Unsure what to expect, I pressed the red button on the communication device Moreau had given me. The device sparked and fizzled, letting out smoke as it melted with acrid plumes of plastic.

“Figures.” With a sigh of disappointment, I turned my focus to the task ahead.

The transformation started with a single breath.

Hunting Mode (1): * -1 AP / Second *

* +8 Senses / Second *

And immediately the rain and thunderstorm became overwhelmingly loud. All thoughts were drowned out by the ever-growing volume of droplets, splashing streams, and rolling thunder. I clenched my jaw shut, fighting to keep myself focused as my body was already growing, changing, sinking deeper into the mud under its own weight.

It was too late to back down, and I needed aural-vision, otherwise Shadow could be standing right in front of me and I wouldn’t be able to tell. Not that things were going too well when I felt like I was being screamed at from every available direction at the same time.

Claws dug into mud as I heaved, unable to even pick out the sound of my own breathing over the deluge around me.

Achievem-

I instantly cut off the mode, not even bothering to read the prompt and hoping nothing had changed, because I just couldn't even make out individual letters. The world was too loud, there was too much movement, too many things demanding attention all at the same time. The chorus of droplets only being interrupted by the earth-shaking rumble of thunder strikes, the flashes of light blindingly bright, searing themselves into my retinas if I happened to be looking the wrong way.

It was a struggle not to unmake the transformation and try some other approach. Maybe the logic was a little sunk-cost-fallacy, but the truth was that I could not afford otherwise either way. Of all days, this one was going to need every shred of AP I could get.

Slowly, I focused on one thing at a time, doing my damn best to physically block out everything else. First was touch, and how each droplet fell upon my broad shoulders, running down my skin, striking my head. Then came scent, the smell of rain, the slight acrid touch of smoke and the sharp smell of ozone. Once I carefully identified each little thing lingering in the air, I could slowly breathe without filling my brain with noise. Then, I began to very slowly uncover my ears, allowing bit by bit more sound in. Just as with scent, I categorized the sounds, though mostly by how far away they were. Then came sight, and the cacophony of movement and random blinding flashes of light.

I just sat there, legs crossed, taking it all in, slowly, until my brain stopped hurting and until I could hear my thoughts again.

I proceeded to take a step forward.

I proceeded to slip and face-plant into the mud.

Grumbling, and needing a minute to properly readjust my bearings, I stood back up and chose to take things into my own metaphorical hands a little.

Blades [F] Purchased [-10 AP]

Velocity Mode (2): * -2 AP / Second *

* +8 Speed / Second *

Rather than focus on the speed itself, I wanted to make traversing this mud easier, faster, and to not have to face-plant every other step. The changes began slowly but surely, with my feet feeling wider and sturdier at the same time, the focus of the system’s efforts being mainly on my lower body in its entirety.

Bit by bit, step by step, the mud became easier to traverse, clawed feet having become… wide hooves? I realized that though the mud was knee-deep, my new feet could find purchase near the bottom, turning my movement forward into a grueling trudging push uphill.

SKREAAAAAAblblblblbl

I blinked, turning to look in the direction of the scream, finding a tiny G-class mouther hopping out of the mud. The thing was shrieking its lungs out as it jumped my way, then sinking into the mud, then screaming once more once it surfaced, only to repeat the cycle.

The mud was suffering, the mud was pain, and the monsters got to enjoy it just as much as I did.

I put the thing out of its misery with a shove of the shield (which, proportionately, was now the size of my torso). The splatter of monster bubbling guts brought a pleasant little shiver and a new notification, soon followed by another.

Achievement: Reach +200 Adaptive Speed Unlocked: Twitch Muscles

Reaction time is halved

Time to start on one of the new stats. If I wanted to be able to face-up to Shadow when she showed up, I needed to push endurance as high as it could go.

Long-Run Mode (3): * -3 AP / Second *

* -1 Speed / Second *

* +8 Endurance / Second *

While speed left a slight feeling of electricity running through my body, endurance was like having ice pumped into my warm muscles. Not in an unpleasant way either, I could feel as if the exertion turned into a mere momentary strain. There were other things, ones I couldn’t quite piece together, not when my ears were picking up on the odd splatter and screech. Dragging myself forward, I found more small monsters to kill, morsels that were desperately trying to trudge through the mud that would often swallow them up.

The more I pushed through mud, the more monsters I fought, the more mud I’d need to push through. By the time I’d gathered enough monster kills to push Endurance all the way to 400, I’d started up on the next mode: agility. And though the stat needed to gobble up 4 AP at a time, I was keeping it well-fed, ignoring unassuming traits from F’s in favor of loading up with as many points as I could within the span of time I had available. Minute after minute, hour after hour, my thoughts felt like they’d turned into gears, spinning in place and pushing forward one annoying step at a time.

Think Mode (4): * -4 AP / Second *

* -1 Endurance / Second *

* +8 Agility / Second *

Agility was a buzz straight to my brain, my thoughts running to catch up with one another, thoughts upon thoughts upon thoughts. It didn’t help the sensory overload, not really, the racing happening within my head only seemed to provide more nuance and details and information to everything that was coming in. The scents and the sounds were being picked apart into finer constituent components and then cobbled together to provide new information.

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I found better ways to move through the mud, shifts in posture and movement that optimized speed uphill. Downhill I’d just use the shield like a surfboard, the need for balance a hard lesson I learned a few times before I’d found something that worked. Monsters were mentally dissected and pulled apart, as I’d figure out a full battle-plan within seconds of noticing their existence. A few times I also had to just lunge into the mud and hide, sensing something amiss way overhead. I still wasn’t entirely sure what, but I suspected it was a C-class moving about from within the thunderstorm. Or maybe it was something stronger? I couldn’t tell from all the way down here, but it just felt like sometimes something was about to notice me and I HAD to duck or else.

