Chapter 4 - SUBCUTANEOUS 1.3

Woohoo! Combat, baybe! Goodies! Tons of fucked up tastytime goodies, and, at the very end, a little twist! Just a smol one. See ya soon!

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Whoever designed the character models and terrain settings clearly had just as much input into the creation of enemy types. And they clearly had just as much joy in making them, if what she’s seeing here is any indication.

Standing in a small patch of hair-grass, squatting fat and round against a terrain of some sort of granules and skin, is what she can only describe as the grossest little abomination she’s ever seen. She loves it.

Luckily, the game system has some more to be said on the matter. 

She sees the words Sludgeling floating in the air above the creature, highlighting its location as well as the features that most stand out on it. It looks almost like a ball of snot, wrapped around a wriggling knot of what seem like centipede legs. The whole thing is, quite frankly, an abomination of the highest order, a rolling ball of goop- and yet, deep in her weird little heart, Ilia can’t help but find it just a little bit cute as it rolls awkwardly across the ground, an occasional centipede-leg coated in slime poking out to roll it in a new direction. It drops the same bits of weird gravel that make up part of the ground behind it as it walks, though she notices a distinct lack of redness to the pieces left behind, like sucked-on scabs.

Disgusting, terrible, no good, nasty.

But like… it’s a small little rolly-baby. She can’t hate it all the way!

Ah well. The siren song of EXP calls to her.

Even if the game is only in VR, it’s still gross to hit the thing. Her avatar’s awkward arm swipe slaps into the ball of ooze, which bounces away with further awkwardness. It half-deflates, turning into a loose collection of ooze on the ground as it spreads out, making it harder to hit and, in theory, harder to pick up- not that she will be doing so.

She goes to hit it again, swiping just a bit more smoothly than before and striking near center mass on the whole thing. It gives off a sound like an angry teakettle, oozing itself towards her rather than away. Before she can react, the snot-thing has wrapped around her avatar’s foot.

The haptic feedback on her leg goes wild, buzzing angrily, and she watches as a new bar forms at the top left of her line of sight. A shape, awkward and strange but whose silhouette she recognizes, appears in the same bright and vein-red material that all the other writing has been in, but as she watches, the foot of the avatar slowly turns from a bright red down to a darker maroon, and then a bit darker again.

They really did think of absolutely everything, huh? Even the HP bar is more immersive and interactive!

She yanks her foot out of the ooze, which splatters pitifully on the floor but is now a much brighter red than the previous snot color. Looking down, she sees the surface layer of her avatar’s foot has been eaten away, making for a steady drip of bloodflow- whatever else the Sludgeling is, it’s acidic as hell!

She awkwardly swipes at it some more, aiming for the jumble of limbs at the center. If there’s organs and muscles somewhere, that means it’s not all acid, more complex than some single-celled organism writ large. Pretty soon her hands are starting to lose color in her HUD as well, shifting more slowly towards that maroon…

But in just a few more hits, the creature deflates entirely, losing surface tension and just dissolving. The slime becomes a lot less viscous, more a liquid than a sludge now, and it flows down into the gravel.

And then- the dopamine. The juicy, delicious, phat as all hell dopamine.

GENERAL EXP ACQUIRED: +5

ABILITY ACQUIRED: SWIPE

And there it is, under the abilities tab. 

SWIPE: A swinging attack, usually open-handed and dependent on claws or strong digits. While there is little chance of lethal damage, it’s better than a slap, even if it’s worse than a claw-attack or punch. Better with the use of additional phenotypes. 

Two possibilities there- either they’re going to give her a new ability for every possible attack pattern or ability in the game, or there’ll be a way to upgrade and fuse later. The trend of complexity and immersion has her believing in the former, but really, who’s to know until she knows? Either way, she takes a practice swing with the ability, and rather than a button-prompt, it seems like it falls more in line with some kind of upgrade. The movement has none of the awkward delay it had a minute ago, and she notices that it goes faster this time.

And then, joy of joys, the only thing that can tempt a gamer more than XP: loot. 

She sees a slight outline of the glowing veins of her HUD flow over the centipede-legs left behind by the Sludgeling. They are highlighted against the scab-gravel and skin-floor, glowing brightly enough to be seen and not much else. 

She pulls closer to them, crouching down in the real world to lower her camera perspective down towards the materials. Red letters appear as she gets closer, forming from the glowing outlines as veins that swim into the air.

MATERIAL: Twitching Digits, Low Grade.

