Vortena

by Neven Iliev

  “God… damn it,” she grumbled into the tiles. “Good thing nobody saw that.”

  Tripping over her own feet because she wasn’t used to moving her newly-augmented body wasn’t exactly the best way to inspire confidence. Upon sitting back up, however, Fizzy realised that her fall hadn’t been due to clumsiness or lack of coordination but because her trousers had fallen down around her ankles, exposing her nether regions to the world.

  “… Huh?” she asked no one. “How did that happen? Did the belt snap?”

  That couldn’t actually be the case, though. The clothes the dungeon had spewed out were of significant quality. Her tunic and trousers were in excellent shape considering what she’d been through over the past few days and would likely last a good while longer. Though they looked plain at best and ugly at worst, the garments were made from hemp woven from Goblin Grass. The fabric was rough, but surprisingly durable for a non-enchanted garment, their sturdiness being the only reason Fizzy’s metal legs hadn’t torn her trousers wide open just now.

  The belt was no different, as it was likely made out of some type of monster leather. Certainly not the type of accessory that would just snap, though it was possible that the fall might’ve broken its buckle. A closer inspection revealed that that was not the case, and that her outfit was just as intact as it had been when she had first put it on. The only way the clasp responsible for holding her trousers up could have come undone was if someone had intentionally unbuckled it, which raised two questions: ‘Who?’ and ‘When?’

  The latter was fairly obvious. It must have happened at some point after Fizzy’s body had seized up, as she was certain that it had still been in place while she’d been browsing her Skill options. There were no suspects, however, as she couldn’t recall seeing anyone around her, living or otherwise. Even though she’d been paralysed, she’d still had her PER-enhanced sight and hearing, so she was sure that she’d have noticed anyone messing with her clothing.

  The question of who, exactly, had caused her pants to fall down hung in the air like a stale fart. Fizzy wracked her new brain-heart, but she was having a hard time figuring out who the culprit could possibly be. It was definitely someone, though – this was the third inexplicable wardrobe malfunction she had experienced since the group had split up. And as a follower of Gilberto, she firmly believed that once was chance, twice was coincidence, but three was a pattern.

  Perhaps she should have added ‘Why?’ to her list of questions, as she was failing to grasp what sort of demented poltergeist would-

  “Of course! Goddamn Valeria!”

  Fizzy couldn’t help but shout when she realised just who was most likely responsible. As a practitioner of Necromancy, the lich was more than capable of controlling spectral entities. In fact, she was part-banshee herself, so she certainly wouldn’t have lacked the means to pull off this sort of prank. It was perhaps debatable whether the insufferable creature was actually petty enough to resort to something like this, but Fizzy liked to think that she was. She also seemed like the sort of insufferable lich that would resort to this kind of petty tactic, no doubt trying to improve her standing with Boxxy by sabotaging someone else’s credibility.

  Having identified the likely perpetrator, Fizzy stood, pulling up her trousers and firmly affixing the belt to her waist. A task she found was significantly easier than it used to be, now that her fingers were as nimble as her wits. She of course made sure to fasten it so that it hung as low as possible in order to show off a bit more of her shiny metal skin. It felt good to put herself on display like this, even if there was nobody else around to see her. Part of her wanted to take it further, to the point where she was walking around fully exposed, but her enlightened sensibilities demanded that she not walk around like a straight up pervert.

  *Fwip*

  Fizzy’s head snapped around at the sound of fabric flapping against her bosom. Looking down, she confirmed that the puerile prankster had struck again. This time, the culprit had attempted to roll up the lower end of her tunic with the intention of putting her womanly domes on full display. However, the garment had caught on her rigid nipples and pulling it free had been the cause of the noise. If not for that, then the perpetrator would have gotten away clean, but the slip-up had allowed Fizzy to catch them red-handed.

  Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that she’d caught the suspect ‘right-handed.’

  Because the thing stripping her clothes from her body was her own right arm.

