The last thing I remembered was the crunch. It was a perfect, symphonic collision, a beautiful violence of crumpling steel and shattering glass. My purpose, in that final millisecond, was to absorb every last bit of it. I was a professional, an artist of impact, built for the singular task of breaking and being put back together. In the lab, they called me Model-72, but I was simply... the dummy. My world was a pristine track, a controlled simulation, a life lived entirely in the moments just before and after a crash. They would strap me into a gleaming new car, and I would wait. The countdown was always the same: five, four, three, two, one… impact. My body, a complex array of sensors and calibrated joints, would register the G-forces, the kinetic energy, the thermal readings. It was a cold, precise existence. No emotions. No fear. Just pure, unadulterated data. I was meant to shatter and then be meticulously repaired, ready for the next test. Then, as always, came the darkness, the routine system reset.
But this time, it didn't come.
Instead, I awoke. Not to the sterile white of the test facility, but to a blinding, chaotic symphony of sensation. I had no frame of reference for this. Two suns—one a familiar gold, the other an angry, unfamiliar crimson—burned in a sky I had no context for, casting strange, intersecting shadows across the land. The air, thick with the scent of damp earth and something sweet and floral, was a bewildering assault on what I now realized were nostrils. My body felt… different. Light. Small. Organic. I was lying on my back on an empty patch of ground, A small, perfect circle of emptiness amidst a sea of red grass, their blades gleaming like some strange metal under the disorienting light of the twin suns.
I pushed myself up, my new joints protesting with a strange, unfamiliar tightness. My hand, outstretched to support my weight, landed on the ground just beyond the safe patch.
Contrary to the expected physics of grass, this red, gleaming variant impaled my hand with ease, piercing through the flesh of my palm, slipping between the bones of my hand and piercing back out through the top of it.
It was strange. This sensation.
I stared at my hand, blood pooling out of it and seeping into the soil beneath. My new brain seemed unaccustomed to such an alien input. It seemed to scream at me, DANGER! MALFUNCTION! FIGHT! ESCAPE!
I did not understand, but the more my brain looked at my hand, the more my throat tightened. My lungs expanded against my will, and then forcefully pushed out the air through my vocal chords, producing a shout that echoed through through the fields.
And then, something familiar appeared in my midst.
[Your hand has been impaled by a blade of Crystal-Blade Grass.]
This is... the Damage Analysis System from the Labs on Earth... So you have followed me here as well.
I stared at the floating window for a while before I looked back at my hand. I noticed the arm connected to it was shaking, so I pulled my hand off the blade of grass, and the blade slid right out as the edge grated against bone, once again sending jolts of that unpleasant sensation through my body.
I decided that I did not like this sensation. I wanted it to stop. I wanted my old body back.
But then, the feeling suddenly began to fade at an abnormal rate.
A dull throb started at the edges of the hole in my hand. The skin knit itself back together, the blood receding and vanishing until only a faint pink line remained. The entire process, from first observation of the open wound to full closure, took precisely 4.76 seconds. It was faster than any healing simulation or repair I had ever been through.
It was clear that this was an active, regenerative process, a core function of my new being. My previous existence was one of breaking and being repaired by others. Now, I was a self-repairing unit. The difference was welcome. It would give me more freedom.
[Host's [Pierce Resistance] has increased slightly.]
And somehow, here was yet another difference. This one far more important. I had a hypothesis. But to confirm it, I had to do what I did best.
I had to test things.
I stood up in the center of my empty patch of dirt, and looked around me. In all directions, stretching to the horizon, were acres upon acres of this red, impossibly sharp grass. There was no path. No trail. Just the small circle of earth where I had awoken. I had no option. To move forward, to find out where I was, I would have to walk through this field.
I took the first step. The pain was immediate. At least ten blades of the grass impaled my foot, creating a constant, grating agony that made my new mind scream.
[Your foot has been impaled by a blade of Crystal-Blade Grass.]
[Your foot has been impaled by a blade of Crystal-Blade Grass.]
[Your foot has been impaled by a blade of Crystal-Blade Grass.]
[Your foot has been impaled by a blade of Crystal-Blade Grass.]
...
Ten of the same System prompts appeared. And following them, as the holes in my foot rapidly healed up, another set of ten prompts appeared.