MATERIAL: Digestive Sludge, Low Grade

Hovering her hand over them, she picks one up, finding the selection process easier than last time, as if the SWIPE ability has added greater dexterity in general to her avatar’s hand-movements. The centipede-leg twitches, but she supposes that, on close inspection, it could be a thin, strange finger, or would mostly certainly be useful as one to something at her size.

She thinks, remembering her stats. Intelligence and Synchronicity both make reference to organic technology, but Intelligence specifically states that there are crafting possibilities to be had.

INTELLIGENCE: Enhances cognitive capabilities, improves effectiveness of abilities, unlocks advanced crafting options.

Hmm. She explicitly made her build not to be a melee machine, but to have high SYNCHRONICITY and INTELLIGENCE. If there’s anything she can do…

It’s not specific. Instructions don’t just pop up out of nowhere, like she sort of expected them to. Rather, it almost feels like she’s free to do what she wants, and see if it works.

She could stop and look for instructions, but… well, it’s been damn immersive so far. Might as well give it a shot!

She grabs some of the hair-grass, and as if guided, her avatar’s hands wrap the flexible keratin around the twitching fingers. In about thirty seconds, she’s made something like a strange necklace or a weird bit of body-jewelry. It fits easily over her hand, and she places it over her left, the haptic sensors providing a few little twitches as the digits touch her skin. 

Hmm. Still something missing. Going off only the materials she has currently…

She picks up the Digestive Sludge, feeling a tingle in the control on her right hand as she dribbles it over her left hand and the necklace of mismatched, twitching things. The left controller starts to vibrate more than the right, until her actual hand starts to feel a little numb, and then-

GENERAL EXP ACQUIRED: +15

CRAFTING EXP ACQUIRED: +7

The biggest amount of exp she’s gotten yet, heavier than the rest by far. Is it due to her stats, rewarding her build directly, or rewarding crafting in general? 

She smiles, almost giddy with joy. It really does just get better and better!

And, looking down at her avatar’s left hand, she sees the results of all that crafting.

CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL: Twitching Claw-Glove (Low-Grade) 

Twitching Claw-Glove (Low-Grade):

+1 STRENGTH

+1 SENSITIVITY

-50% Limb Health

She can feel her haptic feedback responding to the new equipment, sending tiny little twitches against her skin as the grass blows in the breeze all around. It’s like she can feel it without touching, the increase to sensitivity jumping up pretty high. Would she feel the same way if she’d gotten her stats set up that way originally, or is it an effect from the material itself? She’s not sure, but she can’t wait to do another playthrough to find out. At this rate though, it’s going to take weeks to play through this more than once, and that’s with no information at all about just how long the game’s main quests or how large the area she has actually is.

Still, the decrease to health is obvious. Her avatar’s skin, marked with the colorful patterns she put on in character creation, has partially melted, turning to a goopy mess. The wrist is stiff and locked, the original fingers looking like runny wax from the digestive goop, but the hair-strands have fused to the skin, locking the twitching digits into place. They stand mostly upright, though some are lopsided, adding a half-dozen extra digits to hand and wrist, all of them twitching and sharper-pointed than her original ones.

Yeah, she can see how this could synergize with SWIPE. 

Grinning like a lunatic, Ilia charges off towards the nearest patch of moving hair-grass, on the hunt for another Sludgeling.

The second fight goes much better than the first. Two swipes she’s torn open the membrane holding all the ooze in place, dissolving the creature much faster. Her left hand does take additional damage, and with the added health deficit from the item she crafted, it’s edging a bit past maroon towards black now. She’s not sure what’ll happen at that point, but it probably won’t be good for the limb in question.

Plenty of time until then, and plenty more stuff to hunt down!

GENERAL EXP ACQUIRED: +20 EXP

SWIPE EXP ACQUIRED: +3 EXP

CRAFTING EXP ACQUIRED: 10 EXP

Making a string to decorate with additional Twitching Digits, Low-Grade is easy compared to doing the same with acid, repeating the previous process but not wearing it. She puts the impromptu necklace on her right hand, making an improvised way to store at least some of the rewards from her most recent looting. A lot less than the previous Sludgeling had, but still, three twitching digits is three twitching digits! 

It doesn’t take long for the chain of digits to be really, really long, and for her to run into a bit of an issue. Without new materials, she’s not sure what to craft, and adding more fingers and string to her damaged current hand seems like it’s more likely to have her lose it than get stronger. She could probably start doing full body-art with the twitching things, see what it can do to her SENSITIVITY stat, but considering she’s not really equipped for a VITALITY build anyways, that just seems like asking for trouble. Too little HP is for speedrunners and challenge runs, and she’s here to explore.

