Centuria Books · Nice Body, Wrong Loadout: The System Gave Me Curves and a Life-Stealing Tank Build
Nice Body, Wrong Loadout: The System Gave Me Curves and a Life-Stealing Tank Build — Read the First Chapter
Chad Baconizer died chasing half a point of jawline. The gods sent him to a fantasy world in a stunning female body, then handed him the worst class menu he had ever seen.
Chapter 1Half a Point Better
Chad Baconizer knew the cut had gone too far when his tongue stuck to his teeth, but he took the progress picture anyway.
Under the flat bathroom light, he turned six degrees toward the mirror, lifted his chin, and pulled his shoulders down. The black phone case hid the lower half of his face. Above it, his cheek line looked sharper than it had on Monday—maybe half a point.
At full size, one eye sat higher because he had tilted the phone, ruining the comparison. He deleted it with a quiet “Dumbass.”
The digital clock beside the sink read 1:47 a.m., and he had class at nine. He should drink water, eat the chicken and rice waiting in his fridge, and sleep. Instead, he looked at the padded neck harness on the floor.
One last set would bring blood into the muscles under his jaw. Then he could take the picture, save it beside last month’s shot, and stop thinking about the loose skin beneath his chin.
It wasn’t loose, and no one else could see it. Even so, the pinch test found two millimeters more than Chad wanted, and two millimeters counted.
He stepped into his bedroom and hooked the harness beneath his chin. A weight plate hung from its chain. The room smelled of rubber mats, hair oil, and the salt-free chicken going cold on his desk.
He planted his feet beside the iron rack, and the first rep felt wrong. His pulse thudded against his eardrums while black specks crawled over the wall. He lowered the plate and waited for the room to settle.
Quitting on rep one would be pathetic. He had played ranked matches through a fever and finished leg day after a breakup; he could handle ten neck curls.
He drew a dry breath and started the second rep.
The room tipped left before he finished. He reached for the rack, but his fingers struck iron and slid away as the hanging plate swung between his knees. It pulled him forward, then snapped him back when the chain caught and the edge of the rack filled his sight.
There was no pain, only a hard white flash and one last clear thought.
Half a point killed me.
Then Chad fell out of the world, yet for one impossible instant he remained aware of the bedroom without being inside it.
The phone lay faceup near the bathroom door, its camera showing the empty patch of wall where Chad had meant to stand. Beside it, the weight plate rocked beneath the harness. His body lay wedged between the rack and the bed with one arm trapped under it.
No one would find him before morning.
Because his roommate had gone home for the weekend, his mother would be the first to notice. She would call after he missed class, then again after lunch. By then, the progress photograph would still sit in the deleted folder while paramedics stepped around chicken and training bands.
Embarrassment arrived before fear, and then fear hit hard. He tried to move the arm beneath him, but nothing answered; when he tried to inhale, he discovered the body had stopped negotiating.
The cut had not made his face better; it had made his judgment worse. That final set had proved no discipline at all, only that Chad could ignore each warning sign until reality collected payment.
He wanted one more minute—not for a better picture, but to drink the water, call someone, and make one decision that did not treat his body like an opponent. Before he could try, the bedroom folded into a thin square of light and something beyond it applauded.
Applause woke him, though it was not human applause. Too many hands struck at different times: some clapped fast, others dragged their palms together with a wet scrape, and several sets of fingers snapped near his ears.
He kept his eyes shut while he took inventory. Warm stone supported his back, a mild wind moved over bare skin from his shoulders to his ankles, and neither his head nor his dry mouth hurt anymore.
The head injury had either healed, or death came with weather.
A cheerful voice announced, “Contestant responsive, and presentation phase begins.”
He opened his eyes to find a gold panel floating in a flawless blue sky.
He read it twice, but the sky stayed blue and the panel kept the same words.
He tested the phrase aloud: “Assigned shell.”
