Second Genesis

Grey groaned, putting a hand to his forehead. Rather than a warm palm, though, he got a nice chunk of steel cold metal right to the head.

’Ah, what the fuck.’

Grey looked to the side and an item he had almost forgotten about rolled out.

’Oh shit.’ He picked it up and made the intention to move it into his Inventory, but to his surprise, he completely failed. He didn’t have a space powerful enough to take it. ’Well damn—.’

Grey’s eyes widened as he saw his palm on the ground. ’Don’t you fucking—.’

It was meaty, the stubby little digits fighting for air and space between one another. Let alone his fingers, it looked like the back of his hand was sporting a triple chin, doing its best to swallow up the rest of what was left of his hands.

Grey let out a whimper and he rolled to his feet—quite literally. He pulled on his pants and looked down, then did an all too perfect rendition of a meme he had seen too many times on the internet. His head turned away in shame, but instead of looking at an empty wallet, he was looking at a severe lack of a dick.

Were his balls even there anymore? How the hell would he know? His fucking belly was in the way. He couldn’t even see his feet.

Grey wanted to fall to his knees in despair and scream up to the skies. What had he done to deserve this?

The only slight bit of silver lining was that as cruel as the Genesis System was, it seemed quite inclusive because his Epic treasures had resized themselves to fit him. He guessed that this was always quietly happening in the background—Nexis Suits being the exception, at least the mass produced ones anyway.

But he couldn’t even really be all that happy about this either. He was significantly less cool right now, and that was just unacceptable.

"OH FUCK ME!"

Grey suddenly remembered something and dashed to the nearby lake.

The good news? He actually did dash. He might not have looked good doing it, but he definitely did dash.

The bad news? He could hardly see his eyes beneath all the fat rolls, and just as expected...

"My hair... no... no... my precious hair..."

Grey collapsed to his knees, his meaty palms sinking into the moist soil. A single tear rolled down his cheek... or maybe it more so rode the roller coaster that was his fat rolls. The poor tear didn’t even get the chance to fall to the ground, it disappeared into one of the folds of his skin, never to be seen again.

Grey had a feeling a lot of that was going to be happening.

His stomach grumbled.

Grey sighed. He was cooked. He knew he was cooked. Even his stomach had already adjusted to their new lifestyle. He was a second away from drooling about the food he hadn’t even had yet.

Grey stumbled up to his feet and picked up the orb, stuffing it into one of his many pockets. The cargo pants would still work with items in them, but the pocket holding the item would be out of commission. So right now Grey would only have access to a 90 stat point boost, not that that even felt like a lot right now.

It was hard to care about 90 stat points when he had access to over 1300 he had not used yet, and even harder to care when his physical stats were +100% more effective than usual. But this was a Proving Class level Epic item anyway. Most people in the Proving Class regardless of talent had a peak of 100 stat points per stat, so though it was expensive, in its lane, the pants were technically still quite a good item.

Stuck in his depression, Grey only looked up when the shadow of the outpost fell onto him.

He lumbered over, opened the door to the Safe Room, and trudged in. He was half surprised they hadn’t frozen him out of the Safe Room again, but he should probably be grateful. He was starving.

Grey looked up to see a familiar trio—Stella, Brad, and Mauve. They looked over as well and gave him a light nod in greeting, clearly not recognizing him.

As for Grey himself, he couldn’t be bothered to correct them. He also didn’t care to know why the hell they were here.

Grey slumped into a barstool that creaked beneath his weight.

Unlike the others, Barkeep Ji did seem to recognize Grey instantly and raised an eyebrow.

"I don’t want to talk about it. Get me food, please. A lot of it. My fat ass is starving." Grey groaned. "No wonder it’s so hard to lose weight, I can’t fucking stop thinking about food."

Grey felt a weird gaze from Stella land on him, but it wasn’t one of recognition. Grey was just being odd.

’If the cost of not having enemies running around everywhere for me is being fat, I’d rather have enemies coming after my balls every day.’

Ji placed down a large plate of sizzling meat in record time. It jiggled in place and Grey was already devouring it before it could even stop.

Ji’s eyes narrowed subtly. That meat wasn’t normal, it was a Vector Class dish. He had only brought it out because he was curious and because he knew that Grey could afford it.

A single bite should have satiated a Proving Class fighter and been enough for them to last off for an entire week. But Grey finished it off in just a few minutes and still seemed hungry.

"I’ll have three more." Grey said to Ji.

"Hey, do you mind if we ask a question?" Brad flagged toward Grey.

Grey raised an eyebrow. "What’s up?"

"You’re from this Zone, right?"

Grey’s gaze flickered. "You’ve seen people from other zones?"

Maybe because he really wanted Grey’s answer, Brad was actually quite forthcoming.

"We have. Actually, if you explore a bit deeper, it happens more frequently about three to four hours travel from here. If you’re willing to help us out, we could share our map with you? There are some good hubs out there. Our zone is a bit of a shitshow compared to the others."

"Sure." Grey said. "What’s the question?"

"We’re looking for that guy The Great Udon projected on the screen, the idiot that fell asleep taking a shit. Have you seen him around here? We have it under good information that he frequents this Safe Room."