The Dude-Gal and Flesh

The androgynous voice was a bit harder to gender this time, and it only got more difficult once Mitchel turned around. Standing in the middle of an office that looked like it belonged... somewhere not an office, what with random figurines, bottles, and other weird nick-nacks, was a lithe, white-haired person. The fluffy ears that could either be canine or feline were the first thing to throw Mitchel off. The excessive amounts of red was the second. Red highlights at the tips of those ears , a red barret, two silver earrings in their right animal ear, and a single lock of red hair were the only colors aside from white outside of their androgynous face, which housed equally red eyes. They wore a black-and-red crop top with short sleeves and a hood, and black cargo shorts with black-and-red sneakers.

Only the oh-so-slight curve of their chest, indicating two subtle mounds for breasts, indicated their sex.

"Hey, hey, hey!" she excitedly greeted Mitchel. "My name is... not actually something I'm supposed to tell you... and I'm supposed to handle your new body, my little disembodied little friend! Now it says here that you're not actually dead yet, but my man, we can fix that in a jiff!"

Mitchel blinked. Wait, kill me faster?!

"Now, it says here you've got 4,178 Flesh which is a really weird number and little pal," she started to chuckle, in that honest yet awkward way that people a little embarrassed by what they were admitting to tended to, "I cannot handle that, so I'mma just do some tinkering, alright?"

"Instead of messing about with numbers, just choose one from each of the following sections."

"Now listen my homeboy, a lot of the bullshit with your body like sex or skin color or eyeball size or whatever doesn't matter in the slightest when we're dealing with the amount of flesh we're dealing with, so we're going to skip all that, okay? Just, like, decide that on your own when you get to the incarnation chambers, okay? As long as it's within the potential ranges for your species, we're cool. Hell, for small things like pigmentations or whatever, we're cool even going outside of those ranges, so I can't be fucked to deal with all the options." Mitchel was getting more and more convinced that Office Lady's claim that her coworkers were all 'also' professional was a big, fat lie. "For now, my man, we gotta pick the shit that does matter! So here we are with physical boons! Anyway, a lot of these should actually add up to way more Flesh than you've got to work with or not even be affordable for you but I got your back, friendo, I got you some sweet discounts, just for being such a good sport about all this.

"Anyway, before we continue, let's decide what that meatsuit of yours is gonna look like when we're done here. Like I said, you can do whatever you want with the details, my man, we're dealing with big picture shit here."

With a snap and a pair of pointed finger-guns, Dude-Gal (as Mitchel found himself calling her) made three holographic-looking images appear, each with a small pamphlet with the system description on it.

Before Mitchel could even start to read the system descriptions, Dude-Gal sauntered over to the leftmost image, which was in constant flux between a bunch of humanoid species, like elves, dwarves, what Mitchel imagined were 'beast-kin,' even reptilians, avians, and more.

"Humanoid! This is what you were, my man! Add some pointy ears, weaken the flesh a bit, make it a bit more flexible, and you've got an elf!" The image shifted as Dude-Gal spoke, becoming an elven copy of Mitchel before going back to the random shuffle. "We'll do a free cleanup of any sort of genetic problems, and throw some quick repairs at you, but if it reoccurs... well, you'll need an immortality for that, my man. But yeah, my man, pick any race as long as it's got a human-ish body-shape, the average member doesn't get physical abilities above the theoretical human max, and it reproduces biologically instead of, like, consolidating from starstuff or some shit."

"On the note of magic powers - minor stuff like seeing in the dark or making a small spark or whatever are fine, but anything bigger's an Innate Spell."

Mitchel nodded in understanding but Dude-Gal was already moving to the next image, that of a draconic quadruped, which started out small - small enough to fit on a hand - but quickly grew, such that the hand soon became a Mitchel-clone size-reference aid as the dragon grew to be massive, big enough to swallow Mitchel whole.

"Dragons, my man! Giant fire-breathing lizards of destruction! The system doesn't mention it, but Dragons do come with some sort of elemental breath and resistance as an Innate Spell, on top of getting bigger and stronger, though, as the description mentions, you won't get a boost to your magical growth like a normal dragon. Oh, also, you're gonna start tiny. Like, fits on a finger and as fragile as a salamander, tiny."

Mitchel was intrigued, but followed as Dude-Gal moved to the rightmost, final image, which was morphing similarly to the first model, but across much more 'themed' displays. Horns and a spade tail, a halo and dove wings, butterfly wings and glowing dust, a body made of bark and leaves, and more.

"Outsiders are the angels, demons, fairies, and so on and so forth, my man. The Innate Magic the system description mentions is usually gonna be stuff like conjuring light and healing for angels, conjuring darkness and corruption for demons, creating illusions and tweaking nature for fairies, etc. etc., but either way, they won't be very strong at first. Still, they're innate magics, so hey, might be useful, right? Couple that with their physical abilities being based off their magical power, and they're a good choice if you're going all magical!"

