Underworld - Book 4 - Chapter 3

The conversation continued for another hour before everyone’s questions were satisfied. Satisfied might not be the best word for it, but no one came up with an alternative that changed my mind about leaving.

Olivia and Skyler didn’t even wait for everyone to leave the room before they had Khun turn the Dungeon Aura on to attract monsters. About half of our people headed toward the Outer Perimeter. It looked like they had decided their break from fighting was over.

I got started on planting and growing the crops that would keep the other’s going while I was gone. It was more tedious than difficult. I had to plant the grain and feed it Light Magic until it reached maturity. At that stage it would survive while I was gone and not lose its magic properties. One thing I wouldn’t be able to help the others with was the daily harvest that would have to be done in order for our grain to keep its potency.

Just because my job was tedious didn’t mean I couldn’t do other things while I worked. I was limited in what I could power level because I didn’t want to use Light Magic. 7,386 Mana Per Minute still gave me a lot of room to work with though. Fire Incubus Form cost almost twice as much MPM as I had, but with my mana pool I could still keep the form going for about half an hour. I already missed amping up my Mind Buff.

Fire Incubus Form had reached level 97, so it wouldn’t level quickly no matter what I did when I was limiting my buffs. There was something I’d been toying with in the back of my mind that I’d been wanting to try out. As a shapeshifter, there were no rules saying that I had to stick with a single form. I could mix and match as I pleased within the natural rules each of my forms allowed. There was much to consider. Just as Magma Fist had seared the flesh of my arm when I’d first tried to cast it, I needed to figure out how well the different aspects of each of my forms would work together.

I cast Stone Skin over my left hand and wrist before Magma Fist took shape a moment later throughout my hand and fingers. I had perfected the skill enough that it only took 2,000 MPM. Primordial Cat Form was still only level 10, but it was practical experience from playing around with this sub-spell of the form that allowed me to cut 1,000 MPM off of its casting. It made me question all my other manipulations of other forms and spells, but I’d get to those when the time came.

There was another form I had to add to the mix. My skeletal armor once again receded from my torso and my Fire Incubus wings sprouted from my back. At level 97, Fire Incubus Form cost 232 Mana Per Second, or 13,920 MPM. The wings were only one aspect of the form, but they were huge in size compared to my Magma Fist and yet they cost nearly the same amount.

I wouldn’t try flying while I was working, but I wanted to have my wings out just so that I could get used to how it felt to move around with them.

Stretching them out to their full span, I could feel the leather like membrane tighten as it became taut. Leaning from side to side, they naturally shifted with my weight to help me balance. They had more mobility than I would have guessed. The new muscles in my back were the oddest part of the experience. It wasn’t like working out and feeling the muscles that you normally use. These were powerful, flexible, and ready.

Pulling my wings in tight to their rest position, I couldn’t help but to think they became surprisingly compact. The joint at the top of their reach where they folded in two hung over my head at about the height of where the horns of my skeletal helmet would be. I didn’t think they would get in Aeris’s way, but I was curious what she would think of them being there.

I moved to a different plot of soil that Steve had already seeded and let Light Magic flow out of my still human hand at a steady pace into the ground. He was already three plots ahead of me and would probably be done with the entire field before I got halfway finished.

With just over 3,000 MPM left, I took a moment to look myself over. My chest was bare, showing off the tight muscle and more durable skin my ascension had left me with. Skeletal armor covered me from the waist down with thick sheets of solid bone and rounded joints where the sheets connected. My Magma Fist had its heat contained, so it looked like a sculpture of igneous rock. It was still a little creepy watching my own hand move in its solid state.

I didn’t currently have my helm equipped, so all that I saw were my own wings towering behind me when I twisted my head to look back. Curious, I loosed them from their position of rest and wrapped them around me so that I could see what the membrane felt like. As I gently touched it with my human hand, a chill went up my spine as I felt the sensation through both my hand and wing. Through the membrane, it didn’t feel like it was being touched directly, but the smallest pressure pulled at the nerves along bone of my wing’s frame. What I felt with my hand didn’t feel natural. It was as if the armor-like skin of the Fire Incubus had been stretched across a canvas. It was much more elastic than I’d realized.

Another use for my wings became immediately apparent. Wrapping myself with them would give me an entire new layer of armored protection to hide behind.

I manipulated my skeletal armor to solidify over my chest and took my time experimenting with how best to shape it on my back so that it wouldn’t interfere with my wing’s movements.

There was another non-form spell that I’d been thinking about for a while now.

Tail Regrowth

If your tail is severed, at the expense of mana, you are able to regrow it. 

Note: If you do not have a tail, or want to manipulate your tail to possess talons, claws, or pinchers, this spell must reach its final level.

At first look, this spell seemed worthless since I didn’t have a natural tail of my own, but the promise of being about to grow one when it reached its final level was like a hidden challenge that had me intrigued. Since I was going full shapeshifter mode, adding a tail to my repertoire seemed like a must. On the practical side of things, I already knew the utility of having extra appendages. Having a fifth limb would take practice, but it could give me another advantage. Besides, I could just uncast the spell whenever I didn’t want to walk around with it.

I sifted through my shapeshifting forms, looking for the best one to steal a tail from. Many of them I could forget about entirely. Slimes didn’t have tails, and neither did werewolves. Primordial Cat had one but using Tail Regrowth probably wasn’t possible since Magma Manipulation allowed me to reshape the magma however I desired. Minotaur was a no go and so was the Rock Giant Form. Hell Hound was the only form I had with a good solid tail, and this one could burst into flames—it looked amazing. The only problem was that it was much shorter than I had in mind. If I was right about Tail Regrowth though, in time, that would change.

