The "Best" RPG Ever-10

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Ray looked up at the description once more. "Illusionist: Those who have pierced the veil, and are able to both see beyond it, and manipulate it to fool the senses of others. A support class, illusionists have little in the way of raw fighting prowess, but possess a natural instinct in social situations that more battle-oriented classes often lack."

And below was a cloud of smoke. That was what it looked like, at least. "Guess I'll just..pull this smoke out then," he said.

"Get on with it," said Lyle, crossing her arms and quickly uncrossing them, frowning at the breasts her arms had just come into contact with a small bit of red on her cheeks.

"Anything for you, bud." He reach his hand into the smoke, and couldn't quite find anything to hold onto. Looking back up at the message box, he found that its text had changed to indicate that he should "look into the smoke" to confirm the selection. So he bent over and awkwardly stuck his head into the smoke.

He pulled back out again, immediately regretting having done that. "Ow!" His eyes were stinging and tearing up. He rubbed his eyes a few times, and they cleared up..but there was still smoke around them. In fact, there was smoke obscuring his vision entirely. "What the.."
"You okay in there, Ray?"
"Yeah, I just can't..see...whoa.."

What Ray saw was not quite comprehensible. It was as if the smoke presented an image of everything at once to his eyes, and somehow everything seemed to make sense. He could very briefly see that the smoke wasn't even there at all, and neither was he; there were just numbers, which pulled together into words and more numbers, and images and feelings and scents and sounds..and as quickly as the strange experience began, it was gone.

"Where'd it go?" he said, looking around, confused.

In fact, the smoke seemed to be gone. "The smoke? Went straight into your eyes. Didn't that..hurt?"

"Mostly no..only at first, actually. And then I saw..oh man, I have no idea how to describe it. But I..hm?"

Ray had to pause when he looked at Lyle. He could see some text over next to her head..but he knew somehow it wasn't exactly there. The first row said "Lyle – F Human", the second said "Elemental Archer", and the rest looked like a bunch of stats. While he was looking at that, he noticed that Lyle's head seemed to be moving up ever so slightly, even though Lyle wasn't actually moving.

"What?"
"Hmm.." He ignored Lyle's question briefly, instead holding up his hand in front of his face to try and look at his own 'text'. He wasn't sure why he thought it would show up if he did that, but it did. The first couple of lines said "Ray – M Human" and "Classless", but a bit behind that, seemingly moving up toward the closer text's place, there was another pair of lines, saying "Ray – F Vulpin" and "Illusionist". "I don't think you'll be the only one turned into a girl," he said finally.

"Are you sure? You don't look..wait, no, you were taller than me.."

"Mm-hm." Ray nodded, and he could feel his hair swishing slightly as he did, beginning to grow longer. Then he could feel a slight pulling sensation from his ears, like they were being stretched out by some invisible force. At the same time, his skin started tingling, and he could feel a gentle tugging between his legs. "Here it comes.." he muttered, bracing himself. Lyle had made this look painful.

But it didn't hurt, actually. The tingling was a little uncomfortable, but it subsided after a few seconds, leaving his skin feeling strangely smooth. He could feel air brushing against little hairs on his ears, and they were clearly longer than before, taller especially; his hair was already down to his shoulders, and now he could see by his bangs that it had turned a bright, reddish shade of brown. He could feel his clothes moving around, and looked down to see his shirt and pants both turn to white cloth, the pants spreading out into sort of a straight skirt, but then splitting into four pieces, the front, back and two sides, with the tears between the pieces reaching up nearly to his hips. The sides stayed long, while the front and back rapidly shrank up his legs to the thighs; little bits of red string tied the top parts of each section together.

He felt a gentle pushing on his arms, legs, and stomach, and an outward pull from his hips. His shirt became tighter on his waist, some kind of tall blue belt forming there with a rope pulling it close. As his shoulders pulled in, the collar fell off of his neck and shoulders, the sleeves becoming much wider and roomier near the wrist, but tighter on the biceps.

"Mm.." Ray closed his eyes, listening to a higher voice than his own coming from his throat. His hair brushed against the back of his thighs, and the gentle tugging between his legs subsided into a strange, very brief numbness. The feeling that came back after that informed Ray that he definitely wasn't male anymore. "Ah!" Her eyes opened at a sudden jolt from her chest, and looked down to find two quickly-growing bumps under the top that used to be a shirt. The shirt and pants had turned into a single garment by now, with a purple trim along the very wide, deep neckline and down the middle of the chest. As they continued to grow, Ray felt something like an appendage unrolling itself from behind her back as a long, thick-furred tail made its way out and began swishing around of its own accord.

As her chest continued to push out, Ray found her hands holding some short, thin objects—folding fans, she figured out by a look—and felt a small necklace falling across her neck, followed by a mild pull from either side of her head as some hair ornaments formed and brought sections of her hair into a pair of very long ponytails. Finally, her chest stopped growing at a very generous size, and she sighed slightly, idly opening up one of the fans with a hand.

"Phew...that didn't feel too bad," she said, "weird, but not bad."

"Haha, wow, did you ever get the short end of the stick," said Lyle.

"What d'you mean?"

"What..your clothes, that ridiculous hair, not to mention the uh," she pointed at her own breasts for a second. "I mean, I thought having a skirt was bad, but at least I'm wearing a shirt still."

Ray looked down, walking in a small circle to get a better look at what Lyle was talking about. "I think it looks nice. The tail's different, though.."