  [General Information]

  Cornie Fizzlesprocket

  Metal Golem (Steel), Female, 22 years old

  Member of Erosa Craftsman’s Union

  Level 56.38 Arclight Artificer

  Level 25.00 Paladin (MAX)

  Level 15.04 Metal Golem

  1118/1118 HP (+1.8/sec)

  750/750 MP (+1.6/sec)

  [Attributes]

  STR 213, DEX 182, AGI 74, END 181, INT 158, WIS 164, PER 151, FTH 89, LCK 26

  [Artificer Skills]

  Clockwork Expertise – Lvl 10.00 (MAX)

  Explosives Handling – Lvl 6.86

  Deconstruction – Lvl 7.33

  Optics Expertise – Lvl 4.76

  Physics – Lvl 7.04

  Component Forging – Lvl 6.63

  Tick Counter – Lvl 5.22

  Upgrade – Lvl 4.65

  [Arclight Artificer Skills]

  Electrical Expertise – Lvl 2.32

  [Paladin Skills]

  Champion of Chaos – Lvl 7.27

  Toughness – Lvl 8.12

  Strength of Faith – Lvl 7.32

  Holy Scriptures – Lvl 6.87

  Divine Wrath – Lvl 5.51

  [Metal Golem Skills]

  Heavy Metal – Lvl 2.56

  Armoured Charge – Lvl 3.12

  Advanced Joints – Lvl 1.04

  [Other Skills]

  Metallopathy – Lvl 3.34

  Mentor – Lvl 2.43

  Dagger Mastery – Lvl 4.89

  Shield Mastery – Lvl 5.24

  Holy Mastery – Lvl 7.31

  Mace Mastery – Lvl 7.62

  Part Two

  Kora was bored out of her thick skull as she sat idly atop a boulder on the outskirts of the core-less dungeon. Boxxy still hadn’t forgiven her for that little miscommunication during their initial dungeon run, so it was punishing her by letting her do absolutely nothing. Technically she was keeping watch on the meeting spot should Fizzy or Valeria need to get in touch with the Mimic through her, but that might as well have been nothing. Thankfully, it would seem that she was to be granted a reprieve from her boredom, as she saw the aforementioned golem approaching her at breakneck pace.

  “Where is she?!” Fizzy shouted.

  “Hey, squirt,” the fiend answered. “Nice tits. Bit small, but the shape is great.”

  “I know, right?”

  The ex-gnome’s angry expression grew momentarily cheerful at the crass compliment, but snapped back to fury in the next instant.

  “Oh, damn it! Not again!”

  Flustered, Fizzy quickly lowered her rolled up tunic, once more covering her shapely chest.

  “Where is that worthless slut!?” she screamed at the fiend. “I’ll fucking kill her!”

  “Gonna have to be more specific.”

  “Snack!”

  “Pfft! Ahem,” Kora stifled a laugh. “Uhm, she’s with the boss right now. I wouldn’t go over there if I were you, though. They’re currently… practising shapeshifting.”

  “Oh…”

  A proverbial chill ran down Fizzy’s spine. Try as she might, she hadn’t quite gotten over the trauma of her first ‘session.’ Getting near the Mimic’s writhing mass of tentacles while they were busy violating someone was not on the list of things she wanted to do, regardless of whether the victim was willing or not.

  “So. They’ll be busy for a while?”

  “Yep,” Kora confirmed with a nod.

  “Guess I’ll just wait here, then.”

 
; Fizzy moved closer to the fiend and climbed up onto the rock to sit down next to her. She made herself comfortable, and stood perfectly still like a statue. Or at least, that was her intention.

  “Any particular reason you’re taking your pants off?”

  “Again?! For Jamal’s sake!”

  Fizzy stopped her rebellious hands and hurriedly fixed her clothing yet again.

  “Alright, I’ll bite. What the fuck is wrong with you?” Kora asked. “I mean, other than the obvious.”

  “It’s that winged bitch! She must’ve screwed with my head to make me strip involuntarily!”

  “Hah. Hahaha! How the fuck do you manage to strip involuntarily?! Ahahaha!”

  “I don’t know, it just happens! I’ll be walking along and then all of a sudden trip over my own feet because my hand undid the buckle on my belt without me noticing it!”

  “Oh man, that is priceless! I really wanna see that now! Bahahaha!”

