Where should I start? I can guess that the catalyst for all this was clearly the event that happened yesterday. While I was wasting time at home, I received an email.
[Space Survival development team is currently recruiting closed beta testers for the sequel. If you wish to participate, please click the accept button below.]
It’s a survival RPG game where you choose one of the various races existing in the vast space, and you survive, explore, and evolve. What caught my attention here was the ‘various races’. Ever since I was young, I’ve been fond of aliens, monsters, and different species. Space Survival was a game that brought my fantasies to life.
Sometimes I became a metallic gremlin, tearing apart human ships, and other times, I transformed into a mutant monster, slaughtering enemies on the ground.
At times, I even led a hive-minded organization to conquer planets. I’ve played as all sorts of space creatures that could come out of nightmares, but there was one race that I enjoyed the most: the Unidentified Aggressive Space Morph, or UASM for short.
I combined the ‘A’ from Aggressive with ‘Morph’ and called them Amorphs. Amorphs were space monsters inspired by creatures from the classic film ‘The Thing’, capable of acquiring genetic information from their victims to enhance themselves.
They had no limits to how strong they could become, which might make them seem like overpowered beings at first glance. However, due to their incredibly challenging survival difficulty and the inherent risks of their race, they had a notorious reputation.
In essence, they got stronger over time, but they were extremely weak in the beginning, making it nearly impossible to accomplish anything.
Survival games are all about accumulating resources and skills over time, but Amorphs had a mechanism that went against this flow. Dying repeatedly in the early stages reduced the opportunity to get stronger, and if you couldn’t get stronger, you’d keep dying in a vicious cycle.
Nevertheless, one could argue that you could overcome this through effort and skill. But Amorphs had a fatal flaw that made it difficult – they couldn’t communicate or cooperate with other races. According to the game’s lore, Amorphs viewed other races as living prey or genetic material to be collected.
The game developers actually implemented this in the game.
It goes without saying that not being able to communicate or play cooperatively in a multiplayer game with tons of players is a huge risk.
In the beginning, Amorphs are weak, and they can’t cooperate with other players either. These two drawbacks combined to make Amorphs the worst of the non-mainstream races in Space Survival. To the extent that a rumor circulated in the community suggesting that the ‘SM’ at the end of UASM stood for Sadist (referring to the game developers) and Masochist (referring to the players), it could even be considered an accepted fact.
So, why did such a trash race become my favorite?
The reason is simple. It’s because they were a race that could evolve and grow stronger freely based on choice and will.
‘Well, besides that, I also have a liking for aliens.’
Just as they say, those who enjoy it the most tend to excel at it, and I was one of the hardcore players who achieved the most challenging achievement in the game – Galactic Conqueror as an Amorph. In the community, they even called me the ‘Honorable Amorph’, ‘The Xeno-lover’, or the ‘Morph Enthusiast’ .
But, of course, there’s no eternal king.
‘I totally forgot that people have to go to school these days….’
And that’s for two years in a row.
Since I never left the house and just played the game, the outcome was only natural. I had to graduate, so I temporarily left the game to focus on my studies. Because of that, I didn’t even know that a sequel was in development.
Anyway, Space Survival is my most beloved game. What gamer wouldn’t be excited about the sequel to a game that’s practically a life pick?
Naturally, I clicked ‘accept.’
‘The result is this, huh.’
I raised my ‘second’ right leg to scratch my ‘forehead’, covered with a shell. As I scratched, my back started itching again, so this time, I decided to use my ‘fourth’ left leg. As I scratched my back, a translucent scale came off the tip of my toenail.
If someone were to ask how a human could have four pairs of legs, I could respond : “Because I’m not a human.”
I sighed as I looked at my first front leg in my hand, and in response, the sensory aid device hanging from my chin wiggled as if in harmony with my sigh.
The shape of my hands was far from that of a human or a mammal. My long, slender limbs were divided into three segments, reminiscent of the legs of a spider or an arthropod. At the tips of my legs, two claws served as fingers, looking quite cute.
I hoped these weren’t my hands, but the claws seemed to move in response to my will, as if urging me not to ignore them.
Shifting my gaze along my legs, my body had a sleek, elongated form like that of a snake or a lizard. My back and belly were covered in a tough shell, which gave them a hard, unyielding feel. In contrast, my sides were made up of soft flesh, unlike the rigid carapace. I had three pairs of legs, similar in shape to my front limbs, sprouting from my sides.
Finally, at the rear, a thick, flexible tail extended. At the tip of the tail was a sharp stinger, my only weapon.
I knew the identity of this small and bizarre creature.
The favorite race in Space Survival – The Amorph.
Beings with boundless potential who made me the ruler of the galaxy
｢Race: Unidentified Aggressive Space Morph
Special Trait: Super-sense｣
In the vast expanse of space, in a universe where all sorts of monsters and transcendent beings were at play, I had possessed the weakest creature of all.