The panel responded to his focus, opening each attribute into a short description when he looked at it. Force measured direct physical power, and four placed him below the adult human average. Finesse covered balance, speed, and exact motion, with twelve putting him well above average; Presence included beauty, social weight, and the ability to force attention, and fourteen glowed gold.
The System had taken points from his bench press and invested them in eyelashes; he ordered the glossy interface to respec or refund, but no response came.
When the applause grew louder, Chad shouted across it that he hoped each watcher choked; his voice came out light, clear, and far too pretty.
He sat up.
Hair poured over both shoulders, most of it pale gold beneath the sun, while thick black streaks ran from his temples through the lush length. Its ends covered his bare lap.
He looked down at small breasts, a narrow waist curved above flat muscle, and lean, smooth thighs. The body between them left no room for a creative reading of the panel.
With enough force to quiet one row of watchers, Chad said, “No.”
Laughter rolled across the sky as Chad crossed one arm over his chest and shoved the heavy hair from his face with the other. The movement showed him a slim wrist, neat nails, and no useful calluses.
He demanded, “Open character creation.”
The cheerful voice laughed with everyone else before announcing that creation had concluded; he demanded support next, and the voice answered with maddening patience that support had concluded too.
He pointed at the panel. “Open the part where I talk to someone who can read.”
A second panel unfolded.
The last line sat in smaller print, because of course it did. Chad had spent years clicking through games that hid the real price beneath glowing buttons; each bad shop used the same trick. The large text sold the fantasy while the footer owned you.
He pushed himself to his feet.
The body stood lower than he expected, with unfamiliar balance settled through the hips and long hair tugging at his scalp whenever the wind caught it.
He glanced behind himself and found the curved line of a compact, athletic ass. It was a very good ass, which made the situation worse.
Because refusing to understand the shell would only make it more dangerous, Chad tested the new center of balance by shifting from heel to toe. The body corrected faster than thought, and a squat felt effortless until his hair swept the floor and pulled his head backward.
He gathered the blonde length in both hands and inspected the black streaks. They were not dye but two clean bands growing from the roots, an aggressively designed character feature.
His reflection appeared on the glossy status panel.
The face was not merely feminine; it was unfair. Wide blue eyes sat beneath black lashes long enough to cast shadows, high cheeks narrowed into a small jaw, and his lips looked soft even while compressed in anger.
The System had delivered the visual improvement Chad once would have tried to quantify. Symmetry, skin, hair, proportions—all pushed far beyond what the old mirror had refused to give him.
It had solved the wrong problem by deleting the customer.
He made one fact explicit: “My name stays.”
The identity line remained male. That was not mercy but part of the contest, because the Balcony needed him to understand exactly what it planned to take.
Refusing to leave room for interpretive bullshit, Chad ordered the System to reject all three.
The applause stopped, and the blue sky above him split into rows of dark seats. Shapes leaned over a railing beyond the light, their faces hidden behind teeth, glasses, masks, and hands with too many joints.
The Balcony. Chad had no idea how he knew the name.
“Contestant,” the cheerful voice said, “your offers have exceptional shell compatibility.”
His answer came dry and immediate: “My shell can file its own application.”
One shape barked a laugh before the cheerful voice insisted that he would need a class; he asked for one that did not require pretending he was a woman.
The voice replied that the Assigned Shell was female.
He answered, “And I’m male. This is a body problem, not a reading problem.”
The dark seats stirred as a red line crossed each class offer.
Now that was a mechanic, and Chad’s smile died before it formed.
He made the word a decision rather than a plea. “No.”
A portrait opened beside the terms, showing a tall man in white armor beneath a gold crown. He had dark hair, a straight nose, broad shoulders, and the polished face of someone designed to sell a deluxe edition.
Prince Halric looked handsome enough to make the threat worse. The Balcony had not picked a brute Chad could hate on sight. It had picked a life that might look perfect after it removed the man who knew it was wrong.
