As I slowly regained consciousness my first thought was "not again". followed by a quick check of my status as I try to piece together what happened just before the lights went out.

Name Thomas Race Giga Turtle Size 40m Level 16 113/170 Health 2153/10,000 Attack 65 Defense 85 Speed 65 Skills Active; Water Manipulation level 2(0/10), Earth Manipulation level 2(0/10), Mirror Shield Level 2(0/10) Passive; Regeneration Level 3(5/10), Healing Aura Level 7 (0/10) Talents Copper Shell, Improved Mental fortitude, Last stand, Telepathy

Looking over my stats a few things jump out at me immediately. The first is my size. At forty meters I'm kind of curious where exactly I am. I don't think there would have been enough room for me to grow that much where I was. While pondering that a thought suddenly comes to me that is not my own but also not one of my companions either. "The host is protected during the growth stage. Everything not part of the host is pushed aside to make room." Well, I guess that explains why I can't level up during a fight. It wouldn't be fair if my body suddenly expanded and crushed my opponents.

Immediately after that though I had another thought. what about my companions. Hm, no response from whoever or whatever orchestrated all this. Guess I'll have to find out the old-fashioned way, by opening my eyes and taking a look. Slowly I open my shell and poke my head out not sure what to expect. Looking around I spot Vivi and Harold by a campfire that looks as if it's been going for a few days. Twitchy is up in a tree looking nervous as always. He's making sure the others aren't getting snuck up on so I should probably cut him some slack. What alarms me is that I don't see Yuna.

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I can't help thinking the worst. Just then the others begin to notice that I'm awake. I start to ask them what happened to Yuna when suddenly I feel a mouse sized hand on my shell. As I begin to feel the healing energy pouring into me, I realize that the hand is actually normal sized. I am just massive now. Soon after I hear Yuna's voice in my head. "You have a lot more health than you use to. Back when you could fit in my palm it barely took any effort to heal you." Checking my stats again I realize that I have way more health than could be explained by my natural regeneration rate of one health every forty minutes. I'm still a long way from being fully healed but I can tell that Yuna has been putting in work.

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I start to sheepishly apologize but Yuna just laughs it off. She explains that all this effort she is putting in to healing me is helping her improve. She says that she already gained a level and expects to gain another before I am fully healed. "That's not even counting the levels I gained after the fight" she adds after a moment. "Well, if that's the case I shall endeavor to get injured more often" I joke earning a halfhearted laugh. Suddenly I remember how injured everyone else was and look around once more. To my surprise everyone appears to be in full health.

Then I take a look at my skills and realize that healing aura is at level 7 and now heals one health every minute. Apparently my barely conscious mind prioritized healing aura over regeneration. That reminds me I didn't get anywhere near the experience points I expected to get. Searching through the fuzzy memories and doing a little mental math it doesn't take long to find the reason. It seems that whoever or whatever is in charge took into account the fact that I wasn't alone so only gave me a fifth of the experience points I would have gotten otherwise. It would seem that is the reason I only got credit for twelve when I knew there had to have been way more than that.

Now that I'm back up to speed and we're all rested we need to decide what to do. Should we return and report or should we continue on. Alternately we could stay here until I'm fully healed but even with Yuna helping that could take at least a week. On the one hand we were sent out to gather information. Well, technically they were, I'm just tagging along. The point is we still don't really know anything. On the other hand, according to the others it's very rare for orcs to be this far north and that alone might be worth reporting. I can't shake the feeling that there is something else going on. I don't voice my thoughts but there must be a reason I was sent here.

Whoever is in charge I feel like wouldn't do something like placing me here in this body without a reason. At first, I thought it was some cruel joke. I've since had time to think about it, and it seems unlikely that such a being would do something like this for their own amusement. Two unheard of things, goblins gathering in huge numbers and orcs being way further north than anyone has ever seen them. happening now of all times can't be a coincidence. I don't know what it all means yet but there is definitely more going on here.

I don't want to alarm the others so I measure my words carefully when suggesting that we should go back and report what little we do know. A few of them start to protest with Yuna surprisingly wanting to wait until I'm fully healed. The others want to continue on. Only Harold seems to think it's a good idea to return and report. Before they can start arguing I quickly point out that I am faster than I was so we can get back to this point in no time. Aside from that I point out that with my current size I can fit several parties on my back and with multiple healers helping it won't take near as long for me to be back to full health.

That gets their attention. As much as she was enjoying the experience from healing me Yuna admits that she'd rather have me at full health. As for the others they all agree that even with my new size it would be nice to have some extra hands if they run into another attack like that or something even worse.