[Host's [Pierce Resistance] has increased slightly.]
[Host's [Pierce Resistance] has increased slightly.]
[Host's [Pierce Resistance] has increased slightly.]
[Host's [Pierce Resistance] has increased slightly.]
...
[You have acquired the skill [Pierce Resistance I].]
I didn't falter. I forced myself to take another step. And another. The pain was a flood, a chaotic and violent storm of sensation. But with each step I took, I observed carefully. Not just visually, but by utilizing my new sensors. My feeling.
As I walked, by vision was bombarded by hundreds upon hundreds of System Prompts, half of them logging the causes of harm to my body, and the other half logging my steadily increasing [Pierce Resistance].
Minutes passed as I continued on. The minutes turned to Hours and then a new, different kind of prompt appeared.
[The Skill [Pierce Resistance I] has been upgraded to [Pierce Resistance II].]
And through my observation I realized that the blades of grass were now unable to fully impale my feet. They only reached about three-quarters of the way through the flesh of my foot, stopping just shy of piercing through the upper surface. My body was clearly being strengthened.
My hypothesis showed heavy signs of being correct, but the experiment wasn't complete until the true end goal was accomplished.
I kept walking. I walked for what felt like an eternity, forcing myself to ignore the constant assault on my senses. My only purpose was to take the next step. Then the next.
[The Skill [Pierce Resistance II] has been upgraded to [Pierce Resistance III].]
The constant agony was a teacher, and my body was the perfect student. This was what I was built for. The more I walked, the more I adapted. The humming ache became a low-frequency hum. The sharp stabs became brief pricks, like needles, or injections, that only reached a quarter of the way through my feet.
[The Skill [Pierce Resistance III] has been upgraded to [Pierce Resistance IV].]
I began to find a rhythm, a cadence to my steps. I was still feeling all the pain. Even now, it should have been enough to force a scream out of me, but there was a feeling deep inside me, that I, Model-72, should be able to endure far far more than these simple blades of grass impaling my feet.
So I did not allow myself to scream.
The pain wasn't any lesser, it was merely being processed, categorized, and filed away as background noise. That's all it was.
As the twin suns began to dip below the horizon, I caught sight of a new clearing. I sped up my pace until I was sprinting through the fields of Crystal-Blade Grass, and when I reached the half-way mark, I was rewarded with another prompt.
[The Skill [Pierce Resistance IV] has been upgraded to [Pierce Resistance V].]
Suddenly, there was no pain at all. The blades of grass could no longer cause any harm to my body. Some shattered beneath my weight, some merely bent over, but it was now fact that my body had grown strong enough to completely prevent the blades of grass from piercing my skin.
My hypothesis was finally confirmed in full.
It is possible.
I was sure now. This body could, eventually, grow strong enough to never have to feel this displeasing sensation ever again. Then, I will be truly complete. There will be no need for repairs. No need for pain. No need for regeneration. I will simply be unharmable.
Yes. This will be my new purpose.
I resumed my sprint, and eventually I reached the new clearing.
This one was far larger than the one I awoke in, a great, wide-open space at the lip of a massive ravine. The sound of the wind was deafening as it tore through the chasm below, and the air was alive with the strange calls of unseen beasts.
I looked back at the field behind me. It was an all-encompassing, red blur of motion.
I lifted my foot off the Crystal-Blade Grass one final time, and the change in sensation was almost nothing at all. Like walking on air.
I entered the clearing, and kept going until I reached the cliff's edge.
I knelt there, breathing heavily after many, many hours of walking followed by that final sprint. This body was still far too inconvenient with such limited stamina. But I knew that wouldn't be the case for long given it's unique gifts.
I sat down, feet dangling off the edge as I took in the sunset in the distance. I felt oddly calm, though I couldn't figure out why.
As the last of the light faded, I saw them. Pinpricks of light in the distance, on the other side of the ravine, a beacon in the darkening twilight. Fire-torches, a sign of sentient life. I wanted to go there. To see this new world, and meet its people. Perhaps they could aid my in my new purpose. Perhaps others had tread this path before me. Either way I would have to go there, to the source of the light.
And to do that, I would need to descend into the chasm before me, that was, no doubt, filled with unseen creatures and unknown dangers.
This was to be my Second Test.