After a few minutes of burying my face in the mud with this Chimera body and new creepily long human fingers, I realized I wasn’t trying to literally drown my sorrows, but instead was taking a cool and refreshing dip in the water!

Ah, what a great way to relax on a fun and sunny day? I forced my interstitial flesh up to form the vague approximation of the smile.

Your Skill (Earned) Body Manipulation has grown to Level 14.

Fuck, System, don’t make a simple smile out to be a body contortion! Hahaha! After all, why get stuck on a weird mutation? Can’t I just ask Nightshade where he encountered the praying mantis creatures and we can just-

….no, wait, that won’t work. He will just want to rampage against the praying mantises for a while, before we head back to our base. Maybe I need to claim I want to go on a solo crusade against them? He seems obsessed with a particular brand of masculine chivalry. He would probably tearfully wave me away and await for my blood-soaked return…

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 16.

“Hah…” I floated the surface of my puddle and glanced around. I nearly jumped out of my lavender skin when I noticed Nightshade sitting calmly in a nearby clump of reeds.

“Brother. Your vengeful heart hasn’t yet sated itself after yesterday’s feast of blood, has it?” Nightshade’s three main heads nodded in understanding. “No, I comprehend completely. That unending hunger…! The joy of struggle! Alas, we’ve been away from our home for too long. I trust your work ethic, but we will soon host the congregation at the behest of our Kami. Its temple must be built before then.”

Eh?

Wait yes, my special mission-

Eh? Who was it that left after throwing up the next layer of bricks, but without laying out another set to dry?

Eh? It was me? Aiyaaaaaaaaah!

I hopped out of the pool. “Let’s head back immediately. Break time is over!”

“Indeed. Ah, it might be enjoyable to stop by Sagecity’s humble dwelling as we swing through the lower tributaries. When she spends too much time alone, I begin to worry… she is losing touch with reality.” On the three heads, the corners of Nightshade’s mouths turned down. “Of the three of us… I believe she is having the most difficulty adjusting to the… relative mundanity of our current existences.”

The MUNDANITY of our new existences?!? I was fucking a normal guy! My life was so mundane a small accumulation of stress killed me!

From there, my thoughts turned back to the issue of creating and stacking enough bricks in the next three days to accomplish the special mission. We ended up proceeding through the reeds at a brisk pace, Nightshade happily pouncing on any enemies unfortunate enough to cross our paths. I ended up so wrapped up in these practical concerns it took me almost an hour of travel, by which time we arrived alongside the sluggish flow of the broader river, to have the other information offered by Nightshade penetrate my brain.

I twitched in delayed surprise. “Wait what? Sage has another dwelling? A riverfront property?”

Nightshade nodded. “Well, the stump… it was beginning to be a little cramped, with all three of us having evolved.”

I swayed, experiencing a profound sense of disassociation. I felt like a housewife from Akron Ohio, happily waving goodbye to her husband as he went on ‘business’ trips to Buffalo and Pittsburgh, only to find out that he maintained entire other families in these cities.

“...a little cramped…” I mumbled to myself. After all the effort I had poured into making our stump dwelling cozy… My heavy tortoise legs stomped through squelching mud.

Were my initial investments in this life… really so undesirable…?

T-to be fair, creating a dwelling for monsters that evolve isn’t the simplest thing, right? Humph, I can certainly do better next time.

“Ah, you can see it there,” Nightshade paused on a small mound and gestured with one of his heads.

My eye rolled slowly in that direction, filled with dread. A powerful feeling of inadequacy filled me as I saw what Sage was able to accomplish. If anything, it was worse than I had imagined. A fucking circus tent, complete with colorful palm fronds lined with feathers, fluttered in the distance.

A miniature circus tent, Chimera Core sized, but still.

“...what…?” I muttered and swayed, delirious from repeated mental setbacks. First was the debacle of the hands, which might have remained a constant source of negative energy in my mind despite my claims otherwise, and now I found out that Sage had moved out… and up into a better home than I could provide?

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I felt the problematic gears of my mind starting to twitch. As someone who had already died once of a stress-induced brain aneurysm, I had a passing familiarity with the early warning signs-

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 17.

You shit System, are you trying to imply I might really die at this rate- keh, no, self, don’t let such petty notifications distract you…

Because truthfully, I needed a release. Right now. And although my lip curled to think of it, with full Mana, only one possibility came to me.

“Give me a second,” I said to Nightshade. He nodded and I hurried away through the reeds.

I found a small streamlet with a particularly leafy bunch of tall flowers. I surreptitiously glanced around for any possible observers. I shivered and laughed at myself. Why the hell would such an embarrassing act be a release…? Truly, the path of leisure is profound and- well, bizarre.

I felt my arm muscles begin to distort and looked down at my human-ish hands in shock. The digits shifted gracefully. Wah, wait, my hands… am I reflexively forming hand seals?!?

Your Skill (Earned) Body Manipulation has grown to Level 15.

