…
[Reincarnator.]
[Reincarnator!]
[Wake up!]
Huh? Just a bit longer…
Wait. No, that's not right. I’m supposed to be checking my updates.
My head is starting to clear. I haven’t felt like this since that one time I… well whatever. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this tired and groggy.
[It has been 1 month since the chosen day for Meditative Trance to end]
That long huh? I keep trying to yawn but obviously cannot. No mouth and all. What happened while I was out?
[Meditative Trance ended. Calculating experience.]
[459900 experience points gained. Reincarnator has leveled up multiple times.]
[Skill Acquired - Roll. Active. Movement by rolling at a speed of 1/5th size per second.]
[Skill Acquired - Written in Stone. Active. Store up to 15 memories in the core that are available for access by Reincarnator at any time.]
[Skill Acquired - Weight Adjustment. Active. Ability temporarily to increase or decrease weight up to 1.5 times the actual weight.]
[Skill Acquired - Minor Hardening. Passive. 5% more resistant to physical damage.]
[Weak Attractive Force has leveled up 6 times. Efficiency improved by 7%. Range improved by 44 μm.]
[Weak Attractive Force has reached its maximum level. Acquire resources to advance further.]
[Meditative Trance has leveled up 3 times and will generate 300% more experience.]
[Assimilation has leveled up, now it is possible to absorb biological organisms in addition to materials.]
[Assimilation has leveled up, take on one attribute or skill of the material that makes up the majority of the Reincarnator’s composition.]
[Weak Blindsense has leveled up, range is now equal to size.]
[Merged with 327 pieces of dust, 82 pieces of iron dust, 21 pieces of Silt Dust, and 4 pieces of Bone Dust. Size increased. Now large enough to assimilate Sand, Bone Dust, Dust Mites, Saw Dust, and Tardigrades.]
[Form Advancement available. Open the Evolution Tree to see options.]
Talk about a sensory overload.
[Now may not be the best time. Environmental Danger. Reincarnator is advised to move.]
Huh? What do you mean? I take a moment to examine my surroundings for the first time since waking up.
[Now!]
Op, I see it. My vision hasn’t improved much but it has widened significantly since I am so much larger now. I can’t tell exactly what the threat is but I am able to see a massive outline moving towards me. The shape seems to be somewhere between looking organic and like a liquid. The movement reminds me of molasses if it had a mind.
I’m not sure if it’s liquid, living, or what, but I am pretty sure it’s dangerous. Right before it moves, thousands of small tendrils move towards the ground to pull all the particles into the mass. That wouldn’t worry me much, except that each particle’s shape starts to wave and shift before disintegrating. At least that’s what it looks like to me.
No time to consider much more, did I mention it’s coming straight towards me?
I immediately begin to activate my new roll skill which is slow but should help buy me time. I have no clue how large that thing really is compared to a human but to my current form it looks like a mountain!!
Right, focus on escaping. I keep getting bombarded with messages as I roll, alerting me that I have assimilated various materials. I’m not going to get distracted and risk getting myself killed.
Is it even possible for me to die?
Wow, that's a rabbit hole of thought, now is not the time. Focus.
I need to be going faster, I can already tell it will catch up to me in a few minutes. I wish I had someway to distract it or slow it down, but there’s a decent chance that it’s too large to even notice anything on my scale. It might as well be a natural disaster compared to me.
Oh oh oh!
Activate Weight Adjustment. Decrease weight by 50%.
And suddenly I am moving a bit faster. Not as much as I expected but… wait oh crap.
What must feel like the tiniest of air currents to a human was a gust of air that lifted me off the ground, increasing my speed and momentum. Lucky. It's not quite the direction I hoped, but I'll take any extra speed I can get to avoid total destruction. I never imagined my first time flying would be as a literal piece of assorted minerals.
Regardless it seems that my newfound express airline is taking me away from whatever was coming at me before. I really should come up with a name for it. The Great Devourer? Maybe that’s a bit pre-emptive.
A few seconds in the air then I hit the ground rolling. Physics seems to work differently at this scale because normally, I’ve noticed that other particles around me weren’t able to carry much if any momentum after being moved by the wind. Friction maybe? Whatever the reason, my skill seems to have been able to keep me moving and bypass those pesky laws of physics.
As I roll on and time passes, my anxiety starts to fade as I realize this thing is not very fast. I honestly can't tell which of us is faster since the gap between us since the helpful airburst has remained basically the same. I hope this thing gives up or loses interest otherwise this will be a war of attrition.
A war of attrition it was indeed. It's been hours and I can now confirm that it is indeed faster than me. Not by much but that gap has steadily decreased. I need to change the game soon or I'll be a goner in ... probably another few hours. Finally I seem to have reached what looks like a wall. This could either go really well or really bad.
