The sensation of pushing energy into my patient's body was unfamiliar, yet simple enough that I got used to it quickly. I felt a light, silky resistance at first, but it vanished quickly enough that I dismissed it as unimportant.

As I continued to focus, I felt the boy's body begin to respond to my energy. It was almost as if something within him was opening up, accepting the energy I was channeling. Soon, I could feel details of his body highlighted in my System, his organs, his muscle mass, his genetic makeup. It was like looking at him through a souped-up X-ray machine.

But then something odd happened, and I felt a new resistance, but this time it was like hitting a roadblock - I couldn't push any more energy into him. It was as if his body had reached a limit, a ceiling that was preventing me from adding any more. I opened my eyes, feeling a bit disoriented.

"Is everything okay, Heller?" Tetra asked, still standing guard by the door.

I nodded, still feeling strange, "I think so... just... keep watching the door. This might take a while."

Returning my attention to my patient, I noticed a faint shimmer in the air above him, almost like a thin veil of heat... and I knew right away that it was a manifestation of my person qi signature, marking him as part of my System. I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat - it had worked, and if anything it had been all too easy. But my task was far from over; this was merely the beginning.

The energy I had sent him couldn't heal, at least not directly, but what it could do was allow me to alter his body, transforming him in a method similar to how I had been transforming myself for years. It wasn't exactly rewriting the genetic code, since at least part of the changes happened on a level that was beyond anything physical.

Closing my eyes, I checked my System and saw a new entry:

{Allies} now contains:

Yulfric, son of Captain Thoan.

The process of creating an ally was simultaneously complicated and beautifully simple. Since I had designed this with my parents in mind, it was meant to be a robust and permanent change that would change them in a way that I didn't yet fully understand - that had been where the Celestial's gift had stepped in to help fill the gaps.

The basic concept had been to use my CP, or qi, to create a container of sorts, but not to fill it with any energy myself. What I had theorized, and now put into practice, was that there was something in my body that was holding my personal CP, aka 'magical-universe-energy'. While I hadn't been able to expand or change my own container - hypothesizing that the Celestial's book was doing just that, a process over which I didn't yet have control - duplicating my personal CP container in another person proved to be much simpler.

Since my reincarnation I had gathered around 67 CP total at this point, but between growing the capabilities of my System (one of the best expenditures of energy, in my opinion, since it empowered me to not only carefully control how my CP was used, but it also allowed me to analyze and understand the world around me on a deeper level), and using it to transform my body, I had already used nearly 40 CP.

I still had plenty to work with, even though creating Yulfric's qi container had cost me around 10 CP. When I checked the remaining totals, I nearly gasped:

Remaining CP:

Heller: 17

Yulfric: 67

Using my System to investigate further, I was able to come to the conclusion that it was a matter of pressure, but not anything physical... more like some kind of 'qi-pressure', where I was able to, with relatively little effort, use my energy to 'press' on the CP container I had created inside Yulfric until it expanded to hold the same amount as I could. It was even possible for me to make his container larger than mine, but it was prohibitively expensive - each increase steeply raised the cost, and 10 CP was already a huge expenditure.

The next problem was that healing powers were incredibly expensive, for some reason. I didn't know if it was due to my lack of understanding, or some fundamental truth of the universe, but anything that rolled back time or put things back together was way more expensive than simply transforming something as-is.

For example, the basic cost to transform myself to be able to shoot a weak lightning bolt? Around 7 CP. The cost for the lowest level healing ability that might actually make a difference in this situation? 50 CP, and it was an active ability, so I would have to actually know enough about how bodies work to be able to guide the power - not exactly my specialty. Probably something I would look into in the future, but for now preventing injuries was actually far more cost-effective than healing them would be.

Of course, since my patient was unconscious, any kind of active ability was straight off the table. Next was regeneration, but it was even more expensive! The basic level was 70 points, but if I tweaked it a bit I could certainly get the cost under 67 CP. There were two main problems with that option, however, with the first being time: The level of regeneration he could afford might see him fully healed in two or three days (if it even worked at all for injuries that occurred pre-System, which was another matter entirely), but my inexpert opinion was that he only had a few hours left to live.

The second problem was that his primary caregiver, me, wasn't done experimenting yet. If he died I may or may not be able to get part of my 10 CP back, but more importantly, there was a suite of incredibly useful shape-changing abilities that I wanted to test somehow before I risked trying any of them out myself. More specifically, what I wanted to evaluate was an ability I called 'alternate form', which should grant the subject an entirely new physical manifestation that they could choose to inhabit.

I wasn't entirely sure how it would work on a 'scientific' level (which was primarily why I was hesitant to test it on myself), but according to my System it would involve converting matter (ie, the original body) into energy, and then converting that energy back into matter (now with an entirely new physical form). The process was supposed to be entirely reversible since no information was lost in the transition, and once the CP had been spent to set up the alternate form ability it was remarkably energy-efficient to swap back and forth.

