So I am alone for now... My sister will get home in roughly an hour while my father and my brother will come home somewhere between 7-8 pm.

Hmm... what do I do now?

Nothing interesting is on the TV at the moment. I also checked RoyoalRoadl with my phone when I was in school and there were no new chapters on the stories I read. I guess I could try to learn more about my ability to change forms. I noticed that I could look into how it works when I first used it but at that time I thought that looking into that could wait for later. I've experienced the result of not knowing it first hand so I will try to change that. It will most likely be necessary for me to change forms again at some point and I want it to go smoother when that happens.

So I go to my room and sit down on my bed and concentrate on my mana. I have to coat my entire body in it again and then concentrate on the overall state of my body to enter the phase where I can try to analyze this innate magic of mine.

As I have already done so once before, I manage to do it relatively quickly this time. Though it still took several attempts but not as many as last time.

Now that my entire body is coated in mana and I have managed to enter the phase where I usually select the form I want to change into, I instead focus on how my mana acts in my body and look for something that could tell me how all this works.

Once I did that, I felt how my intuition took control and guided me to my head. Or more specifically, my brain. The moment I inspected the mana in my brain my head was attacked by an unreal amount of information. Pentagrams, equations, and instructions all flew wildly through my head and most of it was completely incomprehensible to me.

My concentration was instantly destroyed and my mana dispersed. This left me heavily exhausted. Until now I only moved my mana inside my body or on my skin. Because of that, the mana was not consumed or anything and always returned to the mana lump near my heart. However this time it was dispersed and didn't return.

I quickly checked how much MP I had lost. The result was that I lost 20 MP reducing my MP to 50/70.

Just losing 20 MP made me this exhausted? I feel just like I did in my old body when I ran for 30 minutes straight.

But seriously, what the heck was that. All that information and I don't understand anything about it. Well, nearly anything. The only thing that I managed to understand, was that it somehow changes the structure of my muscles as well as skin and their properties while molding them into shape. All that with a ton of information on just how it does that. It even mentions how to remove your ability to feel pain as that is impossible to avoid. It somehow temporarily messes with my nerves and my brain but I don't understand how just yet. I can imitate the effect though. It is possible to use my mana to block the signals my nerves would send. The only problem is here that without the correct method, I won't be able to remove only the pain. Meaning that I will have to completely cut off all feelings from it. This also makes me unable to use whatever I have cut off for as long as I cut it off. At least I won't have to go through another traumatic experience so that's still something.

Now since I can't understand anything else about the process yet and I would just lose even more mana, I will leave it at that. I will rest for now and recover my mana. I don't need to sleep though. This exhaustion is more like you just need to rest and then you will be able to continue instead of an exhaustion that causes sleepiness.

I play a bit on my phone while waiting for my mana to regenerate and my exhaustion to go away.

It only took a little more than 20 seconds to recover my mana, however, I was still exhausted for several more minutes. I wonder why?

Anyways, I am completely recovered and bored so what do I do now. The time is roughly 16:30 so I still have half an hour until my sister comes home.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Since I don't have anything else to do, I just continue playing on my smartphone for a while. Roughly half an hour later I can hear how the front door is being unlocked with some keys. That means my sister is home. I put my phone away and go downstairs to greet her.

"Hi, Maria. Anything interesting happened to you?"

"Oh hi Mark. Well, nothing too interesting but a bit did happen. Let me just put away all my stuff and then we can talk."

I nodded, went into the living room and sat down on the couch.

Maria came shortly after. Most of what she told me is just the same that I was told in school so that was nothing new. However, there was still something else.

"When I was about to leave the school there was an announcement that we received new information from the military about the situation in Stuttgart. Apparently, the military decided to seal of Stuttgart so that none of these strangely strong and aggressive animals will get to attack other villages or cities."

A logical choice. The more they spread, the more they will be able to attack people and the more casualties there will be.

"This was successful until earlier this noon. Some of these animals managed to escape Stuttgart and have started rampaging in the vicinity."

"Wait for a second, they managed to break through this noon and we only get to know this when it's already nearly evening?"

"They didn't want any kind of mass panic in the cities near Stuttgart and tried to eliminate them before they would be able to get anywhere. However, when they noticed that they failed to do so they made it public."

 Like it was planned my phone vibrated. When I checked, it was because the news that reported about what my sister just told me. Sigh what a situation. 

"Yeah, I just got the news on my phone."

She smiled at me with a helpless expression. 

According to the news the strange animals managed to break through and are going north. All cities in the immediate vicinity are already in the middle of evacuating or preparing to do so. Magdeburg also lies north of Stuttgart. However, the 2 cities are 480km apart so there is no risk at all, is what they say. 

"If it's that bad, do you think that Mom is okay?"

"Don't worry she should be. After all, she was already on her way home when this all started so she shouldn't be directly caught up in it. She probably just met the military on her way as they blockaded the roads."

"Nh..."

*ding dong

"Maria, are expecting some guest?"

"No, I don't. Well, it's probably just the delivery man or something. I did order some clothes for you after all. I'll go get it."

Maria stood up and went to the front door.

form the living room I could only hear some bits of her conversation.

"... from the Bundeswehr... Maria Dämmerung?"

"Yes, I am."

"... other family members home?"

At this point, I got too curious and decided to see who our guest is.

Standing in front of the gate was a man in military clothes and a clipboard in his hands.

"My little brother, well little sister now is home. The others aren't."

"Now little sister? What do you mean?"

"I mean that after that event, my little brother became a little sister."

The soldier paused for a moment before writing something on his clipboard.

"Ok then. This is the first time something like this has been recorded so it is possible that someone else may contact you at a later date. Anyways I am here to confirm your identities and general information. For that, I would appreciate it if you would show me your status without withholding anything."

Ah, right there was something like that.

We quickly showed him our statuses. Maria did it first. The soldier didn't show any particular emotion while looking through it.

"Am I right in my assumption that the little miss next to you is Mark Dämmerung? If so could you please show me your status?"

 "Yes, I am Mark."

I quickly showed him m status. I just want to get this over with quickly.

The soldier, who didn't really show any emotion while looking through my sister's status did not manage to conceal his emotions this time around. His face showed obvious surprise and bafflement. 

He vigorously wrote on his clipboard while looking through it. After he finished, he quickly fixed his expression and returned to a neutral one. 

"Okay, that's all for now. Do you know when your other family members will return? I need to see their statuses as well."

Maria decided to speak.

"Well, our father and big brother will return somewhere between 7 pm and 8 pm. Our mother was supposed to return yesterday already. A few months ago she was transferred to the tax office in Stuttgart. Because of the appearance of these strange animals, she was supposed to go home yesterday but she hasn't arrived or contacted us yet."

"Is that so. Would it be alright if I would come again at half past 7 pm? Or should I return tomorrow?"

"I think it's alright to return today in the evening. It would be same tomorrow as well after all so it wouldn't make a difference."

"Then I'll do just that. Have a nice day."

With that, the soldier walked over to our neighbors and repeated the whole procedure while I and my sister went back inside the house.

I hope that the fact that the soldier was so surprised by my status won't cause any trouble later on.