Was that sense of caution born out of perception, agility, or something else? I couldn’t tell, but I pushed onward through the slaughter of G’s, F’s, and the odd E. The rain was so intense, and the mud so thick, that oftentimes I’d get a chance to actually catch them by surprise, effectively offing them before they even realized what was going on. Though even with the element of surprise on my side, I did my best to avoid any D-class monsters I encountered.

My goal today were neither traits nor battles, just AP, as much of it as I could gobble up in preparation for the main event. I even avoided taking traits, I couldn’t risk some weird interaction or reaction. Because the very important key ingredient was…

Achievement: Have x4 Active Achievements (x1 per stat) active at the same time Unlocked: Master of None

You are malleable

Malleability. Finally.

If there was a way to turn the unbreakable bones into armor, this had to be it. Now, the problem was, that more armor equaled more weight. As much as I’d love the idea of being able to move around faster than Shadow could potentially catch up, I doubted that would be possible even in the best case scenario. She’d literally just vanished into thin air, which had likely been some sort of mobility ability.

I slowed my hunt, catching my breath and taking a moment to pay closer attention to the terrain rather than all the hints that might lead me to my next monster. With the storm still in full swing and the mud getting all the muddier, armor was going to hinder my already reduced mobility. Finding a favorable location could prove crucial, but so far the only options appeared to be mud and deeper mud, and mud on slopes.

So while I continued to trudge forward, I spared some attention to the notifications that’d been left hanging at the corner of my vision for the past few hours. Specifically, the ones pertaining to achievements regarding the new stats.

Achievement: Reach +200 Adaptive Endurance Unlocked: AP Consumption

You recover stamina and heal proportionally to the amount of AP gained.

Achievement: Reach +350 Adaptive Endurance Unlocked: AP Efficiency

Monsters grant an extra +1 AP, this increases by 1 per class higher than G.

Achievement: Reach +200 Adaptive Agility Unlocked: Multi-Think

Your thoughts can multiply depending on the amount of focus

I felt a little confused that the second-tier achievement was at 350 and not 400 or 500, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. By the look of it, the achievements for the endurance stat were extremely useful for going on prolonged hunting sprees. Meanwhile, agility was… weird. Multiplicity of thoughts? I couldn’t quite make heads or tails of this. I suspected it might be because the system either didn’t fully understand the terms it was using, or that the words were only an approximation to the concept it was trying to work with.

The more I thought about it, the more it looked like agility had a lot less to do with reaction time, and a lot more to do with thinking, somehow. I didn’t feel smarter, but at the same time, there was a clarity to my thoughts. As if everything I brought up and concluded was the product of having reviewed it from different angles at the same time.

By the looks of it, I couldn’t have two entirely separate streams of thought, it was more like building up a current out of coalescing many individual droplets. Trying to have thoughts on different subjects just made everything jumble up and become confusing in quick order. And yet, there were other dangers as well, mainly that it felt all too easy to hyper-fixate on any one thing. If I wasn’t careful, the stream I’d built could become a flash-flood, sending me careening deeper and deeper.

Shaking my head, I focused. I’d need 250 AP to be able to push durability all the way to the maximum bonus of 400, and with my storage limit at 200, it meant even with all the points I’d been saving up, I still needed to continue hunting.

It was time to focus on what I wanted to shift into.

Shimmer [F] Purchased [-10 AP]

Obsidian [F] Purchased [-10 AP]

Toughness Mode (5): * -5 AP / Second *

* -1 Agility / Second *

* +8 Durability / Second *

* Unbreakable Bones [C] +*

The changes flowed through my body in waves of severe discomfort, my fur shimmered and blackened, turning into midnight-black hairs that tinkled with one another like glass. But as the sensation continued, those hairs burrowed into my skin, needles that reached with tendrils all the way down to my bones, fixating in place and flattening out against my skin. What started as overly-stiff scales became plates of armor, interlocking with one another, merging with “Blades” and forming large razor-sharp protrusions over my back.

It was an asymmetrical growth, the plates on my left arm becoming thicker, tougher, and smoother. Meanwhile, my shield-carrying right arm retained most of its flexibility and nimbleness where the other one had been restricted. But where my arms and legs felt more restricted, my tail was not. It had grown in length, looking more and more like a thagomizer made out of cobbled-together razor-sharp obsidian glass.

With the final bit of AP left, the system helped create a helmet of this carapace over my head.

I felt like I’d just put on the world’s most indestructible armor.

Achievement: Reach +200 Adaptive Durability Unlocked: Porous Bones

You can alter your mass anywhere from half to double of your baseline

I blinked, slightly surprised. It appeared that the achievement had changed, probably because the merge with unbreakable bones had altered the nature of the stat in some way? Or maybe it was more accurate to claim that the stat had become deeply entangled with the skill itself.

Either way, this was a welcome development. My new mass had almost sunk me all the way to my waist in mud, and without focusing to make myself lighter, I was certain to remain stuck. Though even after halving my mass, I still probably weighed more than when I’d begun Toughness-mode.

I began to trudge my way forward, hunting down and drawing out every monster I could find, if just to fuel the mode just a bit further, just a bit more.

And as the stormy sky lost the last vestiges of orange, marking when the sun set over the horizon, I felt it. A barely perceptible shiver in the air, a sudden jolt of coldness that pushed deep within me.

Shadow of a Doubt (1):

Survive 5 hours and 52 minutes

Shadow was coming.