If I could get it to function as I had envisioned, it would be a game changer. For a moment, I pondered the ethics of testing this ability on an unconscious person, but I quickly pushed those thoughts aside. This was for science, for discovery, for the betterment of *cough* humanity. Besides, I should be able to undo any change I made on someone else, even if it cost me additional CP, but if I experimented on myself there would be nobody to help if something went wrong.

I took a deep breath, centering my energy and focusing on the task at hand. Using my System, I began to analyze Yulfric's genetic makeup, energy signature, and aura. They would all be impacted by the change, and I wanted to be able to compare the before and after. Next, I looked even deeper. It took longer than I expected to sense his soul, and I wasn't able to interact with it directly, but I spent some time verifying that an alternate form wouldn't end up trying to modify it.

... And that's when I saw it. A mark, on Yulfric's soul, that mirrored the mark in my System where I had purchased the Allies ability and set up his qi container. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva with difficulty. I hadn't known that was going to happen...

I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should go through with this. But then I remembered why I was here - the real reason, ego and science aside; the boy on the table was dying, and I was trying to save his life. With a sense of determination, refocused on the task of -

"Heller! Watch out!"

Tetra's frantic warning snapped me out of my musings, and I whirled around to look at the door... and saw nothing except a frightened-looking Tetra, pointing behind me.

I ducked down below the table as I span in the opposite direction, picturing an imaginary opponent swinging at my unprotected back... and saw, once again, nothing of note. What the...

"Tetra? What-"

"No, you beast-brained fool! The floor! Look at the floor!" she exclaimed, dancing from foot to foot from her place by the door, shaking her hands in a mixture of disgust and alarm.

Feeling a chill of fear creeping down my spine, I slowly turned my gaze to the floor. To my horror, a thick, inky black substance was creeping out from under the table, climbing towards Yulfric and surrounding us both. It had a viscosity that was repugnant, yet oddly fascinating, and my breath caught in my throat as I recognized it for what it was: Not a liquid at all, but a swarm of tiny insects.

"What the..." I stammered out, leaping backward from the table. I felt a disconcerting crunch under my feet, and gasped as I realized I had just landed on more of them - yet, strangely, the place where I had been standing previously was completely clear. Had they been... avoiding me? The swarm underfoot scattered, leaving behind their dead, and I finally got a good look at the individual... ants?

"Heller! St-stop them!"

Electricity crackled to life across my fingertips as Tetra drew my focus back to the table that Yulfric was on. A few of the insects, which truly looked like ants, had made it on top of the table, but the bulk of the flowing swarm of creepy crawlies hadn't.

"Bloody beasts... Tetra, have you ever seen these things before?" I asked.

I hadn't learned the word for 'ant' yet, and, in fact, insects were quite rare in North Stone Village, now that I thought about it. The food stores in the Fortress had never been infested even though they were left to sit for years, for example, and I couldn't recall having ever seen an insect in our house growing up.

"No!! Heller, do something!!"

Electricity arced from my hands, strafing the table while I carefully avoided hitting my patient. It was easy to think of lighting as a single target attack, but it always flows through the path of least resistance, and I quickly discovered that 'ant swarm' had a much lower resistance than 'stone floor' or 'wooden table'...

I moved towards Tetra, positioning myself between her and the perceived threat, and before long most of the ants had retreated to the far side of the room. It was a little unnerving how few of them had actually been destroyed, and they fled in an oddly coordinated manner that allowed them to avoid the worst of my attacks (since I was more focused on defending the table than eliminating the swarm).

Smoke curled up from dozens of scorch marks along the lightning-scarred wood supporting Yulfric's prone form, and I checked to make sure that there was no risk of it bursting into flame as I cautiously approached. I kept an eye on the ant swarm, electricity still leaping between my outstretched hands, and, strangely enough, I felt like it was watching me right back.

"Wh-what should we do?" Tetra asked in a subdued voice, still shifting from foot to foot even though she had calmed down significantly.

"Huh... well, I'm not done yet, and Yulfric doesn't have much time left."

"Yulfric?" she asked, giving me a puzzled look for a brief moment before her eyes landed on our patient, "Oh. Oh! Did you know him?"

It seemed a little strange that she didn't know his name, since he was obviously Yulfric, but then again... hey wait, actually... when had I started to think of him as Yulfric, and not 'the boy'? And how did I know his name? I must have heard it, somewhere...

"Well..." I began, before stopping myself. I had been about to respond 'Well, of course', but I had only met Yulfric today, so that made little sense.

I shook my head, refocusing on the present. "Stay focused, Tetra. I have to act fast, so just keep an eye on the ant... group, while I work," I said, pointing at the ant swarm hiding behind some unoccupied tables and boxes of supplies. The term 'ant' was in English, and I almost used the equivalent of 'swarm' in our language, but that might have caused a misunderstanding since that term was always used in the context of a beast attack. No need to freak Tetra out any further...