Sorhafe barely had a minute to lay on her side before the world around her seemed to vanish and she found herself adrift in a black expanse. Unfortunately, while she was hoping that she would end up as some disembodied soul, the stiff, bloated feeling of her new body made it painfully obvious that wherever she was, she was still a cow.
The black expanse persisted for only a few seconds before some large, colorful text filled Sorhafe’s vision: “TOTAL RESPEC INITIATED”
A character sheet popped into view, just like the one that she had used when she had originally made Sorhafe. But instead of a sexy elf in the avatar window of the sheet, there was instead a large, fat cow. It’s fur had the black and white blotched pattern that Sorhafe knew was typical of a milking cow, which raised a question in her mind.
She rotated the avatar around and peered underneath its belly. Where she had been expecting to see a large udder, there were instead just four moderately sized nipples sitting in the area between the cow’s hind legs. Rubbing her own hindlegs together, Sorhafe could feel four small nipples there on her own body, and the area itself felt quite sensitive, but it didn’t feel like there was an udder.
“I’m not lactating.”
The thought came into her head immediately. Sorhafe instinctively knew that her new body had an udder, it just wasn’t really noticeable if she wasn’t lactating. It was strange but she didn’t really know whether to be grateful for that or not.
She saw movement in the details section of the character page, which drew her attention there. The first thing she noticed was the race column began glowing, shifting from the word “Wood Elf” to the word “Cow”.
Next the name section changed, again glowing from “Sorhafe” to “Speckles”. The next thing that began glowing was her class. The word “Ranger” began shifting, but then stopped as a new window popped up:
“PLEASE CHOSE A NEW RACIALLY APPROPRIATE CLASS”
With that, the window shifted to show three options:
1 – Milker. A class that focuses on milk production to buff its allies or debuff its enemies. Sore udders are to be expected. Limited solo ability.
2 – Dam. A class that focuses on summons and growing a herd to fight for you. Excellent solo ability though not bad in groups – assuming that your teammates can stand the smell.
3 – Meat Tank. A class that builds up its fat reserves to tank damage. Good soloing and group ability but requires extensive grazing between fights. Not for those with a low tolerance for pain.
As Speckles finished reading her choices, a timer appeared above the list and began counting down from 2 minutes. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she had to make a selection, and she didn’t want to find out would happen if she didn’t.
So which one should she choose? The sluggishness of her new body reminded her that this choice might be something that she was stuck with for a while.
Milker? For one, she’d been teleported to her current location without her friends, and she wasn’t sure how long it would take her to find them. The class description outright told her that she would have difficulty soloing, so that didn’t seem like a great idea. On the other hand, how long did she want to be stuck as a cow? If she lost, did that mean she would be teleported out of the game?
No, more likely she would be transformed into something even worse, which meant that this class wasn’t a good option when she had no party to group with. Plus, she started to realize why she wasn’t lactating – she wasn’t pregnant. If she picked this class, would she have to get pregnant or, worse, give birth for it to function? That wasn’t something she wanted to even think about.
Moving on, there was the Dam class. That almost sounded like cow royalty, as though she would maybe be a queen cow. The idea of using magic to summon in a royal herd was somewhat appealing, since she could stay in the backlines and avoid getting directly involved in combat. Given the limitations of her new body, she didn’t think that being a frontline fighter was a good idea. Plus, the description said it was good at soloing.
Then there was the Meat Tank. That seemed to run at odds with how she would expect her body to function. She was bloated, stiff, and slow. She didn’t think it would be easy to deal damage like this, and the idea of just sitting there and letting herself get wailed on wasn’t appealing – doubly so since the description made it sound like that would be a painful experience.
Then there was the grazing issue. How long would she have to graze to build up defenses? What happened if she found herself in an area with no grass? Was she just screwed?
All in all, the Milker and Meat Tank seemed like rather unappealing choices, while the Dam seemed like it at least had some flavor to it. Not that Speckles was happy to be a cow, but this was certainly the best of her options.
She selected “Dam” and then watched as her stat page opened up:
Str: 12
Dex: 8
Con: 16
Wis: 10
Int: 1
Cha: 8
As her eyes passed over her Int stat, she found herself growing scared. 1 Int? Would she still be able to think if she left her stats like this? She could just picture herself wandering around as a confused cow, unable to comprehend anything about the world around her.
Decided to improve that state, she raised it as high as the character sheet allowed her, to 5. That wasn’t great, she was still going to be borderline retarded, but it should be enough to at least speak in complete sentences. More importantly, it would allow her to function in the world.
That left her with a deficit of 4 points, which she then pulled out of Dex and Cha, leaving both at 6 which, again, was the lowest either of those stats would go. She’d wanted to lower Str, Con, or Wis, but the sheet wouldn’t let her as apparently those were important stats for her new class.