Born a Monster

All right, I’m posting this as a bonus chapter, and have given the warning. This is about Rhishisikk, but it isn’t part of the actual story.

I know what questions you might have – who is this new Rhishisikk, and why is he behaving like that? For the past eighty or so chapters, you’ve been seeing a drastic change in his behavior.

Or not; it’s possible that I’m not as good at these changes as I thought. I’ve gone back several times to chapter one and been startled with how bad of an author I used to be. I still have a long way to go on that journey.

But, let’s talk about Rhishisikk, and his growth. Not in terms of his System numbers; that will be a different bonus chapter.

This is about his outlook, specifically that he is more eager to stand up for himself, even to the point of throwing down, of putting his life on the line. Even as he’s seeing ever more clearly how little those around him value his existence, he’s driven all the more to assert himself.

It’s not psychosis, and not JUST vanity. Vanity, both the sin and the character trait, are part of it. But that’s not all of it.

And let’s touch on Vanity in passing. Although this isn’t a Ctulhu novel, you’ll see lingering elements. The character is almost no-one, invisible to others at times. (Which yes, you’d think if there were a reptile that speaks in the room, you’d be aware of it. To some degree, that’s a curse upon Titans and their spawn, but mostly it’s just... normal. These people live with all manner of people and half people and some of them can talk to animals as well. It’s normal, stop staring, it’s just rude.)

Ahem. Okay, so the character is almost no-one. He’s not going around making speeches, winning hearts, and changing world views. Whether he behaves well or poorly, horrible things happen to him. The world itself seems to be against him; BUT if you watch, terrible things happen to other people as well. It’s just the way of the world, to hand out fortune and misfortune and not to care who is being dealt what.

.....

Even his own System... well, his System isn’t sentient. It doesn’t THINK; so of course it doesn’t care about him. The gods who take an interest in him don’t care about HIM; they care about the work he can do in the mortal world for them. And that work... just doesn’t measure up to expectations.

But it isn’t just the gods; officials in his own society, all the way up to Rakkal, have expressed their disapproval.

So, yes, to some degree it is Vanity to believe that he has self-worth in spite of the number and degree of other viewpoints. And part of it is psychology 101, specifically reverse psychology.

There are two major paths you can take with that kind of feedback. The one I refuse to explore is the downward spiral, where one agrees with the overwhelming input. To believe that one has no value, that others must be right. That even if one doesn’t take their own life, that they live as less just because society tells them to.

To the above path, I say: bullshit.

And I’m not going to write a story about a character who does. I’ve tried that in my own life, and come to this conclusion: there’s enough time to be dead when you’re done with life, but life is for the living.

So let’s look at the upward spiral, which some people call insanity. To receive negative input and to tell the ENTIRE WORLD that no, it’s wrong, and I’m going to live during the time I’m alive. And it’s not entirely sane, I’m not saying that. But it is enduring the waves of negativity and refusing the undertow.

So what makes Rhishi choose this path as well? Because originally, he doesn’t. He endures the bad things, and curses them, and chooses the course of acceptance. He tries not to draw attention to himself, and just do what he has to in order to survive. Oh, so it’s time to be locked up in a dungeon again? Okay, let’s do that, then.

But what you’ve seen recently is a Rhishisikk who, for lack of better terminology, is waking up. It was over three hundred chapters that he decided he wanted to live to explore things; now he’s suddenly realizing that he can’t just let that happen, he’s got to MAKE that happen.

In other words, Rhishisikk has realized that he needs to act. That being passive and that being peaceful are different things, and that there are times to abandon both if he intends to live his life, not the life others have planned for him. (Or the death others have planned for him, in some cases.)

Now, he’s not there yet. He’s in the process of becoming that.

And that almost-adolescence comes with its own set of problems. I’ve edited this to remove that list of problems, because the hurdles he’s going through or not is actually a different subject. He’s not human, he doesn’t think like a human would (but I still use basic psychology to help), and he never will.

So back to the main track, which is that through constant change, and incremental improvements, Rhishi is actually quite competent. He hasn’t realized the full implications of that yet, nor the full consequences.

A good part of that is that he’s proactively working on his survival, and hasn’t realized that the dangers around him are growing slower than he is. That’s an issue that deserves its own chapter.

And why is he working so hard on surviving? Let’s be fair; he usually has to. Through faults usually very much his own, he gets hurt, and is usually below half health. What is worse is that because of his System, he KNOWS he’s been closer to passing out than being healthy.

Consider that for a moment; every person in this world who has a System understands their health. How much worse would the world be if you were visually reminded that you were hungry, or thirsty, or told what vitamins you hadn’t gotten enough of that day? I know, you think it might be a better life. But really THINK about it; if you knew that there was an orange shortage, would you really want to be reminded daily you weren’t getting enough vitamin C? Would you want to know constantly the percentage of a millimeter your gums had receded that day?

But I’m getting sidetracked, the System is only part of the reason for Rhishi’s alternate mentality.

Part of it is his unusual biology, and unusual childhood, and the fact that his first encounter with society was goblin indifference, and the rest has been people regarding him as a slave or an outsider, or both. Not the sort of things that lend themselves to redefining yourself.

It hasn’t helped that his System has applied the terms “Champion” and “Hero” to him, to include unlocking those features, while he still also sees himself as having a bunch of level one classes. (And insisting that he EAT like a hero, which is a different point.) In fact, one can argue that his System is only warping his perception of reality.

Which leads us to Rhishi realizing he shouldn’t have been able to brew the potions he’s already been making. For a long time, he’s been ignoring feedback from his own System about who he is and what he’s capable of. It would be an over-simplification to say he’s doing the same to society, although it’s not entirely wrong.

So we’ve got a survivor who realizes that while he’s mortal, he’s more competent than his System will give him credit for. He’s innovative, and flexible, and creative. He has seen that when he attempts things that he thinks he’ll fail at, he sometimes succeeds anyway.

And along the way, he’s beginning to pick up confidence and arrogance. (Sadly, these two seem to be gained together, and it is only after being humbled that the latter falls away.)

Now, there’s a lot to Rhishi NOT being as arrogant as he might otherwise be. He’s defeated people who both common sense and System statistics tell him he shouldn’t be able to survive, let alone beat. He has frequently fallen unconscious from his wounds. And he’s smart enough to worry that some day he’ll get a wound (damage condition) so bad that he won’t recover from it.

On the other hand, that hasn’t happened yet. Sure, he jokes about traveling around with a [Concussion], something that just marks how little he actually worries about it. Lost limbs, lost eyeballs, even once having most of his endocrine and urinary system literally eaten out of him like a living serving dish. Sure, he’s mortal, but he also has to realize that compared to the people around him, he’s survived things that would cripple them for the rest of their lives. He already accepts things like bleeding, poison, and disease as things that he’s HIGHLY resistant to. His normal scales block a ‘mere’ six points of damage – on a scale where most attacks deal eight to twelve points of damage. And he laments that with a full suit of metal armor over that, he’d resist up to ten.

Bah, I’m here at words. More bonus chapters like this coming.