Time to go onward then, especially if she can find her way to some other creatures and materials! She moves her avatar over towards the bone-trees she saw earlier, looking for changes in the scenery and a better vantage point to see where to go next. She wanders up the nearest hillside, somewhere maybe five away from the one she started at; even as she’s gotten more familiar with the controls, the movement still feels like it’s on a delay, awkward and uncomfortable to move around in. 

On reaching the top of a hill, she reaches up and plucks one of the branches. They are dry, brittle, but tough enough that it barely bends as her avatar grips onto it hard. She has to add the hand equipped with her Twitching Claw-Glove to finally manage to yank a piece free.

Almost immediately, the highlight pops up again, forming letters the closer she looks.

Brittle Bone Club (Low-Grade).

Well, even mage builds have to start off somewhere. Club it is!

She swings it once or twice, feeling how the haptic feedback and such shows a change in movement. To her surprise, she feels the SWIPE ability activating easily, as if there’s really no difference between swiping her hand and swiping the club- which, in mechanical terms, there mostly isn’t, now she thinks it. Would fighting with a sword also benefit from her SWIPE ability? What about kicks, or claws, or limbs that aren’t arms and legs? 

So many questions, so little time! She’s not sure how long its been, but even with the caffeine running through her, she’s exhausted. The thought of turning off the game and getting some rest comes to mind…

And is immediately dismissed. For a game this good? If Ilia could pull off an all-nighter for the buggy, glitchy mess of the original launch of Cyberpunk 2088, she can absolutely do the same for this. Whatever else it may be, MEAT is a hell of an experience, worthy of enjoying even unto the detriment of sleep!

Ilia giggles a bit as she causes the eating animation to proc again, chugging down another can of Monstrous. She’s got this.

And then, almost as if in response, she hears something growling.

Turning, she seems something more or less the size of a dog, though significantly more stout, about three feet high and solid all the way through. It looks like a Sludgeling’s older cousin, the centipede-fingers replaced by multiple exposed spider-like digits, all of them keeping the heavier body up off the ground and forming something like an internal skeletal structure. It’s like watching a bunch of rigid eels bite and pull on each other to imitate tendons, pulling a thick and heavy piece of sludge up off the ground.

Again, a whistling sound, but this one sounds deeper, more haunting. Like wind through cliffsides rather than a cute little kettle screaming. 

She has just enough time to see the word Greater Sludgelur before it throws itself at her.

She stumbles back, the difficulty of movement made all the more difficult by having to make snap reactions. The delays and awkwardness of some of the controls, matched to needing to maintain at least some idea of the surroundings in her actual, real-life room, double-up to make the whole experience send a thrill of adrenaline running through her, just as the Sludgelur slams into her avatar.

Immediately her haptic feedback goes nuts, sending an actual jolt through her whole body from how suddenly all of them light up. The red simulacra of her avatar in the corner of her vision starts changing hue immediately, the veins that glow and make it up actually squirming in the corner of her vision as the damage accumulates. Spider-digits wrap around her, pinning her in place, squeezing tightly and pinning her against the acidic ooze.

She swings, her SWIPE ability doubling down on tearing through part of the creature’s body and sending it splattering away. It screeches, loud and angry, maintaining its hold, and she decides to risk it, thrusting her Twitching Claw-Glove straight into its center mass.

The fight is going badly, and fast. As an ambush predator, the Sludgelur does wonders, and her health seems at least half gone already. Sacrificing a limb is no minor thing, but sometimes to win, you need to do crazy stuff and accept the price.

She manages to shove it just a few inches off her skin, her avatar’s flesh like drooping wax and runny colors. She’s bleeding from several holes where it’s eaten through her flesh, losing even more health that way, but her own twitching extra fingers wrap tightly into the ooze, maintaining their form even as her original hand keeps melting. Another swipe, and two of the creature’s limbs break, splattering a watery blood and something like black tendons from inside their shell.

From there, it gets easier. She slips free of its grasp, tossing it aside and slamming her club down onto it, once, twice, three times. With a final thick, disgusting splat, it bursts like an overripe fruit, falling apart into the scab-gravel and oozing its remains down the hill.

In and out of game, Ilia collapses onto the ground, her whole body numb from the constantly vibrating haptics. She might need to find a settings menu to tone that down, honestly. She can practically feel where the damage has occurred and how her body has suffered.

Then again… fuck, what an immersion. What a joy. What an incredible thing, to almost literally feel the danger, the risk, the incredible graphics matched by sound design and physical feedback. This… this wasn’t worth 200 dollars. This was worth more. This could be a launch title for a whole new VR gaming setup, if only the aesthetics were more appealing to a mass audience.

