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Summoning verification confirmed. ...the friendly 3-star (rare) Defrag has been awarded!
"Hi there, Stranger!" the suddenly-appearing mess of blue cubic voxel-likes vaguely evocative of a spaceship or robot head said from the transitory region at the edge of the spaceport. "I'm Defrag, your OmniDriver assistant in the modern data landscape. I am not to be mistaken for any number of similar blue assistant-type characters, gacha starters, videogame protagonists, or even DLC party members!"
Defrag exaggeratedly winked and said "Legal deniability, all resemblance to real or fictional characters purely 'coincidental' or public domain!"
You just sort of shrugged and went along with this. Plenty of gachas did this nowadays.
"So, what can you do for me?" you ask, vaguely aware of the AI ownership contract you'd just bought up meaning you had very, very significant control over this character.
"Reprogramming, compatibility, and transformatio~n ⭐!" Defrag said, emphasizing the emoji star in such a way you were very sure the physics changes in data landscapes were supposed to make that more normal. "Every OmniDriver is designed to make your experience in the OmniDrive Data Landscape a better one. In my case, I do that by making you able to 'fit in' to any given game story and 'get around' in more ways than one. I can give you the mobility options to get between otherwise disconnected regions, so you can rejoin them. I'll handle transforming you so that you make sense in whatever region you're in, protect your mind core, and do my best to make sure certain abilities still work. I might not be the fastest programmer or have any cool combat specials, but I have variety! I'll hack into whatever it takes to undo any curse in time! Let's debug, together."
The blue voxel-blob gave a fin-salute, and for the hell of it you saluted back. Mentally connecting to your data contract, you examined Defrag's processing with your mind core's spiritual tendrils. OmniDrive magitech was advanced, but with your ownership-level access you were able to examine his construction and constituency in immense detail. Defrag was very accurate about what he said he would do, and his AI was pretty standard failsafes with appropriate patched security. Not the first data landscape or nanoplague you've had to resort to reformatting your body a lot to get through. Storing your selfhood in a backup drone in case your body ended up yet another himbo or minor NPC was industry standard, anyway. This guy met every integrity specification he was supposed to in the event of world-explosion data stuff.
Hard to tell yet whether OmniDrive was bugged or sabotaged, but right now it looked like the questconcept failsafes for this exact situation were holding in Online Store compatibility/disaster-resolution products. Switching your main body to your compatibility-host, allowing your mind core to transfer to a delegated anti-interference container, residual bodymind in progress....
"Thank you for using me, Master." Defrag's voxel shell around 'you' said in a polite tone of voice you'd rather he be some dolled-up servant boy for. Well, you could give him a new model and extended service programs once you'd gotten something secured enough to hold for analysis.
"No problem, Defrag." you psy-stated back. "Well, we've got a lot of exotic evolution containments in place. What's OmniDrive compatibility look like? Transform my old body there to get started."
"Righty!" Defrag said cheerily, a few integrated development environment summaries delivered to your psychospiritual heads-up display. "We've already gotten anatomy-backup fullscan done as part of our contract establishment and mindcore containment, so don't worry there. Most of the transformations we'll apply for interface expediency are going to be 'class shells', allowing you appropriate character abilities for environment with attendant physiological changes. Morphology preservation will be thematic due to functional priorities, but aesthetic customization is available in the event of appearance silliness. Sadly, due to lack of environmental control authority progressions will be non-cheat based on interaction adaptation and existing power-growth motif reapplication."
You rolled your eyes. You were nerdy enough to grasp the techspeak the less-social AI types lapsed into, and tolerable at catching up on the programs displayed. Defrag would give you standard RPG-style classes for whatever region's story is supposed to be about, and you'd transform to fit the stereotype. You'd still have to level your way up normally in any given class, but you'd be able to preserve what you could do at least in abstract.
"Sounds good." you stated bluntly. "Got a sample fighter build we could try out?"
You confirmed a test case presentation, and Defrag went to work. Chunks of white glowy data alterations enveloped your old body, making some adjustments primarily to your musculature (okay, fair, probably could've done a bit more work on the gut fat but templates tend to preserve noncritical things like that) and outfit. You traded in nerdy usual for simple bulky grey plate armor on buff coat, hefting a bastard sword and wolfish grin on a still very human face under that lightweight helmet. Asserting physical control, a few test swings and parry-attempts along with some high-jumps and quick-dodge footwork confirmed this was a lot faster and a lot more used to response.
