Chapter 2: Disadvantage To Advantage

<< DO YOU WANT TO POSSESS? >>

<< YES / NO >>

Jessica saw the options given to her, and without a moment’s hesitation or even a second thought. The mental equivalent of a frantic, all-caps scream—[YES!]—was her only answer.

The world dissolved into a vortex of sensation. Her fixed, flickering perspective ripped free from the dying torch. She was a shooting star of consciousness, a blur of motion hurtling across the short gap toward the locust. There was no physical travel, only a violent shift in allegiance, from one point of awareness to another. Her vision swam, darkened, and for a heart-long moment, she was nowhere at all.

<< DING!! >>

<< POSSESSED CREATURE RESISTANCE: NONE >>

<< POSSESSION SUCCESSFUL!! >>

Darkness receded, not like opening eyes, but like a curtain being lifted from within. Sensation flooded in, not the passive, detached sight of before, but a raw, multi-directional input.

‘Did it work?’ The thought was tentative, a whisper against the tide of new data. And then she saw it. Or rather, she saw them.

Her vision was… fractured. Wider. She could see the gritty texture of the stone path directly beneath her, the damp wall of earth to her left, and the discarded lightless flame torch with its pathetic wooden handle, all at once, in a jagged, panoramic sweep. It was less like looking through a window and more like her mind was a bowl receiving signals from two separate, wide-angle cameras placed on either side of her head. A 180-degree nightmare of clarity.

Just as she was about to try and look down, to see the form she now inhabited, another blue screen materialized, superimposing itself over the bizarre landscape.

‘The hell!’ She flinched, a mental recoil. The system’s sudden, silent apparitions were going to take some getting used to.

<< Loading….. >>

The screen resolved into neat, blocky text.

[STATUS]
+

Name: Jessica

Level: 1 [Infant Rank]

Exp(Fragnet): [[0%]——-100%]

Title: None

Species: Flame

Species Possessed: Cave Locust [Hp/100%]

Rank: [Infant], Cave Locust [Infant]

Magic Cores: [You Are Currently An Idea], Cave Locust [1/1]

Items: None

Echoes: None

Innate Abilities: [Possess]

Abilities: Unique Skill [Blabber Mouth], Flame Specific Skill [Burning] [Life Multiplier(By Snorting)], Cave Locust Skill [Acid Ball] —> [Flame Acid Ball]

+

‘Oh… this seems to be my status.’ She mumbled inwardly while scanning the lines like a bizarre resume for a more bizarre existence. ‘Name.. check. Level.. check. Exp.. check. Title.. check. Specie.. check. Species Possessed.. check. Ran—’ She paused, her focus snagging. ‘Hmmmm. Why does it seem like this ‘Infant’ thing is something the system just made up? Is it trying to get on my nerves?’ She could almost picture a smug, invisible developer adding that label just for her. With a mental shake, she moved on, but just as she read the next line, though she didn’t currently have a brow, she couldn’t help but inwardly furrow her brows as the next line stopped her cold.

Magic Cores: [You Are Currently An Idea]

‘Is being a flame… an Idea?’ The question planted itself in the center of her mind. It felt profound, absurd, and vaguely mysterious all at once. Was she a concept? A fleeting thought given fire? She pondered it, turning the notion over with the intense, futile concentration of a philosopher considering the meaning of a single grain of sand. The nature of her new existence, the metaphysics of transmigration, it was a mystery begging to be solved by her hands.

Tssss!… Sizzle… Tssss!…

In the end, reality struck harder. A sharp, frying sound, accompanied by a sudden, acrid smell of burning chitin, cut her philosophical deep-dive short. A groan of pure mental agony escaped her. A smoky haze began to cloud the edges of her panoramic vision, not from external sources, but from within her own new head. It was burning. She’d been thinking with a brain now literally on fire.

‘Reality, you ruthless bastard.’ She quickly abandoned the deep thoughts and skimmed the rest. ‘Items.. Check. Echoes.. Check. Innate Abilities..’ Her eyes stopped on her innate ability, a smirk forming on her mental lips. ‘I wonder what I’ll possess next.’ Visions danced in her smoldering consciousness; a mighty wolf, a soaring bird, a wealthy noble with a soft bed… The possibilities were a delicious escape. She didn’t even realize she was giggling aloud until a strange, chittering “Hehehe” resounded inside her mind like a final bell of a burial ceremony.

The sound startled her for a moment as she read the final line.

Unique Skill: [Blabber Mouth]

The smirk vanished.

“What the? What the hell is ‘Blabber Mouth’? Damn system! So you DO have a consciousness and you chose to ignore me earlier? Hmph!”

A wave of indignant fury, hot and bright, surged through her. If her current locust-eyes could shoot daggers, the status screen would be shredded to a thousand pieces. If she had the body of her normal flickering flame, it would be roaring. The system had been silent in her moment of ultimate panic, only to communicate now via a backhanded, cheeky skill name. It was mocking her. It had to be.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

‘Hmph! Hmph!! I’ll deal with you later,’ she fumed, locking the grievance away in a mental vault labeled ‘Future Vengeance.’ As she knew the locust eyes couldn‘t actually shoot daggers, neither could she touch the system as it was incorporeal. ‘For now, let’s see what we’ve got here.’

She turned her attention inward, to the body she now commanded. Through the locust’s compound eyes, she saw her own limbs, segmented, spiky, and currently wreathed in faint, dancing tongues of blue-orange fire. The flames clung to the hard carapace without physically consuming it, a spectral corona that flickered with her every thought and emotion. The Cave Locust was now a Flaming Cave Locust. The warmth of the sight bloomed within her, a warmth of ownership, of capability. It was hers.

Tentatively, she sent a command: Move forward.

The locust’s front right leg twitched, then lifted. It placed it on the stone with a soft tik. Then the left. Tik.

‘I did it,’ She thought, disbelief melting into euphoria. ‘I did it!! Yipeee!! I can MOVE!’ She forgot the system’s insult, forgot the burning-brain smell, forgot the philosophical terror of being an ‘Idea.’ She was mobile! She took another jerky step, then another, a slow, fiery six-legged shuffle away from the pathetic lightless torch. Joy, pure and undiluted, was a sun in her mind.

It lasted for three glorious steps.

On the fourth, her jubilant focus finally expanded beyond the miracle of locomotion to the environment her new body was locomoting in.

She was in a tunnel. A narrow, damp tunnel, carved from rough earth and stone. The only light came from the faint, sickly glow of luminescent moss patches and, of course, her own fiery aura, which cast leaping, monstrous shadows on the walls. The air was cold, still, and smelled of wet dirt and decay. The sounds of the three men were long gone, absorbed by the chilling passageway. An utter, profound silence had descended, broken only by the faint tsss…! of her own burning shell and the drip of distant water.

And seeing this, the joy evaporated. She couldn’t help but want to dig her head on the ground as another realization hit her,

She could move, yes.