  Surprisingly enough, that statement did not make Fizzy as upset as it should have. If anything, it almost sounded like a good idea.

  “So,” Kora continued, once she’d calmed down a little, “what makes you think she did anything to you?”

  “Who else could it be?! These sorts of pranks are right up that bitch’s alley!”

  The incident where Xera had tampered with Fizzy’s memory in order to make the gnome think that her own name was ‘Cornhole Jizzbucket’ was still fresh in her mind.

  “Normally I’d agree with you, but I don’t think the Slutmeister’s responsible for this one.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re addicted to her ass!”

  “That’s not true,” Kora stated firmly. “I mean, I do love sticking it in her since she’s got an ass that just won’t quit, but this and that are completely unrelated.”

  “Yeah, right,” scoffed Fizzy. “And a dragon’s fire breath is just a giant reverse fart.”

  “Really?! That would explain so much!”

  *Clank*

  The golem’s metal palm made contact with her shiny face.

  “Please don’t mistake my absurd metaphor for reality,” Fizzy grumbled.

  “Anyway! You’re a golem now, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So… magical mind-fuckery doesn’t work on golems. Like, at all. That’s kinda why the boss had to rely on Rot-pussy for the dungeon crawl in the first place. Otherwise it would’ve just turned those statues into babbling idiots. You’re a golem too, so you should be the same, right?”

  Incidentally, the same trait was also shared by demons and the undead, which comprised the rest of Boxxy’s entourage. It was a bit ironic, because Warlocks were by far the most common users of Domination magic, at least on this continent. Yet the carnivorous container was surrounded by allies who were impervious to it.

  “I… see…”

  The tiny Paladin found herself momentarily lost in thought. She’d been absolutely certain that her current situation had been the mischievous succubus’s doing, but Kora was right. Her magically-fortified core simply could not be affected by magic designed to target an organic brain. The only way a golem’s nucleus could be influenced was by a specially designed control rod. That was the method that people used to control artificially-made golems in order to make them into loyal servants.

  “I think you’re doing it again,” Kora noted.

  Fizzy looked down at herself and sighed dejectedly. She fixed her top for the umpteenth time, literally sitting on her hands in order to keep them from acting up. It had been almost two hours since she had become aware of this ‘condition,’ and she was more than a little sick of it by now. It wasn’t an issue when she was fighting or otherwise engaged, but every time she was idle her arms and hands tried to remove her clothes without her even realising. She couldn’t even feel it happening since she no longer had a sense of touch.

  “I don’t get it,” Fizzy said in confusion. “If it wasn’t Snack, then what else could suddenly cause this?”

  “Well, to be fair, it’s not really ‘suddenly.’ You’ve been sorta playing with that outfit since the moment you put it on, you know.”

  “What? I have?”

  “Oh, yeah. You keep pulling your pants a little lower or stroking your belly like you want someone to put a bun in it. Stuff like that.”

  “You could’ve said something earlier!”

  “What, and ruin the fun?!”

  She let out a small chuckle, clearly enjoying the golem’s misfortune.

  “You wanna get your face smashed in?” Fizzy growled.

  “Do you?!” Kora snapped back.

  The two stared daggers at each other for a short moment before the fiend burst into laughter.

  “Hahahaha! That’s the spirit! I’m really starting to like you, pipsqueak!”

  Seeing that same little girl stare back at her with such a defiant glare was utterly hilarious. The day when the tiny lump of steel would challenge her to a brawl was likely not far off, and Kora was eagerly anticipating it.

  “Whatever. Just keep it in your pants around me, got it?” Fizzy warned.

  “Oh, believe me, I have no intention of putting my little guy anywhere near you.”

  “What?! I’m too ugly for you?”

  “I never said anything like that. I mean, you look pretty fuckable, if I do say so myself. Your face is nice and you got all the right curves, even if you are a bit tiny. But, like, sticking my dick inside a living mass of steel? I’m a violent asshole, not a crazy one.”

  “O-Oh. Right. Sorry,” Fizzy said, honestly flabbergasted. “I don’t know what came over me just now.”