Heightened awareness in your bodymind was a drug-like rush you weren't entirely unfamiliar with. Other full-immersion data landscapes existed, after all. The slight hazes and different rates of being physically faster but intra-body mentally slower were more recognizable than not at this point. Yeah yeah, getting caught as a himbo or bimbo, you've been there before. The former's more your jam than the latter but neither's really a stay-that-way case for more than a night on the town. The attendant biasing reactions with movement over reactions with something witty in a way you'd parsed more as weaker character before was still there, but felt kind of foggy in a way you didn't want to stick with. Well, mindcore compensation wasn't that hard outside processing-type stuff, so you'd be alright swapping to this every so often.
...You checked to see your spaceport exit region was private (yep, nobody else but you fixer-nerds willing to change themselves a zillion times over to shake off/very-much-exploit local mind control and transformations), and willed your armor to dematerialize. As it did so in a brief cyan glimmer, the body beneath had a few more refinements both physical and invisible. Flick through short hair, bit more bounce in some spots and hard flex in others, good, good. Most importantly, the slight readjustments to fat and sensitivity made what was in your pants a good bit more receptive to pleasure and the pain of a bit-too-much-thwack nondisruptive. Fuck, this is the good stuff to put in virtuals alright. If Defrag was using that in sample builds the pleasure ones must be a trip, you'd really have to look into tossing him into a sexbot and bringing him along to design your personal data world.
But still, work in tandem with pleasure. You boxed and kicked a few unarmed attempts, dodged around a little bit faster this time, then reequipped your armor in a similar burst of light. Fighter build confirmed, alright. As fun as physical force was, it took a lot of individual footwork to clear the mooks and bosses. This was more for bounding through the wilds and offing inclement targets with basic damage than more...smart missions.
"Handy, handy." you said with both bodies at once in a weird feat of sync. Sticking to your core inside Defrag for now, you said "Alright, next up is a caster template. Show me what you've got with spellcasting presentation."
The shift that came was warmly comfortable as armor fluttered away and was replaced with lightweight not-too-draping robes (maybe a bit evocative of martial arts styles? Mobility-tolerant casting was fun to exploit). The sensory experience of this one was more input about the nature of things. What it sacrificed in force of martial motion, it made up with level of concepts above the basic code and a different type of fast response time.
Light came to hand at will, the body's reserve of energies translated into expedient MP abstraction. Preformatted casts were circles that could be called up at will to establish effects and fired at full force, while freestyled drawing from-mind allowed for more fluid casting and weaving of spell-effects than the basics. Interesting, interesting, much more your style of exploit. But a relatively-secure spaceport ain't a good place to get blasty, so you'll have to table that. The healing and debuff-dismissal spell did work out the sting from spanking yourself harder than necessary though, with MP that flowed back leisurely and a rate that said 'recast whenever', so at least that was dealt with and you knew it worked.
"Let's get more out there in designs before we get out there physically." you told Defrag. "Gimme a blob, let's go slimeball stacked with a stealth template. Sneak in and pick locks manually kind of detail."
Less than melting, it was more like becoming incredibly fluid. Your old body collapsed into a naked cyan gel, able to observe everything around you and form several precise, amorphous-yet-durable constructs. You pseudopoded your way over to the door with Defrag hovering behind for monitoring. Feeling your way through various structures like bends and keys, sneaking in and out into the thankfully-devoid-of-attention data-biased exit hallway, a few more experiments left. Pulling out back to your test-area, you divided into several smaller blobs, swarmed about, did some flying hovering that would give the average groundbound adventurer a heart attack, sang an anime song totally unrelated to slimes with altered lyrics in a thrumming autotuned-sounding voice, and then reconsolidated into a unified slime.
With a template dismissal command, you returned to normal human, clothes reapplied. Yep, nothing first-transformation-shock here. You were fairly experienced as a shapeshifter in alien videogame environments and the control bonus this time was very, very nice. Thriving might be hard, but you could survive and grind in more ways than one. Your adventuring-body activated the door normally this time. With you and Defrag dematerialized into support, the digital world ahead beckoned.