Frank had a pretty straightforward plan for the day. First, he checked the cuts he’d made in his tunic. All four had already sealed back up in a day’s time. As for the piece he had cut out, the indent had shrunk a bit, though by less than half its size. More notably, the cutout piece itself had similarly shrunk.
This result made him scrap the idea of slowly generating fabric. Though he was still considering whether or not to burn the remaining piece, mostly to know how careful he had to be with his clothes being destroyed rather than torn apart. After some consideration, he went and did it; he would be able to survive missing a piece from his cuff the size of his pinkie’s nail.
Second, he went to check the snares and tried to forage for some actual vegetables and fruits. It did not surprise him much to find the snares empty, though one had sprung, so he reset it before moving on.
As he was pulling a few onion smelling plants from the ground, he was reminded off [Lesser Constitution]. “I wonder if it would help me resist poisons and other toxins. Constitution does usually refer to the general functionality, health, and or resilience of one’s body, so maybe it’ll help fight off toxins as well.
“But at the same time, in a bunch of systemized settings it’s instead treated as a degree of toughness, while others view it as mystical physique or magical bloodline. Of these options, I think I can dismiss the latter outright. Not only does it feel weird for a Class to randomly distribute a Lesser Constitution, but that doesn’t feel particularly associated with [Survivor].
“On the other hand, both body health and toughness would fit the Class. Gods, this feels stupid to say, but it might be that I’ll need to try to cut myself when I get back to see if anything has changed. I should also retry the skin test with the berry that showed a reaction previously.“ Since it would take some time for the results to show, he made his way back to get it started before heading back into the forest.
While foraging, he mainly looked for anything that bore a close resemblance to edible plants on Earth since this world had already shown numerous cases of similarities. “I can only assume that this world has actively pulled a number of things from Earth, given that Alfred said that they originated from there as well. It’s simply too unbelievable that this could be coincidental in any way.”
This was where he felt incredibly fortunate living both beneath a Tree of Life and in a truly evergreen forest. Not in the usual sense of it being mostly filled with conifers, though he certainly saw his fair share of them. Instead, in the sense that the flora grew on their own seasonal clock. He had by now seen multiple cases of multiple species in the states of all four seasons. Though the number of deadwoods he found were easy to confuse for hibernating trees. ‘Interesting that even in an area as clearly influenced by the Tree of Life as this, I still find a much higher rate of deadwoods than back home. Though there are of course more trees that can die and less insects to break them down.’
The fruit trees further emphasized this point. He had seen the same type of fruit as sprouts, ripe, and falling off the tree, rotten to the core, and once even all on the same tree. He had at that time not taken the fruits for fear of them being unsafe to eat. The smell at that tree had also been sickeningly sweet, which would have been an immediate turn-off regardless.
Now, it wasn’t that he was less worried about the Earth-like plants, just that he felt better about facing the potential consequences given the potency [Arvitae’s Blessing (Minor)] when it came to healing. Plus, it might very well be that [Lesser Constitution] would compound with it, though for that, only time would tell.
Even after a week of surviving here, it still felt unreal to him, walking through a forest this full of diverse plant life. That, however, was starkly contrasted with him seeing very few animals or signs thereof with the only exception being insects, though even their numbers were heavily reduced. Just because Lydia had told him in advance didn’t make it any less weird. Though, the further he got from the Tree, the more often he saw trails and footpaths. That, along with the wolf attack, was why he carried his spear with him over the shoulder using a cordage shoulder strap and would continue to from now on.
In a little over an hour, he had gathered himself two small piles. The first one was from a bunch of different fruit trees beneath the Tree. The second pile was gathered mostly from the forest and consisted of non-fruits that looked close enough to edible plants from Earth to warrant a test. Notably, the pile contained a bunch of onion like plants, all with that distinct oniony smell. He had encountered a few that didn’t have it, and as he would have back on Earth, had avoided them. The ones with the smell were almost always edible while those without were not unlikely to be poisonous. “Alrighty, time to see how well the old rules hold up.”
He took four different kinds of onions and cut a part from each of them and used some cordage to tie them to the inside of his elbow and wrists. Those were sensitive pieces of skin, so if something should be wrong, then it would show in a couple of hours.
While he’d prefer to spend the time waiting on spear practice and testing [Basic Spearmanship], the onions being tied to his joints made it a bit difficult to do both practice and the test properly at once. Instead, he spent that time skinning the fox he had collected yesterday. He wanted to get around to smoking, so having the meat easily accessible would be nice.
Once that was done, he made a new firepit and used long sticks to make a basic tripod over it. From about a meter off the ground and every following 15 centimeters, he connected the three sticks in a flat triangle, not only for stabilization, but to hang racks on.
