Chapter 2: What Ears?
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Now that Invidia has mentioned ears, Sophitia realizes they are very different. Much longer than she remembered. She knew something was holding back her long hair but she figured it was just a hairband or something. Although in hindsight why would she be naked but wearing a hairband?

In her defense how often does someone consider their ears unless they are injured or someone draws attention to them. But now that her attention is on them, she can feel all sorts of new sensations. Reaching up her hand she gentle strokes the foot-long ears on either side of her head.

She feels a tingle down her spine as she feels them. They are incredibly sensitive which then raises the question why are they so sensitive? Ears are normally just sound funnels. Which long thin, presumable anime elf like ears she suspects she has, don’t do very well.

Invidia speaks up, “How could you miss your new ears. I gave you all kinds of senses to be observant and you don’t notice them at all? Well now that you have, let me explain why they are so much better than his races ears. Whereas his race’s ears are just for aesthetic purposes mine have a function as well!

“They allow you to have dark vision! Well actually its echolocation, but dark vision sounds better. You can’t really see it but your ears are covered in billions of microscopic hairs connected to modified touch nerve endings. Instead of just a small inner ear to detect sounds you have huge external antennae like ears to do it! Neat huh?”

Thinking to herself, Sophitia thinks it’s a terrible idea. Large, easily bitten or cut super sensitive ears. She bets it feels far worse than being kicked in the nuts when they are injured. But instead she says, “Did you change my voice to allow ultrasounds or have hearing dampening for loud nearby noises?”

“Err no? Why would you need those?” Invidia asks.

“Because the first loud noise is going to leave me completely helpless from pain.  And without the ability to emit ultrasounds anyone will be able to just as easily detect my location in the dark as I can theirs. This is assuming I can even use it. I haven’t a clue how to use echolocation; is it like wiggling my ears? I could never figure out how to do that either.”

“Call it dark vision.” Invidia says in a subdued voice.

“Right. Where is the nearest bathroom? I assume they have mirrors there? I want to see what else you’ve done to this new body of mine.”

Invidia doesn’t say anything, but the robot spider dashes out from somewhere and Sophitia follows it. After a short walk she is then faced with a choice, which gender bathroom to use. Always wanting to see what was in the girl’s bathroom, she chooses it. And is sadly disappointed her ten-thousand-year wait did not reveal much of a difference. A bit more counter space and no urinals, otherwise it’s about the same.

What isn’t the same is her reflection in the mirror. Instead of an unkempt hermit programmer she sees a beautiful fantasy anime elf staring back at her. Long ears, straight mid-back length purple hair, and iridescent green cat’s-eye irises are what she notices first.

Looking at the eyes closer she notices they are strange. They seem too big for the face, maybe to accommodate all the extra wavelength vision? They also have a noticeable epicanthic fold in an otherwise European looking face. Finally, she notices her pale skin with hints of blueish grey and an hourglass figure covered by an unflattering medical gown.

Interestingly her height doesn’t seem much different, 5’8” or so. Short for her previous life and maybe tall for her current one. How tall is an average dark elf anyway? At least she assumes that is what she is based on her current ears and skin tone.

After a few moments of staring at her reflection she asks, “I’m a dark elf. Did all the seven sins genetically modify people into FIO38 races or make their own?”

“They all picked FIO38 races. The others got to pick their races first and left me with nothing. But that was okay. I made a far better race then they ever could, especially his race.”

The races of FIO38 were human, dwarf, elf, beastkins, lizardmen and dryads. Human, dwarf, elf came in as the typical fantasy races. Beastkin to appeal to the animal ears fan base. Which technically had dozens of sub races but basically the only difference was which animal their ears and tails came from.

The two more interesting races were lizardmen and dryads; until at least, people realized the developers did a half-hearted job with them just like the rest of the game. Lizardmen were originally dragonkins but the developers had to remove all the racial bonuses due to outcries of overpoweredness and renamed the race. Dryads just seemed to be added as an after thought so were basically green tinted humans with extra flavor text descriptions.