The preview changed, and Chad saw his new face beneath a bridal veil, blonde-and-black hair falling over a white gown as Halric smiled beside him. In the next picture, the same woman rested both hands on a pregnant belly, her eyes peaceful and empty—no anger, no Chad.
He struck the preview with his palm, but his hand passed through the gold light.
He struck the gold light again. “You wipe my head, marry my body off, and call that a failure screen?”
The cheerful voice replied that the Imperial Consort route tested exceptionally well.
He told the unseen god to marry the prince itself.
The dark seats shook with laughter while Chad fixed the four failure triggers in his mind. The route only became permanent if he accepted it, submitted to the consort route, missed the deadline, or let something called the Ascension Engine finish.
Four loss conditions meant four things he could break, and Chad smiled despite everything.
The Balcony had tried to humiliate him with the body; instead, the System had admitted that refusal could become a build.
His anger found a grin. “There you are. Knew you had a real menu somewhere.”
The voice warned that his confidence exceeded his equipment.
Looking down again, Chad said, “That joke works on at least three levels, and I hate all of them.”
One figure in the Balcony leaned farther over the rail, wearing a mask like a smooth white face with a vertical mouth.
He asked, “What is Amarat?”
A world map opened, its mountains, seas, and borders flashing too quickly to learn. Four black-gold points marked distant regions while pale threads connected them to a fifth point above the continent.
The map closed after three seconds. His question about its builders earned only the statement that contest information had to be discovered in play.
He pressed for the identity of the Crowned Four and received the same useless answer.
One final question asked how long a season lasted.
Predictably, the voice repeated its refusal.
Pointing at the dark seats, Chad informed them that their onboarding sucked; the voice replied that genre familiarity had been part of the selection criteria.
That meant the gods expected him to recognize quest logic and progression systems. They had picked a gamer, laughed at his death, and built the wager around habits they could predict.
They could predict this, then: he would read each footer.
Light swallowed the stone.
He landed on hot sand, rolled over one shoulder, and came up on one knee. The new body moved fast enough to prove that Finesse twelve meant something.
A dry plain spread around him, bordered by red cliffs to the north and a road cutting between low thorn trees to the south. Two harsh suns burned through the pale sky.
He still wore nothing, so he called, “Inventory,” but no panel appeared. He tried “Map” and “starter pack” with equal success.
The wind moved his hair across his bare chest.
He muttered, “Cheap bastards,” before hooves struck the road and made him turn.
Six riders spread across the sand, wearing wrapped cloth beneath leather caps and carrying short bows. Their horses moved in a practiced fan that cut off the cliffs, the road, and the nearest thorn break.
The middle rider lowered his bow, letting his eyes travel from Chad’s face to his chest, waist, and legs before he smiled.
He gathered his hair across his front, where it covered very little.
“You lost?” the rider asked in a language Chad had never heard.
The foreign words reached him as English through System translation. Fine.
He tried the language of a game lobby. “New spawn, bad loadout. You guys know where the starter town is?”
The men traded looks until one of them laughed.
One rider decided that she spoke like a drunk guard.
Chad corrected him with one word: “He.”
The middle rider stared while Chad pointed to himself and said, “I’m a man.”
The rider looked down Chad’s body again, and his smile widened.
The rider blamed the heat for taking her mind.
Chad answered, “Right. Great talk. Any chance one of you has pants?”
Two riders moved behind him as the System placed small red marks over their heads. Their levels appeared when Chad focused.
The middle rider was the Binder. Chad had no class, no weapon, and Force four, while the scouts carried bows and the Binder kept a coil of thin copper chain at his saddle.
This was not a fight but a capture cutscene with a hidden input somewhere. Chad counted the terrain anyway.
The thorn break lay eleven paces east, close enough to tempt him but too far to beat a charging horse. The red cliffs offered cover, although the first shelf began thirty yards away across open sand; southward, the road dipped beneath two riders who already held high ground.
He had no weapon, no shoes, hair long enough for an enemy to grab, and so little strength that a clean hit might not matter.
