Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Old Mate demanded that I delete the koala photograph, which made it the first message from an armed enemy I had ever considered saving specifically to annoy my own System.

[System: I’m serious, mate. That tofu bastard’s got the look of a bloke who says he’s done his research before buying a cage that definitely isn’t big enough.]

He couldn’t see you, hear you or collect you, and I thought your confidence might benefit from remembering all three facts at once.

[System: Doesn’t change the vibe, champ. Some cunts look at a koala and see wildlife. That prick looked like he wanted to explain a twelve-point feeding schedule while measuring my fucking ears.]

I laughed until my side hurt, then stopped because the treatment worker had already told me that surviving an attack didn’t mean I should immediately organize another one.

Two hundred paid for the visit, dressings and a proper assessment of the burn and bruising. My private balance dropped to fifty-one thousand nine hundred and twenty, which was a manageable cost compared with becoming a cautionary stain on the floor.

The injuries weren’t fatal, but they needed time. The new form hadn’t erased old damage, and neither had the latest round of affection from people who were understandably tired of watching me return in pieces.

Bridget sat beside me while Lyra checked the storage release claim and Cherry contacted the berth operator. The sealed bait-fish tank had remained in its original case with the spare fittings, and the handler had accepted the false seizure sheet despite our paid booking.

That gave us a record, a destination and an owner willing to admit the mistake. It didn’t put the crate back where it belonged or make Horass less capable of knocking the confidence out of me with one arm.

Lukas found the auction vessel’s public schedule. It would load through the surface freight dock the next afternoon, then hold the sale while moving along the protected coastal route.

I recognized the collection outfit on the loading list. The eel boss had arranged the false release and offered my property as recovered family stock, which meant my problem had a familiar face instead of another brand-new bastard demanding a biography.

”I wanted my fish back,” I said. ”They’d survived the storage paperwork longer than most of my expensive purchases, and I refused to let that man win custody by printing a sheet.”

Bridget asked whether I wanted the fish or wanted another chance to hurt the collector. I told her both, because lying to someone who had just watched me get beaten would only make me look stupid in a less entertaining way.

She accepted the answer without accepting a reckless plan. We would rest first, check the boat and build an escape that didn’t depend on Horass politely forgetting how my skills worked.

Old Mate opened the shop after dinner. The first offer was Snack Shame, Rank D, ten IP, which made one chosen serving announce its estimated calories aloud before I ate it, with an hour between uses.

The second was Combat Wink, Rank F, fifteen IP. One eye would glitter dramatically for five seconds, adding no strength, protection or charm effect while making it much easier for enemies to identify the idiot trying to look mysterious.

The third was Emergency Pocket Sand, Rank D, twenty-five IP. It produced a handful of warm flour directly in front of my own face every thirty minutes, apparently trusting me to turn poor product design into tactical genius.

I wanted to know which arsehole had decided the correct response to a rocket launcher was a diet announcement and a fucking bakery accident.

[System: Could throw the flour, mate. Might not stop him, but he’d spend the rest of the fight looking like a pastry with anger issues, which would improve the footage.]

I declined all three without purchasing anything. The skill-offer reroll token from the talent contest still waited in my account, earned before the club opening and left untouched through every later disaster.

It changed the offered menu, not the prices. Using it wouldn’t buy a skill, reset my existing cooldowns or refund points spent on something I had permanently replaced.

I considered saving it for a more desperate moment, then remembered lying beneath a trailer while Horass carefully selected the next thing to explode.

That seemed desperate enough. I confirmed the reroll and watched the token disappear, leaving my EXP and three hundred and ten IP unchanged while the shop prepared a new set of three choices.

Bridget couldn’t hear Old Mate, so I explained what I had done. She asked whether any replacement would update her, Lyra and Cherry too, and I confirmed that it would before choosing anything.

They deserved to know when a tool they had practiced with was about to vanish. Sharing abilities didn’t make the people using them extensions of my preferences, even when my preferences were clearly excellent entertainment.

Cherry said she liked Red Light but understood why two seconds hadn’t solved the fight. Lyra pointed out that any replacement needed an actual drawback we could plan around instead of pretending a flashy description removed the rank difference.

I promised to read the whole offer. Old Mate accused us of holding the world’s least sexy shopping meeting, then suggested that surviving long enough to use the purchase might improve the atmosphere later.

I sent the berth operator a written claim with our original storage receipt, keeping the real ownership trail intact even if my preferred recovery method was about to become much less polite.

The first new icon appeared beside a chair with running legs. The next showed a dramatic musical note, and the last looked like an ordinary drink can under a warning label much larger than the actual skill name.

I stared at that final image while the description began to load, because apparently the System had heard my complaint about rockets and decided the answer belonged in the drinks fridge.