"How are you not concerned about having huge boobs."
"Weell..if I have to be a woman, I might as well be well-endowed, right? Maybe I can use it to our advantage, huh?"

"If you say so. I think the game screwed with your head."

"That's possible. I think I can see your stats. Mine too."

"I guess that's useful." Lyle walked into the circle that had replaced the class-picking pedestal.

Ray started to do the same with her own circle, but hesitated a moment. "Oh, wait! Maybe we should have character names! You know, for better roleplaying."

"Mmmgh, okay. I'll be Lynn, then."

"Great! Call me Rayna. I guess Ray for short if you forget."

"Whatever. Just get on the circle thing already."
"Oh, Lynn. I'm already there." The archer did a brief double-take as another copy of the fox-woman was suddenly standing on the circle, and then the one she had just been talking to disappeared.

---

Zack woke up in the inn room the party had rented the night before, lying on top of the bed, still in the torn-up underclothes he'd fought the wolf in. He sat up and looked around; it was late afternoon by the light through the windows, and Nora was lying upside down in her own bed. The others weren't there.

He moved his feet to one side of the bed, then stopped, finding a large lump of white fur in the way. After taking a few seconds to register the situation, Zack swung his legs around to the other side of the bed and stood up, and then went on to the door. The wolf stood up and followed him. He looked at it for a couple of seconds before shrugging and heading out and down the stairs anyway, the animal in tow.

Mika was sitting at one of the tables, which were mostly empty, and waved at him. "Mornin'! You're awake sooner than I thought."

"Well, I feel fine," said Zack. "Not sore or anything. Weird."

"Blame the RPG mechanics. Hey, doggie!" the witch reached out a hand to try and scratch the wolf's ears, but he drew back and growled at her. "Aww.."

"Do you not remember the part where it tried to kill us?" said Zack.

"I remember. All the more reason to try and make friends now, right? Powerful allies and all."
"..Did you leave my armor and weapons out in the middle of the road?"

"No, of course not!" Zack waited a few seconds without saying anything. "Well, I mean, at first we did, because everyone forgot and we were way too tired to pick up all that heavy stuff, but then a couple of people from the town guard brought it to the inn an hour ago and put it up in the room. You didn't see them?"
"I guess I wasn't looking. Was everything there, at least?"

"I think so? It was all kind of bundled up, but the gloves and leggings were on top and I saw two swords sticking out."

"Good enough." Zack paused after a second, realizing his hand had been playing with his hair just then, and slowly lowered it back to the table.

"Oh man, isn't having long hair weird?" said Mika. "I mean, it's all swishing around and brushing your stomach or leg or something. But I don't even notice it when I'm fighting stuff."

"Yeah," said Zack. "It's like whoever designed this..game..was willing to bend the rules of physics to make ridiculous hair practical for battle."

"I dunno, I mean, if there was a female knight who always kept her hair like that, don't you think she'd learn to maneuver around it?"

"Maybe, but it'd be a stupid handicap to work with while learning to handle deadly swords. Especially since you can literally just cut it off and not have to deal with it."

"But what if it was someone who was just that dedicated to having nice, luxurious, long hair?"
"Mh." Zack shrugged.

He felt a little hungry, so he waved at one of the waiters around and ordered some food. Mika did the same when the waiter offered.

"So, uh..you feel great, then? Not sore or tired or anything?" said Mika.

"Yeah. More RPG mechanics at work, I guess."
"Maybe you're just physically that good. Anyway, um..so you would be able to fight at full strength, like, tonight at midnight if you needed to?"

"I guess so. I mean, I just slept. Why, you have all the ingredients for the dem—uh,the, thing already?" Mika had put a hand to her lips rather quickly when he almost said 'demon'.

"Heehee, I thought you'd never ask. I'm sure we're more than strong enough by now to beat whatever will show up the first time, and Katherine said she'd be up for it. I dunno about Nora though, she's been conked out longer than you have."
"I suspect if we told her we wanted to do that tonight, she'd agree. Where'd that cat-girl go, anyway?"

"I dunno. She said she'd come here to lie down and rest when I went to go buy things, but when I got here she wasn't. Innkeeper said she left a little before I came in."

---

The Psion held a knife close to each hand, and the freshly-bought one in the middle and up slightly, a third point of the triangle. She faced the human-shaped bunch of straw, prepared, and then started swinging, hacking, slashing, and stabbing at it as quickly as possible. It didn't take very long to lose control of the extra knife and drop it, and she stopped, panting slightly, shortly after that.

Someone picked up the knife and offered it, hilt-out, to her. It was the guard captain. "You know, hacking at things with a weapon like that isn't going to get you anywhere. Even if you have a lot of force behind it, it's just too small to make a big cut," she said.

Katherine took the knife telekinetically, moving the three to one side of her and keeping them bundled like one object to save concentration. "So what, just stab things all the time?"
"Not all the time. I mean, if a little cut is enough to do some harm, go for it. But you have the advantage of being able to pick things up from a distance..so I would suggest throwing them. Especially if you're planning on making a collection of it."

"Hmm.."

The captain stepped back, and Katherine tried throwing one of the knives at the dummy. It landed square in the "head", and the human woman pulled it out again. "Your aim is good, but if you want to make longer distances or a better impact..." she said, walking several steps away from the dummy before suddenly turning around and tossing the knife. It buried itself down to the hilt in the middle of hte "chest". "...Let gravity do the hard work."

With that, the captain of the guard walked away.