《Cells divide》 1 Disclaimers @@ This book may not be the best one out there and may contain some ''SPAG'' mistakes all I ask is that you are able to look past that and enjoy this book. The book itself may have ideas simular themes to the anime ''that time I got reincarnated as a slime'' or one of the other books from this site like ''reborn: evolving from nothing''. I will not try to steal ideas from them but if I happen to please do not get too annoyed at me. I will try to give out chapters consistently but I may be slow at times as I might want to get a good plot development or I may just forget to do it, after all I''m only one creature among many. If the chapters also seem to be lacking, then in the comments of the last chapter you can put down a (realistic) word count that would seem to be more fitting for the next chapter to come@@ 2 Background @@ the book itself will not be have only traditional creature as it wills also things such as elves, dragons, goblins but even though this is the case it will also hold normal creatures as well... This universe will also include magical properties both in terrain but also in magic spells/powers as well and the ''entity'' we follow will have a human like mentality to it and will be able process everything around it. The book itself may be on evolution but it will character''s, battles and story arks.@@ 3 First ligh @@ Qu looked around but had no sense of sight or any other thing. All that could be seen was an endless void of darkness, but even though it had no sense of touch it still knew it''s body and what it was going through but nothing from the outside world. Qu''s body felt elastic and almost liquid like, the first priority of any creatures survive usually depends on movement and so it proceeded to use all of its efforts in movement. But no movement could be made, it proceeded to attempt movement in every direction possible but was incapable of doing so at this point in time. Attempting to move had drained a lot of energy from such a low creature so it proceeded to go into a dormant state. --------------------------- A lonely scientist called Yen had recently found a grey ooz outside his lab slowly developing from a corpse holding a large store of energy left from the culprits attacks and large amount of bacterial mold forming on it combining into a low ranking ooz. Most would leave this as they are rare but useless creature but Yen had other plans, he wanted to experiment on it due to the species resilience. At this time he happend to have a small glass storage unit on him and decided to store it within it as they are usually lazy creatures that may move a maximum of 100 feet in there life time. But to Yen''s supprise the ooz seemed to be desturbed in the container and slowly pushed itself against the walls of the box, but he took no note of it as the ooz had no offensive ability or really any ability at all.@@ 4 Unstable ra Qu awoke, it could feel the energy used come back to it. It decided to attempt movement again, it started trying to move, this time it could to a point. Qu moved to one direction to only be greeted by what it could guess a wall. It then decided to try moving along it to then feel movement stop again, it decided to but it had used up too much energy trying to move so it began to feel tired once again due to it moving so much, so it sat still, it was still awake but chose to retain its energy. ------------------ Yen had placed the ooz into a slightly larger container as he needed more room to work with the little creature, the moment it was placed in to Yens surprise the ooz had began to move immediately it proceeded to go to one wall of the container and then follow it to a corner but then continued no more, it just sat still doing nothing. Yen could barely keep in his excitement, he was actually able to find a ooz wanted to explore. For being such a good specimen Yen had decided to reward the ooz a small rat in one of his other containment boxes --------------- Qu sat still waiting for something, anything to happen at all. But it''s wish had come true, as soon after Qu sat still it felt something enter its body of mass, it felt warm and it could feel the blood and flesh disappear within itself it felt heavenly. Soon after Qu ate the whole thing a screen of text appeared in the blank space of what Qu could see. The writing asked ''would you like to evolve to a - rat-''. Qu chose to as fast as it could, apon accepting this a new screen apeard showing a small rat and only one thing under it ''what gender to you want all your future creatures to take''. Qu wondered if this really would affect it in the outside world, but if it happend to be an option then it has to be answered. Qu chose to be female. ------------ Yen looked at the ooz watching the rat slowly die in it. But afterwards the ooz seemed to shift around and slowly the ooz took the form of a rat and as time went on you could see fur appear and skin cover the top of the ooz''s body. "Holy shit", Yen was scared to his soul, he could see the new rat slowly walking around in the cage, but what alarmed him most was the every now and then peaces of the rat would melt into a grey ooz to only then reconnect itself to the original position it was in, it either slowly made its way back or in some cases the ooz would jump back to it almost defying gravity as it sucked itself back into place, the rat seemed to be unstable. 5 Stabilising Qu could feel her form starting to change, slowly the world around her started to take shape, as she looked around she could feel her slime like body to start mimicking the muscle structure of a rat. She clumsily got up and apon doing so realised that her form now had legs and the small arms of a rat, Qu slowly checked the rest of her body to then realise that a light fuzz of hair had started to form as well as a tail at the back of her. She started to move getting to know her new body and as she did so she could hear the voice of a relatively young man shout out ''holy shit'', to Qu''s surprise she could understand the language, and after hearing this looked to the direction the noise had come from, in front of her stood an average looking figure, the person was of normal hight and had a relatively weak figure, the face of the man looked somewhat kind even though it was replaced by the look of horror, he had short brown hair neatly laid out atop of his head andwas wearing small round glasses placed far up his nose covering his deep blue eyes. As odd as it was in these few moments Qu had formed a small crush on this man that stood befor her. After looking at him for some time while still walking around what looked like a glass container she decided to follow his eyes and apon doing so followed them down to her own tail, but apon looking at it, it was missing from her body all that remained was a pool of grey ooz on the floor slightly leaning towards where her tail should have been, soon after the ooz flew into the air and flung itself at the stump of the tail, reconnecting to it and forming the tail once again. A screen of text appeared in front of her, it read ''the form you are currently in is unstable and will require time for you body to stabilise to this new form... Time until stabilisation: 24 hours.'' Soon after a new piece of text appeared in the top right corner of her veiw, it seemed to tell the status of Qu at that point in time: --- Name: Qu Gender: female Species: rat Status: undergoing stabilisation-24 hour Energy: 1/10 --- after seeing this the energy levels on her display reached 0, seeing this she could feel her body start to slow down and an extreme sensation of tiredness washed over her. Soon after Qu fell asleep. 6 Make or break Yen looked at the rat, it''s small black eyes staring at him. The rats tail slid off again and he watched it as it jumped back to its place. The rat soon fell asleep after all of this, giving Yen time to work with the creature. The first thing he did was move the rat into a much larger area, he moved items out of one of his lab spaces he no longer used. He then put a small metal dish that held water for the creature, he then went to work on making a small latch in the door so that he could throw the food in for it without getting into any possible harms way. So far of what he knew about the creature was that it could consume other creatures and then take on their body shape, but even then it seemed to be in an unstable state as it kept partially transforming back into its original ooz state.What Yen now wanted to know was, what is this creatures limits... Yen prepared a new ''dish'' for the creature, a nice tasty scorpion. The body nice and shiny and as black as coal, the tail high up in the air ready to strike, seeping with venom. The creature he held with his gloved hands was commonly known as ''the black dream'' this species was known for its black outer shell and the venom it held being able to send a wolf to sleep. If this creature truly had the capability of surviving in this world it would have to adapt to one of the common dangers this world held. Yen seemed a nice man but he held a dark side, he was taken from the scientific world due to his unforgiving nature. He would put all his work into danger, putting them into extreme conditions to make sure they would suffer as much as he had. If they were unable to survive under extreme conditions then how did any creature have an advantage over the feeble human race, a lowly ooz was barely ranked lower than a human. The fact the human race had survived was a surprise, so for Yen who was a low ranking human was put through only the most harsh conditions could not allow something better than him to survive in this world without being put through the same. The experiments he had in plan for this extraordinary creature are made to break this creature, it will go from scorpion to dagger toothed beaver and only higher and higher until its killed by the creatures or it dies internationally. All that was left now, was to wait for this creature to wake, and when it did Yen was ready to break it down! 7 Experiment 1 @@ Qu woke up, first thing she checked upon waking was her status ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: rat Status: undergoing stabilisation- 10 minutes Energy: 10/10 ----- ''oh my god, I slept for a whole day!'' Qu scolded herself mentally. But putting that aside she looked around the room, it was larger and was more private than her last. It seemed that after the scientist had seen her capabilities that he had decided to move her to a larger container to most likely studies her. She was almost flattered by this, but her thoughts were cut off as she heard something slowly being opened. She looked towards the door to see a latch that had been built into the door being opened, behind this latch she could see the deep blue eyes of the sceintist looking at her with a glint of excitement. She continued to look at the sceintist waiting for what was to come next, the man had stepped away after some time to only then be replaced by a dangling back scorpion. Soon after it was thrown into the container. Qu stared at this angry scorpion and after some time a new display appeared in the corner of her sight ----- Name: the black dream Species: scorpion State: agitated Characteristics: this creature is known for its black shell and its venomous tail, the venom on its tail is capable of sending a wolf to sleep. ----- Qu was shocked by the incredible strength of the venom on such a small creature. The scorpion seemed to be slowly advancing towards her. She desperately wanted to consume this creature but that ment to get close to it and her rat form was still 8 minutes away from becoming fully stable, it seemed that this fight would be a war of attrition.@@ 8 The first fight of many The scorpion advanced towards Qu as it moved the tip of its tail slowly becoming green. As it moved its legs slowly slid it around Qu, it seemed it was trying to circle into it. ----- Qu slowly started backing into a corner to avoid the scorpion heading towards her, she kept in this fashion until she was completely in a corner. But when she did this it seemed that she had followed through with the scorpions plan, the scorpion lept towards Qu its tail high above it seeping with a dark green liquid. Qu jumped to the left of the scorpion leaving a puddle of ooz being her, she started running towards the centre of the room and her ooz followed and jumped back to her body. Qu spun back around to face the scorpion to see it slide to halt and its charcoal eyes staring into Qu''s soul. The scorpion shot its tail forwards, speeding towards her torso. She jumped backwards and as she did her hand melted off, the tail shot into the ground hitting where her hand would have been moments ago. Qu glanced at her status, she still had 3 minutes to go before she would be fully stabilised. Qu looked back to scorpion its legs bent ready to jump, Qu slowly edged backwards away from the horrid beast. As she did so a glint appeared in the scorpions black eyes, it jumped forwards and landed on top of Qu, its pincers gripping into her flesh and slowly starting to tug on it as its tail slowly started to go back to its green colour filling with venom. Pain filled Qu, all her body''s muscles going tight and her tail starting to go stiff. As the scorpion tore into her flesh the area within the pincers tyring in and out of flesh and ooz. As Qu accepted her life to be run short a message shot in front her eyes, ''stabilisation period completed''. As this message appeared Qu could feel her body turn to complete flesh and her body become one with a rat, but even so she could still feel her ooz form within her. The black dreams tail started to drip with its green venom, and its tail shot down towards Qu''s heart. As the tail shot down a feeling of complete control of her body and her hidden ooz form, Qu''s body slid from the scorpions grip. Her body turning into grey ooz and shooting away from the scorpion, as this happend the tail struck the container floor injecting its venom leaving a pool of venom on the floor. Qu''s body began to expand outwards and blanketed the scorpion, and started to devour the creature. Multipul messages shot up after, ''black dream acquired'', ''10 units of tranquilliser venom''. After these two messages flashes up another followed ''would you like to evolve into Black dream'', Qu accepted and her body slowly morphed into a scorpion, after the message followed ''24 hour stabilisation period''. Qu fell asleep soon after the fatigue hitting her because of the damage sustained from the fight. 9 Creatures advancing Qu woke up, the first thing she did was check her status ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: Black dream scorpion Status: Healthy Energy: 15/15 ----- Qu noticed that her energy levels went up by 5 points showing her growth, soon after this Qu wondered if there was a ranking system for creatures to know how high she was on the food chain. After she started thinking of this her status updated ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: Black dream scorpion Status: Healthy Energy: 15/15 Rank: common ----- Under this a new screen appeared showing all the rankings ----- Common Uncommon Rare Epic Bronze Silver Gold Diamond Legend Godly ----- After this all Qu realised that she had slept for the whole 24 hours, but wasn''t really surprised as she had slept for a long time the first time and she had suffered injuries which now seemed to have been healed. The hatch on the door slowly slid open again revealing Yens eyes staring down at her. Then his hands appeared and three animals where chucked through, Qu looked at them and all the information revealed itself to her ----- Name: Black dream scorpion ----- she instantly skipped past it as she already knew about the species. Then the other two where scanned both appearing to be of the same species: ----- Name: leather worm Species: giant worm (lightning) State: agitated Rank: common Energy: 25/25 Characteristics: these worms are at rough 1 foot long and have multipul layers of sharp teeth that go all down the inside of their body, they have a outer shell of protection with the durability of leather. These worms have been mutated with the aspect of lightning, allowing them to generate and manipulate it. ----- ''what does it mean by it can manipulate and generate lightning?'' QU thought to herself. The worms advanced and as they did sparks of electricity started shooting off of them, the worms slowly got closer together making the lightning join together making it stronger. The scorpion in the middle slowly got inclosed by them and all the lightning from the two shot together combining, then struck downwards in one big bolt killing the scorpion instantly. Qu backed away seeing the raw power of these creatures head towards her. As she did the worms advanced wriggling across the floor, then one shot downwards and broke through the floor beneath and started tunneling, the other stayed on top directed towards Qu. She sprinted forwards heading towards the worm above ground, the worms electricity getting more powerful as the sparks grew to bolts chaining around the creature. A bolt shot forwards heading straight for Qu. She jumped sideways avoiding the blast, as it hit the floor the other worm shot out and collected the electricity making its become more powerful. The first lept towards her with extreme speed, its mouth wide open ready to eat her whole. She shot her tail into an arched position so that it was just above her eyes, venom slowly being generated by her body and heading towards it tip. But it would take to long at this rate, Qu made use of her 10 units of venom and sent it up to her tail to fuel it faster. The tail seeped venom in an instant and she shot it forwards heading straight for the creatures mouth. It struck it, all the venom sending itself into the periced fleshy insides of the creature. The worm shot downwards as soon as the tail struck and it dug away from her. As soon as the creature shot out the ground its body seemed to loosen and the creature dropped heavily, it now asleep. As this happened one of her mental messages shot up ----- Ability unlocked: dream venom This ability allows the creature to generate and shoot out venom from surfaces of their body, the venom generated is that of the black dream scorpion. ----- Qu spun around the other worms electricity covering its whole body, all at once a massive bolt shot towards Qu, she jumped to the side but the bolt seemed attracted towards her and slightly curved making it still on track with her body. Qu switched forms, back to her rat. Apon doing so she could feel her speed increase by a small amount as this smaller body was a lot more nimble. She ran around the worm and led the lightning back to it. The worm was struck by it and collected it all back up covering its whole body in lightning once again. It shot it again at her, this time she ran to the unconscious worm allowing all the lightning to get collected by its body. Leaving the other with none to use, she ran at the scorpion and activated her dream venom, slowly the tip of her fingers seeped with green liquid, she jumped at the worm and scratched the shell of the worm. Leaving small marks in the outer shell but not pearcing it, the venom released from her fingers sat in the outer shell, some of it seeping into the cracks on its body. As this happened the creatures speed seemed to slow. Qu transformed back to her scorpion form and ran at the worm, and struck the tail into the armour pearcing through It, leaving a hole in it, after this strike she started creating venom again, but as she waited for it to charge she went towards the creature again and attacked its shell with her pincers slowly breaking through it. The worm attempted to strike back but its speed was so reduced that it simply couldn''t catch up with Qu''s movements. Qu activated her dream venom and struck her tail into the worms exposed flesh, she watched as the worm dropped down and sat still on the floor asleep. She went over to the first sleeping worm and consumed it. A message shooting into her head: ----- ''leather worm aquired'' ''Lightning core 1/2'' ''Would you like to evolve into leather worm?'' ----- Qu declined the offer for now, she then went over to the other worm and consumed it ----- ''Evolution points: 1'' ''Lightning core complete'' ----- She then whent to the electrocuted scorpion and consumed it ----- ''Evolution points: 2'' ----- After consuming all the creatures she then chose to evolve into the leather worm. ----- ''24 hour stabilisation period started'' ----- Qu then wrapped up on the floor and fell asleep allowing the stabilisation period to go by quicker. 10 combination Qu awoke, her scorpion body replaced with a foot long worm, it''s body covered in brown armour. And yet she couldn''t see the sparks of lightning anymore, and she couldn''t feel any sense of control over any type of electricity or really anything. She looked at her status. ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: leather worm Status: healthy Energy: 20/20 Rank: common ------ But where had the lightning gone? But then a new scree shot up ----- Lightning core (complete) With this screen it allows you to see stored bloodlines that you have not used as well as mutations ----- After this all one more message shot up ----- With the bloodlines you currently have stored you are able to combine and mutate them to create a new creature or a whole new species None of your species are destroyed in this process ----- She then wanted to see the mutation she could get. ----- Combo: Black dream scorpion, leather worm, rat Name: dire rat abilities: night vision Description: this species of rat has evolved to be bigger that the average rat, with its size being roughly 1 foot tall. Its clawed are sharp and curved, they are adapted to the task of digging making them a lot more effective for escaping from predators or ambushing prey. they possess two long teeth and their eye sight is adapted for the dark yet they still have good eye sight during the day. ----- this creature seemed to be somewhat useful and from what she knew about the the black dreams ability then the night vision should be able to be used by her other forms as well as this one... ----- if host would like to evolve into this species it will cost 1 evolution point... you have 2 at this point in time. ----- Qu pondered on this for a while wondering if she would be able to use this creature effectively and if it would outweigh the the cost of the creature. after some time thinking over it she decided to accept the combination as it seemed simple enough to earn evolution points anyway. ----- user is now making a combination, this will take approximately 10 seconds to do so... do you accept ----- Qu instantly accepted this offer. Soon after she was brought into a a pure white space, she looked down to see that her body wasn''t even there. She was just a floating consciousness, she stayed still studying the area around her wondering where she had been transported to. After about 10 deco ds of being within this space, she was suddenly transported back into the room she was previously in. As Qu looked around wondering what happened she looked down at her body revealing that of a dire Rat. She then mentally willed her status screen. ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: dire rat Status: healthy Energy: 30/30 Rank: common ----- This dire rat form seemed to have greatly increased her power compared to the other forms she had used. But after that she chose to switch back to her scorpion form to test if she had truly kept all of her forms in this process, she mentally shouted out the creatures name and with that her body morphed back into its oozing state to then reconstruct itself into a scorpion. She then switched back to her dire rat form as it seemed to be a better adapted creature for attacking with and with the added venom making a formidable enemy. ---------- Yen stared into the chamber looking down at the worm, it seemed that the worm was taking on its challenges rather well. He continued to observe it until something new happened. The creature turned into a puddle of ooz to then have it slowly mold itself into a creature. This process continued until the form of a plain grey dire rat had formed, after this grey dire rat had appeared it suddenly obtained its colour and all other fine details of the creature. It was absolutely remarkable, how had this ooz obtained a dire rat if it hadn''t been fed one? Yen chose to make notes on the progress the ooz, making sure it could learn all it could about it before he chose to end its miserable existence... ------------- Qu was in absolute glee with this new form under her belt. As she sat looking over her new body, the hatch door slid open again and a singular creature was put in. Qu turned and looked at this new apponent and as she did this the info screen appeared, showing the true colour and strength of this hellish creature. 11 Suntarn ----- Name: suntarn Species: goblin(mongrel) State: agitated Rank: common Energy: 50 Characteristics: this small goblin known as apart of the suntarn goblin race, has had so many different species in its family it is barely apart of the suntarn race. It primary blood is that of the suntarn but the percentage of pure suntarn blood is around 40%. The next highest of this is that of a imp and that being near 20% of its blood the rest too small to recognise. The suntarn race itself are small goblins that hold no special abilities and have a general weak power to them. ----- This suntarn goblin was horrific to look at, it''s body was small but it was covered in small dense muscles, it''s skin was a pale red and its face was mostly mouth, holding a massive smile reaching from ear to ear filled to the brim with sharp teeth. With its hands holding dense long nails ready to peirce through skin. It started to approach her, it''s smile growing. It''s eyes dark red and filled with madness, it slowly continued to edge closer and closer to her. Qu''s eyes darted around the room looking for a way to gain an advantage against this creature. Then it finally hit her, the dire rat form was naturally good and digging. Qu looked at the ground and dug her long claws into the floor, piercing through the tough substance. She quickened her pace and soon dirt was being flung into the air, she then dived under, she dug to the location she had last seen the suntarn. She then flung herself upwards, her body shot out the ground and ready. She then looked around the room to find the suntarn looking down the hole she had created, she then started to run towards the creature, and as she did so she started to use her sleeping venom ability. The tips of her claws started to rush with a green liquid, she continued to run towards the creature. As she soon approached it the suntarn spun around clearly having heard the footsteps behind it, it lashed out its arm its claws scraping against Qu''s body leaving a small line of seeping ooz. But Qu didn''t stop after this, so she flung out her arms and dug her claws into the skin of the suntarn. But instead of the creature slowing or falling asleep, it''s energy stayed the same. ----- The suntarn you have tried to attack, has too high of a resistance to be affected by your venom ----- Qu''s mind was racing, her most powerful attack was inafective against this creature. But her clawes had actually pierced its skin. Qu jumped backwards, she started to look the suntarn to try and find any weakness she could exploit. But nothing, it''s body was dense with muscle throughout, there was no point on this creature where the protective muscle layer seemed to stop. The suntarn ran at Qu its mouth opening up impossibly wide. Its jaw seemingly unhinged itself to allow its mouth to cover even more space. Qu jumped to the side to avoid it, but the suntarn jumped at the same time bring its Jaws right into Qu''s arm. Its mouth snapped shut like a spring lock mechanism, it''s teeth digging into her arm and piercing straight through it. All of Qu''s arm turned into grey ooz, the suntarn spitting it out onto the floor leaving her with one arm and a dripping hole of ooz. The suntarn seemed to be slightly combat intelligent, it being able to predict her movements. Qu ran forwards leaving the beast no time to react, she changed her body into her rat form, her speed increasing. She ran forward faster and faster breaking into a full sprint her joints starting to ache and barely being able to keep herself up. She then jumped herself towards the creature and transformed herself back into her dire rat form, keeping her momentum from before. She lifted her arm up and scratched towards the creature, she felt her arm collide with something and rip through it. After she could feel her body collide with that of the suntarn''s feeling it start to be pushed away from the force. She aimed her legs towards the creature her claws on her feet digging into the suntarn''s flesh, locking into it with a feirce grip. Her carried momentum pushed against the suntarn, making it fly backwards. Its back smashing against a wall, and the force from hitting into it making Qu''s clawes sink deeper into its flesh. Qu was now able to see what she had ripped through, to show the creatures bottom jaw hanging on by a small strand of muscle. Blood flooding out of and covering Qu in thick blood. After all of that the suntarn still continued to claw at her, its nails digging into her torso making grey ooz flood out of her. Qu opened her mouth fighting through all of this pain, and sunk her teeth into the suntarn''s skull. Her teeth smashed through its head and instantly hit its brain, she then lifted her teeth out and proceeded to shove her teeth in and out of the creature until its body loosened and its fighting completely died out. The monster was finally dead, its body against the wall and blood and muscle littering the floor around it. But Qu was also in a sorry state, her arm had been removed and her torso barely keeping itself together with it now mainly consisting of grey ooz. Qu checked her status. ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: dire rat Status: damaged (repairable) Energy: 29/30 Rank: common ----- It seemed that the damage had been bad, but at least it was repairable. Also that her venom ability only took 1 energy to use. Qu walked towards the tattered mess of the suntarn, she then expanded outwards and consumed it. But instead of getting the option to turn into the suntarn, two messages shot up instead. ----- Suntarn: 40%. Imp: 20% The bloodline you tried to obtain was too mixed to be able to create a body, you may only transform into pure breed bloodlines. The two recognisable bloodlines have been separated and when 80% of the creatures blood is obtained you may then transform into the selected creature. ----- "so this was all kind of for nothing", Qu thought to herself. And even if she did get a suntarn form from that, they are classed as low ranking monsters. "so the imp form probably gave it all its power", so the next logical step is to find some more imp mutated creatures or kill an imp. ----- The demon race is no longer in existence, there are some creatures in this world that hold demon blood but no actual demon''s are alive ----- A disappointing message shot up, it seemed killing an imp was out of the question now. Qu walked around the room, picking up any bits of ooz. By the time she circled the room she had collected up a pile of ooz that she left in the centre of the room. She walked towards the pile and climbed up it, when she reached the top of it Qu closed her eyes allowing herself to rest and hopefully recover. 12 Planning Qu woke up, the ooz pile she was on replaced by the floor, she looked over her form to see that she had completely healed over in the time she was asleep. she chose to look over her status: ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: Dire Rat Status: Healthy Energy: 30/30 Rank: common ----- she seemed to have perfectly recovered after the fight. after that her thoughts grew to a new matter how exactly could she escape from this battle ground. she slowly walked towards the door and latch, eyeing it up and down. she slashed her hand down towards it, it did nothing. soon after she slashed towards it the latch opened to show Yen''s eyes looking down at her, the eyes filled with concern. she jumped up to try and reach him but only ended up going half way up the door. Yen''s face drew back after seeing her jump, then his face was replaced with a familiar cage most likely harboring an animal of some sorts for her to fight. she jumped back away from the door not wanting the creature within it to be dropped on her head, she then gave a good look towards the creature to get its stats up: ----- Name: chest (small) Species: ??? State: none Rank: common Energy: ??? Characteristics: ... its a chest... you can put stuff inside of it for storage... this ones small, fitting in the palm of a hand? ----- Qu was filled with confusion, the man seemed to be holding it with caution, and yet it was a chest. And one other thing confused Qu... Did her ability to sense a creatures status just give her a description holding sass? As she thought over these things the chest was abruptly dropped onto the floor. And then something that sent waves of horror over her happened, the chest suddenly grew spider like legs out of it, it''s hatch opened up to reveil a row of teeth that a long slimy tounge sat on top. ----- Name: small chest mimic Species: mimic State: Hungry Rank: common Energy: 50/50 Characteristics: mimics survive in this world by mimicking other objects and in doing so are able to lure people into their Jaws ----- The mimic suddenly started to scuttle towards her, a thick stream of saliva emerging from its mouth. Qu ran towards it, her dire rat form drawing apon her dream venom ability. As the two approached Qu lashed her claws out towards the mimic, but apon hitting it all of the venom released fell off of it. It seemed that the dream venom was weak towards the mimic or even immune. In learning this, Qu jumped backwards to get herself away from the mimics Jaws. The moment Qu landed the mimic shot forward with its mouth opened wide ready to try and take a bite out of her. Qu landed and the mimics waiting Jaws were their with her. A massive jolt of pain shot through her. She looked down reveling that the mimic had ripped one of her legs off, Qu quickly retaliated with a flurry of slashes from her claws. Each hit of her claws left small dents in the mimics body, making it howl out in a deafening screech. Qu made good use of this time and shoved her arms down into the mimics open mouth, she then cought her claws onto the rim of its mouth and proceeded to pull against the Jaws. This amount of force caused the Jaws of the creature to start to creak and one by one the tendants in the mimics mouth began to snap, then huge amounts of muscle started to tear in two as Qu used all her strength on trying to rip this monsters Jaws open. And then with one final bolt of strength, the resistance from the mimic fell still and Qu was rewarded with a shower of blood. She then quickly absorbed the mimics body before anything else would attempt to kill her. As she ate it up, she also found the chunk of ooz that the creature ripped out, she grabbed this and plastered it back onto her body making it form into a rough dire rat leg. She then moved towards the mimic ready to absorb it. But the moment she approached the mimic she could hear a load smash of feet, then the hatch of her door was quickly opened to show the eyes of the man, them showing a genuine fear. Then the door was swung open and the man ran towards the mimic corpse, then continued to scoop it up and rush it out of the room. ----- Yen watched as the dire rat tore open the mimic with a big burst of strength. It was horrific. But then a though flashed through his mind, and that was if the ooz was to get to the mimic then it would most likely find a way to replicate the mimics ability to hide as inanimate objects, making his containment of it a great deal harder. So he rushed into the room and grabbed the corpse before the creature could get to it. ----- Qu wanted to escape, all her life had become was a fight. But why should she want that? Its her life so its her rules. And with that determination in her body, she ran towards the door and started to claw at it, sadly it was just leaving scratch marks. By the time she gave up her body ached and the door was filled with long scratches. And above that door were the dreamy eyes of the man. Qu wanted to get out of here and join him so that they could be happy together, but a blasted door was keeping them apart. Qu needed to get out, she just had to. So she sat still and thought about how she could get out and then it hit her, the hatch! If she timed it right then she would be able to escape if she jumped through the hatch. And with that she started to work through the night, making dents in the door to be used as finger holes and feet holes. If she got this right then she could be with that beautiful man, and she was sure he wanted to be with her. ---- Yen sat in a big leather chair in his study and opened up a bottle of wine for himself. As he sat at his desk swirling the glass a quick thought jumped into his mind... ''I hate that creature''. 13 Playing hard to ge It was the next day, and Qu had worked throughout the whole night creating dents into the metal door so that she may climb up to the hatch with a greater ease. With the sun coming up, it was only a matter of time before the hatch was opened and when it did she could finally see him up close and personal. She slowly started to climb up her little ruts until she up close with the hatch, so that she was ready for the escape. She sat still for minutes that slowly turned hours, and then it happened the hatch was slowly slid open and the eyes of the man appeared. Qu quickly put her plan into action. ---- Yen was ready to finally end this threat, he finally realised the potential of the creature after the mimic incident and if that creature was to get loose or if his desire led him to feeding it more and more power then surely an all powerful being could be created. So with this he slowly walked towards the door, and he was ready to finally kill it. He walked towards the hatch and he slowly opened it, when he opened it he scanned around the room to see where the creature was and then he found it. The creatures eyes met with his and then it lept through the hatch, Yen stumbled backwards and landed on the ground. In front of him was the creature he was trying to suppress in dire rat form he had mistakenly given it. ---- Qu jumped through the hatch and there he was, the man she had seen all this time sitting there on the floor and his kind blue eyes now holding a look of horror. Qu started to walk towards him in the form that he had given her, it was surely what he wanted. She continued to walk more and more towards him, and as she did the air around her seemed to start to get hotter and hotter, all of this hot energy being centred around the man. And then he slowly got up from the floor and the air around him started to rise as the heat he let off increased more and more, until it started to feel as if her fur would ignite at any second. ---- Yen watched as the creature walked towards him and then it hit him, it was the time to kill it not only for his own life but for the fate of the world. So he slowly allowed the magical energy flow through his veins, the beautiful dancing flames he used to love and train. He slowly stood up and allowed his aura of fire circle around him, he may have only learnt 3 spells, but he could surely cook this being. After all the creature before him was a common while him with his fire magic allowed him to go to the world of the uncommon creature. ---- The man''s deep blue eyes slowly shifted to a deep red and then the info screen appeared: ----- Name: ''Yen'' Species: human State: He probably wants to kill you Rank: uncommon Energy: 99/100 -new- magic: Fire Description: he is current drawing apon the magical fire element he holds in his body, this element allows his to create fire and use it in different way. With the man using fire magic and improving in it, it allowed him to go from a common ranked human to a uncommon. Furthermore, it seems that the aura this person is using when using his magic could hold the property''s of the magic and also could damage others. ----- After some thought she finally came to a solid and fair conclusion... It was clear that he was just playing hard to get. So Qu decided to leap towards the opertunity and make sure to get his love by showing him that she is capable and that she can play along with him. So now It was all down to who should make the first move in this love stricken game of cat and mouse. ---- As he stood high and powerful above the creature an overwhelming sense of invasion hit him, it felt as if he was open to the world like a book and that the creature in front of him was reading him word for word. And with this, there was no time to waste if he just stood there it would seem fair tosuggest that the creature would use this knowlage to its advantage. So he brought his hands together and channeled the energy through him... ---- Qu watched as the man pushed his hands together and as he did this the aura arounf him started to condence around the man''s hand, it seemed to her that he was the first to strike. All of a sudden the man man brought the palm of his hand towards Qu and with this he shouted out, "Fire ball". And then a ball of fire started to form within his and hand and then with a sudden flury of power it started to fly towards Qu with great speed. Qu quickly dodged downwards and the fireball grazed against her hair, leaving black marks along it as it singed her fur. The man then started to clasp his hands together as his aura proceeded to condence towards his hands. Qu chose to waste no time, and transformed into her leather worm, and then started to dig down into he ground. As she dug under she heard the man shout out "fireball" again, which the was quickly followed with a ball of light being generated behind her. It seemed that ''Yen'' as it said he was called was aiming down her tunnel. She then felt the air once again start to grow hot as he prepared another attack. It seems he likes it rough, and luckily for him that''s exactly what she was going to do. Qu started to dig upwards towards the heat, then in a moments notice she broke though and was under Yen, she then quickly transformed into her dire rat form and aimed her claws towards his legs. As she went to swing her claws towards them the man shouted out, "blazing hand". When he said this a layer of fire wrapped itself around his hand and he swiped towards Qu. Qu''s claws dug into his leg and started to make blood drip out of him, as her claws sunk in a powerfull force of heat slammed into her and she could feel her fur start to sizzle and her skin grow tender. But with this great force her body was flung from under him bit sadly for Qu her claws where still sunk in his flesh and so he ended up leaving a great gash across the bottom of his leg, and with it a great deal of blood started to flow out of it. Qu lookes at Yen and was only getting started, she left no time as she started to run at him again, the as she did so she saw him condense his magic again and shouted "fireball". And aimed at his leg, by doing this he sealed the wound up with heat allowing him to continue the fight but unluckily for him with his time being spent stopping the blood Qu was close to his legs. And with a swipe of her claw she left another gash across his other leg, with this one also bleeding heavily. Qu skidded with to a halt as she went to go at him again, as she ran towards him he used another fire ball at his leg making this one reduce its blood loss. As she ran the Info screen shot up showing Yens energy status ----- Energy: 40 ----- It seemed that his spells used about 10 energy and that he was being worn out due to pain, it was only a matter of time until he declared her the winner. She approached his leg again but with her being distracted she only heard "hand" shouted out and then to was too late to Dodge. As a hand ingulfed in fire punched into her side, making both sides of her body become tender and the fur start to form in patches on her body. Shr imidiatly ignored the steering pain in her body and ran towards Yen, this time she wasn''t going easy on him. And she called apon her sleeping venom, and with it being activated the tips of her claws slowly started to drip a green substance. The liquid here was said to be able to put wolves to slepp so surely she could put a person to sleep as well. She struck at his legs again, the venom quickly going into the wound. She then jumped out the way before he could do anything, she had won. There was nothing else he could do, as he would surely be put to sleep I matter of moments. And then he started to condence his magic again, his body already becoming more slow and sluggish, she gently spoke "self destruct" as tears started to flow out his eyes and he dropped to the floor as he fell to his final slumber. The words took time to hit Qu but then she realised what was about to happen as Yens body slowly started to get wrapped in a thin layer of fire and his body began to pulsate. She quickly ran to his body and consumed it into her, and her unstable form of a human began to pulsate with hot red energy and warning messages shot off in her head... 14 Out in the wild Qu ignored all the warnings being shot of at her, she chose to sit down. As she sat her body started to glow as Yens did as her body started to take him into her system. This was surely the end, as Qu sat waiting for her death tears started to slowly drop from her eyes. And then as the flashing around her hit its limit, something hit Qu, maybe just maybe Yen didn''t like her. As this thought hit her the fire element around her started to flow towards her as it hit its ending point in the spell. And then nothing. Nothing at all happened, all the element in the air flew towards her and now no explosion or anything as she sat on the floor in a deathly silence. Then after a unbearable amount of silence a message shot off in her head. ----- New form received Fire elemental human This was created due to a human form being absorbed, and a large amount of fire aspect magical energy being infused into you at the same time. With these two present a fire elemental human was formed. A elemental human is simply a human that has a connection to a certain type of magic and they come in many forms. It is believed there can be a elemental human for every magic, which is near limitless. These elemental humans also have a mark of sorts to show the elements, with the fire elemental having small flames on the fingertips, that can be controlled to be used in damage and to be peaceful and unable to harm. This form will be used once ready as, if the store of fire isn''t used it could lead to death. Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting. ----- Qu sat onto the floor, happy that she now has a huminoid form, but sad that Yen died. Tears continued to flow out her eyes, the tears rolling onto her fur and instantly being absorbed into it. Then a message shot up ----- Fire elemental human is now complete ----- Then her body started to stretch out, it''s body losing all its fur and then as she transformed the remnant fire element in the air from the previous spells seemed to be enchance. She could feel all the hot element in the air so clearly now, all of the energy felt so welcoming and natural. Then she looked down as her transformation hit completion and she was sitting on the floor. And the tips of her fingers held low flames, and as she sat the fire element in the air slowly flowed towards her fingers helping the flames on the them get fueled. ----- Transformation is complete... Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: fire elemental human Status: sad Energy: 50/50 Rank common (verge of uncommon) New abilities gained: . Natural fire detection . Language . Fire tips control ----- Qu slowly rose up, allowing herself to get used to her new body, and slowly grab hold of how to control the flames on her fingers. And then a thought hit her mind, how does she look? Then an image of herself popped into her mind, she was... Beautiful. Her body was thin and agile, with hair flowing down to her her back, with it having the colour of a fresh red flame. Her eyes held a Ruby red and if one looked closely small sparks would ignite themself within her eyes. Her fingers had small flames on them, holding both danger and calm. And then one last thing hit her, she was naked! Yen seemed to hold clothing on him to hide his body... But all of the clothing he was wearing perished with him. Qu then walked around the area she was held in, until she found the exit. She pushed open the heavy wood door and was released into the wilds she was created in. All around her were trees, them being tall and sturdy. She then took her first step, the damp dirt beneath her sinking between her toes. All the birds around her were shouting at one another, and the light sound of walking could be heard from the depths of the forest. Qu slowly started to walk into the forest, which then followed into a jog, then a run. Until she was sprinting, until she jumped down to all fours. Her hands also sinking into the wet soil, but the flames on her fingers still burning gently. She couldn''t help but scream In delight, as she ran in the forest. The smells, the sight, the noises all filled her with glee. And then she slowed, as she finally saw something In the wild... A deer, eating on the moss growing on a tree. She looked at it and a burning sensation spread through her as she was filled with a desire for destruction. And then the fire got hotter and hotter until it no longer felt good to her form and instead gave her a burning destruction heading towards her from all angles. She was had synced with the universe, and had gone through a enrichment of the fire element. And had officially become a fire wizard, and the flames on her fingers grew in intensity and slowly fled up her until all her fingers and not just the tips were coated in fire. And as it continued the feeling of fire burning her flesh changed into a heavenly feeling as the warm energy run through her veins and enriched her body with fire element. And as it hit the end, a small fire aura coated her body, it only just wrapping around her naked body, heating up her body slightly. And then she slowly started to gain control of the flames on her hands and she calmed her flames so that they would be harmless, leaving her fingers with just a red tint of where the flames used to be. Then she remembered there was a deer in front of her, and this was the perfect opportunity to test out fighting in this form and to pick up a new creature. As this thought floof through her mind, she allowed her fiery aura to sit tightly over her body and the flames on her fingers to rekindle. The she slowly started to crawl towards her prey. 15 The hunting party Qu started to run towards the deer, she then fueled her flames so that they spread all over her fingers. The flames on her fingers now able to deal damage. She then went into a full blown sprint, her hands and feet sinking deeply into the wet soil. The deer finally heard Qu running towards her, it looked towards Qu before running, and the moment it looked towards her, a massive wave of fear and danger spread through its body. Qu continued to run towards it, and the deer spun and started to run for its life. Qu continued to run after it, she also started to use her dream venom ability. The moment it was activated, the flames on her fingers turned a bright green, as they became enriched with a potent venom. As the venom continued to run through her body and connect with her flames, the skin tight aura she held started to go from the gentle red to a deep green, it now acting as a sort of clothing for her as the green glow started to turn a more solid colour. With this power running over her body, she started to run harder and faster, and she slowly started to close in on the creature. She continued to advance, as she continued to push her body to go as fast as it can and for as long as it can. Then when she eventually came in range of the deer, Qu leapt into the air and pounced down onto the deer, the flames on her fingers dug into its flesh, and the rampant fire ran into the creatures body. The fire ran through the creatures veins and scorched the veins of the deer, and as this happened the poison in these flames slowly released out of it, allowing the poison to run through its system. The deer started to grow groggy as the venom run through its system and the creatures skin slowly began to give off a tantalising smell of cooked meat as the flames on her body began to cook it, due to her body being pressed up against the deer. Then in almost an instant later the deer was dead. Qu then engulfed the creature, allowing her to gain its bloodline. She then chose to change into the creature so that the stabilisation period of the creature will be over and done with and won''t have to do it later on. When she chose to evolve the usual message of stabilisation period came up, but this time it said it was only 20 hours. Somehow she had ridden 4 hours off of the time. Then the screen of her status showed itself again: ----- Name: Qu Gender: female Species: deer (stabilising) State: healthy Energy: 85/100 Rank: uncommon Magic: fire (Common level) ----- It seemed that with her new fire magic it also boosted her energy and broke her from the common rank to the uncommon rank. Even now when she was in her deer form, she could still feel her fire magic. She then walked off from the area. And found a tall tree with a hole within it. She crawled under and sat down and fell asleep, allowing the stabilisation period to go by a little quicker. ---- A group of hunters where walking through the forest, the group had a warrior welding a average looking sword. It also held a archer with a worn bow. And finally a low ranking wizard that practiced earth magic. Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting. The three where in the forest looking for a creature to kill and harvest for things to sell back at the village. And the wizard of the group said that he felt fluctuating energy in the area, so they thought that their might be a creature mutant that had an aspect to an element, and if they could sell it they could earn a fortune. As the creature can have into elemental crystals and if used they allow the person to increase their magical abilities or even earn a magic. But when they reached the area they found just the smell of cooked meat and what seemed to be a trail of hands and feet, but later on the trail transformed into deer tracks. But even still, the wizard of group said that there was a lot of fire element in the area, so their suspicion of an elemental creature seemed to be pretty solid. But seeing that the tracks of the animal is fresh as well as the fire element, they chose to set up camp for the night. As after such a fight, the creature most likely is sleeping off the damage. So they set up camp, and set up a campfire. They sat around the fire telling stories, making jokes and talking of their dreams... ---- It was morning and Qu awoke, her body still in stabilisation, but not long left. She had gone to sleep near middle of the day, and so she only had about 1 hour left of her stabilisation as she had slept well into the day. She then walked out of the tree, the bright sun being dampened by the canopy of the forest. But still making Qu squint due to the light its producing. ---- The hunting party had been walking through the forest for about 2 hours, going after the tracks. Until the earth wizard of the group told them they were closing in on the location as the fire energy in the air was becoming more wild. In front of them was a large tree with an opening within it, inside of there was a groove in the ground of where the creature was sleeping. And outside of it where some fresh tracks. ---- Qu continued to walk through the forest, waiting until she could go back to her humanoid form, she now only had 30 minutes left of her stabilisation period. She continues to walk and walk waiting until she found something to do, as she walked she chose to try and get to know her fire a little better, so she tried using the magic in her deer form. Upon activating her magic, her hooves started to gather a small amount of fire on the bottom of them. Because of this she started to leave a path of smoldering tracks, as she activated her magic the fire element around slowly started to enter her. The longer she held her magic then the more element entered her and with the rate it was going it was leaving a small portion of unused fire element, and so if enough of it was stored then she could possible ''upgrade'' her magic. ---- The hunters kept on following the tracks, but still made slow progress, as they had to keep quite incase the deer was nearby. But then something peculiar happened the deer tracks started to smoulder at a certain point in the trail. With this it solidified that the deer was attuned to the fire element, so they chose to quicken their pace by a little bit to make sure that it doesn''t escape them. ---- Qu had been walking for 23 minutes, collecting fire element and slowly improving her fire magic but by no substantial amount. She had about 6 minutes left until she could start walking in her humanoid form. Then she heard a crack of a twig, she looked towards the sound and a Bush was what she was greeted with. But behind the Bush moving pieces of cloth could be seen...there where people tracking her. 16 A story is told Qu turned and stared at the people behind the bush, since she had become a wizard she had become more sensitive to magical energy. And as she sat and looked at the bush it felt almost as if she could taste dirt in the air. This made her come to the conclusion that there may be another wizard, who practices some sort of earthly orientated magic. She then started to circulate her fire magic to the max and as she did so the flames on her body slowly started to make their way up from her hooves to her knees. As she continued to use her magic to the max the tightly wrapped aura around her body slowly started to form a little bit larger and more dense. When she did this the activity in the bush increased, and then a group of lowly hunters popped out. One was holding a dull sword, another welding a worn out bow, and the wizard bearly bringing themself to the uncommon ranking. Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting. The warrior ran toward her with his sword raised above his head. Qu quickly jumped back away from him and started to use her dream venom ability, when she did this the flames on her body and the aura on her started to turn into a deep green, as the venom infused itself into the flame. The warrior continued to run at her, he swung his sword wildy. Qu kept on dodging his attacks easily, but then an arrow flew towards her and hit into her side. But it didn''t sink into her flesh but instead grazed her skin and then got burnt to ash before it could deal any real damage. After two of the group had attacked Qu looked expectantly at the earthly wizard. Then almost at the instant she looked over, a great deal of earth element flood toward the wizard, it then condensed itself around his hand and transformed the wizards hand into stone. He then sprinted towards Qu with a clenched fist ready to strike. The earth wizards approach Qu rapidly and by his side was the warrior. Both ran to different sides, trying to circle her In. As they approached closer Qu used her dream venom to its max making the flames on her body turn a even deeper green and the aura wrapped around her body turned even darker. As Qu prepared to attack, an arrow flew towards her face, it struck against her nose leaving a small wound. But once again it couldn''t deal much damage due to it being burnt to ash. With the moment of her being stunned both the wizard and warrior went to strike her. She struck out her back legs towards the warrior. When the warrior was hit, the heat from her burnt a hole through the warriors clothing leaving exposed skin, furthermore the venomous fire also started to spread over his body, as it tried to find an entrance point so that it could run rampant through the warriors body. The warrior dropped to the floor and started to roll across the floor, as he tried to dampen the flames. Qu felt victory rush through her, as one of her enemies was rendered useless for the time being, this was soon replaced with pain, as the wizards stone fist collided with her side. Qu dropped down due to the force, as she hit the floor a small message quickly shot off, telling her she only had 30 second until she could transform back. Qu quickly tried to get back up, but as she did an arrow plunged itself into her leg, this time the arrow had hit a temporary point where her flames were not present. This allowed itself to sink deep into her, Qu whent to get back up but as she did she felt a fist collide with her again. Then another message shot off, telling her she could transform again, she instantly transformed back to her fire-elemental human. When she did so, the fire on her body became stronger, and it reached up to her shoulders as she circulated her magic to its full. ---- The group stood over the deer, they damaged it over and over again, it was so powerful and it would yield a great reward. But then the deer turned grey, it then turned liquid like and reconstructed itself, until a human was in front of them. The woman had deep green flames across her, they went up to her shoulders and seemed to hold great power. She also seemed to be completely naked, but her deep green aura that sat around her acted as a clothing of some sort. The archer of the group instantly started to bolt back to the town, the wizard stood dazed as it all happened and the warrior finally got rid of the flames, and slowly stood. When he stood he looked around for the deer bit instead there was a savage looking woman in its place. Suddenly in front of the warriors eyes he watched as the woman grabbed the wizard and allowed her flames to run rampant across his body, the wizards screamed in pain. But he was only greeted with more flame running across him until the smell of cooked meat ran rampant in the air and the woman dropped the wizard... He was dead. The warrior ran towards the woman with rage, as he swung his sword wildly. When he reached the woman, he swung towards her head but instead only hit through air. Then he looked down to see a flaming green dire rat. The dire rat used its claws to slice open his ankles, When that happens the fire on its body flooded towards the wound and ran rampant through his veins. Until it hit his heart and her dropped dead to the floor, the last thing he saw was the rat turn grey and morph itself into the shape of a woman. The archer kept on running until he ran back to town, he instantly posted a job on the board of the tavern, with a reward of all the money he held on him. The request was simple kill a green flaming human that ran in the forest. He then went around the tavern and told people of the horrors of seeing a deer turn into a human and kill his friends. Many people laughed at him, but nevertheless a story of a flaming green woman with the ability to morph was spread through the small village quickly.... 17 the wizards brother Qu walked to the two corpses, one horribly burnt and the others ankles bleeding. She walked over and consumed the wizard then the Knight. Apon eating them a few messages shot off. ----- Absorbed human form Gained 1 evolution point ----- ----- Name: Qu Gender: Female Species: fire elemental human State: damaged Energy: 60/100 Rank: uncommon Magic: fire (Common) (50%) Evolution points: 2 ----- Her body ached after the fight and although her energy was high she still felt exhausted and although her body could reform and repair she still felt the pain from everything that happened. Qu then tried to explore her magical potential, she first tried to see how far her flames could go, but to her surprise they could barely reach her wrists. It seemed that another factor made it so that she could reach such levels with her fire magic. she then tried to infuse her dream venom into her flames once again, this had worked and the flames morphed to a green colour. soon after this, a notification appeared informing her that she had gained the ability dream venom flame. after this quick exploration of some of her abilities she started to ponder over the human form she gained. This new form seemed to be similar to the humanoid form she was using now, with the only true difference being the small flaming tips on her fingers. But even they could be controlled so that they are barely noticeable, and her evolution points seemed to be of some importance. Just as she was about to come to a verdict the system appeared before her eyes. ----- "the human race are a diverse species with an almost unlimited potential, this would allow the user to make many combinations (like your dire rat) in the future" ----- Qu completely ignoring the systems sudden sentience then took all of this in and chose to use this species, she then willed her possible transformation menu to appear and selected her only option and evolved into a human. ----- ''20 hour stabilisation period has begun'' ----- her body seemed to be keeping the same shape, but her eyes turned brown and so did her hair. otherwise near nothing changed. Qu sat down and rather than sleep like she usually did she started to slowly take in the ambient fire mana in the air so that she may refine her own. Slowly her tightly wrapped faint aura appeared around her as she started the process. ---- Celebration was amidst the family, it had finally hit kenos birthday, and on this fateful day he has reached 16. After all this time and hard work he could register himself with the adventuring guild. Sadly be lived in but a small town so his guild was actually the bar down the road, but nonetheless it still had ties with the guild and anything he would do with the bar would be transported to the proper guild. He had been one of the few in the town to harness magic, and he was lucky enough to get his family''s natural affinity to earth magic. His older brother had gotten this too and had focused it all on boosting his strength, and it paid off, his brother had managed to break into a mighty uncommon class. Sadly kenos couldn''t use the same methods as his older brother, he had tried many a time but he seemed to have been given a different speciality, rock creation and morphing. although cool it was the most common type of magical use, while his big brother''s was a hard thing to master but if done could easily outshine someone like himself. Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting. But despite all of this he made his was down to the bar, in there was a person he recognised, an archer that was on good terms with my brother. He was frantically screaming about a deer turning into a woman wielding green flames... Yeah he seemed to be on something stronger than beer. But after this all he even posted on the board a mission to hunt it down, and it had a large sum put up to it as well, 1 silver. that was enough to feed the family for a week and it could be all his if he just killed a deer in the forest. so he accepted the mission and went back home, he grabbed his wand (which was a stick with a slight bit of mana infused into it) and headed out into the forest. He might as well humour the man in the bar and tried to see if he could sense any mana in the air, and although he couldn''t sense the fire magic supposedly out there he did sense the familiar mana of his older brother. Seeing that his older brother was out there he went and started to track the mana so he could meet up with him, after about an hours walk he found some footprint as well as a small amount of weird mana in the air he couldn''t really get a good idea of what type it was or where it was coming from. But nonetheless he chose to set up camp here as it would allow him to still have his brothers tracks and he was still relatively close to the village so he should be safe. So he channelled his mana through his wand and morphed the earth around him into a teepee made of condensed earth and mud. He then looked over to the setting sun and and lay down in the teepee while using his magic to put some loose dirt into the entrance so that no wild animals could get to him while he rested. ---- after a couple of hours of refining her mana Qu had brought it to 60% completion, it seemed that after 50% the difficulty greatly increased in raising your affinity with the element. After this she also noticed that her energy levels where around 10 so she didn''t have long left until she would be forced to sleep so she made her way back to the tree she has rested in before. She lay down and slowly closed her eyes and the aches and pains of the day slowly ebbed away as she allowed herself to rest. 18 health and damage bars when Qu woke up her system sat before her eyes ----- "due to the frequent amount of times you have been damaged an analysis of your physical body and mana has been taken into account to create a new piece of information. I am proud to announce the ''health bar'', this will give you a rough estimation of your life, if this reaches 0 it is safe to say your dead" ----- After reading this helpful update, Qu chose to ignore the sudden sentience her system seemed to have gained and checked just how much health she had. At this moment in time she had a total of 200 health. After checking this Qu stood up and went to transform into her fire elemental human, after doing so to her surprise there was another system update. ----- Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting. "Due to frequent amount of battles taken place i have also developed a damage indicator, this will allow you to see how much damage has been dealt to a person so that you can accurately gauge how much damage you are doing in comparient to the creatures health" ----- Qu read through the alert and did a few stretches afterwords, it did seem useful what the system was telling her but its effectiveness would only be shown during battle. After a few warm up stretches she tried to test something she did when she first discovered the earth mage, as she stood there she tried to feel and detect the mana in the area, eventually she was able to do so and could feel the fluctuating mana in the area and the surprising amount of fire mana congregating around her. After doing so she got a message telling her that she unlocked an ability called mana sense which also seemed to be useful. But something else that was weird was the sheer amount of different mana types, if it wasn''t for how dull they were it would be overwhelming, it also seemed as if an infinite around around her at all times. After thinking about this she remembered the message the system gave her when she got her elemental human, it being that there was practically an infinite amount of magics in the world. which then only made her wonder the sheer amount of different mages there were and the capabilities of each and every one of them. After idling around for so long Qu chose to start heading off to find some things to hunt and possibly consume for new forms. As she trekked through the forest she allowed herself to truly appreciate the senses she now has, taking in the sounds of the wind rustling the wind, the smell of damp dirt in the air and the feel of the dirt creeping her way between her toes. It was so much worst being caged and unable to perceive the world, be that through captivity or the lack of perception when she was a grey ooze. Another thing she noticed as well was that as she developed and grew stronger, she grew to be more like the species she was copying. Her body actually had proper texture and the same properties the real ones had, she first noticed this when she was a dire rat and her tears