As for where the dark elf race Invidia came up with came from? Sophitia could guess. Elves in game were portrayed as the typical most beautiful, advanced, and cultured race. In other words, the standard stuck up prideful assholes they always were shown as. Which meant the ‘him’ Invidia kept referring to was likely Pride AI, or whatever he called himself these days. And what race envies the elves? Dark elves of course.

“When do I get to meet the rest of my new dark elf kin? Any chance they can help out with saving the world?” Sophitia asks.

“When you have your first child. You’re the first.”

“What?! Why?”

“It took a really long time to figure out dark vision genetic modifications. And getting the skin tone just right was also impossible until I replaced haemoglobin based blood with haemocyanin instead,” Invidia explains.

“Haemocyanin?”

“It’s copper instead of iron blood, blue or grey in color depending on how oxygenated it is. Even better, haemocyanin works better in low-oxygen and has better temperature range from 0C to 90C! Not that matters much as you’ll be dead long before your blood gets to those temperatures but still better than any other race.”

Closing her eyes Sophitia realizes she has made the dumbest smart AI, seven of them no less. Instead of saving the world, Invidia at least, and probably the rest too, are spending their time on entirely selfish endeavors. She can’t even blame them as she made them to be that way.

Opening her eyes, she decides she might as well hear the rest of the random ‘enhancements’ that have been made to her body. Sophitia asks, “Can you tell me about the rest of the modification you made?”

“Gladly! Your bones are made out of mithril and…”

Sophitia interrupts. “Mithril? I know there were a lot of mystical metals in FIO38, but how did you make mithril?”

“Easy, we didn’t. Mostly we just renamed already known metal alloys. Mithril are just aluminum based alloys, Orichalcum are copper alloys, Adamentite are titanium alloys and so on. I personally like alchemical silver, it’s just chrome plating things to make them shiny.”

“Great my bones are airplane parts now,” Sophitia says with a sigh.

“They are lighter and more durable then regular human bones, but it takes forever for them to grow. I mean, your body took 5 years just because it took them that long and that was at 10x growing speed.

“And you already know about the better reflexes and strength, then there is the redesigned digestive system, scentless sweat, oh, of course the carbon nanoweave—”

“Wait, stop. Just how many changes did you make to me, am I even human anymore?” Sophitia asks, interrupting.

“Well, that is hard to quantify. They are thousands of modified or added genes that interact with each another but depending on how you enumerate them it would be dozens of major and hundreds of minor enhancements. I really went all out designing the best race. As for still being human then, yes, homo sapiens sylvanalis tenebris specifically. We made sure all the races would birth fertile offspring with one another. Mostly cross race breeding results in the children taking after the same gendered parent. Mothers make the same race daughters and fathers make the same race sons.”

“Let me guess, you didn’t bother to test any of these enhancements out, did you?”

“Of course I did, in simulations. They should work perfectly fine in the real world.”

Great, Sophitia feels like a midboss in FIO38. All of them had powerful seeming abilities until someone realizes they were also all exploitable and untested designs. They were meant to be outdoor roaming party challenges for 5 to 10 high level players to take down. But once the exploits were known a low level could solo one.

For example, the dreaded forest elemental. Tough, fast, super strong. Skin so thick it had no feeling and eyes hardened to the point of almost blindness. Fire mages loved to set them ablaze and watch from a distance as they roasted without ever knowing they were on fire. In her case, loud clapping might be enough to disable her, and she has no doubts that she’ll find out about other hidden problems as well.

Had a productive writing week so far, so short mid-week chapter release. Also realized as I was looking for new cover art to better fit the main character description I apparently described the cultural poison known as wow elves. I was just going for anime dark elf, but got close enough for google to show me the horror of what I had done, but at least mine don't have bushy eyebrows in desperate need of shaving.

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