I slow down as I approach the wall. I can't be sure that I won't accidentally shatter my dusty shell upon impact so best to play it safe. I do lose some valuable time and distance from the ever closer slime creature but if this doesn't work I don't think I'll be making it out of here.
Will my attractive force skill help attach me to objects like this?
No response. And the system was feeling so chatty just a little while earlier.
I push and try to climb up the wall but I can't get any traction. I think I actually might have lost some size from spinning out against the wall for a second there.
Let's try something else, huh? Umm, I don't have much time, maybe 30 minutes to figure this out before I'm presumably dead. What can I do?
Seconds and minutes tick by as my anxiety rises again. Nothing, nothing is working. I've tried activating my Weak Attractive Force at full capacity, I've tried directing it's attraction, and nothing has changed.
[Rotate your perspective.]
What is that supposed to mean? I've actually tried doing that with the Weak Attractive Force skill and it didn't do anything! You can clearly hear my inner monologue system, so you should know that.
...
Snarky doesn't help. Right sorry. Alright lets look at this another way. What is a particle of dust? What is a wall to dust? I can see scattered dust particles scattered sporadically on the walls surface. Held there by the slight imperfections in the stone and something else. What else is there to rotate? It's not like I can rotate the wall to be the floor!
It's much closer now. Maybe 5 minutes until it's too late to try and continue the chase though I know that won't change anything if I can't get off the ground. ... Assuming it can't get off the ground.
Several seconds of expletives later it clicks. If I can't rotate the wall to be the floor physically, I can at least try to rotate it mentally. So far my skills have all worked as I've intended in the bounds of the description. If I rotate my perspective so that when I try to roll along the wall, I treat it not as a vertical surface but my new horizontal surface?
Another minute passes as I focus my mind on trying to view the wall as my new floor before I activate Weak Attractive Force as much as I can and begin to roll. If I had eyes, they'd be tightly shut in focus and fear of this not working but I'm moving. I'm moving up ... no along the wall. I figured it out!!
Greeting my success is a blue text box with a new skill of all things. Now all there is to do is roll as fast as I can and hope that thing can't chase me.
[Skill Acquired - Static Cling. Passive. A combination feature from Weak Attractive Force and Roll, enables movement along vertical surfaces or even upside down so long as size is less than 5mm. Improve Weak Attractive Force to improve this ability.]
Just as I get a few inches off the ground, it makes contact with the wall and begins to reach up. My nonexistent heart leaps into my also nonexistent throat and it just stops. Slowly pawing at the wall with it's tendrils but just stops and stays still as if waiting for me to come down. Probably a good idea to get a move on then.
I start to roll along the wall heading away from the floor. I have the new skill but I'm afraid if I start thinking of the wall as a vertical surface again I'll fall. It takes me another hour to reach the joining edge with the ceiling. This seems like a good place to spot and I should be safe here for the moment. Let’s check out those updates again. I wonder how many pieces I assimilated while rolling here.
[Merged with 21 pieces of dust, 45 pieces of iron dust, 16 pieces of Silt Dust, and 7 pieces of Bone Dust. Size increased.]
Alright nice. Not bad for a few hours of frantically rolling for my life. What are my stats like now?
[Reincarnator: Ja???s Ha?lv?rson
Form: Dust Speck LVL 20 ?
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Size: 4.9 mm (4998 μm)
XP: 6056
Next Level: 69300 XP]
I hit level twenty, that's right. I should be able to evolve into a new form by now first I'm curious. How is my Composition looking? Open Form Info please.
[Form Info
Composition by Size: Bone 33%, Iron 30%, Silt 27%, Dust 9%
Further info can be obtained with new or upgraded skills.]
Looks like Dust Speck isn’t very accurate anymore, not even 10 percent by size wow. I bet if I looked at composition by particle quantity it would be like 95% dust. I am also getting pretty large, about the same size as one of those mini dice. So not huge compared to my old standards but I am about 4,000 times larger than when I started.
Nothing much to change about it now, I guess all there is to it is to open the Evolution Tree and see what I’ve got as my options. I hope they are good. Please Mr. Manager, make them good. Is the manager a god? I really ought to start a list of things to inquire or think about when I have time. I may not have a physical brain anymore but I guess my soul or thoughts or whatever still has ADHD. Anyways, let’s open the Evolution Tree.
[The following forms are available or known to the Reincarnator. Minimum size to evolve forms is at least 5000 μm size. Requirements are listed in brackets.