Since that on its own would only make a horrible smoker, he needed something to contain the smoke. Therefore, he went ahead and debarked the rest of the wood he had cut down; he had only prepped half of them for making cordage. Each piece of bark was 20 or more centimeters wide and long enough for one or two pieces. So, with about ten logs debarked, he actually had enough for a basic covering.
“That’s good for now. It wouldn’t hurt with another layer later when I have less to do, but this should do the job.”
With the smoker “finished”, he used the opening he had at the bottom on one side to get a fire started with [Sparks], making sure it didn’t touch any of the sides. For the wood, he used only the driest pieces he had from the deadwood he had cut down. He didn’t yet have his meat prepared, but that was just fine, since the fire needed to die down into embers regardless.
Next he cut long, thin slices of the backstrap and loin of the fox along the grain, avoiding any sections that looked or smelled even remotely off. Thankfully, there seemed to be next to no signs of insects, but it had still been at least a day since the animal was caught, so there was potential for some amount of toxins to have built up already. If it had been back home, he would’ve long deemed it too risky, but here he had the Blessing. Which was the only reason he had stuck with the wolf meat for as long as he had.
Despite it taking a while to cut the strips with a stone, the fire still hadn’t died down enough by the time he finished. He could spend this time cutting firewood to size, making more cordage, or any other thing of a similar nature, but there was something he had been wanted to experiment with for a while now.
‘Alright, time to find out how to activate [Person of Many Faces]. My previous attempt did nothing, so there has to be more to it than just thinking “activate”.’ He thought back to when he had tried to activate it shortly after learning about [Smack], but the lack of immediate success made him put it off until he had better time to work with.
‘I hope not, but maybe the name is a bit more on the literal side.’ Going off on a spur of the moment idea, he put a hand on his face and tried to pull while visualizing the last person he had interacted with, Mathilde. To his relief, it didn’t appear that he would have to pull his face off. Though that relief evaporated as soon as it had formed. “I really hope it means faces more as in different appearances and personas, and not me having to take the faces from other people.” Just the thought made him slightly nauseous.
“If I take it as different appearances or personas, how would I go about activating that kind of ability? Actually, I also have [Actor’s Fa?ade], so maybe it’s related to my acting or cosplaying; I have worn a lot of faces if you count each cosplay and role as a different one. But at the same time, I can’t see any relation between those two and [Unusual Essence Growth]. Though based on what Alfred said, then that might be the cause of me being here, so it might not be related in the slightest.
‘Well, if it more of taking on different appearances, what if I try to visualize one of my cosplays instead and imagine physically transforming into that. Maybe that could work?’ Running on a random mix of vocalizing his ideas and just thinking them, Frank finally stumbled upon one that felt right.
It took a moment to recall properly, but he soon had a mental image of Alisha Diphda. When he then imaged his body shifting to match it… nothing happened. With a sigh, Frank released his focus from trying to transform, but something stopped him just as he was about to move on trying to think up another way; it was not only unusually easy to hold onto the image of Alisha, but it was not only in far better detail than it should’ve been but also naked. There was also something weirdly familiar about the model.
“Hold on a second, this isn’t even the Alisha I was trying to make or cosplay of. Or well, it is, but more human, and I definitely didn’t envision her naked. Why is my mental image of her as if she was a real person and not an anime character and undressed?” When he tried to recall her appearance, properly dressed at that, as both and anime and game character, he could still easily do that – he had spent far too long looking at reference material to forget it that quickly. But the moment he thought about turning into her the mental image changed automatically. This time around, he felt the Condition activate ever so slightly as it happened.
“This is fucking weird, man… It just forcefully upped the resolution and turned it to ultra-HD++ realism, but not even in the uncanny valley sense. Though something still feels a little off.” Inspecting the mental image further, he realized why it felt so familiar: it felt like he was viewing a 3D object in Blender. But instead of a simplified modelling of an object in a software, it was a full reconstruction of a real – albeit fictional – naked human in his mind. This was where he appreciated being able to view it from a work perspective, and not a sexual one.
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“Disregarding the insanity of what just happened, how does this actually help me use the ability?” Lacking a better idea, Frank started inspecting the mental model. He found that he was able to change the pose with just a thought along with rotating his view as well, but these small discoveries were dwarfed shortly thereafter.
Looking to try with a real person, he once again envisioned Mathilde, and the ability responded as expected. “Hold on. I somewhat get it making something up for Alisha, but what did it do here? I haven’t seen her undressed before, so did it just go with what I think she would look like or did it make it based on my memory of her?”
Only at that point did he consider that he was inspecting his friend’s naked body without her permission and immediately cleared it from his mind. “Sorry Mathilde…” he said instinctually, mostly for his own peace of mind. “Actually, does this even count as voyeurism or a breach of privacy? I suppose that comes down to whether it recreates her or my imagination and or memory of her.”
