My main issue was that I had no idea what would happen when I chose an attribute to upgrade. Would I be locked in to my choice, or would I get the opportunity to compare the upgrades?

  Given that I didn’t know, I had to assume the worst. If I couldn’t compare the upgrades, I had to make the best choice with the limited information I already had.

  [Bound Soul] was the fuel for my core, while also being my sense of self. I had no idea what upgrading it would do, and was a bit reluctant to mess with what seemed to give me life.

  [Chimaeric Core] was more or less my brain, or at least the part of me which housed my soul and kept my chimaera body together and functional. More importantly, it had spoken of mass storage, and that would be necessary if I wanted the freedom to change parts of my body.

  [Amalgamation] was my actual body, and contained my Loadout. This was my physical form, and could change if I had the mass necessary to make a change. Would my Loadout options change if I upgraded?

  There really wasn’t much of a debate to be made. I needed mass storage if I wanted to make non-permanent changes to my Loadout. I chose to upgrade [Chimaeric Core], and hoped for the best.

  

  [Chimaeric Core]: Requires [Bound Soul]. The control core which operates and modifies the [Amalgamation]. Mass storage: 0/10 grams.

  The attribute changed, and as I had hoped, I now could store 10 grams of mass in my core. Excellent.

  I still had some of the grasshopper that I had killed to level up, having stopped myself mid-meal to debate the upgrade, so I started eating it again while trying to send the mass not just to my belly but into my core itself.

  When I was finished, it had changed, although barely. It now displayed 0.2/10 grams. I had already taken a bite from it before my level, so it was hard to say for sure, but it would take at most five grasshoppers to get a gram in my storage, which meant fifty to fill it.

  That would take a while. The real benefit of having available storage, in the short term, was that changing my Loadout would store discarded mass when I changed my form.

  I quickly pulled up my Loadout and considered my options.

  

  Head:

  Body:

  Limbs:

  Tail:

  I only had three profiles, the , , and . I didn’t really have a good sense for the size of my first two profiles, but a grasshopper was tiny, given the fact that I had only gained 0.2g in my storage. Unless not all of the mass was sent to my storage. Perhaps that was only partial storage, since my body still needs food to live?

  When I tried to change my head, body, or limbs from to , I got the same warning about discarded mass. Grasshoppers were just so much smaller than rats, which weighed enough that any individual part of the rat’s body would overflow my limited storage. Interestingly, I couldn’t select the profile for my tail. I suppose no part of the small insect counted as a tail, according to [Amalgamation].

  I couldn’t actually fully disable the tail, either, so there was no way to actually turn into a full grasshopper. I could only ever become a grasshopper with a scorpion or rat tail, at least with my current profiles.

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  Trying to turn my tail into a tail immediately also failed, because I had insufficient mass in my storage. Rats apparently weighed a lot more than scorpions, even just the tail.

  Similarly, trying to set my head, body, or limbs to the profile again warned me that mass would be discarded.

  Well… that’s not great. Even now that I had some storage, if some mass would be discarded, I still couldn’t make a change that wasn’t permanent in the short term. I would have to keep waiting, storing mass, and hope that a full 10g was enough to at least convert my tail to a tail to test things out.

  The other thing I had gained from my level up, in addition to an attribute upgrade, was a skill point. My attribute upgrade came immediately, but my skill point seemed to be banked. I had no skills yet, so I couldn’t select one to try and upgrade.

  After fighting with my system for a bit longer, I finally figured it out. Skills were tied to my profiles, and I could use a skill point to buy a skill from my various profiles. I wasn’t sure what that meant for when I tried to change my Loadout later, though.

  The most tempting skill was the one tied to my profile, [Venomous Sting]. It was one of only two skills I could get from the profile, the other being [Venom Resistance], and it turned my stinger into a much deadlier weapon. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to sting things without accidentally using my venom once I gained the skill, and I was using my stinger on the grasshoppers I was eating. I would want to also get [Venom Resistance] alongside it, in that case.

  If my whole body was a scorpion, then I might assume that I was naturally immune to my own venom. My body was a rat, though, and it wasn’t clear to me if it would be. I didn’t want to poison myself by accident, eating my own venom. I also wasn’t sure if I could use the skill once I changed my tail, so for the moment, I left it.

  The profile had a pretty decent skill as well, [Infectious Bite]. It would be a really good way to take on slightly stronger enemies, particularly if I could run and hide and let the infection take hold. I had a feeling that significantly stronger enemies would have resistances or abilities to purge infection, so it was probably limited in terms of how far outside of my weight class I could punch, but perhaps if the skill leveled up as well it would stay useful as I grew.

  That left the profile, which also had one skill, [Mighty Leap]. This skill intrigued me the most, since if it was a skill that I could use no matter what form I took and would always serve to increase my movement and evasion.

  Ultimately, I really wanted both [Infectious Bite] and [Mighty Leap], but I only had one skill point to use. There was also no clear use case for either as long as I was trapped in the cage. Given that I was stuck, I decided to sit on the banked skill point for now, and I would buy the right skill if the right conditions occurred which made one seem useful. If I could get a second skill point, it also opened the door to getting the pair of skills.

  Banking the skill point also meant that I could maybe choose a skill from another profile, if I could get something new in my belly. There were still some unused creatures in the stasis cages that seemed to be discarded and forgotten, like myself. Perhaps I could kill and eat those.

  I would need to get out of the cage to find out, but if I did, I put myself at serious risk. So long as I behaved, and so long as Timothy was around to feed me, I could survive and hopefully grow in strength. Escaping would only be possible if I betrayed Timothy and attempted to escape when he fed me, and I wasn’t sure I liked how that sat with me. Once I was loose, the wizard might decide to exterminate me.

  There were a lot of things to consider, but I didn’t need to make a choice immediately. I would be patient.

  My patience was tested the next day when Timothy visited and fed me.

  

   (Level 0) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

  Having leveled up, I was no longer receiving the same amount of experience from the grasshoppers. I could only imagine how much more experience I needed to reach level 3 compared to what I had needed to reach level 2, and that had taken dozens of grasshoppers, possibly even over a hundred.

  If I had already needed potentially hundreds of additional grasshoppers to reach level 3, then with a reduction to experience, I might need even more. Thousands, possibly. That was simply not going to happen.

  What should I do? Should I try and escape or continue to bide my time?

  I only had one life. Living in the cage was unpleasant, but I was alive. Taking a risk meant putting my life in jeopardy. It was so, so frustrating, but I just wasn’t brave enough to try something that might result in my death.

  Laying down in the corner of my cage, I let ennui take me.