"Anyway, anyway, you lemme know which tickles your fancy, and we'll move right along, my man!"

All things being equal, any of the three would be fine with Mitchel, but things were not all equal. As awesome as being a dragon sounded, the boost to physical growth was a risky proposition with Dominant's Tithe in the mix. Sure, it wouldn't drop his [Mana Generation] lower than the stat itself, but if he was stronger than his thralls, he wouldn't be able to get double or triple the generation - even higher, if fantastical species with incredible superstrength were on the table.

That just left the 'boring' humanoid option, or the ironically risky outsider choice. Mitchel wasn't sure what Dominant's Tithe would do when it came to the outsiders' physical capabilities being derived from their mystical strength. If his strength wasn't his actual physicality from flexing his flesh-and-blood muscles but a derivative of his supernatural powers, would he always count as the minimum in strength for Dominant's Tithe, allowing his biological thralls to far outstrip him and provide more mana (regardless of how strong they actually were)? Or would it measure what he could do, rather than what it was made of?

He shot a questioning glance at Dude-Gal, who made an exaggerated thinking face, fingers supporting her chin and face scrunched up while looking at the ceiling. "All the magic stuff is the other guy's business, buuuuut I think your hope is closer to correct. Like, sure, outsiders get their physicality from their magic, but they don't just cease to exist if they use up all their mana, or get stuck inside an anti-magic zone! They do still have a body made of meatstuff, they just never really use it on its own. So for that purpose, you'd probably have the strength of an average person who never exercises." She shrugged. "At least that'd be my guess, my man. Don't get upset with me if I'm wrong, there's another guy that's waaaaay better about magic stuff than me."

Dude-Gal's guess was good enough for Mitchel, and he decided on outsider.

"Good choice, my man, good choice! Like I said, you can pick all the nitty-gritty at the incarnation chambers, we just gotta lock in the big picture bit.

"Now it looks like you're about to die, my friend, on the brink of coming back here but for real, you know? So we're going to do a bit of tinkering, a bit of fucking around with what it really means to be alive." She paused. "In the physical sense. I dunno about the philosophies bud, I'm not a philosopher, and that sorta thinking ain't my strong suit. Anyway, like I said earlier, pick one!"

The three species models fizzed out and three new images came up. The first showed a severed, bloody hand lying in a field, and as days and nights sped past, it slowly grew back into a person, who subsequently exploded into a small hand which regrew, again and and again.

"This is a pretty straighforward one, my man! Basic bitch levels of keeping you alive. Convenient, but not very strong, it'll get you up again as long as someone doesn't go out of the way to burn you to ash or whatever. Means you won't bleed to **** like you're doing now, dude, so it'll be enough to get you up and running again. Problemo though, my man: Recovery takes just as long as it normally would. But hey, none of those pesky bodily functions! Also, not sure if you caught this, but it deals with aging as well."

Mitchel managed a quick glance at the information and saw that he'd need to keep at least 10% of his body intact for the repair to work, but that he'd never have to eat, sleep, piss, shit, or even breathe again.

Dude-Gal moved over to the middle option, which simply showed a life cycle - a baby was born, grew up, grew old, died, and was reborn. A brief look at the information before Dude-Gal started talking showed that he'd only keep 30% of his memories... 30%?!

"This is the... serial isekai option, I think you'd call it? Anyway, it's not as bad as it sounds, my man, 30% of your memories doesn't mean 30% of what you remember this very second, I mean, think about it my guy, how much of the last 3 months can you remember? Because if you can remember a month then I am super impressed, homes. I can't even remember what I had for dinner last week, let alone all those individual seconds of bullshit I got up to. But yeah, when you kick the bucket, you get moved into another body. Another reason I didn't wanna waste time fleshing you out, bud, if you pick this one, you've got what, maybe just a century before you get a new bod my man, depending on what happens? Not worth the hassle."

Mitchel breathed a sigh of relief. He even thought that 30% might be a bit much, given how much he knew the human brain filtered out on a moment-to-moment basis.

The final image showed a body receiving a continuous stream of holes, which it quickly repaired, but also rapidly grew gaunt, until the figure ate something or glowed with excessive magic power.

"Basically, this is the wizard's immortality. Wait, was the last guy some office chick offering you magic? Oh man, her, she's a bit of a bitch and a nerd, don't take her too seriously okay, my man? Anyway, this one's pretty simple. Long as you've got the magical power or the food to shove into your maw, you'll shrug off any sorta damage within the day, including from age or whatever. Works proportionately faster the bigger or more serious the injury, so it doesn't matter if it's a papercut or a gaping hole in your chest, it'll recover over twenty four hours. They don't mention it, but it'll even bring you back to life as long as you've got the energy to pay with! It's pretty sweet, dude, but again, avoid getting set on fire, ya know? Damage over time effects like that'll burn through your reserves. Anyway, this is like, a pretty efficient, always-on healing spell, and I guess this is actually _technically _an Inherent Spell itself of a sort, so you can probably reverse engineer it to heal people? Also means that sufficiently small wounds might fall under your Free Cast value, so people can't kill you by spamming papercuts, amirite man? That'd be a pretty embarrassing way to die. It also works if there's nothing left, and that's pretty much instant, so if you just up and get vaporized, as long as you had enough magic on you when you got dusted you'll pop back up pretty much the second after you died, though that sort of full-body rebuild is suuuuuper mana-intense, you get me?"

