Sight! Finally! My eyes had been stewing and going through multiple different attempts to regain the ability to see what was in front of me. It's like adaptation could tell there was a problem but couldn’t tell that the easiest solution was to make some eyeholes!

To say I now had eyes like a hawk would be an understatement, the level of clarity I’d achieved was unreal! In fact… it almost felt like my brain was a bit too slow to really make use of its full potential currently. Maybe I’ll do some hard math problems later and become a giga-brain or something to balance it out, for now I’ve sat down long enough.

I hopped up and made my way back near the lake… with electrical sense or whatever it’s called active just in case. I leaned over the water to get a good look at myself- I looked like… a knight and… Well, Doomsday. I had the whole spiky aesthetic going with sharp points coming off my elbow, knees, fingers, toes and shoulders. I even had something similar to the braided hair he had with the predator dreads.

Thankfully no spike beard or unibrow of bone. I still looked fucking terrifying though and I’m glad I’m not in America cos I’d place a bet on being shot damn quick. I spent a bit more time checking myself out in the river's reflection before trying to backtrack and make my way on my original path.

Every now and then I’d see a road, read the directions and continue on my way- now with the added difficulty of being in more high traffic and residential areas. I got spotted a few times and got pointed at a bit, uncomfortable sure but a better reaction than I reckon I’d have.

…But it was getting a bit too difficult to stay unnoticed, I was well and truly back amongst humanity and while interesting to see so many people clustered together, all it would take is one curious police officer to put a halt to my cross-country plans.

There was another river nearby, with any luck it’d lead to a port where I could tail a cargo vessel or something. Besides, I didn’t need to breathe and was halfway to a bony submarine already. I ducked into the water and started going with the flow… I wish! My chunky self was too dense for that to be effective… Now that I think about it- will I be too heavy to swim across the sea?

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The water where I was currently was deep and murky enough to block anyone looking from the surface, my eyes were also overqualified to see through something like this and I didn’t exactly have to surface so I figured practicing my swimming long enough for adaptation to create a solution would be a good idea- I really don’t wanna reach the port and end up having to basically walk my way to Japan underwater.

I couldn’t really lie down and start paddling (I’d just end up with my head in the muck) but I could attempt to ‘jump’ while using my strong legs and arms to displace enough water to keep me from immediately sinking like a stone for a few seconds… still sank though. I could feel my hands and feet getting a bit of retractable webbing which was nice- not enough but still handy (hah pun).

I continued my hopping around (with my current appearance and slight buoyancy I probably looked like either an astronaut on the moon or Cthulhu's best friend). I’m not sure of everything my body changed… I mean I was already pretty streamlined despite being a bit spiky, I didn’t need gills since I didn’t need to breathe, my eyes could probably work in any environment and I doubt I’d be dropping any weight since my muscle was needed to move with so much bone and I could tell that the bone suit wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon due to that asshole of a plant (the first thing I’d rubbed with the plant had of course been my face and eyes so you can probably imagine how much that spurred on the creation of my new armor).

A little hop and a skip later (mainly hops)-

I felt that my body had done some slight modifications all around- streamlining a bit here, changing the legs a bit there and creating some spiny fins in a few areas for easier movement direction. Nothing that’d really make swimming possible yet though I was hoping that whatever I was currently feeling would change that, I could feel my body churning a bit- kinda similar to how it felt before the dreads actually, was I gonna get another new organ or something?

My back started glowing red as my tailbone extended (cool as this was, it also hurt like a bitch!), “Gah!” (or what counts for that underwater). I didn’t notice any other adaptations physically hurt- only a bit of itchiness or the headache from the sensory overload… but this?! THIS HURT! It felt like someone was bending my spine the wrong way or taking a chisel to my back!

I didn’t notice that it actually had to punch a hole through the plating near my ass to continue the process either. As I spasmed about in the water a large skinny bone tail extended from my lower back, this was quickly covered in a dense array of muscle before being covered in flexible and tough skin with bony plating running from its tip all the way up to my shoulders- all of this also accompanied by the red glow.

When the torture session drew to a close (hope this doesn’t become a regular thing… I’m Doomsday. Who am I kidding?) I could finally spend some time going over my new body part. A tail huh? It felt like I’d been born with it… it was also really long… like longer than the rest of my body- looking at the bony spikes also reminded me of something, it wasn’t a perfect match (less spiky) but it really did look like the tail of Godzilla… and I was going to Japan… Was this a sign?