Borderlands: Unnatural selection

I came to slightly regret taking those enhanced senses when I stepped out of the portal to my house and immediately got overwhelmed by all the sounds and smells that hit me at once. The plants, the dirt, the water and so much more filled my nostrils with their scents and it was disorienting. The sounds weren't much better as like you may expect a forest/jungle was not exactly a quiet place. It took me a good thirty minutes to bring it back to a level that I could handle but I twitched at even the smallest sound out of place.-

It got better progressively as I walked through the greenery and my brain adjusted but the next time I shot my gun I winced at the loud sound. It was just to kill a Prowler but still really sucked even as I harvested the 451 units of lifeforce. I was good on the traits of that species at the moment and only took the lifeforce before leaving. I didn't need more physical strength or sharper hearing at the moment so I passed on the traits to stockpile lifeforce instead.-

It was a balancing act really as I knew I needed to take traits to improve myself but that I should also be at least a little picky with what I took since I knew that I would need a lot of lifeforce if I wanted the good shit when it started popping up. Thanks to my new senses after I adapted to them I could track animals that way by following scent trails and listening for the sounds of movement. As a result when I picked up a foul odor wafting my way from a certain direction I knew I had found a Woemp.-

The dumb beast was like the previous one in appearance though it had a mohawk and was waiting up in a tree to clobber anything that walked under it. I raised my gun calmly, took aim and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.

"THUD!" the putrid corpse hit the forest floor dead moments later.

I whistled casually as I strolled over and stabbed my bayonet into it's throat and began to skin the still hot body on the spot. The disproportionate nature of the species biology and the plant on it made this process a chore but in the end I had a mostly intact hide.-

While I was still hungry I wasn't going to eat something that lived in filth like this and merely harvested the nice 949 units of lifeforce and left since I didn't want to find out if something could just casually stroll into my house through the portal if I left it open right next to this bloody and dead Woemp. Once I was a good distance away I opened up my house and went straight to the crafting room. The creation thingy was comprised of three parts(that I could see). The first was a black and glowing orange square sliding drawer that was what took the materials.-

The second was an amber knobbed lever like with the food creation thingy that interfaced with the person touching it(me) and told them what materials it had and how much it needed for whatever you wanted it to make. Unfortunately I also discovered that much like the food creator thing this device also had a cooldown though a much lower four hour one since you had to provide materials which cut the cost considerably. Anyways the final part I could see was a sort of set of square black and glowing orange rings that were in the wall to the other side of the lever.-

I walked over to the depositor drawer and stuffed in the Woemp hide waited for it to get accepted then started to strip. I was totally bald underneath it but I wasn't surprised since I HAD lost all of my skin previously which took my hair with it. I tossed all of my clothes down to even my shoes into the depositor and then left since I wanted to get clean before I put on new clothes.-

"Come out damn it!" I cursed in the shower as I furiously scrubbed at the dried blood on my skin to try and get it off, it wasn't going well.

I even had the water at almost dangerously hot temperatures to try and get the scum off but it was stubbornly clingy to me. It didn't help that I lacked anything abrasive to scrub at it with as well as soap and was just using my hands. At some point I just had to accept less than perfectly clean and move on with small specks of dark colored dried blood on various points of my body.-

Thankfully without hair to hold it the water just ran right off me and I dried out very fast. Walking over the smooth stone floors to the crafting room I entered the room and headed straight to the maker thingy. 

'Alright so first I'll have the hide shaped into a set of leather armor like I was used to on earth, then remove the crotch and replace it with denim and a zipper. Layer the legs with denim on the inside and create hard rubber soles with grip groove add holster for gun on right hip then layer the top with the cotton of my shirt. Plate with Eridian metal on the forearm, upper arm, chest, thighs and shins.' I thought setting my specifications.

Once I had what I wanted set in mind I saw I had a good bit of hide left over and decided to create a satchel as well with a button latch. Good and happy with my specifications I pulled the lever and the black and orange glowing ring began to hum and glow even brighter as they started rotating in back in opposite direction.-

"WOOO-THOOP!" The machine made an odd noise and the next second my items got shot out between the rings and thudded to the floor.

'That's trippy as fuck.' I thought with a chuckle.