  “I think I do, though. It’s the monster inside you begging to be let out. That’s probably why you keep stripping, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, you remember how the boss slobbered all over that shiny treasure chest back in the dungeon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Same thing.”

  “What?! How is that the same thing?!”

  “Just hear me out. The boss is only four months old, right? It’s still got all these weird instincts and urges that catch it off guard at times because it’s still immature. It’s like a little kid that lacks boner control. The body reacts before the mind can stop it, that sort of thing.”

  Kora was speaking from personal experience. Even though she was over three centuries old, that was still relatively young for a demon, not to mention that she still wasn’t completely accustomed to inhabiting a physical body for days or even weeks on end. Which was most likely why she sometimes got awkward erections that she just couldn’t explain, or why she couldn’t turn Xera down whenever the succubus practically sat on her junk.

  “There’s no way a three-day-old monster like you can help herself,” she added. “That’s what I think.”

  “So… what, I’m going through some sort of puberty and strip myself instinctively?!”

  “I dunno. I guess?”

  “How does that make any sense!?” Fizzy threw her hands into the air.

  “I mean, it kinda does. Have you ever seen or known of any golems that wear clothes?”

  “Ah… that’s actually a good point.”

  It wasn’t entirely uncommon for artificially-made constructs to wear clothes since it helped to identify them to their owners, but they had no minds of their own. They drabbed themselves in the trappings of society not by their own will, but by the control rod dictating their every move. They were much closer to Valeria’s undead than any sentient golems that appeared in the wild, the latter of which was what Fizzy had become, barring a few complications.

  “I guess you have a point there,” she admitted. “What about that Jade King, though? He was wearing a fancy-looking outfit! Ah, but then I guess that part of his body was sculpted, so he was technically naked, wasn’t he?”

  The more she thought about it, the less sense it made for a monster to bother with clothes, especially if they were as well-sculpted as the stone
soldiers. Fizzy may not have had much of an eye for art, but even she could appreciate the aesthetics. They couldn’t hope to compare to her own glorious form, though. Now that she thought about it, wasn’t she just the absolute best looking-

  “Oh my God!” she exclaimed as the realisation dawned.

  The truth of the matter was that all golems were vain and narcissistic to the extreme. Those that managed to develop some measure of intelligence might consider wearing clothes and/or armour for extra protection, but they would ultimately refuse. They would never allow filthy cloth or unsightly forged metal to obscure their flawless perfection. Of course, this was simply their own ingrained and overinflated opinion of themselves, which didn’t necessarily reflect reality.

  Those were exactly the feelings that had plagued the former gnome ever since she’d abandoned her flesh three days ago. Her infatuation with herself had gone way beyond the simple joy of no longer being a filthy meatbag or pride in her appearance. She also realised that she’d definitely gotten just a little too happy when Kora had offhandedly praised her looks earlier, vulgar phrasing notwithstanding. Therefore, it was highly likely that her sudden urge to be as naked as possible was indeed nothing more than part and parcel of what she had become.

  However, Fizzy hadn’t always been a golem. Her two decades of experience living as a person were conflicting with all these new urges, making them feel unnatural even though the exact opposite was true. This had resulted in an internal conflict wherein her subconscious urge to be seen and appreciated by others in her entirety was clashing with her conscious desire to maintain her dignity as a person.

  Her newfound penchant for violence was entirely unrelated to her new status, however. The desire to inflict pain on others was just her way of relieving the stress that had been building up even before Boxxy had barged into her life.

  “… I’m the weird one for wanting to dress up, aren’t I?!” was her ultimate conclusion.

  “Seems like it.”

  “I’ll get better, though. Right?”

  “Dunno,” Kora shrugged. “What do you mean by ‘get better?’”

  “That… is a very good question, actually.”

  It really wasn’t as simple as Fizzy had initially assumed. Should she embrace her new self and do away with clothes for good? She felt she’d certainly enjoy herself a lot more if she let go of her sensibilities and indulged in the desire to expose herself to everyone with eyes to see. In fact, she felt giddy at the mere thought of walking around a city with hundreds of people appreciating her naked body as she passed through.