Chapter 2: 2: Ah, New Body Smell

Before her eyes, Nameless saw an unfathomable ocean of possibilities. But immediately the ocean began to narrow down to a much smaller set of options, then a subset of that appeared before her eyes. Each one a different version of herself. And she grimaced, as all of them were masculine looking. Then all the displayed options changed, becoming more feminine in appearance. The potential bodies repeatedly changed until they settled into shapes she was far happier with. With amusement, she noticed that all of them had a generously curvy body shape. Yes, this was exactly the kind of body shape she wanted, now that she saw it.

All of them were humanoid but with monstrous features. Nameless raised an eyebrow as she saw one with pink coloring and slug-like features such as slimy skin, eyestalks extending from the forehead (thankfully, this form also had regular eyes in the right place), and a slug-like tail extending from the lower back. After a brief thought she dismissed that. While she liked her slug friend, this form wasn't really her.

Others, such as one with wings instead of arms and talons instead of feet, she dismissed offhand because she wanted to keep her arms and opposable thumbs. After that rejection, the displayed possibilities changed, removing all forms without opposable thumbs and displaying new ones in their place. As Nameless eyed them, she realized she was going to have a harder time choosing.

A cute form with scales, snake-like eyes, poisonous fangs had some interest to her. She did dismiss the alternative that had a snake's tail below the waist instead of legs. There was also one with lots of handy looking tentacles, which she had a harder time turning down, but in the end she didn't like the octopus-like eyes.

Then a new form appeared in the place of the one she had just dismissed, and she immediately fell in love with it. It had everything she wanted! Toxic green scaly tentacles with special scales on the underside for gripping, toxic green spotted and patterned fur like that of a painted dog, snake-like eyes, extensible claws on the hands and feet, a cute humanoid face with sharp teeth including poisonous fangs, big round ears like those of painted dog, and she somehow knew the form had a keen sense of smell. Oh! And the tentacles could spout snake-heads to inject venom into targets. That was a neat feature. Sure she would have to sacrifice a little bit of eyesight, but overall she felt like this was the ideal form if she had to be a monster. No, actually, this was the ideal form! It was both cute and menacing and had the ability to attack from multiple angles. Plus it had poison and a great sense of smell! And it was super cute!

And the form reacted to her love for it, approaching her and touching her, merging into her. Then her body started changing, and she realized she had woken up from whatever state she was in. She felt the strange sensation of parts of her body she normally couldn't feel moving around and changing. Fur sprouted all over her changing body, and her shape transformed into a more womanly one, though thankfully she was still strong, muscles rippling under the new layers of fat. Her teeth became sharp, and her canines grew, becoming poisonous fangs she could extend and retract at will. The scaled tentacles bursting out from her shoulders and sides she could already tell would take a bit of getting used to, though she felt like she was being helped with that by the entity governing monsters' evolutions.

Finally, the changes concluded and she looked over her body. It was glorious. It felt right. Trying to figure out how to thank the entity responsible had several names pop into her head, fed to her directly by the entity. After a bit of thought she settled upon Evolver, the most popular name used by monsters. "Thanks, Evolver," she said while patting her jacket which like the rest of her clothes had shifted to something better fitting her new breasts and curves. Thank gods for empowered clothes.

Then she looked over to her slug companion. Huh. The slug was suddenly much more humanoid looking, looking rather like a purple child version of the slug-humanoid form she had rejected. There was a curious look on the slug child's face as they looked over their own body then stared at her. And Nameless asked the question immediately on the top of her head: "Why did you choose that form?"

A little to Nameless's surprise, the slug-person replied in words she could understand. "Because you're strong."

Nameless frowned at that. "I have a curse weakening me and I struggled in every fight up to now. That tiger was very powerful, and the owl-ape nearly killed me even through my healing. The only thing I have going for me is my regeneration and my stubbornness."

The child said, "But they're dead and you're alive. So your kind of strength is better."

Nameless paused as she realized she had no good counterargument to that. Except one. "My healing ability is at the Transcendental level. That's not so easy to reach. Please don't think you can do the same thing as me unless you're at that level."

The slug child stared at me, both their humanoid eyes and eyestalks fixed on me. "I know. You're stronger than me. I got the body with the best healing, but I'm still weaker than you."

Nameless breathed out in relief. "So you know to be careful."

They just nodded, and a thought struck Nameless. She said, "You need a name. How does Lucrici sound?"

The child frowned at that and Nameless began running through name possibilities until the simple Mirn won a nod from them.

"Okay, Mirn, let's get back to killing and eating our way out of this place," Nameless said.

"What's your name?" Mirn asked.

