Chapter 4: Customization

An unknown period had flowed on by before I slowly regained consciousness to an extent and, as I did, things definitely felt different from when I was floating in that dark void. The first thing I noticed was the space I was in pulsating every so often, and I couldn't open my eyes and see anything.

Unable to do anything currently, I floated there waiting for the fuzziness I was experiencing to subside. When I fully regained clarity, I wasted no time and immediately began trying to open my eyes so I could see where I was and what my current situation was. Regardless of my attempts, they remained shut, thus I continued trying, not ready to give up.

A few more attempts later, I managed to pry them open and, right as I did, I found my vision to be a bit blurry. Although that was only initially since, as the seconds ticked, it began to clear up quite quickly and as soon as it had; I found myself in a dark and flesh-colored space.

Looks like I'm in the womb of my new mother, or at least I hope I am... Well, not much I can do right now, given my current state, but hopefully something happens sooner rather than later. I really don't want to stay in here for much longer since this place isn't all that different from the void I was in previously.

Now that I had an idea of my current status and situation, I kept my eyes open for a few seconds longer before shutting them to rest because I began feeling a sudden onset of tiredness for some reason or another.

From that day forward, I continued my stay in what I presumed to be my mother's womb. I would occasionally wake up every now and again before going back to sleep again shortly thereafter. This continued for who knows how long, when eventually one day there seemed to be a lot of movement from my mother along with her womb, pulsing significantly more than usual.

It would appear I'm either getting out of here soon or I'm in possible trouble. Hopefully not the latter. It would suck to have stayed in this boring ass place for all this time just to get sent back to the void.

Things started to slow from that moment, and right as a few seconds had elapsed, time came to a complete and sudden halt. Once everything came to a complete stop, I appeared back in that dark void again. Seconds into my reappearance there, that cyan-colored holographic screen I hadn't seen since my first stint in the dark void popped into existence in front of me.

Prerequisites met.

Loading. . .

System activated, system integration started.

Loading. . . . . .

System integration complete.

Loading. . .

Character creation started.

Yes, I was hoping I would get this. Let's see to what extent I can edit and modify my body.

...

After navigating through the character creator, I found that I can modify just about everything, from things such as my appearance to my desired height. I could even modify stuff like my dong's length, girth, and many other such features.

This character creator is even more extensive than it was in Wastelander 3, which was already quite extensive compared to most games… Alright, that's enough looking through the options time to get down to business. Starting off, I was already pretty satisfied with my appearance in my previous life, so I'll be using that as my base and go from there.

Thankfully, the character creator already had my past life's appearance loaded up by default. It definitely would've been a major pain in the ass to get the avatar here to look exactly how I did in my previous life. And from the looks of it, it would've taken me more than a small amount of time to get everything just right, or at least I believe so.

Where to go from here… Good looks can be very useful in a number of situations such as first impressions and attracting the opposite sex, so I suppose I'll try altering my appearance to make myself more attractive. That being said, what needs to be improved on my last life's appearance, hmm…

I've taken a good look at my face and have a pretty good idea of what can be improved. To begin, I'll first modify and give my face some sharper and more attractive features such as a stronger and more defined jawline and when I have that out of the way, I'll improve my brow alignment and upgrade various other small features.

A short while later, I finished my masterpiece and what was displayed before me was a very masculine as well as extremely handsome face that some would say was nearly perfect if they preferred a man with masculine features.

With looks like those, I'll pretty much be considered a lady killer when I reach adulthood for the second time. I'm not particularly looking forward to going through childhood all over again, but it'll be worth it in the end, I'm sure. Having finished editing my face, let's take a look at the rest of my body and see if anything else could use an upgrade.

…

You know what, I can improve the various shapes of my muscles to allow me to build even larger and stronger muscles than I had in my last life. Which at the end of the day should improve my survivability a decent bit on top of the many other benefits that larger muscles provide. A few such benefits being carrying more loot, having an easier time wielding heavy weapons, and beating the shit out of bandits and any enemy that steps in my way.

As I slowly went around my body and modified my various muscle groups to allow for them to grow much, much larger than the average person, basically giving myself top-tier bodybuilding genetics, I made a surprising discovery.

Oh shit, I can even make modifications to my cardiovascular system, too. That's honestly pretty broken, not gonna lie.

...