- Ironclad Speck
- Requirements: Minimum 50% iron composition
- Dust Giant
- Requirements: 100% dust composition
- Bone Fragment
- Requirements: Minimum 50% bone composition
- Silt Shard
- Requirements: Minimum 50% silt composition
- Composite Pebble
- Requirements: Minimum 3 materials of any quantity present in composition
- Memetic Cell
- Requirements: 50% organic composition]
Ooh okay, that’s more than I was expecting. I wonder how these will affect my future though, they all seem to be pretty similar from a scientific viewpoint but I guess this world is probably different. Do I have any information on what I will get from each if I chose it as my new form?
[Detailed Information is restricted. Summary permitted.]
[Ironclad Speck creates focus on metals. Skills may be related to magnetism and increased defense.]
[Dust Giant requires shedding all other materials and focusing on dust progression. Relies on quantity and may include domain like skills.]
[Bone Fragment creates focus on organism remains. Can learn skills that allow form change and greater offensive abilities.]
[Silt Shard creates a shift towards movement. May learn skills regarding movement.]
[Composite Pebble focuses on well roundedness. Skills learned are based on current Composition.]
[Memetic Cell focuses on living organisms and adapting. It may include skills that modify or compliment Assimilation.]
All seem to have their uses. I wonder which I should take. Memetic Cell seems to be impossible at the moment, since I haven’t encountered any living organisms I could assimilate yet. That narrows the options by one I guess.
I want to come back to this. I don’t need to choose right now so it’s not a big deal. I’m more worried about my memories. I got a skill that will let me store about 15 or so during the last mediation period. I should make use of it as soon as possible, so I can be prepared regardless of what happens.
Alright then, sounds like it’s story time then. How do I start? Do I just talk and tell stories until the memory is full? I kinda feel like a narrator in a story already with all this inner monologuing, perhaps I’m already starting to go crazy. If I did have any listeners I bet they would be dying to have some dialogue but I don't think I can really deliver on that front at the moment as much as I would like to oblige. That’s not a comforting thought however, and the show must go on. I will recount my life as best as I can remember and then decide what I should keep. Are there any limits to the skill? Can I store skills from my previous life like reading and writing?
[It is possible, yes. If the skill is a higher rank.]
Well I guess I should check what I still remember. I was born in a loving family, I had a younger sibling, a sister? I’m not positive. We didn’t get along well, I remember that but I really can’t remember much about them.
I did fairly well in school, particularly science and math, but I always preferred video games to learning. In high school, I joined the science club and even won an award or two at some competitions. I ended up going to university, much to my parents' surprise. I think they just assumed I would spend my life gaming. I majored in Computer Science with a minor in Physics. Seemed crazy at the time to mix the two fields but it worked out pretty well in retrospect. Turns out those career advisors weren't totally crazy when they said your major doesn't really matter all that much in terms of defining your future career.
I also got into my first serious relationship around that time. … Yep I still remember and it still hurts. Not saving that memory.
After graduation, I worked as a software developer for a bit, but I struggled to make much progress in the industry. I remember some kind of opportunity came up and I was able to move into Journalism. I don’t remember what led to it but I think everyone was just as surprised as I was. I was never really a writer, but somehow I ended up doing well. I had lots of writing practice in university and so it came pretty easy all things considered.
I ended up doing really well in Journalism, though I definitely faced some challenges. I didn’t like sugar coating things and tended to do extensive research to figure out the truth. I ended up angering a few too many people with my articles. For a while, I thought the best case scenario was losing my job. Somehow, my boss took a liking to me and moved me to the gaming sector and had me write under a new pseudonym.
While doing that I got into my second serious relationship and it was going pretty well for a year or two, but once again it didn’t work out. I would have probably given her more time and attention if I knew it would be my last. It was pretty soon after I was in what I assume was a car accident. I'm pretty sure it was a car accident. This isn’t a memory issue, I just am not positive. I was crossing the street and suddenly was on the ground. I still remember how much it hurt as I lay there, unable to move before finally passing out. Not sure what else would do that other than a vehicle. Though since I didn't fly over the windshield, it could have been one of those trucks.
How much did that take up? I have 15 slots, right? Well, objectively if I am worried about losing the mental skills I learned in school and work I should start there. How large are these memories allowed to be?
[Memory Slot storage is able to be condensed to contain up to 100 hours worth of information spoken aloud at an average speed or 30 minutes of full detail memories if played like a movie.]
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of information on investigative methods.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of information about scientific principles.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of information regarding physics.
[Information regarding ‘Physics’ is two large to store in 1 memory slot. Would you like to store information regarding ‘Physics’ across 2 memory slots?]
Really? That big? Hmm, yeah let’s do it. I took a couple courses on geology and since I'm, well, a rock that would probably be helpful.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of information of geology.
Can I store a collection of memories that have been curated to only include certain parts?
[Certainly.]
Allocate 3 memory slots for storage of full detail happy memories.