In comparison to my wings and magma fist, casting my tail cost almost nothing at 18 MPM. I still had plenty of room for a number of other additions to my current form if I so desired. Before that, I needed to figure out how I would cut off my tail so that I could cast Tail Regrowth. It was beginning to sound like a bad idea.

I had another problem. Adding a tail to my form might be a little difficult without mooning all of Sanctuary…

With a sigh, I cast Hell Hound’s tail and cringed as it started to grow beneath my skeletal armor. Using the pain to pinpoint its location, I released my armor around the area to allow the tail freedom to escape from my tail bone region. Looking around the room, I closed bone armor around my tail now that it was free. It didn’t seem that anyone had been watching.

After a couple swipes to get a feel for it, I curled my tail around to where I could take a look. “Hey little guy.” I held in the tail’s flames, so that it looked like a normal dog’s tail with wiry black fur. Its end was frayed, and it was about a meter in length. I certainly couldn’t use it to grab ahold of something in the same way I could with one of my bone appendages.

Before I marred my new addition, I came up with a game plan of how best to deal with the pain. I’d no idea how quickly Tail Regrowth would work, which made the prospect a little unnerving.

I stopped working on the crop for a moment while I tried my experiment. I would need my human hand to continue working, but that meant I’d need to do something with my Magma Fist to take care of my tail. Heat wouldn’t do. Burning it off couldn’t possibly be better than cutting. Besides, it was a tail that could quite literally burst into flames that I was working with here.

Using magma manipulation, I reformed my magma hand into an igneous blade. Feeling the edge, it seemed sharp enough, but I’d need to use two hands. That gave me an idea. 

My magma fist took its new shape. I almost stabbed myself by facepalming with my new pair of magma scissors because of how ridiculous they looked.

Here goes nothing.

My healing magic was already saturating in the area where I was going to cut as I placed my tail between my two scissor blades. With a firm snip, I severed about a foot off my tail and cast Tail Regrowth in the same moment. It felt like a sharp pinch, but Tail Regrowth worked almost instantly, deadening the pain. My tail was restored.

It had worked far better than I had hoped.

You better understand the essence of The Tail!

I shook my head. It was the kind of spell that didn’t divulge much information as it progressed. The good news was that I’d received an indicator after using it for the first time, so hopefully I wouldn’t have to continue with the process many more times before it reached its final level. It didn’t cost much either. I’d flooded it with excess mana, but even then I’d restored what I used in a few seconds.

To keep things simple, and to make further use of the rest of my MPM, I cast Minotaur as a partial Form. Leaving my Magma Fist, Incubus Wings, and Hell Hound Tail in place, the rest of me started to change. I allowed my skeletal armor to reform to my new shape as my feet became hooves and my body grew and expanded. I felt fur form under my armor, and strangely, this form didn’t bring with it a feeling of increased power even though there was a decent one.

Minotaur Form

Level: 1

Cost: 20,000 Mana Per Minute (4,000 with buffs)

Strength: +1 for every Character Level, +1% Strength

Dexterity: +1 for every Character Level, +1% Dexterity

Constitution: +1 for every Character Level, +1% Constitution

Special Abilities: Magic Resistance, Wild Bull

Magic Resistance: 

Level 1

5% Damage Resistance to every School of Magic 

Wild Bull: Pushes past any mind-affecting status effects and allow you to continue your attack.

Note: This puts you in a state of auto attack if you lose consciousness. Target picked at random. If you regain consciousness the attack stops immediately.

Next Level:

Cost: 19,850 Mana Per Minute (3,970 with buffs)

+1% Strength

+1% Dexterity

+1% Constitution

I limited the form in another way by not allowing it to transform my neck or anything above it. This was mostly to benefit the others who might not take kindly to seeing a random minotaur working among their crops in the heart the Living Quarters. It was bad enough to have an abnormally large skeleton with a human’s head, wings and a tail.

Speaking of tails, I watched the severed end dissolve into nothing at my feet. Without a steady supply of mana it lost its form and was gone.

I got back to work. Power leveling Tail Regrowth wasn’t exactly fun, but I hadn’t forgotten the foreboding darkness that I imagined was approaching with every passive moment. Mistress Nava was coming. She may not be on the way at this very moment, but when her minotaur army didn’t return… Any advantage I could get was worth a small amount of pain. And this pinch didn’t compare to how it would feel if I didn’t have healing magic and Tail Regrowth at my disposal.

As for my Minotaur Form, it didn’t cost much and using it as a partial form would allow me to level it up. I could keep it going indefinitely. It would normally cost me 4,000 MPM, but in this state it cost me two thirds of the total, or 2,666 MPM, leaving me with a little left over. I wasn’t yet convinced Minotaur would become one of my go to forms, but it would help me level my mastery and there were no negatives unless you counted becoming a giant bull. It might also have some good situational uses, like in the rare scenario I was about to run out of mana and stampeding around like a raging bull sounded like a better idea than death. The worst part was I was pretty sure that I’d have need of it one day.

I returned most of my attention to growing our crops. The sooner it was done, the sooner we could leave. Once I was free to use my Light Magic, then I’d get to really experiment with my new ultimate form.