actually absorbed into the fur, she also felt as if real blood was starting to develop and proper muscle was being made. It seemed as time went on she would develop more into these bodies and grow closer to anything she changed to. She would no longer be a ooze copying something, but rather she would be the thing. ---- keno awoke, he manipulated the loose dirt for a door and smoothed it away. Once he crawled out of his teepee he spent his time to remove and smooth it all out to allow others to camp here without his dirt teepee being in the way, he then opened up his backpack and pulled out a bit of jerky and ate it for breakfast. Once he was done with this he then continued on his trail after his brother, although now the mana trial he was following was significantly weaker than it was before. At times it was so weak he lost the trial and had to wander around until he found the trial where it left off. As he continued to walk along his brothers trial the strange mana he felt before felt a little clearer, perhap if he went the night before he could have probably figured out what type of element it was or at the very least what type of class the element would fall under, like if it was metal which would fall under earth attunement. But at the very least the weird mana trail seemed to be going in the general same direction to his brothers, it was possible that the archer of the group his brother would hang out with may have been with his brother hunting some sort of elemental animal or beast. This brought him to the conclusion that the beast that the archer described must have been nothing more than that of a elemental animal, and the archer chewed more than he could swallow. So it must make sense that his brother was still tracking the animal and was going to bring it back to ensure that his family would eat and live for a little while without worry. But to stop this train of thought he finally saw something more than a bit of mana trial but rather some faint footprints and something better yet, a set of what seemed to be deer tracks, which seemed to be exactly what they were hunting a elemental attuned deer. Zenos heart sped up after learning this as it meant that his brother truly was hunting this deer and if he was to help his brother, he may even be able to get a share of the spoils from it to allow his magic advancement or even get a fire crstal from it and be one of the very rare lucky few to get two different magic attunements or from the rumours he heard even get a combination and develop his earth to magma through the combination of fire and earth. And then finally he would be able to outshine his brother or at the very least be on the same playing field as his brother. ---- After walking around for a long time Qu was finally able to find something to hunt, she found a rabbit. The rabbit had white fur but with the slightest hint of the lightest blue, but before Qu could see anything else about the rabbit it ran with incredible speed out of her sight. But luckily it left very clear tracks which allowed for her to easily track the rabbit, she continued to follow the tracks it made until she found it in a clearing eating at the roots of a large tree. While she had the opportunity she slowly activated her flames allowing them to feed all the way up to her knuckles, she then activated her dream venom causing her flames to change to a dark green colour. Once she finished doing so she slowly crept up on the bunny on all fours, once close she slowed down further and poised herself to strike and then just as the bunny went to bite into the root again Qu grabbed it by the neck and snapped it quickly before it could begin to struggle. 19 RIP Jeffrrey Qu looked down at the rabbit she killed and something that she somehow didn''t notice before was that the rabbit had one long curling horn come out of the left side of its head. So she chose to inspect it. ---- name: rabbit (i would have called him a jeffrey...) race: horned rabbit state: really dead (RIP) Find authorized novels in Webnovel£¬faster updates, better experience£¬Please click www.novelhall.com for visiting. rank: common energy: 0/30 (its kinda dead so no energy) characteristics: well if you couldn''t guess yet its kinda dead... anyway the species is a mutated form of a regular rabbit, through minor mana infusion over the years a horn has developed on its head to allow itself to charge at prey and predator alike, it has a also developed slightly blue tinted fur due to the absorption of mana. ---- Qu ignored all of the comments her system made seeing that this probably wasn''t the last time her system was going to make. After reading through all the information, she pressed the rabbit against her chest until her chest turned to ooze and allowed the rabbit to enter in. ---- "new form gained- jeffrey" ---- Despite how annoying the system was turning to be Qu couldn''t help but laugh. she chose to become the horned rabbit and watched as her point of view slowly shifted lower and lower. once this one done the normal 20 hour stabilization period message shot up and Qu went on with her day, although it was slightly hard to hop around with her foot constantly turning to ooze. ----- keno continued to walk through the forest, keeping on the trail of footprints and deer tracks, his heart sped up when the tracks of of the deer started to leave smoldering imprints in the ground where slightly charred earth now stood. To pass the time Keno chose to practice his magic as he walked, he scooped up a bit of earth and proceeded to slowly manipulate it until it became a smooth ball, then once he did that he pulled any small pebbles and bits of dust that may be in the ball causing it to become an even smaller ball. Then he slowly started to infuse his mana into it, he continued to feed his mana into it for about an hour before his energy went down to half value, in which then he stopped. The result of this was a dense smooth piece of dirt that was able to be manipulated by Keno very easily without much input of mana to do so. So as he walked he started to morph the ball into different shapes, from triangles all the way up a tiny little chicken. But he soon had to pocket it, when he came across a hollow tree with a groove in the ground, it was a weird sight as well as there was a lot of deer tracks, and footprints in this area. So what it seemed was that after his brother found the deer he killed it and chose to rest in the tree the deer was resting in, but what didn''t make sense was that the footprints were not from boots or shoes but rather bare feet, which could only make Keno wonder why his brother would ever walk barefoot in a forest. But nonetheless he still followed the foot prints so that he may meet up with his brother. ----- Qu found that when she went to generate fire in this form it gathered at the tip of her horn rather then her feet or hands, but on the plus side it did look cool. She then chose to start heading back to the tree she had been resting in for the last 2 days, she slowly started to hop her way back. But to her surprise about half way to reaching her tree she found a boy walking through the forest. He seemed to also be a practitioner of earth magic, much like the mage she fought before, but sadly at her current state she wasn''t able to fight him, as she would have to wait for the stabilisation period to end before she could consume his body and she also wasn''t in a optimal form to fight him in as well. So she just continued to hop past him and continued to trekk back to the tree so that she can sleep off the stabilization period so that she can return to her elemental human form. ---- As Keno continued to follow the trial his brother left he saw the most peculiar thing, he saw a rabbit hop right past him, but the weird thing was, was that it had a massive horn protruding from its head with the tip of it lightly burning away. It almost looked like someone strapped a sparkler to its head. But something he couldn''t quite shake was that the feet of it almost seemed liquid like and drained of colour, but he shook it off and put it down to hunger seeing that he had only eaten a piece of jerky in the morning. So he sat down and pulled out a small container holding a few nuts and berries that he took from home and snacked down on them. once he was done eating he noticed that it had hit just past mid-day and as such he would have to start moving a bit quicker if he wanted to meet up with his brother, so he packed up his stuff and started to follow the trial again but this time he moved a bit quicker so that he could meet up with his brother as soon as possible. ----- It was time, time for Qu to figure out what was going on. She just had to know now, it was bugging her too much... why on earth would a rabbit get a horn. Because it seemed to her that if rabbits lived in burrows then why would they need a horn, if anything a horn would be a negative as it would mean they would need bigger tunnels. ---- "it''s not a bad thing it, didn''t you hear me the last time, they use it to hunt and protect themselves. I think living from a predator is better than having a small hole to sleep in" ---- "yeah, but wouldn''t more predators be able to get them if its a larger hole so really it''s a double edged sword" This argument had been going on for the last 20 minutes between Qu and the system and so far not a single one of them was able to convince the other. But on the plus side it passed the time while Qu waited for her stabilisation period to be completed. 20 spirit of nature After a few more minutes of arguing Qu couldn''t take it anymore, so she shut her eyes and started to drift off to sleep. Hopefully she would be able to sleep off all of the stabilisation period without distraction and just have a fun filled relaxing day tomorrow. ----- Zeno continued to follow his brothers path, until it stopped... There was nothing left for him to follow, the footsteps ended and the footprints of the horned rabbits began. Zeno called for his brother, then he did it again and he continued and continued until his voice was too hoarse to continue. He felt abandoned, maybe his brother had left him, went out in the world to make a new name and leave his weak family behind. Zeno dropped to the floor and wept, that was until he heard a quiet and muffled voice. He could make out no words, all he could hear was the faint warble of speech. Zeno jumped from his spot on the ground, and sprinted through the forest to the source of the sound, he ran carelessly and got stuck on branches and tripped many times until his clothing had massive cuts running down it and his whole body was covered in dirt and filth. And when he was finally able to start making sense of some of the words being said, they abruptly stopped. All that he was left with was a general location of the person and segments of a conversation, he heard things about horns, predators and digging burrows. It all sounded very weird but frankly he didn''t care, all he wanted was to find this person so that he may ask them if they have seen his brother and if so where did he go. So he walked through the woods towards the general area he heard the conversation coming from, reading to ask anyone for help. ----- Qu was woken by the sounds of heavy footsteps and the ragged breath of what she presumed to be a person. So she hopped out of her tree and went to look for the being responsible for waking her up, lucky for her on the other hand she was woken with just 2 hours left on her stabilisation, so it wouldn''t be long until she would be able to transform back into her humanoid form again. Qu continued to search around until finally she found the source of all the noise, it was the young man she had seen before, but only now he had ripped up clothing and was covered in all sorts pf muck from the forest floor. She could only guess as to what he had been doing, but frankly she didn''t care, all she wanted to do was give this young man a piece of her mind. ----- Zeno continued to look for the person he heard before, he had been searching so long in fact he had spent the entire night doing so. He felt absolutely exhausted, but then he saw the horned rabbit form before, it still had a warped sludge like foot and a small flame brandished on its horn. But then his worn mind must have finally kicked in as he could almost swear the rabbit started talking. He stood bewildered as the rabbit started to shout and rave at him for waking it up, and continued to talk disrespectful he was to be in its ''hunting grounds'' as it were. He couldn''t help but slowly laugh and laugh until he had tears in his eyes, he had gotten so sleep deprived and stressed that he was now having auditory hallucinations. Then suddenly the rabbit ordered him to follow it, and Zeno did just that laughing the whole way, until he arrived at the hollowed out tree from before. He was then told to lie down by the rabbit, and once he did so he almost instantly fell asleep. Little did he know that he had been hit with dream venom, so he would be sleeping a fare bit longer than he usually would. ----- Qu hit the poor boy with dream venom, it was clear he was delirious, and some rest was in order. What she chose to do afterwards she did not know, she may kill him depending on his actions and her mood, she could leave him alone, or she could give the boy a hand. Near all of them were boring in Qu''s eyes but the system insisted that she was to not eat everyone and everything she meets. So Qu chose to take her systems advice this one time, but only this once. So while she waited for the boy to awake, she counted down the rest of her stabilisation period and once it was done she transformed back into her flame elemental human body one again. Then she checked through her system for any possible combinations she could make. ---- combo: human, horned rabbit name: lesser horned human description: a human with a small deer like horn protruding off of the side of their head, the purpose of this horn is unknown (and is NOT up for discussion). Apart for the horn on this humans head everything else is normal. - combo: horned rabbit name: rabbit description: through a bit of editing i can remove the horn, and better yet i''m 25% sure that this will work... - combo: human, deer, horned rabbit name: horned human description: by adding a deer''s horns and the horned rabbits together i was able to complete the horned human form to an acceptable level. This version of the horned human has two long deer like horns protruding off of each side of the head... still has no benefits or abilities (perhaps a greater horned human will... maybe, possibly, generally don''t know) ----- Qu had her eyes on the horned human, but it wasn''t quite there yet. So she made a proposition to the system, just a simple tiny request was all. she wanted the horned human, to be an elemental horned human and after a lot of begging and a lot of warnings Qu got what she wanted. She selected it and went straight to the white space, but this time it was different, she could see the smallest amount of ash, it would drift by every now and then and was very easy to miss if you didn''t pay attention, but nonetheless it was there. And then before she knew it she was out and she asked the system to display what she looked like. She had dark red hair that dropped down to her back, but what was surprising was that she had vines making up small amounts of her hair, but it still looked good, the occasional dark green clashing with the red. Her eyes were still red with minor sparks flashing in her eyes and her skin was a pale white, her fingers still had red tips where her fire would be able to be summoned with ease. But then the main attraction, on either side of her head, just slightly above her ears were her horns, they were large and sturdy and looked identical to the antlers of a deer. And surely it would perfectly for Qu when she has to talk to the boy when he wakes, afterall what would be a bigger bargaining chip than looking like a spirit of nature 21 a village to burn Keno awoke, he still felt slightly exhausted and his muscles seemed way too relaxed for him just waking up. He could still remember small segments of the night before, the horned rabbit talking, him following it to a hollowed out tree and falling asleep in that tree. But he had more pressing matters to attend to, because when he looked up he saw something he never thought he would ever see... A spirit of nature. She was very pretty but the fire in her eyes and the warmth of the air around her showed him that she was dangerous. He sat there dumbfounded and waited for her to speak. ----- Qu looked down at the boy as he sat there looking up at her, so she finally went to break the silence seeing that the boy didn''t seem to want to break it himself. "Hello child, i but only have a few questions for you and if you play your cards right then you may just survive another day" All the boy did was nod and wait with utter fear etched into his eyes. "My first question, why are you in my forest?", the boy responded to Qu, "i was just looking for my brother, i was tracking his earth magic from a couple nights before". As soon as he said this Qu knew exactly who the kid was looking for. "Now for another question, how far away is the nearest settlement and what species make it up?", the boy then told her "Just a day or two walk from this area, and mainly humans make it up but a few elves and dwarfs live there and maybe some types of half breeds". "And finally, what is the highest rank person in that village,and i want to know everything about that person", the boy sat and thought for a little while before finally responding, "the highest ranked person is at the middle of ''rare'' rank, his name is ''para cantorp'' and he is a human, he specialises in a strange type of magic that he gives very little information on, but from the bits and pieces that the village has seen him do it has something to do with blood or life force or something" After getting given all this useful information, she chose to be nice to him and allow him to leave with is life, but just before the boy started to walk of he stomached up the courage to ask her name. "Qu" was all she replied with, and soon afterwards the boy left her sight. She went back into her tree and went back to her elemental human form, it was surprising just how much her head weighed when she had horns on her head. But she got little time to react as her system had finally chose to show itself. ---- "Congratulations, you managed to go through a full conversation without killing someone. But you better not go into that town and go on a rampage, i could see the bloodlust in your eyes when that poor boy told you about other species" ---- And like per usual, it was annoying her. But while Qu still had all the information fresh in her head she chose to stop the conversation before it turned into a pointless argument and asked the system just what the difference between an uncommon and a rare rank was. ---- "Well different rankings usually depend on just how much energy a being can control and contain, or how pure that energy is. A creature usually uses mana, but some use special energy that they get from there race or other means that i don''t quite know yet. But anyway the difference between a uncommon rank fire wizard and a rare rank fire wizard, is either the time they can cook for or how high they can crank up the heat or a mix of both. (So don''t fight a higher rank, pretty obvious if you ask me) ---- After learning all of this, it was definitely safe to say that taking the place by storm was off the table. So she could either stay in the forest until she is ready to go head first, or go in the village and pretend to be one of them to try and climb the social ladder. So just as Qu was preparing to settle down for good in the forest she got the biggest box to ever appear from her system yet. And to sum it up; ---- "Your an idiot, you need to go in the village, if she doesnt do as she is told then she isn''t allowed any fire elemental forms of anything until the day she dies" ---- So after a long hard think Qu chose to go the village and blend in with the crowd. So Qu went through the forest and after about 6 hours travel, it had started to hit night. So Qu chose to start hunting as she would soon need to get clothing, and so she chose that she might as well as get some deer skin. So after a little while of walking around and following tracks, she finally found a deer and so she got on all fours and crawled up behind it very slowly and quietly until she was just behind it, then she transformed into her dire rat form and jumped up onto the deer and before it could react she penetrated its skull with a claw. And then staying in the same form she skinned it, although not very well but it would do. She then tied some around her waist and some around her breasts, giving her a rudimentary skirt and shirt of sorts. She then chose to sleep for the night so that she would be ready for the day ahead of her, so she transformed into her giant worm and dug a hole into the ground for her to rest in and keep somewhat safe for the night. ----- Keno finally arrived back in town and went straight to the bar, as soon as he got there he went over and cancelled the request to let someone else deal with the craziness of that forest. Once he did so he went straight home and sat on his bed, he chose to tell his family that he believed his brother had gone to a bigger and better place than this to become famous, but he didn''t tell them about the deer tracks, the horned rabbit and especially not that woman, afterall if he did he would look insane. He needed time, he needed to have a proper rest and time to think, he just couldn''t bear to go anywhere near that forest for the time being, so he would give it a month or two before he would even risk confronting that spirit again. 