Finesse was his only advantage.
He let his weight settle forward and watched the horses rather than the bows. Riders aimed with their arms, but horses revealed intent through ears, shoulders, and feet; if one opening appeared, Chad could move before the men expected it.
With both hands raised, Chad promised to remember all six faces.
The Binder swung down from his horse and approved of Chad’s spirit.
As the man pulled the copper chain free, Chad watched his hands, the distance between them, and the position of his knife. Tiny hooked plates lined the chain, with blue script running across each one and vanishing beneath the next.
Not rope—an item.
When the Binder stepped close, Chad waited for the chain to open and kicked at the man’s knee.
His heel struck leather, making the Binder grunt and shift half a step. Force four was every bit as garbage as promised.
The Binder reached for him with his free hand, but Chad slipped beneath it, turned on the new body’s quick hips, and ran for the nearest horse. A scout dropped from the saddle to block him.
Chad feinted toward the man’s knife and changed direction, letting Finesse carry the move cleanly. He seized the hanging rein, planted one foot in the stirrup, and almost mounted.
Almost.
His hair caught around the saddle horn, and the vicious pull stopped him mid-climb. Chad swore, released the rein, and cut sideways before the horse trampled him as an arrow struck the sand beside his foot.
The scouts spread again, and this time they had stopped laughing; the escape attempt had gained him three paces and taught him that waist-length hair counted as enemy terrain.
He shouted a question at the sky: “Who designed this cosmetic?”
The Balcony did not answer, but Jorad did. He looped the copper chain between both hands and approached more carefully.
Chad gathered his hair over one shoulder. He could try the thorn break again, but the archers had corrected their spacing, and a second attempt would not be bravery; it would be feeding.
He shifted goals: see the item, read the rules, survive the capture, and break it later.
The chain snapped around Chad’s throat, and bitter cold sank through his skin. His knees hit the sand before the man even pulled, then the world narrowed to a blue panel.
The Binder caught Chad’s hair and forced his head back.
Tightening his fist in Chad’s hair, the Binder ordered him to try again.
Chad studied the collar panel. Resistance converted Stamina into charge, which meant the collar wanted him to fight until he filled whatever happened at thirty.
He stopped pulling and smiled. “Nah. I don’t blow my whole bar on the first guy who grabs me.”
The youngest scout choked on a laugh while the Binder’s face went still.
Chad smiled up at him through long lashes he had never asked for.
Through the same smile, he asked, “Was it the way I said it?”
The Binder struck him behind the ear, and sand rushed up.
The last thing Chad saw was the collar notification burning across his sight.
Three conditions meant the idiots had given him three win states.
Chapter 2Wrong Preset
Chad woke beneath a coarse, greasy wool blanket that smelled of horse piss. His raw wrists crossed behind him, bound tightly enough to numb both hands. The chill copper capture collar rested against his throat.
When the hard wooden wagon wheels struck a deep rut, Chad rolled across rough, splintered boards and hit a squat crate with his hip. His new voice made the resulting grunt sound cute enough to feel like a second injury.
He opened his eyes to the dim, cramped interior of a canvas-covered wagon. Thin amber sunlight cut through ragged holes near the roof, illuminating three bulging sacks, two clay water jars, and a locked black iron box. Someone had tied his lush hair with a strip of dirty cloth, although the heavy golden tail still reached past his waist.
Stale air scraped his throat with the taste of old sweat; someone had also dressed him in a sleeveless brown shift that stopped halfway down his thighs.
Rough cloth clung to skin already sticky with heat.
Trying to tug the useless hem lower, Chad muttered, “Of course it does.”
A wary guard glanced through the torn rear flap. He was the young scout who had laughed when Chad spoke to the Binder. A patchy thin beard framed his narrow jaw, and he looked about seventeen. Chad had no reason to trust Earth ages here.
The scout called toward the driver’s bench that she was awake.
Chad corrected him with a blunt “He,” then demanded to know where his pants were.