Asher the Insane

09 - Asher the Already Different

I yawned loudly.

It was another beautiful day and the adventurer business was booming.

I’ve done a few quests already and had gotten a nice sum of money from them.

There were a few opportunities where I could test out some of the new skills I learned.

On one mission, where I had to kill a few acid-spitting toads, I used one, which was called [Inside Out], and to my horror, it literally did what it was called.

But I was the dumb one for using it, the spell did exactly as advertised.

Another quest was saving a cat from a tree.

I could climb it normally but no instead I used another spell in my repertoire.

[Steps]

It build a magic staircase wherever I wanted one.

The only limitation was that it had to touch the ground somehow and that every step I took I had to spend more mana, but in addition to my insanely high stats, the skill has leveled up so much that I could basically walk up to the clouds and back.

The quest I found the strangest was traveling ten-thousand kilometers while some kind of recording device was strapped around my waist.

I got 25 silver pieces for the quest, which was a real meager amount.

I did that quest in about a minute.

I had a couple of skills that when used combined increased my actual running speed a lot but in the end I was too lazy to actually walk.

So I created a round, semi-transparent platform out of dirt and stone around me, with a skill called [The World To My Design], which let me form anything at hand into anything else, no matter how stupid or crazy, how I saw fit; the drawback was the huge mana cost and the limits of my imagination, which again, I don’t really have a problem with anymore, counting in my newfound sense of creativity, maybe due to the insanity.

I sat on it, and threw myself through the air as hard as I could with a sort of telepathy skill called [Psionic's Hand], and held on for dear life.

It was a fun ride but the clothing I had on ripped off me in an instant and I was left with rags and had to buy new clothes.

It was kind of sad, my mom had embroidered a nice thought up coat of arms for the Burell family, because we didn't really have one, on my shirt.

Like a meteor I cratered in some grassland. I didn't quite know where I landed, maybe I was in another country. I was completely disorientated, not know left or right so I used a recall skill and returned to the place I marked, which was the market square of Charlo.

I thought at first to teleport myself, with one of the new skills I had acquired, to the other side of the planet or something the like but I wasn't sure if that was the kind of 'traveling' the quest giver wanted from me. 

So, in the end, I just didn't do that. 

It would be fake traveling, wouldn't it?

The next morning, when I stood up, I felt weird, not really like myself. 

Well, I felt weirder than I usually did in the last couple of weeks. 

Walking over to the bathroom that the Inn had I was staying in, there was a stranger approaching from the other side of the mirror.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that that strange figure was me.

I looked different and not just slightly.

I was taller and thinner. A man whose black hair turned purple at the tips.

I looked like a late 90’s edgy anime character.

He, well, I, reminded me of someone.

I looked like Sword from Armen Noir.

How did this happen? Who in this world could know about a decade-old VN that wasn't even released outside of Japan? 

And why Sword? I'd rather look like Rain, his design was my clear favorite but I couldn't say that this was in any way a downgrade from what I looked like before.

But I must investigate! 

‘Faye, are you somewhere here?

Come out, come out, but only if you are.’

“What is it that you need?” I heard from behind me.

"Don't you knock? A single man being approached by a single woman in the bathroom while the former is topless is a bit spicy, don’t you think? Anyway, do you know what this is about?” I pointed at my face, “do you still recognize me?”

“I do. You are Cyrus the mortal, my ward. You are standing right in front of me,” she said somewhat bored.

“Did you know how this happened? Why do I look like Sword?”

“I do not know who this 'Sword' is but it is a coincidence that you look like whoever you are referring to. While you were sleeping I changed your appearance. I thought you would like it. You've talked about changing appearances and your personality has an affinity to random chance. Are you not satisfied?”

“I mean-" I hesitated, "I am beautiful, that's a fact but that’s not the point. Can you reverse it?”

"I could but it would take a while. Your inner system is too occupied with handling the calculation of your other misfortune. To quickly and manually change your appearance would take a long, unspecified, amount of time. Unlike randomization, which takes a force priority within you, quick manual changes of even the most minute of details are complex, much more complex than you could imagine. It would, in any case, be hard to get your previous appearance exactly right again. Almost impossible.”

“Oh dang.

…

Ah, to hell with it, when we're already at it why not have fun with it? Gotta take the good with the bad. Just randomize it again.”