Chapter 2: How to eat if you're a fork?

  What really sucks is that I won’t even be able to tell what I’m eating, so I won’t be able to filter out potentially bad stuff. My life is now a lotto draw, except I don’t know if the jackpot even exists. Or any other prize. And they might repossess my house if I’m unlucky. Well, enough of the bad metaphors, time for work!

  …I forgot I’m a fork. I can only wait. Looking closer, the first requirement of me having a better life is to first be used as an eating utensil… I’d be bawling my eyes out with depression… if I weren’t a fork. A pinching feeling interrupts me. Never have I been excited to feel so helplessly pressed in between what I assume are some fingers. Maybe I could absorb their hand?

  …Even if I could, I doubt someone would keep what seems to be a demonic fork.

  Wait, will I be able to control it to only activate at the tip of the fork? Where is my ‘head’ anyway? Probably the opposite end to where I’m being held, I suppose. Well, I’ll just try and focus on whatever I get embedded in. Here it comes!

  The sick disgusting feeling washes over me again, the disgusting juices running all around my body. I feel the pressure on my tines as they try to slide into… whatever it is I’m being used to eat. Sliding in, with a brief burst of immaturity, I shout internally: Fork powers activate! Absorb!

  I focus on the desire to pull the surrounding material into me, but slowly. I feel the fluids encasing me disappear gradually, and the pressure around me lessens slightly before disappearing abruptly. What? I can’t have consumed it all, that quickly, can I?

  Wait, before I panic, wouldn’t whatever I was embedded in fall off if I consumed the matter around my tines, which were the things attaching me to it? That must be it. I hope. I turn my attention to the two windows that had appeared before me, unbeknownst to me.

  Ignoring everything else, my vision was nailed to a single word. ‘Sight’. Since becoming a fork, the only thing I could see was darkness, then after a while, the windows. If I could see, it would change everything. I wouldn’t be left to wallow in misery after meals! At least, probably not… not as much. Staring at that single word, fixated on the simple possibility, the windows in front of me winked out of existence.

  A moment of nonplussed disbelief is interrupted by the sudden feeling of my brain exploding. An inaudible screech of pain sounds from me. Of course, as a fork, I have no brain, but the feeling is so similar I assume it to be so. Although, this nonchalant monologue was simply my thoughts as I reminisced that moment, later. Back then, I was still screaming in pain as my vision bloomed into being abruptly. It was very disappointing to the me back then, of course, after I had sufficiently recuperated from the pain.

  What greets my vision now is the same old darkness, but it is no longer a single colour. Tiny white spheres drift around, some in large groups, others drifting around on their lonesome. After spending a while overcoming my great disappointment and concurrent despair, I sadly conclude that I should have a better look at that new ability. I think it was a skill? I forgot everything else on the window once I saw the hope of sight. Sighing, I open my Status for a better look.

  My experience went up, and my durability is filled. I can heal and grow stronger by eating? I would call this a cheat, but I don’t have any of the five senses. Which limits me severely. Skills.

  Well that explains it, I guess. The white spheres must be mana. I focus my mind on pulling the nearest sphere towards me. Nothing happens. Maybe I would need some sort of mana control skill to do that? Hey, my absorb skill said it could absorb mana, didn’t it? I wonder what that would give me?

  Focusing on pulling only the mana towards me, I activate the skill, but nothing happens. I suppose it did say it had to be in contact with my body for it to work, didn’t it? Hey, doesn’t that mean I didn’t really need to be careful about my absorption speed? Being cautious is better, though. I am but a flimsy fork you know... I should really check those Traits out now.

  Wooden fork, huh? So, is there any way I could be more vulnerable? The racial fame thing sounds cool and all, but I can’t reproduce even if I wanted to. I’m a fork after all. Well, at least nobody will notice me. Ever.

  *cries*

  Just kidding, I’m a fork. No tear ducts.

  And thus, as I have nothing better to do, I begin observation of the little floating balls, hoping for one of them to contact my body. Interestingly, my field of vision seems to be a full 360-degree sphere. I suppose having no sensory organs has a bit of payoff. Totally not worth it though.

  Floating balls~ floaty white balls~ I’m really bored~ hey, is that ball drifting towards me? No, it swerved away. But! One that was just drifting passed me suddenly swerved towards me! Get ready! Absorb!

  Awwww… talk about a big lead up to nothing. Well. Waiting again.

  Thus, time passes. Meals come and go. Mana drifts and is occasionally absorbed…

  6935 forks leaning on the wall… 6935 forks… take one down, throw on the ground, 6934 forks leaning on the wall…

  And this is how I pass the time. I have no biological functions, and am thus incapable of sleeping. I started at 10000 just a little while ago, and I’m already this far along. I’ve absorbed all the mana that’s come in contact with me - nothing better to do, after all. Even so, there have barely been a dozen and the proficiency of absorb I’m getting from them is decreasing. You’d think I’d have absorbed more mana, but remember, it has to come in contact with me. Even if it floats 1mm away from me, I can’t do a thing to it.

  Oy, what’s that weird ball of mana doing? Crazily moving in a spiral towards me? Is that going to hit me? Thanks. For. The. Meal! Absorb.

  Viva la Magic! What does that even mean anyway? Oh well, I got magic. Well, mana, anyway, and that means magic, right? Amusingly, at the centre of my vision is now a fork-shaped accumulation of mana. Yeah, I can see myself. How? How do I even see at all? Don’t question the anatomy of a fork, you’ll just get confused.