22 first reques Qu was only a few minutes away from town, she could already see areas where the trees had been cut down and where herbs and flowers had been ripped from the ground, and as she continued towards the town the destruction became clearer and clearer. When she reached a certain point she could start to smell the scent of cooked meats and from what her system told her pasties, then she started to hear the sound of people talking and constant foot traffic, and then finally she could see houses and people through some of the remaining trees. So she quickly went over the plan again with the system before she went to the point of no return. ---- "It is all very simple, you go into the village, you pose as a new adventurer, you get some money and buy some proper clothes and equipment, and with your capabilities you will be able to climb the social ladder until you can become the leader of the town. This will significantly increase your social standing and give you access to more delicate information. I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT START EATING PEOPLE!" ---- Qu was fairly sure she understood most of plan, so without wasting any more time she went straight into town. First thing she noticed was that a lot of people were giving her odd looks, it could either be because she was new in town, her fingertips were slightly red or because she was near enough naked. But Qu couldn''t really care what they think, so she continued through town until she realised something, she didn''t know how to sign up as an adventurer or even where she had to go to do it. So she used an ability she hadn''t much, she chose to user her natural mana sense she got when she became a wizard, and she tried to track the earth mage she let go. But she soon realised it would be harder than she thought at first, as a lot of different mages lived in town. So she did the next best thing, she guessed that a lot of mages would become adventurers due to their abilities, so she tracked different mana until she found the building with the largest concentration of mana. So she stepped inside of the building that was labelled as a ''tavern'', it was very weird in there. A large concentration of different people were there, some of them were drinking different liquids from wooden cups and some were chatting together and having fun. But the most important thing was a large board with multiple pieces of paper pinned to it, and from what she could tell each of these had a different request, some of them were requests to gather different herbs in the forest, some to gather meat and pelts from animals and on the odd occasion a piece of paper would request for someone to exterminate a type of dangerous creature. She continued to look over the board, that was until the owner of the bar interrupted her, "Excuse me love, i''m guessing your new and im positive you need money. If you need a job you can grab a request from the board and hopefully get enough money to buy some decent clothing". Qu thanked the man and grabbed a request for special herbs, she then gave the piece of paper to the owner, once she did that the man told her to put her hand on a crystal and put some mana into it, once she did so it glowed and the man told her that she was now officially an adventurer and that the request could officially be put under her name. After all of this she quickly left the tavern as more and more people in the tavern started to pay more attention to her and it started to make her feel more uncomfortable until she couldn''t stand it anymore. Once she left the tavern she checked the request again and it stated that she had to gather some ''priest petal'' which was apparently was a flower which helped in making healing potions, and she also had to gather some ''wizards leaf'' which was used in the making of mana potions. The ''priest petal'' was apparently a small flower with pure white petals and a golden centre, while the ''wizards leaf'' had a long, curling stem with a large leaf attached to it and the whole thing coloured light green. So she head off into the forest and went searching for the different plants she needed to gather. When she got far enough into the forest that she could no longer hear or smell the village anymore, she got straight to searching, the first thing she did was try to sense the ''wizards leaf'' with her mana sense seeing that it must have some sort of mana in them if they made mana potions. And after a little while she was able to find one of the leafs, the mana was very weird it seemed pure and it had no elemental attunement, it was just a blank canvas. After analysing it, she uprooted the plant and threaded it through her skirt. Once she found the first one, it became easier to find the plant, as she got a better feel for what the mana looked like. She continued to gather the ''wizards leaf'' until she had gathered 10 of it, then she went on to start looking for the ''priests petal'', this was harder to do as she couldn''t track them down with mana. But soon enough she found one of them and it definitely looked unique among all of the other plants near to it, after carefully looking over the flower so that she would be able to more easily spot the flower in the future, she plucked it and threaded it through her skirt like the rest of the plants she got. Then after a couple more hours of searching in the forest she was able to obtain a total of 5 ''priest petal'', after gathering that much she chose to start to head back to the village before it turned completely dark. After around an hour of walking she made it back to the village and she head straight to the tavern to hand in the request, after giving the piece of paper back to the owner of the bar and the different plants she gathered he gave her 7 copper coins. After picking the man''s brains for a little bit she found that there are 100 copper coins for a silver, 100 silver coins for a gold, 100 gold for a platinum, he did say there are currencies higher than that, but she didn''t have to worry about that unless she became the leader of a town or city. After learning all of this she said thanks to the owner and headed out of the tavern and went looking for a store that sold clothing so that she could buy some proper clothing with the money she earnt, so that she wouldn''t stick out so much. 23 burning streak Qu hit the town, she finally had a chance to explore this place, the first thing she did was look for a place that sold clothing. The first place she saw was a nice looking shop named ''Elders clothing'', but when she walked in it was clear that this place was out of her budget, a single item cost around 3 silver! So she immediately left and went looking for a store that was within her price range, and soon she did, she found a more run down store but the clothing items within it were much more affordable. So she purchased a pair of dull brown trousers for 3 copper and a dull white shirt for 3 copper as well, this left her with a single copper. After getting these items she went into a back room and changed into her new clothes and absorbed her to get rid of them, she still got the odd look from people every now and then due to the face she didn''t have shoes, but she got a lot less weird looks from people now. After walking around town for a little while and looking at the different buildings and shops she chose to head back into the forest, once she got a fair bit deeper into the forest she chose to practice a bit of magic. the first thing she did was activate her flames on her fingers and allow them to spread as far as she could, by the end of it she was able to bring it up to just under her elbows. Then she tried to see if she could try to create any types of spells just like Yen had, due to her natural abilities she was already able to make the ''blazing hand'' spell, but what she was interested in was just how he made a ''fireball'' spell. So she started to practice manipulating her fire, first it was small things, with her slightly nudging the tip of the flames around but soon she started to progress and after around 2 hours of trying to manipulate her flames she got a significant breakthrough. She was able to directly control her flames to a point, she was able to slightly shape the arks of her flames and she even got to the point that she was able to choose where her flames where on her arms, so she was able to make spots on her arm where flames were present and others where flames were not. This also gave her more control of the fire on her body as well, it allowed her to get rid of fire in other places but then it allowed her to spread it further, she now was able to practically summon her fire anywhere on her body, but no matter how hard she tried she wasn''t able to take the fire off herself and sustain it, let alone manipulate it. After spending this much time using her fire her energy was near enough depleted, so she transformed to her giant worm and dug into the ground and created a burrow for herself, then soon afterwards she fell asleep. When Qu awoke, it wasn''t to her own accord. She was greeted to snarling and growling of some creature, so she looked over towards the entrance of her burrow and allowed her system to do its thing. ---- Name: wolf (nothing special about it) Species: wolf State: hungry for worm Rank: uncommon (barely) Energy: 117/120 Characteristics: an average wolf with brown fur... that''s kind of it, unless you need me to tell you what a wolf is... hold on wait, give me a second (just one second) - "After a little bit of analysis i have developed a health bar for the creatures your facing... its not completely accurate but its pretty close" - Health: 120/120 ---- So like any sane creature, Qu transformed into her dire rat form and activated her dream venom flame, and then smashed her claw into the wolf''s nose. This caused the creature to pull its face out of her burrow very quickly, as soon as this happened Qu pulled herself out of her hole and transformed into her fire elemental human. When she looked towards the wolf, its snout was dripping with blood, but before she could properly look at the damage she dealt the wolf lunged at her and bit deep into her arm, Qu instantly started to try and get the beast off of her before it could bite into her anymore than it already was. The wolf was soon pulled off of her but it took a chunk of her arm with it, and soon enough a box appeared before her eyes telling her that she took 30 damage. Qu was angry, she was more than angry, she was pissed, so she activated her flames and ran straight at the wolf, in which the wolf returned this and ran towards her. When she got close enough to the wolf she punched out and hit the already damaged snout of the wolf, but by doing so she allowed the wolf to claw at her body, causing long claw marks to run down her stomach. So Qu retaliated before the wolf could get out of range and ignited flames on her foot and kicked the wolf straight in its side, she used this momentum to kick off of the wolf so that she would be out of its range. She then made the flames die out and reappear on her fingers, but this time she condensed the flames on each tip until there was a blazing inferno on each finger tip on her right hand, then she activated her aura causing a thin layer of fire to wrap around her body and in tern make her flame more powerful. She then fed all of the flames on her fingers to her index finger, and there sat a flame nearly as big as Qu''s head. She then tried something she never thought before, she would manipulate her flame outwards but keep it on her finger. So as the wolf came running towards Qu, she activated her dream venom, causing her flame to grow a dark green and she shot the flame out towards the wolf, the beam of fire hit the wolf in it bloodied, torn up snout and completely obliterated it, and soon afterwards her flames ran rampant through the wolfs system, utterly destroying and scorching its insides. After the adrenaline started to fade, the pain kicked in and she finally had a look at the state of her body, and to her surprise her wounds were leaking two different liquids, one was her normal ooze, but some blood would come gushing out every now and then, so she quickly cauterize her wound despite the fact it hurt to do so and checked her status. ---- Name: Qu Gender: female Species: fire elemental human State: badly hurt (...be more careful next time) Health: 60/210 (you bled a lot, your not used to it but if you bleed too much you could die) Energy: 17/120 (that spell of yours took a lot of mana) Rank: uncommon Magic: fire (common) (72%) Evolution points: 2 (your stats seemed to get a boost after you got the horned human form) -new- spell learnt: ''burning streak'' (please don''t cut it so close next time... you''re not invincible you know) ---- Qu somewhat felt bad for what she did, it seemed her system genuinely got scared for her. She slowly walked up to the corpse of the wolf and consumed it. she then transformed into her dire rat form and pulled her clothing out from the burrow, as she didn''t have time to change before the battle. She then transformed into the wolf and the 20 hours stabilisation period was enabled. So she put her clothing into her mouth and made her way to a large bush, in which she layed down and started to drift back to sleep, this time not only to gain energy back but to also get her health back. 24 bitter liquid Qu slowly opened her eyes, the first thing she did was check her status. ---- Name: Qu Gender: female Species: wolf State: stabilizing (3 hours) Health: 200/210 Energy: 120/120 Rank: uncommon Magic: fire (common) (72%) Evolution points: 2 ---- To her surprise it seemed that she had near enough healed up after yesterdays encounter and better yet she hardly had any time to wait until she was done stabilizing. So while she had the chance she chose to practice magic, the first thing she did was try to see if she could easily cast her new spell. So she thought over all the different steps to cast the spell and started to try and cast ''burning streak''. Quickly after doing so the teeth of her wolf slowly started to coat with fire, until all of them were completely coated in it, to help this process Qu opened her mouth to allow all of her teeth to be on display. Then the fire stated to condense on the tip of each tooth, afterwards the fire then pulled itself out into the centre of Qus mouth until a small ball of fire was floating in her mouth with lines of fire streaking into it, and then finally with a single thought Qu sent a beam of fire out of mouth and made it strike the side of a tree resulting in a small whole being burrowed into the tree as well as a small scorch mark around the hole she made. But what Qu noticed when she cast the spell this time she had better control over the spell and was able to control just how strong she wanted the attack to be. After using the spell she checked just how much mana it had taken up and to her surprise it took up a staggering 50 mana leaving her with 70. This clearly showed her just how expensive this spell was to use, so she made sure that she wouldn''t use this spell unless it was the perfect time to do so. After testing out her spell she then just focused on trying to improve her fire magic, so she slowly took in mana from her surroundings to refine her mana. But to speed it up more she also made use of her fire magic, as it seemed through use of her magic she also got closer to the uncommon rank. So as she sat taking in mana, she also concentrated on trying to cover as much of her body in fire starting from her front paws. She continued to do so for the remainder of her stabilisation period, only taking breaks from doing so when she had nearly run out of energy. As soon as her stabilization period was up she transformed back into her fire elemental human form, rid of the fire coating most her arms from training fire magic and put her clothing on. After she did so she checked her progress and it came up that she had reached 91% progress, it seemed that she would become uncommon rank in fire magic in no time. After finally being able to transform into a humanoid form, Qu started to head back to the village. As soon as she got back into the village she headed straight to the tavern so that she could get a new request. When she arrived she quickly got to searching the board, a few different requests peaked her interest; -gather 5 priest petal and 5 wizards leaf -hunt 3 deer and bring back the pelts -get 1 rabbits foot -teach basic magic The request that particularly took her interest was the job to help teach someone magic, this was as she herself had a good grip on magic and it would hopefully be an easy job for some quick money. So she walked up the bar and registered that she accepted the request to teach, the owner of the bar then gave her the address of the person she was teaching, what type element the student used and the time she would have to get there by, the payment was not yet determined as it would be based off of how well she did. After checking the times and getting directions from the owner she determined she had about an hour before she would have to go to the person and teach them, so for the time being she chose to sit on a bar stool and order one of the drinks everyone seemed to love. Luckily it was very cheap and it only cost 1 copper to buy, but sadly that was all she had left, so she spent the remains of her money for this drink. When her drink finally arrived she was informed by the owner that it was a type of ''beer'', Qu happily imprinted this drinks name in her mind, then took a massive gulp of it, filling both of her cheeks so much that they puffed out before gulping it down with great effort. The first thing she could tell from it, was that it was horrible, it tasted really bad and it was really bitter as well, she was completely confused as to why anyone would be willing to pay for this drink. And the second thing that concerned her was her system showing up. ---- "Warning, the substance you have ingested is attempting to numb your body and is affecting your mind, taking in more of this liquid will allow its affects to take place and possibly more" ---- Judging from the other people here, one mug of it was not enough to cause these effects seeing a lot of people were happy enough drinking many of them, so Qu drank the rest of her ''beer'' to ensure she didn''t wast any money despite how much she disliked it. But as soon as she did so her system chose to show up again. ---- "Okay I tried to be nice and technical like a normal system, but your really yanking my chains. I literally just told you to NOT drink it, so you choose to drink more. I will repeat this once more and only once more DO NOT DRINK THAT STUFF!!!" ---- Qu ignored her system, after all she had no intention of drinking any more of it and even if she wanted to she didn''t have enough money to do so any way. Now that she had experienced the liquid people for some reason enjoy Qu continued to sit at the bar and chat to the owner every now and then, asking if he was okay or hows business and other mundane things similar to it, just to pass the time. Eventually she asked the owner for the time again and it was around the time she needed to go, so she said goodbye to the owner and walked out of the bar, she then headed down the road off towards the house she needed to go to for her fist ever class. 25 The first lesson and breakthrough Goreg, Goreg Rolam was the name of the person that she had to teach. It all seemed easy at first but now that she actually took into account everything she was told it could be harder to teach the person than she imagined. The first problem was that the person was 16 years old, which is a high age for someone to be without knowing how to use there magic properly. The second problem was the magic in itself, it is a type of dark magic, which she has no experience with and even better yet it is a rare type of dark magic, ''shadow manipulation''. And finally the last problem is that the person she is teaching is a dark elemental human, now this is good for him getting a grasp for his magic but it will make it much harder for Qu to resist eating the boy. But she would have to tough it out, after all this should be able to give her a bit more coin to play around with. After about 10 minuets of walking she finally came across the house, it was fairly nice, it was a bit larger than the other houses and had multiple rooms unlike the most other houses and from what she was told the Rolam family were lower middle class and so they have a bit more money than the average person in the town but only by a small bit. So after psyching herself up a bit she went up towards the wooden door and made sure that her flaming tips were put down to the lowest they could go until the tips of her fingers were only slightly red, then she knocked. After a couple of moments the door was slowly pulled backwards to reveal a woman. She asked Qu what she wanted and she quickly informed her that she was here for the the teaching job, after doing so she was brought inside and told a few more details, such as what rank his magic should be brought to, how long the sessions would be and a few details about his race as well as magic that she mostly already knew. So after being informed of all of this, Qu was brought into a side room that seemed to be a bedroom for the boy. The room was quite bare, it had a slab of wood with a few pieces of cloth to act as bedding, a rough wood floor and a small open space for activities. A couple of moments after entering the room Goreg was called to his room and was told that a teacher had arrived and that they would see each other daily for 3 hours a day until his magic was brought to uncommon rankings or higher. After being told this he sat on the edge of his bed, his mother exited the room and Qu went and prepared to start teaching. But before she actually began with the teaching she looked over the boy and looked for how the dark element affected his body. From what she could see it was similar to her, he had black hair and black purple eyes, and his arms had patches of small wispy black smoke that would come off his body as well as having the same black smoke being generated on the tips of his fingers. After doing this she got straight into teaching him, the first thing she did was ask at what percent was his shadow manipulation was at, which she was quickly informed that it was at 5% which was extremely low. She then asked what magical skills he had obtained and if he knew any spells, she was then told that he had no spells and he knew how to sense mana to a degree and that and that he could naturally sense dark mana. She then asked if he knew how to control the smoke on his body, and to her surprise he did not and didn''t even know he could make use of it. So the first thing she did was put her hand through the smoke he was generating and asked if he knew she was touching it without him seeing it, in which he replied with a yes, so then she proceeded to teach him to treat the smoke like a part of his own body and almost as a limb in itself and that he should try to move his smoke by itself. After about 30 minuets of trying to do so, small changes started to become apparent, he was able to slightly push his smoke to one side, the first time he succeeded in doing so he slightly nudged the smoke on his right arm to towards himself, and after doing it the first time he slowly got better and better at doing it on all the smoke on his body until he was able make all of his smoke join together between his arms and make a small darker cloud of smoke from the smoke on his arms. By just doing this he had already brought his percentage to 10%, after finishing up manipulating his smoke an hour had already passed by, but in this time she was able to bring up to 10% and gave him the ability ''shadow smoke control''. Which led Qu to believe that the smoke itself was not just smoke but a shadow type mana being given off by his body, which also led her to believe that he was not just a dark elemental human but actually a shadow elemental human. After coming to this conclusion she asked the boy what his race said in his status, in which he then responded that it said ''dark elemental human'', she then responded by asking if he was sure because it seemed more likely that he was a shadow elemental human, after saying this to the boy, he seemed to get distracted and he started to concentrate presumably on his menu. After around a minuet of him doing so he finally stopped and looked over towards Qu with bewildered eyes. From how he explained it, after he was told he may be a Shadow elemental human, his system appeared and started to swarm with random letters and numbers being put together before it finally all cleared and he was greeted with the message. ---- "After learning the specific type of dark elemental human you are, you have uncovered your true form... A list of changes will be generated... -new race name- Shadow elemental human -ability- Your shadow smoke had become more dense and you have finer control over it -ability- You have much better control and affinity for shadow magic -ability- Your magical aura has been generated -health- Your health has increased from 100 to 350 -mana- Your mana has increased from 200 to 400 ---- Both Qu and Goreg were ecstatic, the boy because he was already progressing significantly after only an hour of having his teacher and that he had gained massive changes as well as finally learning his true race. Qu because it meant it wouldn''t be as hard to progress with the boy and by having him come out with a massive breakthrough like this already, she was guaranteed a high reward. After celebrating a little bit Qu got the boy straight back to work, although now the boy seemed a lot more social towards her and a lot more eager as well. She didn''t mind though as it meant he was just more engaged in her lessons. The first thing she did was start to teach him how to summon his aura, when he finally managed to do so, his body was covered in a thin layer of weak black smoke, but it did seem to be able to make him harder to spot and especially if he was in dark places, but for now it wasn''t thick enough to really pull this off completely yet. Qu then spent the rest of the lesson teaching the boy how to use his ''shadow smoke'' from his arms and fingers, and it seemed to be much easier for the boy to control and by the end of the lesson he had a fine level of control for someone at his rank, he was now able to push and pull his smoke in any direction with ease but he couldn''t quite pull it out long enough for Qu''s liking or compress it, but that was wishful thinking for there firs lesson. And by the end of the lesson he had already brought his percentage to 41%, so it would be no time at all before he reached uncommon rank in shadow manipulation. Before she left the house she informed the mother of all that had happened, in which she seemed to be extremely happy and excited for this breakthrough. Qu soon left the house to allow the family to celebrate before starting to head back down to the tavern to sit at the bar and talk to the owner. 