanied by a squish or squelch sound from its weird meaty flesh legs, but I don't really care about that.
Instead, I stare at my minion as it finally reaches the zombie, and now that I can compare them I realise that my minion reaches up to around the zombies hips. Anyway, my minion then proceeds to open its mouth wide open and then bite off a good chunk of the zombies leg, causing it to fall on its to the ground, and try to orient itself towards its enemy to attack it, but the flesh ball quickly hops onto its chest, causing a couple of cracking sounds as its weight cause a couple of the zombies weak and brittle boes to break, before the monster bends forward and chombs th zombies head off of its shoulders, effectively decapitating it with its mouth.
I quickly climbed down and aproached the decapitated, rotting corpse and tried to see if I could use flesh crafting on it. And it turned out I could use flesh crafting on it. But that wasn't actually very useful, because the material it was made out of was very bad, and I just didn't know what I could make out of a decapitated and partially dismembered corpse. So I could try to create a minion out of the corpse, but it would probably be more effort than it was worth.
I could see another zombie heading our way, and quickly decided to order my flesh monster to push it and hold it down without harming it too much. I was quick to head after it and soon enough I was touching the still alive, or is it undead? Still animated zombie, and tried to use flesh crafting on it, and it worked just as well as with the corpse.
I contemplated on what to do with this zombie and how to try to change the zombie, and I got a brilliant idea, or at least a pretty good one. I decided to copy Terraria once more and turn the zombie into a copy of the Blood Zombie from the Terraria Blood Moon event, and soon enough it looked much more fearsome. It wasn't much stronger, barely an improvment, but hey, an improvment is an improvment.
As I looked upon the now crimson red zombie I decided to use observe on it.
Very Weak Flesh Abomination
Race: Flesh Creature
A weak and brittle humanoid monster. Stronger than a human, but not by much. Its fearsome appearance is a much stronger weapon than its actual strength.
Ehh. Not very suprising with how weak it is, but what I am more annoyed at is that they both have the same names. After thinking about it for a couple seconds I decide to rename the zombie into Blood Zombie, because that's what it is, and for the other one... hmmmm.
...
...
After thinking about it for a couple of minutes I decided to name it Many Eyed Devourer. Yeah sure, it makes it seem cooler and stronger than it actually is, but I don't really care that much.
Anyway, I ordered the monsters forwards while I safely hid behind them and looked around for any enemy, and soon enough we had found another zombie, and I ordered th Blood Zombie forward to kill it. It marched towards it, and slashed at the enemy zombie with its newly created claws, dealing superficial damage, the zombie retaliating right back with a bite that tore through the red zombies flesh and left a wound, and it retaliated by biting the rotting zombie right back, removing some of its flesh, but not dealing an incredible amount of damage. This went on for a couple more seconds until finally the enemy zombie died. Overall I was very disappointed in the Bloods Zombies ability to deal damage. Maybe I should have given it sharper claws or something?
But what was clear was that the Blood Zombie was shit. At the very least it was very bad, and the Many Eyed Devourer was much better, at least in this situation.
An hour later I had a bigger army and had fought a lot of zombies, some stronger than the first ones. I now had 3 Many Eyed Devourer and 7 Blood Zombies and I was just randomly wandering through the empty city, most of them not being too much of a threat.
As I thought that a scream rang through the air as a zombie began running in the direction of me and my small army. It was intercepted by a MED and a Blood Zombie, the latter pining the running zombie down and stopping it from running as the slower and armless MED took a few bites out of the zombie, killing it quickly.
Fresh Zombie
Race: Undead
A relatively recntly infected zombie, the decay and rot hasn't caught up to it yet, making it faster, stronger and tougher than its older bretheren.
It may be stronger, but turning one of them into a Blood Zombie doesn't make the resulting monster much stronger than using their weaker versions, so I stopped bothering after the first two.
Flesh Crafting Upgrade Quest Completed!
Have your Minions kill 50 enemies. [50/50]
Create 10 Minions. [10/10]
Reward:
Flesh Crafting Adept: Change, improve and manipulate biological matter, with the limits being your skill and your mana. Still not very good at flesh crafting yet, manipulating flesh is a little easier and the end result creatures are usually stronger than before being flesh crafted. Can flesh craft from a very short distance, but enemies are much harder to flesh craft from a distance. The stronger they are the harder it is. The Flesh Monsters created are always loyal to their creator, never disobeying.
That seems pretty useful, especially doing Flesh Crafting from a distance. And now I can choose a second upgrade. But what should I?
Upgrades: Body, Magic, Flesh Crafting, Flesh Crafting Spells
Uhhh... Body?
Body Upgrade Quest:
Exercise for 2 hours. [0/2]
Kill 10 enemies yourself. [0/10]
Shit, I'm a summoner, I'm definitely suited for the task of killing my enemies myself, but I guess I could have my minions hold the enemy down. But hey, I just got a wonderful idea! I should figure out where I actually am. In the real world that is.
And with that me and my minions leave the dungeon at my command, and we are in the cave I found myself in an hour and a bit ago.
I looked around and went towards the exit while ordering my minions to remain in place and not leave, at least for now, and went exploring through the caverns ahead. I walked for a couple seconds in one directions when I heard a sound. When focusing on it for a few seconds I could hear a distinct tiktiktiktiktik of claws on the floor from another insect walking around, so I slowly made my way towards the sound to find a gigantic bug crawling along the floor. It had bluish-black spines on its back with a grey head, 6 legs, grey underside, 2 black eyes and mandibles. Immediately I hit it with an observe.
Crawlid
Race: Insect
Timid scavenger that crawls through the caverns looking for food.
I paused upon reading that because I had this nagging feeling I had seen that before, somewhere else...
OH FUCK. This is Hollow Knight. I'm in fucking Hollow Knight. Shit. I nervously tap the ground, trying to work off the frustration and fear by hitting the ground with my legs, because Hollow Knight is not a good world. Sure most enemies aren't too strong, but there is the very important problem of a fucking mind controlling Godess of Light that can take control of you through your dreams and there is basically no way to resist other than getting lucky. Sigh.
That's certainly not very good, but I shouldn't panic right now, I should be as fast and careful as possible, and right now I need to see if I can kill this crawlid with my Flesh Crafting from a distance.
I focus on it from a reasonable distance, and focus on its legs trying to melt them. Immediately I feel tired like I just spent half an hour exercising, and I feel like I should sit down and recover, but instead I focus on the bigger insects screeches of pain as its legs turn to slurry and it is left immobilised due to its lack of legs.
I go towards it and probe its carapace with my fangs, and I penetrate its carapace easily enough as I feel the taste of its haemolymph in my mouth, very sweet, like Fanta without the carbonation, so basically orange juice. Which suddenly makes me worried because there were a lot of jokes that the infection juice was actually orange juice, because both have the same colour. Which is pretty dumb, so I don't think too long about it. I continue taking bites of the still screaming and living insect that is twice as big as me, and I find its flesh to very stringy, and its carapace kinda like pizza crust.
Overall not the worst thing I've ever eaten, but still not very good. I quickly kill it once I stop feeling hungry and thirsty, and decide that I should complete the quest about killing 10 enemies by killing 9 more of these insects right now.
I've drawn some art of what I imagine the Many Eyed Devourer/MED looks like on my tumblr: voidblood-isalreadytaken/723284436529053696/many-eyed-devourer?source=share
Anyway the song I was pretending to sing in the beggining of the chapter is named Chlorine, made by Xxtha. It's pretty good and I was listening to it while writing that part and that's why I decided to include it. Expect this often.