[‘Happy memories’ can be stored in 1 memory slot as information.]
[If you would like to store ‘happy memories’ as full detailed memories, it will require 9 memory slots.]
Okay that’s too many slots for such. I’ll do it this way then.
Allocate 1 memory slot as information.
Allocate 1 memory slot as full detail including only my favorite memories.
[Which memories would you like to designate as favorite memories?]
Oh good question. I just assumed you would be able to pick for me and know. Let me think about it for a moment.
…
Okay, the first one I want to save is the time my team won the International Physics Competition. I spent hours on my speech but was so glad to see my parents and friends there to support me. It was one of the first times I felt that I meaningfully accomplished something in my life. Our project was about harnessing kinetic energy but I can’t seem to remember what exactly the solution we created was anymore. Make sure to include the time after where my parents congratulated and gave me encouragement. Their words gave me a lot of support for a long time after.
[Memory of encouraging words are incomplete.]
[Using context to extrapolate possible encouragement.]
Uh great, thanks. I’m not sure how to feel about that but whatever. Don’t tell me next time.
Moving on. I want to save some moments from the time I went to Yellowstone with my university buddies. We hiked and camped for about a week. It was so beautiful to see the landscape, star gaze, and share stories. I want to particularly save the moment we hiked to the summit of one of the trails and saw the sunrise. I want to remember that feeling of being alive and free.
…
Alright, cool. Yeah, I didn’t want to know anyways.
The last memory I want to store is the time I slept over at my grandpa’s. He was getting older and needed some help so I volunteered to spend the weekend with him and help out. He was my hero and that night we sat on the porch, drank some hot chocolate, and just talked about life and things he learned in life. We talked about everything from the wonders of the universe to the importance of kindness. I didn’t realize it would be one of my last moments with him before he passed.
[Memories allocated successfully.]
I want to save some other things that are important to me. How many memories are left?
[8 memory slots remain.]
Allocate 2 memory slots for storage of assorted things learned at university.
[Unclear instructions.]
Just choose from information I learned from my general education classes and my introductory computer science classes. I doubt I’ll need most of that here.
[Memory slot allocated successfully]
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of lessons learned from negative experiences.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of information about myself and my life.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of video game references.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of full detailed memories of my experiences with the manager and everything after my death.
I have a feeling that that last one may come in handy. I would rather not forget it, just in case.
Allocate 1 memory slot for storage of knowledge about fantasy worlds from pop culture.
[Memories allocated successfully]
Now that that’s done, I really need to make a decision regarding the evolution. Which form do I want?
Also I really need to have a word with the genius who named it evolution. Perpetuating science misconceptions, what an idiot.
Reincarnator: Ja???s Ha?lv?rson
Form: Dust Speck LVL 20
Composition by Size: Iron 37%, Silt 29%, Bone 21%, Dust 13%
Size: 4.9 mm (4998 μm)
XP: 6056
Next Level: 69300 XP
Skills
Reincarnator's Blessing. Passive. Increase experience gain by 5%. Increase luck by 1. Improve relevance of skills upon leveling up.
Meditative Trance IV. Active. Voluntarily enter a state of meditation for a predetermined time. Gain 3 experience points for every day spent in meditation. If the trance is not ended early, experience points gained will be multiplied in proportion to time spent in meditation. Extra experience gained is increased by 300%.
Assimilation III. Passive. Upon direct contact with objects of similar or lesser size, the material or biological organism will be assimilated into the main body. Take on one attribute or skill of the material that makes up the majority of the Reincarnator’s composition.
Weak Attractive Force X. Passive. 15% more likely to attract smaller or equal sized objects that are less than 60 μm away when active.
Core Membrane. Passive. Prevents unspecified materials from coming into contact with the core. Only one type of material may be chosen.
Weak Blindsense II. Passive. Gain a basic sense of what is around the core. Radius is equal to size.
Roll. Active. Movement by rolling at a speed of 1/5th size per second.
Written in Stone. Active. Store up to 15 memories in the core that are available for access by Reincarnator at any time.
Weight Adjustment. Active. Ability to temporarily increase or decrease weight up to 50% the actual weight.
Minor Hardening. Passive. 5% more resistant to physical damage.
Static Cling. Passive. A combination feature from Weak Attractive Force and Roll, enables movement along vertical surfaces or even upside down so long as size is less than 5mm. Improve Weak Attractive Force to improve this ability.
This one ended up being a bit longer than I expected but I wanted to try and flesh out who our MC is early on. As for the evolution, which do you think James will pick?
When you see James's name throughout the chapter and at the bottom, it should show 'corruption marks.' Or it will be unreadable on some devices, either way it should work to the same effect. Basically, the more his memory is corrupted, the harder it will be to read. That's the current plan anyway.