26 a quick match When Qu finally returned to the tavern a familiar face greeted her. The boy that she had scared a couple days ago into giving her information was standing by the board looking over the different requests that were present. Qu walked up to the boy and looked over his shoulder to try and get a good understanding at what exactly the boy was looking at, from what it seemed he was either looking at a request to collect the usual priest petal and whatnot or he was looking at the request to bring back some rabbit meat. After a little while the boy finally pulled a request off the board, it seemed that he chose to grab the request for rabbit meat. But when he turned around to walk over to the bar he was startled by Qus presence. He quickly asked her to move and walked up to the bar to confirm his request, soon afterwards he left the tavern presumably to do his request. But Qu wouldn''t let him get away so easily. So she quickly ran out the tavern a caught up to the boy before he could reach the forest. She then tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to turn around, "Hello again, you probably don''t recognise me, but shall we walk and talk, we have much to discuss" she said sternly. Before the boy could even start to hesitate she grabbed the boy by the back of his neck and started to push him forward towards the forest. But her plan was soon brought to halt when she could sense the boy using his mana, so she quickly let go of him, right after she did so a dirt spike shot up where she had previously been. "i don''t know what you playing at, but if you try that shit again I''ll kill you right here and now" the boy told her. Qu could only chuckle at this remark and soon retaliated by transforming into her horned form. But this time her transformation seemed different, rather that turning to ooze her hair seemed to slowly morph and change to develop her vine like hair. And the horns on her head seemed to materialise from a swirling storm of bone that soon pieced itself together to form her horns. It seemed with each passing day she became less and less like her original ooze form. After transforming into the appearance the boy knew better, his eyes were quickly filled with fear and his body froze up. "Now that you recognise me how about you do as I say before I roast you alive for that comment" she quickly told him. After saying this the boy instantly started saying sorry to her for his rude behaviour. After the boy was finally done saying sorry, Qu walked ahead of him and beckoned him to follow, which he soon did. They then continued to walk deeper into the forest in silence before reaching an open space where the trees seemed to part. "Would you consider yourself a good fighter?" she asked him, "I''m just below your average guard, so somewhat good" he responded. "\tGood, good, well then I want you to fight me, it will not be serious match. But I want to test my skill, if you do this for me I will permit you to ask me some questions". The boy soon nodded, the rules were, no lethal injuries, don''t intentionally try to kill your opponent but don''t go easy on them, and if the one of them tap the floor 3 times then they stop. After confirming the rules were okay with the boy Qu then started the count down. "3" "2" "1" "Start" While she was counting down, Qu took her clothing off to make sure she didn''t burn them, it also for some reason made the boy blush. When she finished the countdown she instantly activated her aura, causing a light layer of flames to cover her body. She then activated her flaming tips to there max so that they would coat her arms up to the elbow. And then finally she changed back to her fire elemental human form, as the horns on her head weighed her down slightly. The boy on the other, scooped up some dirt and condensed it together until it was fairly packed together and then morphed it into a spear. As soon as he did this he ran towards Qu with his spear aimed directly at her. Qu waited for the spear to come into her distance, and when the boy thrust it towards her, she grabbed the shaft of it and tried made her flames go to max heat and tried to cook the spear. But all she did was weld the dirt together and reinforce the spears shaft even more. This surprised her and she was caught off guard and the spear was thrust out again and grazed her ribs. Qu jumped backwards away from the spear and began to activate her burning streak on her pinky finger. While she charged it Keno seemed to sense something was going on and ran straight for her again, but this time he seemed to manipulate the tip of his spear to spin in a drill like fashion. He once again thrust his spear towards Qu when he got close enough but this time a beam of fire hit the tip of the spear and blasted away the majority of his spear, essentially disarming him. She then stepped closer to him and struck out an open palm towards his chest. With Keno being distracted by the fragments of spear flying off in all directions, he had no time to react to the strike. Her palm collided heavily with his chest and pushed him back a couple of steps as well as slightly singe his clothing where he was hit. As soon as that strike hit him, Qu once again stepped closer to him, this time he had his arms up in a defensive manner, but Qu ignored this by ducking down low and sweeping her leg out. Sadly she didn''t give herself enough time to put her flames on her foot, but it still tripped him up. She then jumped back up from her squatting position and looked down on the boy, he seemed to have been winded when he dropped to the ground so hard. It seemed that this boy was no challenge to Qu after all. But just as she let her guard down a blunt pillar or dirt struck her in ribs causing her to her lose her balance and drop to the ground. In this time Keno pulled himself back up from the ground and smashed his hands into the pillar he made before pulling them back out, but this time with a pair of compressed dirt knuckle duster. He then ran over to Qu and swung his fist down towards her stomach, but as his fist came into her reach, she grabbed his hand and compressed all her flames to the palm of her hands to try and get the hottest flame she could muster to burn him. As soon as her hands lit up with flames he quickly pulled his hands away, in this time Qu got onto her hands and knees and lunged for his legs before dragging him down to the floor. When he hit the floor, she then jumped back up and manoeuvred around him until she was behind his head. She then ducked back down and wrapped her arms around his neck and slid her legs over his arms and pinned him down. After doing so he struggled for a little while before he finally stopped and she heard the "tap" "tap" "tap" she was waiting for. 27 a new friendship After hearing him tap three time Qu unwrapped her arms from his neck and pulled her feet off of him, she then stood back up and bushed herself off before deactivating her aura and her flaming fingers. Once she did this she quickly put her clothes back on. When she looked back over to Keno, he was back up on his feet and moving his neck around after having it gripped so tightly. Then finally after all the times that Qu has run into the boy she asked his name, in which he quickly responded to her with his name. After asking this she allowed him to start asking her some questions. "What exactly are you?" he asked, "I shall not tell you everything but what I will tell you is that my primary form is this fire elemental human you see before you and that I myself am no human, nor spirit I am everything I consume and more" she responded. "what rank are you and your magic?" he continued, "i myself am at uncommon rank and my fire magic is at the common rank at 93%" she told him. (She had slightly improved during their fight due to her use of fire magic) "What are you doing in town, and why were you in the tavern?" he asked her, "I am in town to learn more and to help grown in power and influence. And I was in the tavern to relax after working on request. And before you ask I am currently doing a request to teach someone magic to the uncommon rank" She informed him. Before Keno went to ask another question, Qu stopped him there and told him that was enough for now, and for wasting so much time while he was on a request she would help him hunt rabbits. So after there little fight and a bit of questioning the two of them walked deeper into the forest in search of rabbits. The request wanted a minimum of 5 rabbits, but they would hunt a minimum of 6 (so that Qu could take its form). After a little while off walking the two of them stopped and began to patrol the area , they chose this location as there were a fair amount of holes in the side of small mounds, as well as a lot of vegetation either with bite marks in them or having been trampled on. After a little while Keno found and rabbit by plunging his hand down one of the rabbit holes and pulling one out, after pulling it out he simply snapped its neck and put the dead body onto a bag. Soon afterwards Qu tried the same trick on a different hole and it seemed to work, after she pulled put the rabbit she snapped its neck and consumed it before Keno could see, adding the rabbit to her list so that she could transform into it later. After searching for a little while Keno got another rabbit and Qu also got a rabbit, bringing their total to 3 rabbits. Suddenly Qu remembered a skill she had that could have made this whole thing so much easier, she has night vision. So rather than plunging her hand into a hole and feeling about wildly she first peered into the holes and looked to see if any rabbits were within reaching distance. By using this technique Qu was able to speed the process up much more and quickly caught the last two rabbits and handed there bodies to Keno to put in his bag. After getting all of the rabbits required, Qu and Keno started to walk back to town so that he could hand in his request. On the way the two of them began talking again to pass the time and to gain some more information on one another. "So, if you are such a capable mage, what rank is your earth magic at then?" she asked him, "Well at the moment its at the common rank at 99%, I''m just trying to break through the barrier at the moment" he replied This in itself was very useful to Qu as it not only let her gauge the capabilities of the boy, but it also taught her that to reach every milestone there was a barrier the person had to breakthrough to advance. After that they chatted about different requests they had done, and Qu even told him abut her current request and the progress she made with Goreg and the breakthroughs he had gone through. When they finally reached the town again, the two of them were a little less tense around each other and they may have even counted each other as acquaintances. When they both walked into the bar Keno handed in his requests and earned himself 5 coppers for it, enough to buy some cheap food or drink. But overall he seemed pretty happy with his payment for such a small job. After receiving his payment what was more surprising was that he chose to sit at the same table as Qu and even asked her if she wanted a drink, which she very swiftly denied, before her system came around to shout at her. He soon bought himself a drink and sat back down next to Qu, once he sat down the two of them engaged in conversation once again, but this time it was a lot less serious and was a lot more relaxed. The two of them talked about dreams, Keno talked about family and by the end of it they were both telling jokes. They both acted around each other as if they were friends for years, despite all that Qu had done to him (both what he knows and what he doesn''t know). After a little while Keno seemed to be what the owner said was called drunk and had spent 4 of the copper that he earned in his request. Due to the state he was in Qu asked if anyone knew where he lived and luckily someone did. That person then gave her directions and Qu started to bring the stumbling drunk Keno to his house so that he could hopefully sleep it off. When she finally reached his house, she knocked on the door and after a minute or two the door was finally opened by a woman, presumably his mother. After looking at the state her boy was in the woman let Qu in and she and the mother helped carry him to his room and position him onto his bed. Once they did this Qu went to leave the house, but just as she reached the door the mother stopped her and offered her some food and drink for the trouble. So Qu accepted seeing that the woman seemed so nice and the two of them sat by a small table and ate some plain looking (and tasting cake) while the mother told her all about Keno as he was growing up. But what startled her most was that she kept alluding that the boy and her were dating, which after a bit of explanation from her system as well as the mother, she understood exactly what that entailed. But despite how much she told the mother there were no feelings between the two of them and that she hardly knew him, the mother just would not stop. 28 staying the nigh After a couple more minuets the mother started to calm down with the teasing and stopped saying the two were going out. A few more minuets later she finished her cake and drank the rest of her water. When she did so she finished up the conversation with the mother and went to head out the door, but once again just as she was about to leave the mother stopped her again. "My boy might be a bit worried if you leave and he may worry you didn''t get home safe. If you want I can lend you the spare room for the night so that your not in any danger" she said. After a little bit of thought Qu chose to accept the offer, seeing that she had never actually slept in a bed before. So she was soon directed to the spare room, after the mother closed the door Qu then stripped down and jumped into bed. It was a lot more comfy and a lot more warm than sleeping on the floor, in fact it was such a difference that she didn''t even sit and talk to the system like she usually did as she near enough instantly fell asleep. When she finally woke up she was greeted to Keno looking over her, seemingly about to wake her up. She quickly said hello to the boy and pulled her covers off and went to get changed. But when she jumped out off bed it seemed to startle the boy and his face lit up bright red once again before he rushed out of the room. But she just ignored it and got changed, when she walked out off the room she asked the time and it seemed she had around 3 hours before she would have to teach Goreg again. After thanking the mother for letting her stay she swiftly left the house before the mother tried to start hinting at them having a relationship or before she made her stay longer than she wanted to. When she left the house she went straight towards the woods, when she got deep enough inside she stripped down and folded her clothes on the floor before starting to practice her magic again. Like last time she put up her aura as well as pushing her flames as high as they could go and sat on the ground and allowed mana to flow into her while maintaining this state. After two hours had passed she finally stopped with the exercise, as her energy was starting to run a little lower that she like, she currently had around 20 in the tank and that was it. Then once she turned off her state she put her clothes back on and checked her progress. After her exercise she had hit 99% completion to the next rank, it seemed she had now hit the wall that Keno had talked about. ---- "Due to use of magic, ''energy'' has now been labelled as ''mana'' and is now independent of your stamina. But I cant be bothered to make a stamina bar so this will have to do" ---- After this little update she checked her status again and indeed the energy tab was now labelled mana and now its max was now at 110 so it had only decreased by 10. A thought then hit her, "system, how do I break past the barrier to go from common to uncommon rank" After a couple of seconds of no answer her system finally showed itself again. ---- "To break past this so called barrier, your understanding of your fire must increase. This can be done through practice and learning more properties of the fire and how to better controle it, read up on the element and learn more about it, Or begin to shape your element and nuture it to how you would like it to act in the future." ... "And by that I mean if you want your fire to shape into animals, be hot, cold. You could possibly make it act as a solid, liquid or gas depending." ---- So it seemed to Qu that she had to use her fire more, learn about it and develop it if she wants to boost her power. So she put her clothes back on and started to head back to town, as by the time she gets there she will have around 30 minuets before she has to teach again. The whole way back tot own she continued to play around with the flames on her hands, just slightly moving it and manipulating it, trying to learn as much as possible about how it acts and works. When she finally reached town again she started to head straight to Goregs house, as it wouldn''t be long before she would have to start teaching him anyway. Once she reached the house she knocked on the door and was swiftly let in and was told to go to Goregs room to teach. So she headed straight to his room and sat on the floor while she waited for Goreg to come inside. A few minuets later he came into the room and she quickly began teaching him. The first thing she did was tell him to try and manipulate his shadow smoke, which he swiftly did so. It seemed that he had gotten better at it over the time between there lesson, so he had most likely been practising. After doing this for a little bit Qu then asked him what his percentage was at, which he then responded with 59%, which confirmed that he had definitely been practising. After asking this she then went to try and give the boy more of a challenge, seeing that his magic was shadow manipulation, she then asked him to try and manipulate his shadow. Goreg then began to concentrate, and after a little a bit of effort she saw his shadow slightly wobble and distort slightly before it snapped back to its original form. "That''s what happens when I try to do it, I try to shift my shadow about but it just slightly wobbles and goes back into place." He told her. But near instantly Qu already knew what he was doing wrong, "Your problem is that your trying to shift it all. When I use my fire I focus on a section and change one section not all of it at once. What you should do is grab a chunk of it like a hand and only focus on that and nothing else." she informed him. After being told this the boy instantly went back to having a face of concentration, and after a little while the hand of his shadow started to morph outwards and started to stretch further than what should be possible. But after a couple of seconds the boy broke concentration and the hand shifted around for a couple of seconds before snapping back. But the positives were that not only was he able to considerably change his hand, but after he stopped focusing on it, it took more time for it to go back to its original state. She then asked the boy his percentage, and after morphing his hand like that it jumped all the way to 68%. But unfortunately it seemed doing this cost him a lot of mana and they had to cancel the rest of the lesson for today, due to his mana being near enough sapped dry. After telling the boys mother his progress, she left the house and began to walk down to the tavern, where she would either grab a new request or chat with Keno if he was there. 29 Earning some copper When Qu reached the tavern, she looked around but it seemed that Keno was nowhere in sight. So she headed over to the request board to find a new job. When she looked over the board it seemed to be about as mundane as it usually was, a few herb gathering quests, animal hunting and the odd monster hunting request. After looking over it for a little while Qu decided that some monster hunting wouldn''t be so bad, so she looked over the different types. -hunt a small band of goblins, 3 copper per kill (confirm by bringing an ear per goblin) -exterminate dire rats, 2 copper per kill (confirm by bringing back teeth and/or claws) -kill a dire bear, 25 copper (confirm by bringing back a claw) She may be confident in her abilities, but for such a high payment even she wasn''t going to risk the dire bear. The dire rats will be easy to kill but only if she transforms into her dire rat form or another smaller form, but it could risk her getting caught as the dire rats lived close to a farm. So after taking all of these into account she chose to hunt the goblins. She brought the piece of paper to the owner and he registered the quest, he then gave her details on the quest. The party of goblins was last known to have 4 members. One seemed to focus on tanking damage and had a piece of strong bark to act as a tower shield and nothing else. Another one of them seemed to act as a warrior, brandishing a damaged iron sword which he probably stole from an adventurer. The third one seemed to be a type of mage, this one seemed to focus on a type of nature magic, but what type is unknown. And finally the last one was unknown, all that is known is that it is a goblin and that is all. She then got the location of where the goblins were last seen, and temporarily given a knife so that she could cut off the ears once she is done. She then immediately began to head to the location where they were last seen, this in itself took over 30 minuets. The whole way to the location Qu played around with her fire trying just to get a small bit closer to breaking through to the next rank. When she arrived at the area she instantly activate her mana sense to try and locate the mage of the group, but from where she was there was no sign of them, so she chose to walk through the forest until she got some sort of location on the goblins. After around 10 minuets of walking through the forest she finally saw the slightest hint of magic, off in the distance there seemed to be a small greenish blur. As soon as she saw this she started to run towards the mana signature, and when she got relatively close to the mana signature she slowed down and started to sneak towards the area. As she got closer she started to get a clear view of what she was stalking, and it was indeed the goblin party. Apon inspection it seemed that the information was correct and that the equipment of the party stayed the same. Then she gazed her eyes on the mage, just by feeling the aura it gave off it made her skin crawl, but she couldn''t pinpoint what the element the mage used was. Then she looked over to the mystery goblin, and well nothing seemed special about it, it looked bland, it wasn''t a mage and when looking at its status it was average except for a high level of mana. There was no point in wasting time so she got straight to work, the first thing she did was figure out the formation they were using. It was the tanker in front, mage and mystery goblin in middle and the warrior at the back. She chose that the best bet was to take out the warrior first, seeing it would be one of the damage dealers of the group. So she slowly crept up behind the warrior and activated her dream venom flame and went to try and stuff it into his mouth to prevent noise and killing him. But the moment she activated her flame, the mage goblin turned around and alerted the group, which just got rid of the stealth option all together. Due to these circumstances she quickly changed to her dire rat form and slit his legs and ankles open and allowed her flames to begin to run through his body, which it did and it quickly burnt his heart completely. She then dropped the body, but before she knew it the tank was already in front of her, preparing to try and crush her from with his shield. To retaliate to this she changed to her horned human form, in doing so it brought her back to full height and also impaled his shield, stopping him from being able to use it. In this time however the mage took on a drastic change, parts of its body seemed to be covered in a light brown shell like substance, and parts of its body seemed half way through transformation, with those parts being light brown leathery skin. Its arms seemed to have some sharp claws made from this shell like substance and its mouth seemed to get a small set of mandibles. She quickly ignored this however as it seemed that the mage was into close combat and wasn''t close enough to her yet. She coated her arms in flames and quickly prepared ''burning streak'' on one hand and focused on fending off the tank with the other. Despite her best efforts the tank was starting to get some solid hits on her and her body began to lightly bruise in the areas she was hit. But just before it could get another hit in, her spell had finished and she blew a hole through the stomach of the goblin. After doing so she went to move on the to the mage, but the sight she saw before her was disgusting indeed. The mystery goblin was currently willingly being eaten alive by the mage, with it ripping its arms off and practically chomping them down in one bite. But what she did notice is that with each bite his body became more and more complete into its bug like form, and before she could even get close the mage the goblin had completely eaten the other and had completed its form. It had grown in height, now eye level with Qu. It body was completely covered in plates of armour that her system identified as chitin. It had a pair of jagged mandibles over its mouth and large compound eyes. It fingers and toes were larger and sharper and one of its hands had transformed into a full blown blade! It seemed that the other goblin had sacrificed itself to power up the mage, a good tactic for sure, but I doubt they can get as many goblins as willing as the last one. It seemed that the request was a little bit harder than she first thought, but nonetheless she was a bit too deep to quit now. So she activated her dream venom flame, and changed to her fire elemental human form. But before she began she tried something, she set fire to the ground around her to give her an supply of fire that doesn''t just come from her body. But just before she went to attack the creature, the system interrupted her. ---- "fire magic has now reached the uncommon rank.... Due to large use of flames with a function independent of itself (dream venom flame running through the bodies of victims) you have specialised in the creation of life... You will now be able to shape and instruct fire, but only in basic ways and the fire is not sentient... you will still be able to cast spells such as ''burning streak'' you have just added to your abilities" "just popping in to say congratulations on the promotion" ---- 30 ERROR ---- "You have finally br... ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ ¡­" ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ... ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ [796F7520686176652066696E616C6C792062726F6B652074686520666972737420626172726965722C20636F6E67726174756C6174696F6E732C20636F6E74696E756520] ¡­ "Well I have no clue what you did, but you broke it... So I guess I''ll have to take it from here" "Okay so, because of your improvement in magic you have now become a ''true uncommon rank'', this is due to you now being uncommon rank as a creature but also in magic. Now don''t go nuts but basically you''ll go through another attunement to fire magic, which will boost your magic and provide you with the abilities that were stated before you broke the system" "3" "2" "1" "(Don''t get messed up by the goblin bug thing... Good luck) ---- After receiving this helpful little message, she started to feel a bit of change. It was small at first, just a bit of mild heat in her chest at first, but then it started to slowly increase. It went from mild to warm, then to hot, then to burning and then like magma was sitting in her chest. The heat started to spread and this impossible heat in her chest spread, until her whole body felt like a volcano. Qu then activated her mana sense and sure enough, mass amounts of fire element in the air was rushing straight to her and fuelling her more than ever before. Then finally, after what felt like days and days of this sensation it felt good. The impossible heat slowly disappeared and was replaced with a heavenly, cosy warmth that seemed to hug her as tight as possible. Then as soon as it started it had ended, and Qu was left with the remnants of the sensation she felt and a little bit of knowledge about her new abilities and how to start using them. Qu then looked up, the goblin was standing there seemingly surprised at this event seeing he too could see the mana that flooded towards her. She then got ready to fight, she activated her flaming tips, this time they burned so much brighter and flooded all the way up to just over her elbows. She then activated her aura, it was so much thicker and so much more dense. At this state it could almost pass off as clothing. Which was good seeing she accidentally burnt her clothes to ash when she activated her aura. After all of this preparation she looked back towards the goblin, who was now charging towards her with his claw and blade like arm targeted at her. So she condensed some of the flames on one of her arms into the palm of her hand. She then infused some poison into them, and chucked it as hard as she could at the goblin. The fireball didn''t dissipate in the slightest as it hurdled through the air, and soon enough it smashed against the hard carapace that made up the goblins chest. When it hit against the goblins chest, it physically pushed it back a couple of centimetres. The fireball left visible scorches on the carapace and the acid left residue on it that slowly started to eat away at the creatures chest. Only then does she realise that after this advancement of hers, she feels stronger, more tough and like she is packed to the brim with mana. She then creates another fireball, this time however she started to sculpt it, she tore into the middle of it and created a rudimentary mouth on it. She then used her new information gained through the advancement and gave it a simple command... "Bite!" She then threw it right towards the creature that was only just starting to pick up its momentum again. The little ball hit the goblin right on its leg, and as soon as it did the mouth wrapped around its leg and chomped down. Now it wasn''t perfect, it couldn''t really bite, it could just kind of put the centre of the fire ball the leg of the creature. But it still worked in a way, the fireball was able to burn at the entirety of the leg at once and it wasn''t dissipating. The goblin was clearly in pain, but it seemed to want to get at Qu as soon as it could. When she noticed this, she condensed all of the fire running up her arms to her fists, making them blaze wildly and practically ooze danger. When the goblin reached Qu she struck out an open palm that hit directly with the goblins chest. This shock then caused the goblin to lose all of its momentum and drop to the floor in a heap. But this also effected Qu, the shock ran through her as well and was sent down onto one knee. But she soon recovered and stood back up and gazed apon the heap that was before her feet. The goblin looked up at her, its massive compound eyes gazing directly into her soul, so she chose to check its status. ---- Name: Goblin Species: bug goblin State: scared Health: 21/200 Mana: 150/210 Rank: uncommon Characteristics: A goblin that practices a sort of bug based magic that focuses on morphing its own body for combat. Due to the large levels of mana ingested to get to this level of transformation it has irreversibly changed its body from a goblin to a bug goblin. -Extra- this creature is completely stricken with fear, due to the way it is done it is possible to attempt to tame this creature. ("Hey its me... now this is good and bad, it will be an extra set of hands, but due to your methods it is not loyal to you. It could try to act while you sleep or turn on you at anytime, only through a true source of utter fear could it never attempt such a thing, or through treating it nicely or at least half decently could it learn to trust you, but this method takes more time") "Would you like to attempt to tame this creature?" ---- Qu looked down at the quivering creature. It would definitely be good to have an assistant, but her and Keno seem to be going on well, and she isn''t guaranteed complete loyalty from this creature. On top of this, this creature has changed its race, which would surely be a fine addition to her ''collection''. So Qu came to a conclusion, she bent down and placed her hand on the creatures head, and stroked it gently. Its breathing started to slow and it seemed to be more accepting of her hand brushing over it. She then dismissed her flaming ball on its leg, and continued to stroke it, then a new message came up. ---- "Natural taming progress has begun- 5% complete ---- she continued this on and on until it hit 90%, but by then it was done. She stroked the head with one finger, gently gliding across the smooth carapace, until it hit the forehead of the bug goblin. Then it hit 96% completion, but it was too late... A beam of fire blazed right through the creatures skull... ---- health: 0/200 ("Excuse my language, but what the fuck!?") "taming interrupted... taming procedure cancelled" ---- Qu then walked over to the bug goblin and consumed it, then over to the goblins and cut off both ears on each one so that it would seem that she killed 4 of them. She then went over to the goblin corpses and consumed both of them, giving her 1 more evolution point. She then headed on her way back to the tavern. 31 messed up big time Keno was surprised that he didn''t see Qu at the bar, usually she was here. So she was either teaching or on a request. While he waited for her to return he chose to have a look at some of the requests on the board. Sadly it was all the usual, some gathering ones, hunting, the odd monster killing, but overall it was kind of bland. What he was originally looking for was a request he saw about a day ago, it was a simple job to get rid of a party of goblins, and despite how weak they were, the still gave a lot of money. But sadly it seemed some lucky person got to it before he did, so he chose just not to grab anything a lounge around at the bar until Qu show''s up. ----- It had taken a little while but Qu finally made his way back to town, but the main problem was that she no longer had clothes. So on her trip back, she killed a deer and skinned it, once she did this she then knotted it around her waist and breasts. The good thing was, was that the money she would gain would be enough to buy some clothes back. When she reached the town again she headed straight to the bar and handed in the goblin ears to the owner and received her payment which went to the grand total of 12 copper. Soon after handing it in, Keno ran up to her and asked what she was doing and how the quest went, once he heard all of this Qu then headed to the clothing store she went to last time. When she reached the store she bought her clothes again, which costed her 6 copper in total leaving her with another 6. After quickly sorting this out she went back to the tavern and met back up with Keno. Once they met up again they just sat at a table and talked. But after an hour of chatting, the mood soon soured in the area. A bulky, tall man had smashed into Qu''s back, and in doing so spilt his (bitter) beer all down her. But rather than apologising to Qu, he chose to blame Qu and even let out his measly common aura to try and intimidate her. So as any rational being would do, she stood turned around and activated her new true uncommon aura. Rather than wrapping it around her like she usually did, she just chose to let it hang in the air, allowing it to truly apply pressure to the rude man. The first thing she noticed was that the air around her seemed to heat up a bit, not enough to burn or hurt anyone, but just enough to make someone uncomfortable and generate a little sweat. But apon activating it, she noticed that the man''s eyes were filled with shock, but he quickly recovered. "You don''t want to mess with me girl, clearly your new around here so I''ll let you off just this once, you see I''m good pals with the Cantorp family" He told her. Now that didn''t mean nothing to Qu, to be honest she didn''t even know who that was, but from the reactions of Keno and the people around her, he was probably a big deal. "Now just remind me why I should care, and what is he going to do that will stop me from burning you to a crisp?" she asked him. This seemed to surprise him a little bit, and he even stood there bewildered for a couple of seconds. But then he seemed to come up with an idea. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a weird looking crystal with intricate shapes carved all over it. After a couple of seconds it seemed to activate and it began to lightly glow a light blue before the man spoke into it. "Yeah boss, there is some girl who is getting cocky around here because she has reached a uncommon rank. Is it all right with you if I send her your way to teach her what happens when you don''t listen?" He asked the glowing rock. After a couple of seconds a response came through, "sure". The man then grabbed Qu and tried to drag her out, the key word being tried. At first it worked but then Qu planted her feet to the ground and the man just didn''t have the strength to compete with someone from the uncommon ranking. But luckily for him Qu wanted to head to this mysterious Cantorp person, so she just followed behind the man. After a couple of minuets, they hit a new area of the town, the place where higher classes lived, and this continued until they were near the heart of it, where a luxurious looking house made of stone bricks stood before her. They soon entered the house and waited in a nice looking living room, with hard wood tables and comfortable leather seats. After waiting a little bit the brutish man finally left and all she had to do was wait for this Cantorp person. Then it finally hit her, Cantorp, Para Cantorp... the most powerful man in the village. Oh she messed up big time. But before she could escape the doors opened revealing a pale looking man, with dark hair and deep blue eyes, wearing a beautiful black suit with a red tie. ---- "Excuse my interruption but I swear Keno said this guy was human... this is not a human this is the most clich¨¦ looking vampire I''ve ever seen. For gods sake he practices ''life or blood magic''. These people are dumb..." ---- Qu chose to humour her system and have a look at the guys status. ---- Name: Para Cantorp Species: Vampire (told you, it was so... so obvious) State: Dunno, probably not happy or something Health: 600/600 (damn) Mana: 1000/1000 (double damn) Rank: true rare (also close to breaking into ''epic rank'') -Magic- blood or life or something (maybe he has magic that turns him into a bat) -Extra- "DO NOT PISS HIM OFF, IF YOU DO, YOU WILL DIE!" ---- It was fair to say, he is a beast of a man. "So you must be new, went into uncommon rank, felt strong and so you stir up trouble with my guys. Well let me tell you right now, you are not strong. If you want to feel true power then you shall have it!" he told Qu. Soon after saying so, it seemed he unleashed his aura. It was strong, like really strong. Qu could barely breath, and just being near the guy made her feel as if her life was being sucked away from her. So she looked at her status and it was actually draining her life, SHE WAS GOING TO DIE AT THIS RATE. She needed out, out right now, but when she went to run a set of chains wrapped around her arms, and when she looked at them they were made of pure blood! The man came closer to her, "How does it feel, your helpless, and just being near me is killing you, your a trapped rat" He asked her. "Now listen up and listen good for this is your only warning..." 32 making a scene 1 "If you ever come into this town and act like your the big dog again, well I will ensure that this fear you feel right now is nothing in comparison to what I would make you feel. What you need to realise is that I own this town and everyone in it, and you are by no means close to being able to take that away from me. But I am a forgiving man, I will let you off this once, but at a price, the odd job here and there, after all you are indeed one of the more powerful people in town. But if you ever try to refuse one of my ''jobs'', well I can make it very difficult for you. I can look at every request you take, I can make sure that you are denied quests... Do you understand what I''m getting at? Well do you?" "Y-y-yes sir, I-I''m so sorry for wasting your time" She stammered "Good, Good indeed. Now for an immediate punishment, what to choose, what to choose, there are so many options. How much health do you have remaining girl? Answer me now!" "175 s-sir, out of my total of 230" She responded. "Oh I guess that will suffice, not nearly as much as I would like... Your punishment will be to sit here until you are brought to your last drop of life, just so that you know that I can kill you easily, after all I won''t even have to move from my seat " Then it began, she was kept strapped to the chair, having to look at this impossibly strong man as her health slowly whittled away. The worst of it all, was that he had a stupid grin plastered on his face the entire time. He even ordered a drink called ''tea'', which her system informed her was a drink the wealthy usually enjoyed. Which just added insult to injury, it was as if the man thought this to be some type of entertainment. No matter how bad it was, she couldn''t act. She couldn''t risk transforming in front of this man, and she definitely couldn''t try to fight him either. So she sat still, and watched as her health slowly went lower, and lower until she was all the way down to 10 health. "Sir, sir. My health is at ten, please stop now, please." She begged him. After saying this the grin on his face grew even larger, but he didn''t stop, he kept watching her. She started to intensely sweat, and she even started to uncontrollably shake. This was it, she was to die, die just like how she began, trapped and helpless. Then just as her health hit 1, it stopped. The man finally stood up and made the chains locking her up dissolve away. "Now that you know I truly don''t care about your life, its time for you to return the favour, after all I am the saviour of you life" He then started to step closer to Qu, he continued to do so until he was a few inches away from her, he then lifted up her shirt and placed his finger on her stomach. The tips of his fingers then started to drip with blood, and he drew a complex pattern on her stomach. Once he lifted his finger away, the blood was sucked into her skin and etched the blood red pattern into her. ---- You have been placed under a contract by Para Cantorp. You must complete a single task that he will provide, failure to do so will result in death. "I''m sorry Qu, there is nothing I can do to stop this... Just do as he says, then just maybe we will make it out alive." ---- "Now that you have a little more incentive to do as I say, lets us begin in our business. It is a simple request, I need you to kill a man. I believe he is a spy from one of the other lords, I believe he plans to kill me and claim the town to add to his territory and improve his status. By killing this spy, he won''t get his information meaning that he is less likely to succeed. And I''ll tell you what, if you get me the name of who this guy works for, well you may even get a reward. Anyway, go away, and be quick about it." After being told this, she quickly fled and was released back onto the streets. It was peculiar, she now had this urge to do as he said, not just naturally but almost as if this is law and that this was her true purpose in life. So without wasting any more time she went looking for the man. During the explanation of her task she was shown images of the man and the places he frequently visited. So she went straight to the first building she was shown, which was a small middle class house, so most likely the place he was staying. As soon as she got close to house, she went straight to the front door and tried to open it, but sadly it was locked. But it was made of wood, so she could easily ''pick the lock''. Soon enough the ''lock picking'' was complete, so she stepped through the smouldering wood and looked around the house, but he wasn''t home. So she stepped straight back out the house and went to the second place he visited, a brothel house... ---- "I swear to god, if anyone even thinks about touching you, burn them, and if you don''t I''ll make you life a living hell!" ---- Ignoring the nice message she received she continued to the brothel house. Luckily this time the door wasn''t locked, so she stepped straight inside. It was fair to say she was removing the memory of this place from her mind very quickly, extremely quickly. Luckily enough he wasn''t here, so she didn''t have to see him in the act... So she headed to the last place she was given, the best and most expensive restaurant in to whole town, it was fair to say that she was going to cause what some would call ''a scene''. Once she arrived, the first thing she noticed was that she would not have enough money even to consider eating here any time soon. The first thing she noticed was that it had actual glass, and lots of it too, which acted as windows. Every other place she had been to had little to no glass, and had hatches and holes for windows. Another thing she noticed was that everyone here were dressed really nicely and seemed to have a small bit more money than her (just by a tiny, tiny amount... I swear). But the worst thing of all, to get in the place it seemed you needed to pay. Believe it or not, she did not have enough to even step inside. So she chose to look through the very (expensive and) nice windows. And lo behold, he was there, at the back of the restaurant ordering food. So rather than going through the door, she did something else... The first thing she did was hide her identity, she did so by turning into her bug goblin, and to her surprise she only had to wait 20 hours now. She then activated her aura, and finally completely coated her bladed hand in all the fire she could muster, and just to make it even better, she added a little bit of venom into the mix, by not only making her flames green, but her aura also, and she even coated her other hand in the pure poison. 