Your Skill (Earned) Mana Sensitivity has grown to Level 16.

Due to unique actions, your Seep Blessed Oils has earned +9 Proficiency!

Perhaps due to my suddenly enthusiastic (and mildly sapient?) hands, the amount of liquid pouring from my body was almost a third again more in volume than the previous activations. I shivered in something between pleasure and shame as my Mana drained away and gleaming drops fell from my lavender skin.

When I finally regained control of my body, I hopped into the streamlet and furiously scrubbed away all the liquid. I couldn’t help but twitch when I saw the way the drops seemed to refuse to disperse. They floated down the stream like mutinous little jewels.

Don’t think about it. Out of sight, out of mind. Thankfully, none of those pesky spiderlings are in the area to pilfer this… strange liquid. Let’s think of it positively; this is a vacation from perverts…

My good mood lasted until I returned to Nightshade and his squirrel head-pillar-arm, realizing that perhaps I had just chosen a different sort of pervert as a traveling companion. But I did my best not to let that get to me. We three were sworn siblings. We had come into the world together. We survived and escaped from Raccain together. No matter what else happened…

No matter if they abandoned the fruits of my construction efforts and created their own domiciles…!

We are siblings, I felt my stubbornness wiggling and sinking deeper into the foundation of my mind, but didn’t try to stop it. Not a replacement for Mimi, but a second chance at nurturing that important relationship. So long as I invest in them…

As always, I returned to our joyful jelly dance. Imagining the tentacle-waving revelry always calmed me down.

With those thoughts in mind, we moved through the swamp toward the fluttering silken awnings in the distance. But for the third time on this journey, I froze and stared at the area around me. The terrain in this area was more rugged than any of the other areas we’d pass through, and running along the top of ridges was a familiar-looking vine. I pivoted and stomped sideways; my shocked instinct was confirmed when I saw tiny little rubies bobbing along in the streams below the ridges.

“Cranberries?” I gaped. I slid down the muddy slope and waded out into the stream, stretching out a tentacle and plucking up a cranberry. My 7 Perception turned out to be enough to give me a muted sensation of the flavor and I dearly wished I had thought to absorb a tongue.

Wait, I do have a tongue, it just heals…

I shook myself before the dark thoughts could take me again. Instead, I allowed myself a brief moment of fantasy where I imagined that, in addition to creating a wonderful dwelling that would be enough to lure Sage back to living with us, I could also create a wonderful fruit orchard.

My eyes shifted to Nightshade, who looked over. And you… hehehe, let’s turn your wild aggression toward those pesky snakes that have greedily settled on top of my strawberries…

“I like the look in your eyes, brother,” Nightshade laughed and slithered down to join me. “Do those small bits possess Anima?”

“No, but I have an idea for them. Later. Anyway, let’s visit Sage.”

When we finally arrived right in front of Sage’s little home away from home, I couldn’t decide whether to be happy or annoyed. Certainly, her ‘compound’ was almost double the size of my stump cottage. The loose and fluttering walls gleamed and sparkled beautifully in the sun.

However, what I assumed to have been palm fronds were really woven lines, with bright bird feathers tucked into the weave to add more flavor. I could also see through to the places where the woven vines had been messily tied to wooden sticks to add height. A petty part of myself felt smug that my world had quite a few sophisticated building and material accomplishments that would allow me to provide a base more than capable of luring Sage back.

…but do I remember how to do that sort of stuff?

Your Skill (Earned) Monster’s Wisdom has grown to Level 18.

Keh, just remember…. The System might be rude now, but tsun…. I dere you to keep up this attitude with me…!

However, all the guilt I felt over feeling superior vanished when two small, baby canaries fluttered down in front of Nightshade and I. The first slipped in the mud and face-planted, covering its fluffy feathers in dirt. The second descended with more grace and released a high-pitched trill. “Interlopers! Who dares approach the wondrous palace of a thousand pleasures, home to Revered Sagacity?!”

Your Skill (Language) Bestial Comprehension has grown to Level 4.

“What?” I blinked.

Nightshade snorted, his new right arm/single-squirrel-head swelling to double its previous size. The head snapped forward and gulped down the small canary. I was about to chide Nightshade on his cavalier bloodlust, but he flicked the head sideways and the canary came tumbling out of the mouth. Another flick of a head sent the muddy one face-first into another mud puddle.

“Ignore them, Sage should be within,” Nightshade rolled confidently forward. For a brief second, I felt glad to have Nightshade my side. His behavior might be a little strange, but he at least was my brother, through thick and thin.

However, all those warm feelings vanished as I heard a shriek from the depths of the tent. “You stalker! Cease darkening my doorstep!”

Nightshade stumbled backward, being pelted by several glittering bits of rock. All tails and self-righteous indignation, Sage stomped out of the tent. Her expression noticeably brightened, however, when she saw me. “Oh! Tallum! By the great fire, I am glad you are here. Let’s band together and pop Nightshade like the abscess he is!”