Nameless scowled. "I have a curse preventing me from having one. I'm gonna rip apart the bastard who laid all those curses on me."

Mirn tilted their head. "So there's someone stronger than you?"

Nameless frowned. "Probably plenty of people stronger than me, particularly right now as I am. Why, want to go with someone stronger?"

Mirn shook their head. "I like you. You share your food with me. I'll give you a name. Ah, it feels like I can't."

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"Curses are nasty like that," Nameless growled, "Just call me the nameless one or something."

Mirn tilted an eyestalk. "Okay, nameless, I was wondering, why were you going to the same places again and again?"

Nameless blinked. "...I was? Must be the curse that makes me always lost. Um, you can just decide where we go."

"Okay. That way." Mirn pointed down one of the hallways.

"We'll go that way after I check my status." And Nameless did so, only for knowledge without words to enter her mind, followed by a message from Voice. She knew she was some kind of weird mixture of human, banehound (a dog-like monster capable of inflicting woes upon those it bit), nethermamba (a venomous monster snake dwelling in the Nethers), and... Beyonder? That last part was the most eye-raising and alarming. To think she was partly one of those eldritch shitters...

In terms of power the banehound added... cursing teeth and claws, the ability to disease others particularly those she bit, poisonous blood, and the stronger ones (a strength she could perhaps hope to reach) could make their bites and claws burn as well as breath forth a sickening, cursing, poisoning fire. The nethermamba added a lot of venom and resistance to the temperate extremes of the Nethers. And the Beyonder stuff just made her weirder in some way that she couldn't quite understand, but she was able to grasp that some of it had something to do with her tentacles and their ability to turn into snake heads.

What the shit, Nameless thought, the information that she still had her boon of Tower's Resilience barely registering in her mind. This was higher tier stuff than most monsters got in their first evolution from what she'd heard and even more than some of them got their whole lives. Then her incredulous thoughts were answered as Evolver informed her this was actually far weaker than what she would've gotten if she was at her full strength. Apparently all the abilities she now had also were weaker than they would normally be thanks to her Curse of Weakness and she was currently a long way from being able to use banefire.

As she glanced at Voice's message showing her unchanged list of Words and Sigils, she wondered not for the first time just who the shit she was. But a bigger problem appeared on her mind: she should've gotten at least one more Sigil by now. That Curse of Damnation was nastier than she thought. She'd been thinking of tackling the weakness curse after resolving the Curse of Doom, but Damnation just got higher on her priority list. The weakness curse could come after.

A thought came to her and she glanced at Mirn and asked, "What kind of monster did you get?"

Mirn answered, "Young Mimic Slug."

That wasn't what Nameless had expected. Mimic types were... potentially very, very nasty, particularly if they grew to the point where they could flawlessly copy others' abilities. Even without that, their ability to copy the shapes of other people and creatures and in some cases even objects made them dangerous in their own ways, and even limited ability copying could add a degree of frightening versatility. Nameless determined not to underestimate her cute little friend.

She said, "Okay, I'm all loaded and ready to roll! Let those hostile monsters beware!"

~~~

Nameless stared at the squid with bitey looking maws adorning the very end of their tentacles. The maws clicked open and closed as the squid made an unsettling sound halfway between a squeak and an agonized scream while advancing toward them, its foremost tentacles dragging it forward. "Well, here goes nothing," Nameless said and lunged her tentacles forward.

Naturally, it lunged its tentacles as well, and for a brief while it turned into a strange game of tentacle fencing as the two combatants tried to bite each other without getting bitten. Getting quickly sick of it, Nameless put up her arm, pressing them toward the squid monster's biting tentacles which quickly took the bait, biting into her arm. Thankfully this monster wasn't too smart, apparently! With that opening, Nameless lunged her own tentacles forward, sinking the snake heads into what she could reach of the squid's body and pumping into it as much venom, disease, and curses as she could.

Suddenly she had a writhing, flailing squid monster to contend with. Wincing as the shrieking squid thrashed away at her, Nameless shielded her more vulnerable spots with her arms while continuing to inject it with unpleasantness. And then a halberd smashed into the hostile monster, ending it.

Turning to Mirn, who was holding the halberd, Nameless flashed a victory sign. "Good job!"

She was glad she had insisted on Mirn being the one to get the halberd as soon as the two of them had found it. It was a much safer way for the slug child to contribute than getting up close, and contribute they had badly wanted to do. "Keep your eyes out for openings like just like that," Nameless said, "Don't bother attacking if they aren't super distracted or something, got it?"

Mirn nodded. "Yes."

Nameless grinned. "Now we feast."

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