33 making a scene 2 Now that all of her preparations were done, she stepped closer to the glass and placed her hand against it, but sadly it seemed that the glass wouldn''t melt from this level of heat. So Qu then pulled the fire from her sword over to her hand and to help the affect she also tried to pull her fiery aura over towards her hand as well. Once she finished doing all of this she then tried placing her hand against the glass once again, and this time her hand slowly went through the glass until it was on the other side. By this point the people eating the restaurant had seen what she was doing, which was unfortunate as it meant that Qu would have to act a bit quicker, so she pulled all the fire away from her hand again and returned it to its original setup and punched the glass as hard as she could. *thump* Small cracks appeared where she hit, it seemed it was thicker and stronger than she thought. So she hit it again. *thump* More cracks appeared, by now all of the people in the restaurant are either preparing to run or starting to activate their own auras. *thump*... *thump* *thump* *THUMP* *THUMP* *BANG* After the series of punches, each one stronger than the last the entire glass window was covered in a big network of cracks. Everything seemed to go still, no one daring to even breath. *SMASH* Qu came smashing straight through the glass, glass shards flew through the entire restaurant. People started to flee and scream, but the odd few people stayed still, ready to fight if they need to. Qu ignored them, and started to calmly walk towards the man. She slowly began to prepare a fireball spell on the tip of her blade hand. The man was very thin, almost skeletal and was hunched. He wore a black suit with a white shirt, he had thin black hair and black dead eyes. But most importantly he wasn''t scared, or happy just completely empty of any emotion. Qu stepped closer and closer, then when she was around half way to the man he finally moved, he stood up, looked towards Qu and fixed his tie. Qu was nervous, it seemed that all would be easy, but the man seemed already dead, but he seemed as if he had control over the entire room. She couldn''t take it anymore, so the fireball was released and shot straight for his chest. The man didn''t flinch, his face didn''t change, he didn''t even blink. The ball smashed into his chest and fire sizzled on his clothing, but the man didn''t move, he didn''t even move from the impact. This was too weird even for Qu, so she sprinted at the man and lunged straight at him with her blade aimed at hid body. *thump* It felt like she hit a brick wall, the man didn''t move at all, her blade didn''t even pierce his flesh. She had to get away from him, this was too much, so she tried to kick off of the man to get some distance away from him, but she generated no force. Her legs hit against him but all the momentum she tried to build just didn''t appear, instead she just crashed against the floor without moving at all. She picked herself back up and scrambled away from him as fast as she could, she didn''t like this one bit, and she couldn''t think of any solution as to why this is happening. But then it hit her, magic. She activated her mana sense. The mana around him wasn''t normal, it usually moves around like water, still for moments and then shifting all at once like a massive wave. But his was still... Then he finally moved, he blinked and then hell broke loose. The mana around him exploded, as if all of the movements they should have made came out all at once. She looked back at the man, the fingers on his left hand were completely shattered, but then she felt it. Her stomach ached like it had been hit with a brick, and she flew backwards out into the street. ---- -30 health 200/230 ---- It was so weird, the man''s hand seemed to break for no reason and she was flung out into the street, and yet the man didn''t seem to move at all, all he did was blink. The people in the restaurant all ran out now, even those that were ready to fight didn''t want to get involved between these two. The restaurant staff had all evacuated the building and so it was just Qu and him. "system, give me status on this guy" ---- Name: Dilon Fus Species: human State: emotionless Health: 450/500 Mana: 600/700 Rank: rare Magic: recoil ---- Recoil magic, it all made sense now. He takes the force applied to him and smashed it back, but I''m guessing that he also still gets applied some of the force which would explain his broken fingers. It all seemed to add up now, but what did worry her was that he had to fight someone that was a whole rank above her. But seeing he still takes damage, it seemed that it would have to be a battle of attrition. So she dove straight back into the fight, she ran straight back into the restaurant and picked up a chair, she then ran closer to the man and threw the chair right at him. The chair struck against him and rather than breaking the chair as would be expected it hit against him and then fell to the floor in perfect condition. She continued to run towards him, and once she was within range she jumped upwards and grabbed the man''s head with her clawed hand and tried to topple him over, but once again he didn''t move and instead she just vaulted over him. Then once she hit the floor she spun around and slashed her clawed hand down his back and attempted to plunge her blade into his back, which just smashed against him. Qu then ran behind a table and flipped it to make it act as a shield, but before she allowed him move in the slightest yet, she then created a fireball on each of her clawed fingers and one on the tip of her blade, while she was doing this she also stared to create her burning streak spell on her mandibles. Then released all of them at once, each fireball smashed into his back and left sizzling marks against the back of his suit. Then the man moved, he spun around, but just as his head turned to face her, her burning streak spell collided with is head. The man fell backwards from the force and hit the floor, and the man''s head had a black scorch mark from where the spell hit. For only a second Qu felt happy. But then the force hit her. The table did nothing, it seemed the force just directly hit her. Her body ached and she flew backwards into the stone wall behind her. ---- -97 health 103/230 energy depleted 198/400 ---- blood leaked from gaps in her carapace, but the man seemed no better, he pulled himself up from the floor, his entire arm as bruised and shattered and his left hand was broken. She checked his health, ---- 127/500 ---- And his energy looked no better ---- 130/700 ---- It was a miracle, that lucky shot she got on him seemed to have actually put the two on an even playing field. But then the man smiled. 34 immovable objec "What is magic? Or in this case what is fire magic? We have studied ''normal'' fire, the type that can be wielded by those that do not have fire affinity, or in fact any affinity at all. But then we have fire created through the use of mana, and it breaks all the rules, you require no heat or fuel. The mana is thing that creates it but at the same time it is the fire. So then the obvious conclusion would be fire generated by mana is not in fact fire but rather something entirely different. But this too is wrong, how come someone can use mana to manipulate the fire that is meant to be so different just as easily as their own? So it is my theory that mana, fire attuned mana, is in fact the fuel. The oxygen to help create the reaction is all around us. The heat is around us as it is, even if it is small. So all that is left is fuel, and that is mana, what if taking over ''natural'' fire was just the same process as one candle lighting another. Now I am aware that this has flaws, something may not make sense to you, and you may be able to think of instances in which what I said doesn''t apply. So I implore each and everyone of you to think up of your own theory or back up a theory that appeals to you. This is an official assignment, I want it back in a weeks time, and no excuses this time. If you need help come and ask me or your family and friends." -Magical theory and the nature of mana- -mutare elementa, academy of spells- ----- That grin, a blood-curdling grin. It started small at first, just a slight smirk, but then it grew. It grew larger and larger until all of his teeth were showing, and then the laughter followed. He started to wail and scream with laughter, and for the first time in this fight he had emotion in his eyes. Wild and raw emotion filled his eyes, and soon madness followed. The impenetrable surface he seemed to be had been broken, and with it his mind. He laughed and laughed, and without breaking a beat ran straight towards Qu. Qu had to act fast, it would only be a moment of seconds before he would be face to face with her. She had no time to think, only time to act. But it was already too late, he was already mere moments away, he had already brought his fist up to strike her down. And then without her even knowing, her fist was already clenched and headed towards him. Her fist collided with his face, but rather than a usual punch, her fist glowed in a brilliant blue light, sparks of electricity flew around the room with her fist being the centre of it all. And then the sound of glass cracking. Qu opened her fist, and inside were shards of blue glass, each and every single one of radiated strong amounts of lightning mana. There was no time to run, she dropped the glass on the floor, spun around so that her back to against the explosion and tried to push as much of her fire mana on her back as she could. Then pain followed, she flew through the air like a cannonball and hit the ground hard. ---- -103 health 0/230 health ¡­ ¡­ ¡­ "Please don''t leave me... I''m not ready yet" ---- ----- Para Cantorp remained ever watchful of the town, the encounter he had with that girl was the most entertaining part of his day so far, but he had a feeling she would make his day even better. The first question that came to his mind was how she would act, technically she didn''t have to kill the man today. She could first scout him out, find his weaknesses and hobby''s, or she could rush into things. Frankly he believed it would be the second option, after all she was put under a contract and was threatened to be killed so she probably wanted to get things over and done with. His thoughts were quickly interrupted when the crystal device he uses to communicate with his grunts started to glow. "This better be important I''m busy at the moment" He snapped. "Sir there seems to be a brawl kicking off at the ''Para le'' cuppedia'', its between a weird looking fire mage and a emotionless looking man" The grunt told him. "Do not intervene, the fire mage is someone helping me deal with some things, I want you to ensure everything is cleaned up afterwards and that all loose ends are dealt with" He told him. It seemed that the girl did indeed choose to rush things along, this would surely be a good show. So he headed to his coat rack and pulled out a long black trench coat with a custom black hood build into it to shield his head from the sun. He then headed to his balcony and jumped from it with extraordinary an amount of strength, he then jumped from roof to roof until he had the perfect view of the battle. The first thing he noticed was the way that Qu looked, but he quickly threw it out as some weird custom armour she had gotten made. The second thing he noticed was that the two people were surprisingly evenly matched, he had 100% expected for Qu to get slaughtered within the first few moments. When the fight finally hit its climax, and he watched Qu get flung through the street from the explosion, he jumped down from the roof and looked at her battered and beaten frame. And chose that just this once to be merciful. He pulled a dagger out from his coat and slashed open his wrists and allowed his blood to trickle from his wrists. He then pried open her mandibles which then revealed her mouth and manipulated the blood down her throat. Eventually her chest began to rise and fall, and her body stirred as it came back to life. For a split second her eyelids shifted to reveal her massive compound eyes, but no sooner did they shut again as she fell asleep. Para picked her up and placed her against and wall, he then gave his men strict orders to ensure she is to come to no harm. He would have to talk to her about how to enter different situations, and he would much rather her look at the charred remains of that man then he. So he then left as quickly as he arrived and headed back to his house, he had many more tasks for that girl to take care of. 35 lightning dense zone "How do people become magically attuned to an element? Anyone, anybody at all know the answer to this?... Come on people, everybody in this room is attuned to an element and yet none of you know how it happens. Fine, I guess I better do my job and teach you then, a person can have a natural affinity to a type of mana, if this happens then that type of mana is naturally drawn towards you. Now you become attuned to this mana once your body is able to process this mana and store it as its own. People that aren''t fortunate enough to have a natural affinity to a type of mana can become attuned through other means. One example is that you may be lucky enough that your body just randomly starts to process and store mana. Another way is through special medicines and items that will temporarily draw certain types of mana to you to increase your chance of being attuned to it. And the most rare case of all, you find an area that has a natural higher density of a type of mana, by finding a place like this your body is exposed to that mana in a larger quantity than usual which then increases chances of attunement. Now seeing that you didn''t know that basic fact, I''m going to be adding another assignment on top of your other assignment. I want you to research your family tree and see if you have a natural affinity and if so what element, and if you don''t have a natural affinity I want you find out what way you were able to gain an attunement. That will be all, class dismissed" -magical theory and the nature of mana- -mutare elementa, academy of spells- ----- Qu opened her eyes, her body ached and her muscles were stiff, but she was alive. Somehow she had survived despite the fact her last memory was her health hitting 0. She sat up and looked apon the remains of the restaurant, bricks littered the floor and glass had been flung everywhere. But the restaurant itself was gone, all that was left was a ditch and blackened earth. But the weirdest thing of all was that the area had an oddly dense amount of lightning mana. The air itself was practically sparking with electricity, and worst yet the mana didn''t seem to be dissipating back to other types, the whole area was just ridden with the stuff. She walked towards the ditch, her body groaned as she walked, each step feeling like an achievement in itself. Then she found the charred remains of Dilon Fus, it seemed his magic tried to take the damage for recoil but it was too much for his body, but due to him absorbing some of the damage his body was at least somewhat in tact. She pushed her hand up against his chest and watched as her hand morphed back into grey ooze and engulfed the entire body, the moment this was done the ooze snapped back into place and her hand was back. ---- "Gained 1 new evolution point" ---- To be honest Qu had completely forgotten about her evolution points and her ability to combine creatures. She would definitely have to try and make some new creatures at some point. ---- "Your contract with Para Cantorp has been fulfilled" ---- Now that heavy weight had been lifted off of her chest she could finally go back to working on requests and work on her goal to get stronger. That was until she transformed back into her fire elemental human form, when she did so a small piece of paper floated out of her. This piece of paper was most likely stuck between a piece of her chitin, and on this paper was a message from Para. He wanted to see her as soon as she woke up. But Qu still had some matters to attend to, so Para would just have to wait. She then stepped back into the remains of the restaurant to try and find out what exactly she did. ---- "While you''ve been walking around and generally doing nothing, I figured out what exactly you did... So you know from ages ago, when you got a lightning core, well it turned out that was a physical item and not some loose mana you collected. So in the heat of the battle it seemed you accidentality pulled that lightning core out of you and cracked it open, the release in dense mana created a deadly explosion. But wait there''s more, so congratulations you have a basic inventory, you should be bale to hold up to 10 medium sized items, such as swords, daggers or a set of clothes. I do believe that when you go into the next rank of power (rare) you should be able to hold more items. But wait there''s even more, due to you releasing an incredibly large amount of lightning mana, you have created a natural phenomenon, you have created a lightning mana dense area, this is predicted to exist for the next 10 years. Now you may be asking what does this lightning mana dense area actually do, well I''ll tell you, it increases the chances of you gaining a lightning mana attunement just by being in it. So I''ll give you some advice, stay here for a little bit and soak up some of this sweet, sweet lightning mana and hopefully you''ll attune to it. And I suggest you do it now, because I can guarantee some rich magic people will soon be claiming this area for their own use." ---- On that note Qu then walked to the centre of where the explosion happened, where the mana was most dense and sat on the floor and allowed the mana in the area to flow through her. While she did this she also chose to try and use some fire magic. But what she soon realised was that it was much harder to use fire mana in an area mainly dominated by lightning mana, but luckily she could just manipulate the fire naturally produced on her body instead. She soon got bored of playing with the fire on her body though as she couldn''t really develop any spells with the fire on her body so it was kind of boring. So she chose to do the next best thing, she pulled up her menu to look at some creatures she could create, and this time some of the options did look a lot more tasty, it seemed that Qu was going to go on a spending spree, and gain a lot more new forms. 36 new forms ---- cost: 1 combo: bug goblin, wolf name: armoured wolf description: a wolf coated in armour made out of chitin, this armour does not inhibit the flexibility of the wolf building: by using the chitin plates from the bug goblin I was able to then incorporate them onto the wolf, in doing so the wolf now has pieces of armour fused to its skin - cost: 2 combo:horned rabbit, deer, dire rat, black dream scorpion, wolf, grey ooze name: spiked wolf description: a wolf with needles over all of its body where hair is present, it is able to mildly control these needles so that they can be flat against it so that items or creatures can touch its body without being damaged, or be spiked upwards to inflict damage building: through the use of all of the creatures at your disposal with spikes of some sort placed on its body I was able to create fine needle like structures. And through the use of the grey oozes excellent control I was able to make it so that the wolf has some control over the spikes on its body abilities: minor body control - cost: 2 combo: bug goblin, human, deer, wolf, horned rabbit, black dream scorpion, rat name: beastman description: will provide you with a random beastman variant of any creature in your possession. A beastman is a humanoid that has certain characteristics of the animal they are based after, be it physical or an ability building: by using the bug goblins fusion I was able to create a basis for the fusion of creatures with humanoids. Any creatures in the combo list could become a variety of beastman, at this point in time I can only make it random as to which - cost: 1 combo: rat, bug goblin, worm name: ant description: an extremely small creature that can lift much more than its body would make you think, they have excellent grip and are naturally found in massive colonies ruled by a queen building: bug aspects from the bug goblin have been extracted, this combined with the small size of the rat and the digging capabilities of the worm have led to the creation of the ant abilities: relative strength - cost: 1 combo: human, grey ooze name: formless slime description: a translucent creature that has a similar physic to the grey ooze, it has excellent control over its body, the body of the slime is an outer shell for a core building: by simulating the grey ooze eating a human and gaining its mass, I was able to create the next stage of an oozes life, in this case being slime abilities: minor body control ---- Qu couldn''t wait to be able to get some more forms under her belt, the first one she chose was the ant, seeing that the relative strength could be very useful. As soon as she selected the ant she was brought to the white space that she went to each time she created a ''combo creature''. Once again ash was floating around her, but unlike last time, she didn''t have to focus to be able to see the ash, in fact it was very obvious that it was there. Before she could look around some more she was brought back to her body, except this time she was very close to the floor, and she was extremely small. And when she activated her flames her entire body lit up like a match. She then chose the spiked wolf, and once again came back to the white zone, she looked around at the ash in the air, then it hit her. She activated her mana sense, and the entire area around her was filled with fire mana and fire mana alone, the ash in the air seemed to be packed with fire mana. So it seemed that this area was a representation of her soul. Then once again she was back in her body, this time however she was much taller than the ant form, she seemed to be around the same height as her wolf form, except this time she felt as if she had control over her body a little, it felt as if her body was covered in extra tiny limbs that she could control. Then after that she chose the formless slime, after waiting a few moments in her soul she returned to the world, it felt near the same as her grey ooze form except that it was just a bit larger. ---- "Due to owning two ''minor body control'' ability they have been merged to create ''basic body control''. This allows for more control over your body as well as finer control over your body. ---- she then immediately switched back to her spiked wolf form, and indeed she felt as if she had greater control over her spikes, in fact it felt as if she had some minor control over the hair on her body. After her little shopping spree, she transformed into her bug goblin form, she then headed down to the clothing shop she usually headed to and went to buy some clothes. She used the rest of her money (6 copper) on a new pair of trousers and a new shirt. Once she bought them she then transformed back into her fire elemental human form and put on her clothes, and one of things she noticed is that she a finer control over her body, it felt as if she could get more out her muscles and even better yet it seemed she had better control over the flames produced by her body. She then walked towards Para''s house, once she arrived she then knocked on the door and waited to be let in. Para didn''t seem to be in a good mood, when she walked in and looked at him behind his desk he had a fierce scowl etched onto his face. "Where have you been? I asked that you arrived as soon as you woke, and yet you have only just arrived" He said. "Don''t answer me, anyway lets get down to business. So you have paid me back for being cocky, but now you must pay me back for saving your life, I fed you health to keep you alive and you better be willing to return the favour" Para said. "But, I have only just returned from the last request, and as you know I nearly died. Could I at least have a couple of days off, I have friends to see, I need to continue to teach a boy, I have many responsibilities" She told him. "Fine, fine. You have 4 days, and you better be ready, if I was you I would use some of your precious time to improve your abilities. But after that whatever happens, happens." He said "I will contact you in 4 days time, you better be ready" And with that she was rushed out of the house and back onto the street. She then began to through the streets until she reached the remains of the restaurant. She wanted to try and get lightning affinity before the area was closed off to the public.