I meant it too as one second there was nothing then the next BOOM, items. Definitely not complaining but that didn't meant it wasn't hard to fathom. Anywho I collected my new clothes which looked like a pair of leather pants with built in foot wear and a long sleeved leather jacket. The parts I specified also had perfectly stitched on plates of the Eridian metal that actually matched the dark gray color of the hide very well, nice contrast with the plates bright silver.-

The satchel was just a normal dark gray leather bag with a flap to cover the opening and an over the shoulder strap. It wasn't anything fancy but I was tired of always having to carry my house in my left hand and this would let me have that hand free now. I attached my shield back to my hip since I had to take it off to feed my clothes to the wall. I felt rather vulnerable without that shield and was relieved once it was back.-

For the Coup de grace I holstered my gun at my hip and grinned.

"Alexander Drake, badass wilderness explorer, slayer of monsters!" I struck a pose before bursting out in laughter that I hadn't realized I needed.

I had been rather high strung since I found myself in this new crazy place after meeting what can only be described as a god because I fucking died to a sneaky grizzly I probably should have seen coming but hadn't because I was over confident. If you had told me I'd be in this situation even a single day before it happened I'd probably would have beaten you within an inch of death before leaving you to die in a ditch somewhere thinking you were some lunatic trying to insult me.-

I wasn't new to taking lives, I'm not proud of it but sometimes underground fights don't go so well or your opponents didn't like that they lost and try to get even outside the ring. One thing leads to another and well eventually your rich buddy has a clean up crew show up and make the dead guy disappear. At some point I had killed so many people who got unlucky or thought to get even for some supposed slight that it didn't even phase me anymore when I did it.-

Whoops! Didn't mean to let my mind wander there like that. Anyways laughing like that had helped me unwind a bit, unclench that ass as it were. You know it's amazing what a new outfit will do for your self confidence. I was focused and in the zone when I walked out of my house with this new set of threads. Now that I wasn't so uptight I was also able to register the little things I had been neglecting such as the small insects and avian species nearby.-

Reaching out I grabbed a small blue and yellow slug off a tree and activated my powers.

{Newt slug

Lifeforce:30

Traits: [Boneless-Trash grade]- 50 units, [Slime production-Common grade]- 500 units, [Poisonous skin-Common grade]- 500 units, [Poor senses-Trash grade]- 50 units.}

While I couldn't take the lifeforce of the slug since I hadn't killed it I discovered that didn't mean that I couldn't copy any of it's traits, not that I would as all of these had huge negative issues involved in them. Like[poisonous skin] that meant blowjobs would end badly in the future, totally not worth it. Still the sheer importance of this discovery couldn't be understated as it meant if I ever found someone or something with a trait I wanted I didn't have to kill them to get it.-

'I'll need to test how my copying of a trait will effect a living thing though so I don't accidentally kill them in the process or worse leave them braindead.' I thought as I deactivated my powers and put the slug back on it's tree.

It was a bit tricky but I managed to track down a nest of seven Prowlers and kill all but one of them. The last was a young one that was just as hostile as the rest so I didn't feel bad about grabbing it by the back of the neck and using it for my experiment. It squirmed and hissed angrily but I ignored it as I activated my powers and focused on the only trait I wanted, [Predatory muscles] for 500 units. I [grafted] it without hesitation and watched to see how it would effect the creature. The answer was that it didn't really have any effect on it.-

It was more like my lifeforce stash flowed into the thing made a copy of the trait and then I got that copy, no messy process or backlash for the creature at all. If anything it actually did it some good as I felt it's total lifeforce rise from 171 to 202. 

'I see! So I lose some lifeforce during the process which bolsters the targets own lifeforce. Does this mean I could just directly infuse lifeforce into a creature to make it more powerful?' I pondered and decided that since I was already conducting unethical experiments I may as well go further.

My tattoos thrummed and and red energy began to rise off of my are as I sent a "small" amount of 500 units of lifeforce into the very unhappy kitty. It stiffened immediately and I watched as it's body began to balloon.

"Shit!" I shouted and tossed it hard.

"SPLAT!" the thing blew up violently and I only just barely avoided the wide area of blood splatter.

'Okay , so probably should have known that putting almost two and a half times it's lifeforce into it would go badly, that's my bad.' I thought with an embarrassed look.