The next few minutes went with contemplating the implication and morality of it before he eventually arrived at a conclusion. “Compared to potentially having had to steal the faces of other people, this aspect of the ability is insignificant. If I just don’t use it to jack off to mental images of my friends then I’ll call it good enough.” At no point during the contemplation had he given any thought to the morality of likely turning into or impersonating other people, that part mattered little to him.
“With that all said and done, what do I do now that I have the mental image? Actually, can I view my body in the same way?” Inspecting his own body was even easier, as just the thought made it appear in his mind. He figured that trying to compare his own image with his body would give a better baseline of how the ability worked.
Most notably was his right thigh. While most of it looked fine, every bit of that had been affected by the wolf bite or the healing almost hurt to focus on. It was as if he was looking at both his damaged leg and the fully healed one simultaneously. He couldn’t help but be reminded of z-fighting in videogames, where two or more different textures fought for the same render space on the screen.
Though it was definitely something he should study further, right now was not the time for that. Making a mental note to do it later, he elected to focus on the upper body instead.
As he tried to get a feeling for how the image was constructed, or really anything in that vein, he soon found himself at a loss. Sure, he could get a feel for how the hand was made or even just a finger. He was even able to connect the feeling of a finger to its part in the hand’s feeling without having to focus specifically on it. However, he had no clue how to do anything with it. Or more precisely, he couldn’t figure out how to get a grip on any part and alter it.
After spending way too long staring at himself, a useful thought finally struck Frank. ‘What the fuck am I doing? I haven’t even tried seeing if imagining someone else and then wanting to become them could do it.’ Rather than wasting time beating himself up over it, he just called Alisha forth once more. With her image solidly in his mind, he tried his best to activate the Condition.
‘Transform!’
“Transform!”
‘Activate, [Person of Many Faces]!’
“Activate, [Person of Many Faces]!”
And so on, he continued for a few minutes, alternating between trying to: image a change, think the ability active, and call for it out loud. With [Smack], he had been able to do it simply by thinking of it, but he didn’t yet know if the same was true for every Skill or Condition.
In the end, he did not succeed in becoming Alisha.
“Welp, it was at least worth a shot. Maybe I didn’t waste my time inspecting first.” With that slight comfort Frank went back to inspecting the mental model. Since he already had Alisha’s in mind, he decided to just continue with her. After all, he had already spent plenty of time getting nowhere with himself, and expanding the sample size should only help.
The result was immediate. After having spent most of his time studying his right hand, the comparison with her highlighted not only numerous differences, but even more similarities. It felt like before, he had been asked to alter his recipe for mashed potatoes to give the same result as another’s, but he had only been able to see their dish. Now, he was not only able to taste it as well but also pick out all of the differences. It didn’t make changing his recipe a cakewalk, but it sure as hell made it a lot more feasible.
‘I wonder, can I alter my own image to be like Alisha’s like I would a 3D model?’ He tried to call forth his own hand to both change it and compare it to Alisha, but as he already had Alisha in his mind, it appeared in his mind next to her. ‘I can have multiple images in here at once? This will certainly make comparisons much easier.’
As he thought about having multiple images in mind at once, a shiver ran down his spine. “Oh gods… I’m happy I realized this already. If this does allow me to transform, I should seek to always have an image of myself loaded. I don’t want to risk losing myself to my ability.” While his cosplay hobby had ensured that he knew his own appearance, he had watched and read a few too many stories to want to risk anything. In the best scenario, he was just worrying over nothing but rather that than the alternative.
To do this, Frank called forth his own full image once more and tried to just focus on keeping it in mind as he went on to try and alter his hand. While he was speculating on how he should go about the alterations, he felt [Person of Many Faces] activate as something clicked mentally.
He soon realized what had happened, he no longer had to keep trying to focus on keeping his own image in mind. Instead, it just stuck around on its own, even when he stopped viewing the weird mental space and started again. More interestingly, the glitchy behavior on his thigh had disappeared.
“This is most interesting. Ignoring the leg for now, can I store more images or is it limited to just one or maybe even just myself? Nah, I can probably scratch the last one. If it was limited to just myself, then I would probably just have been able to recall my image regardless of how the ability might change me.” Even if he didn’t have any proof that it would actually transform him, he had started to convince himself that it worked way.
Luckily it wasn’t exactly hard to test if it had a limit of one, as an attempt to store Alisha succeeded after about a minute. “It seems it requires a bit of time to store, but it’s at least not limited to myself. I’ll have to stress test it later, and it’d probably just be a good idea to have a number of images – or I suppose, Faces – prepared in advance. Regardless, with that tangent dealt with for now, I can get back to the transformation.”