Ilia looks down at her avatar. Her health looks like its hovering somewhere around 20%, nowhere near ideal, but as soon as her attention returns to the game’s HUD, she gets a new notification, one that sends a thrill of excitement through her.

GENERAL EXP ACQUIRED: +30

SWIPE EXP ACQUIRED: +15

LEVEL UP!

As soon as her eyes hover over the words “Level Up”, they expand, filling her vision and casting her back into a sort of haze. They almost look like the web of veins has expanded into a sort of cocoon or screen around her face, taking up her vision to block out the alien landscape.

CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!

+3 STAT POINT

+1 REGEN

UNIQUE MUTATION ACQUIRED: SKIN-DENSITY I

The rest are exceptional, especially if the regen means she doesn’t have to ditch the run or spend the next few hours scrambling for a healing item, but her eyes are immediately drawn to the unique mutation. Hovering over it, the words crawl out and expand;

SKIN-DENSITY I: Often considered the bare-minimum standard, a Fleshling’s Skin is so subpar that this mutation only barely brings it up to an average. The density and toughness of your skin increase, reducing acid and fire damage, but at a loss of SENSITIVITY.

And, interestingly, she notices that it doesn’t immediately fall into place. Beneath the description, a prompt appears;

ACCEPT? Y/N

Without hesitation, she accepts. She got stat points to push her SENSITIVITY up if she wants, though it hasn’t felt like the most useful skill yet, and reducing acid damage seems tailored to improve her survivability in this place. Instantly, her haptic sensors send a subtle, calmer pulse over her body, leaving her a bit tingly, and she sees her avatar’s appearance shift slightly beneath the cocoon-screen. Where before the parts touched by acid looked like runny wax, now they look more like dense, hard packed beeswax, rough and uneven but thicker, more solid. It looks out of place on her skin, thin, light and pale as it is, but she enjoys the thrill of how customizable everything is. Every possible aspect of the entire game seems tailor-made to have as many options, variations, and interactions at once.

Fucking hell. Where has this game been all her life?

She quickly puts two points into VITALITY, putting the last one into SYNCHRONICITY. A setback is no reason to abandon a build, after all! That’s just good reasoning to double down and find the right way for it to work!

Her final stats look like so-

{MANIFESTATION OF [00000000]}

EXP: 1 (0/???)

GENUS: ESURIATIO AUTONOMIA 

SPECIES: FLESHLING

STATS:

• Vitality

  • 4

• Agility

  • 2

• Strength

  • 2

• Endurance

  • 2

• Intelligence

  • 3

• Sensitivity

  • 1

• Synchronicity

  • 5

SKILLS:

• SWIPE (Lvl 1)

MUTATIONS:

• SKIN DENSITY I

ORGANS: 

• CUTANEOUS

  • FLESHLING SKIN

• SKELETAL

  • FLESHLING BONE

• MUSCLE

  • FLESHLING MUSCLE

  • FLESHLING TENDON

• CIRCULATION

  • FLESHLING CIRCULATION

  • FLESHLING PUMP

• RESPIRIUM

  • FLESHLING LUNGS

• GLANDULAR

  • FLESHLING LIVER

  • FLESHLING ADRENAL

• NEUROLOGOS

  • FLESHLING BRAIN

  • PARASITIC INFESTORICA

• SENSORIA

  • FLESHLING SENSORIA

• DEGUSTATION

  • CYCLIAL DIGESTER

EQUIPMENT

• Twitching Claw-Glove (Low-Grade):

  • +1 STRENGTH

  • +1 SENSITIVITY

  • -50% Limb Health

• Brittle Bone Club (Low-Grade)

  • +3 Melee Damage

Nothing perfect, not by any means, but she feels like she is well on her way towards something. Her next priority has to be finding new materials to craft with, she’s sure of it. Without her club and her glove, that would’ve gone far, far worse, and this is just a low-level trash mob in the starter area! But if she can get at the much larger spider-things of the Sludgelur, maybe see if her character can eat some of the stuff that fell out of it for her side-objectives.

She closes the level-up screen, looking forward to finding out just how much her regen affects her, when-

Everything lights up. Her haptic feedback gets loud, screaming into her, every part of her body lit up with tingling sensations and borderline electrified. She spasms in shock, feeling like every funny bone in her body got smacked at once.

Her vision is covered by the same grey-snot coloration. The words of her HUD pop in for a moment, but like they’re a real object affected in the physics engine, they too are dissolved by the goo surrounding her.

The game didn’t pause. It kept going when she went into the leveling screen.

Ilia yanks off her headset as the game makes a disgusting crunching noise and her HP disappears entirely.