While the choices at first seemed pretty even, Mitchel quickly had a revelation: one of the options would always work, not matter what, and all he would lose was time. The first choice, 'Needless Immortality' would fail if he was reduced to less than 10% of his body, and in a world of magic (or even something as simple as being dropped in a volcano), that wasn't an impossibility.

Conversely, with Restorative Immortality, he ran the risk of running out of calories or mana and dying. Even if he did have crazy scaling and ended up with trillions upon trillions of mana at some point, 'almost infinite' wasn't actually infinite, and the possibility of running out and dying would always be there.

But reincarnating? Sure, he might have to start from square one, but even if he was hunted down and killed as an infant, he'd just reincarnate again. And from the way that Dude-Gal explained Restorative Immortality, he could potentially reverse-engineer something similar to indefinitely prolong his body!

"As much as I wanna call you out for being boring, I gotta respect being careful and smart, my man," Dude-Gal said as the choice settled in.

"Now, let's see... oh hey, you've got some resistances, my man! Normally each of these would cost WAY more flesh than you've got, but like I said homie, I've got your back! Pick one, would you?"

All three of the new images were basically the same, just with slight details being different. All showed a Mitchel being shot in two panels, and in the left he died, but in the right he ignored the bullet like it was nothing.

In the first image, the left panel showed a glowing person shooting an obviously magical bullet, while the right panel showed a regular person shooting a regular bullet.

"The system gives a pretty shit description, my man. Okay, so, lemme give you the downlow. So basically, this makes you immune to all sorts of wizardy stuff. Not just someone trying to turn you into a toad, but, like, if they use magic to throw a rock at you, the rock'll just bounce. If they try and rip the ground from under you, the ground'll stay. They buff themselves and punch you? Punch does jack - not even the normal amount a punch should do. It's hilarious, my man. Well, watch out for people with Pierce or combat-oriented Innate Magic, or who are actually good at hitting things with swords, but if you're a wizard or something you should be good either way."

Dude-Gal moved on while Mitchel considered the implications of such an easy weakness. Dragon breath attacks would still hurt. As would literally anyone else's Innate Spells, which weren't always spell-like, so something he thought was mundane and he would be immune to could get him by surprise.

The next display was basically the inverse of the first one. "Again, a pretty hilarious effect, my man. Basically, unless you're fighting a wizardy type, they can't do jack shit to you. Someone drops a rock on you? Bounces off. Gravity? Only affects you if you let it. They wanna hit you with a magic sword? Blunts the edge on your skin. Spells only. And, they mean it when they say spells, dude, if someone casts a fireball on you, it'll work fine, but if they cast a flamesword spell on themselves then try and shank you, then it does jack because they're hitting you with a flaming sword, not a spell. Watch out for assholes carrying around wands and shit.

"Weirdly, stuff like Innate Magic still works against you, despite being 'mundane' for all other purposes."

Again, that pesky Innate Magic loophole. Add to the the likely prevalence of magic wherever he ended up, and there was always a danger.

Finally, Dude-Gal went to the last one, which showed what was obviously a robot shooting and killing Mitchel, but on the right, both a magical and non-magical person shot magical and non-magical bullets. "Really, the description for this one gets most of it, my man. Living guy shoots you, does jack. Has an AI shoot you, works fine. The line can get a bit arbitrary at times, but what can you do, you know? Anyway, stuff he didn't mention is that this includes stuff like bacteria and a lot of the direct effects of aging, but won't do anything about starvation, even though that's your body breaking bits of itself down. Makes suicide a bit of a bitch as well."

Similar to the previous choice, Mitchel thought this one was pretty obvious too. While non-living enemies could very well be common no matter where he went, and accidents that didn't involve any other living people were always a possibility, the Life Resist choice seemed like the best choice. It covered most of what the other two options did, plus seemed to at least slow down aging. Depending on what 'indirect effects' of aging covered, it could prevent cancer, illness, and potentially even senescence.

Dude-Gal grinned at him. "I was pretty sure you'd go for that one, bud," she said, then stretched. "Well that was fun, my man! We've got you all set up and ready to go for your next life! Now just go chat it up with my boss and she'll get you into the Incarnation Room and you can get back to your old life! Or maybe a new one, who knows? Have fun though, my guy!"

Once again, the office and Dude-Gal faded out, leaving an empty whiteness behind. And again, the new voice came from behind Mitchel, but this time, it was clearly feminine and had a soft, kind tone to it.