Now that he was able to more easily have multiple images in mind, he tried to just image his regular image transforming into Alsiha’s. To start with the result, nothing changed. That, however, isn’t to say that it was uneventful. [Person of Many Faces] flared up and a massive headache assaulted Frank while his entire body tingled, but before anything could happen, it stopped and he was left with a pounding head.
With the headache receding quite quickly, he was soon able to start going over what had just happened. “I’m definitely on the right track; the question is just how to proceed from here. It felt a little like I tried to lift something far beyond my capability, so maybe I should try a smaller scale first.”
After a few more minutes’ rest, Frank turned his focus towards his left pinkie finger. Then he once more compared the images and tried to make his finger shrink to match hers.
To help his visualization, he imagined his finger was a ridiculous number of polygons – far more than he could directly picture, so it was more conceptual. Then, much as it would be in a program like Blender, he imagined the vertices of each polygon shifting to match those of Alisha’s finger. Just as he was about to begin, he realized that it might be better to visualize them as polyhedra instead, since his finger is a fully fleshed-out object and not just a surface render.
Doing it this way proved much more effective, as when he looked at his left pinkie finger in the real world a few minutes later, it had shrunk. Granted, it wasn’t that much smaller, but when he compared it to Alisha’s, it matched the shape of hers perfectly. Even more impressively, it had not only changed the shape, but everything looked like hers, including not only the slightly lighter skin tone, but also details as small as the “patterns” on the skin and fingerprint.
“Gods damn, that’s freaky as hell,” While the new look didn’t particular freak him out; he had seen enough stuff done with makeup and props to care. Knowing, however, that it was his actual finger that now looked like that, now that was messing with his head. “I wonder if this is permanent or if it turns back on its own? I hope the former, but I guess there’s only one way to figure it out.”
Deciding to leave the finger as is for now, he took another short break, since even just this slight change had left him temporarily mentally drained. During the break, he wondered if it would continue to be this draining to use. If so, he feared that this ability might be less useful than he’d hoped. Hopefully that wasn’t the case, and it would instead change with either practice or Leveling up, if not both, even if he had no clue how it would relate to his Class Levels.
Frank went back to check on the smoker after the break and found that the fire in the smoker had mostly turned to embers. He quickly bound a bunch of the thin branches together into a few small wooden grates on which he hung the meat strips. Then he carefully removed a few of the wall pieces to get full access to one side and placed the grates on the racks.
To finish this for now, he covered the hole at the bottom a little to reduce the loss of smoke but left it open enough to still allow a draft to enter. Regardless, it still definitely needed that second layer, as it leaked some smoke through the walls, though most of it left through the top. Now, he just needed it to smoke for at least the night through and preferably a bit more. So, he planned to just check up on it once or twice before sleeping to ensure it was still going and had enough wood.
With that entire ordeal handled, he entered the forest once more, this time on the lookout for saplings to cut down for more thin sticks. This was to get started on his second food preservation project; pemican. This was one of the oldest ways of preserving meat for long periods of time, but the process required a lot more work than smoking. Or more precisely, a different kind of work.
He also didn’t want to use any of his current meat, since even the freshest had been outside for at least a day. Even spending the time to smoke it had felt a little dubious, but he figured he would rather have the smoker ready once he got more meat, and since he had finished it, he might as well try to preserve some of what he already had. Though he intended to get rid of this batch as soon as he got a fresh one.
As for the pemican and why he was looking for saplings, he needed to make a large grate to place over a campfire. This time he needed to just dry the meat as much as possible, to the point that he could in practical terms pulverize it. Luckily making such a grate was not only useful for pemican, but it would also improve his options for grilling meat by adjusting its height and cooking time.
After both gathering the saplings and weaving the grate, he estimated that there was roughly an hour left of good sunlight. So, he went out to gather even more clay to use tomorrow.
With the last remaining light, he did a closer inspection of each armpit and wrist, and he still couldn’t find any sign of irritation. Throughout the day, he had checked regularly to ensure that he didn’t have any reactions, and he still had yet to find any.
The only hint at a reaction was with the berry that he had previously had a reaction with, but that was barely noticeable even after staying on far longer than it probably should have. It could of course just be the specific berry he had picked, but the result being from [Lesser Constitution] was a lot more desirable. Just to be confident, though he already felt good about it, he planned to repeat that test over the next few days.
Using the last light of the day, he found one of the onion varieties he had tested and cut a small piece to eat. It didn’t taste particularly special. If anything, it almost disappointed him how much it tasted of a regular onion, but he tried to be happy about the thought that it hopefully meant that it was safe to eat; something he would have a much better idea about tomorrow after giving his body time to process it.
And with that, sleep had come to claim Frank once more.
[Survivor Level 8]
[Skill – Detect Toxin (Natural) obtained]