That's enough looking at that for now. I need to finish modifying the rest of my muscles before I start taking advantage of that.

Following my new discovery and quickly exploring the various things I could do with it, I went back to what I had been working on moments prior and continued looking through the rest of my muscles and modifying whatever muscles that could be improved.

As soon as I was done, I closely inspected my work to ensure I had done everything correctly. Once I tripled checked my work and was absolutely sure I hadn't missed or passed over anything, I continued on to my cardiovascular system scanning it to see what I was working with before I began thinking about what I would upgrade to increase my body's overall performance.

I've checked over my cardiovascular system more than once and tested out the simulation feature to see how the whole system worked. As a result of that, I see I have a number of areas in my body that can be improved, so I'll move onto the next step and begin increasing and expanding the number of vessels in the relevant areas.

The improvements made will allow my blood vessels to transport more blood, oxygen, and other nutrients to the various parts of my body, like my muscles and organs. Thus, I should see an improvement in my stamina, my body's ability to build muscle, and an increase in my body's overall performance.

Right as I was about to get to work and begin my improvement plan, I remembered something very important.

Ohh, I just remembered that I could've modified my tendons too. Yeah, I need to go back immediately and increase the strength, thickness, and number of them so I can increase my strength at a much faster rate instead of having to wait for my tendons to catch up in strength and durability of my muscles before I can continue onto even heavier weight.

Spending a bit checking out my tendons, I modified them in such a way that they will have a much higher ceiling right off the rip, on top of making it so that they will regenerate and increase in strength at a faster speed than my muscles. Which will also increase in growth speed further when I'm able to safely begin taking one of the various drugs that increase physical performance.

However, to do that, I'll need to experiment and perform research on the drugs that exist in the wastelander world that share similar benefits to PEDS from my previous world and figure out a way to make them safe to be used.

All that said, I have one drug in mind that should be a good candidate and do just the trick, that is the oral drug Maxigen. Based on the information I've encountered in the game and gathered through my exploration of multiple online sites. The drug was developed by the U.S. military to enhance soldier performance and combat ability. Other than that, it was known as the pinnacle of all body building drugs, hence why I want to direct my focus to it.

The only issue with it is I'll need to resolve the sole negative side effect it has, that being the rage it induces in its users that eventually leads to them entering a permanent berserker like state after prolonged use. Thankfully, it doesn't have the side effect of shutting down my balls like most anabolic steroids do from my original world so I won't have to wait until my body is fully mature to start taking it when I eventually find a way to make it safe.

Getting back on track, now that my tendons have been upgraded, it's time to do the same for my ligaments as well. Alright, everything looks good. Let's head back to improving my cardiovascular system.

...

That should do it for my various veins, I now need to increase the size of my heart to accommodate all the extra blood that I'll be gaining from all the extra veins I added... Aaaand done, now I just need to test it out in the simulation mode to ensure that the entire system is working as it should… Okay everything appears fine but it seems my lungs could be a bit larger. Let me make that adjustment and test it out in the simulation one last time… Good, every part is operating efficiently and without issue, I can move on to the next step.

Finished there, I backed out of the cardiovascular menu to the main menu of the character creator and began looking at the rest of the features I can change to my liking.

I like my blue eyes so I'll be keeping them, though I'll increase their vibrancy.

Continuing on down the list, we have hair. I don't really have any issues with my dark brown, almost black hair. However, now that I'm thinking about it, I've always kind of wanted jet black hair like my cousins, so I guess I'll change it to that.

With those two taken care of, we have skin color next, which I don't want to change, hence that will be left alone, and just under that setting is height. I was five eleven in my past life, but I've always wanted to be a bit taller, so I'll increase that to six foot six, putting me in line with a certain group of space marines. I could've gone for even more height, however I don't really like a towering height difference between myself and whoever I'm with.

After setting my desired height, I looked at what else I could edit and left most of them alone until I arrived at penile length and girth.

I already had a slightly above-average dick size previously and never had any complaints about either my length or my girth lacking from the fairer sex, so I'll pass on changing what I already got.

Satisfied with my seven-inch-something dick size, I looked through the remaining things that I could change and edited them as I pleased. At the end of it all, I ended up with a tall and muscular, attractive, dark-haired white male with a pair of vibrant blue-eyes that appeared to glow due to their vibrancy set upon his masculine face.

It's gonna be sweet living life on easy mode.