The feeling of relief that came with finally ranking up after being stuck in level 120 for what felt like so long was liberating. Then my new Perk triggered and my lower body started to change. I remembered a web novel about a guy sent to another world as an insect monster and how he'd have monstrous itches every time he mutated his monster form.

The scapula underneath my lower body shoulders started to grow and thicken as muscles wove around it. I could feel it covering another rib and a half and bulging out. It formed another set of shoulder sockets at the top nearer the spine. The skin burst and bones for my new limb grew from the socket with muscle, nerves, blood vessels, and skin growing fast to snake around the bones and form my third set of humerus bones. The exposed flesh and nerve endings felt like an open wound, an exposed fracture that was being pulled at. Then a new elbow joint and the ulna-radius pair, ending with the small bones of what would be hands fused and formed the third section of the wings. Once it was all covered in the proper tissues, the feathers sprouted. It felt like dozens of needles pierced my "arms" and sucked the marrow out of the bone.

Then it was over. Exhausted, I slumped on the grass, tucking my legs underneath me.

The joint between the horse's lower body and the human upper body in a centaur is very strong. With all the physiological differences, calling it a "human" upper body is a misnomer. Not including the size of the lungs and heart and the wider and stronger trachea and esophagus, our spine is also thicker than a human's. While it gives the centaur a bit less mobility than a human would, it also allows us to sleep with the torso upright.

I took my normal ten-minute nap, with just a faint awareness as each half of my brain slept in turns. I became more and more of a strange creature as each life overlayed more and more features.

When I woke up, I heard giggling and something tugging at a limb that didn't quite fit with my proprioception. Going from a mermaid to a six-limbed centaur was hard, now I had eight. And a horn. There was a fairy playing with my feathers, ruffling them.

"Having fun?" I had a faint smirk.

Nenandil flew up and stopped to bop my horn. "How are you doing, miss mutant?"

"Pretty fine, now that I stopped mutating. What are you up to?"

"Prospecting new building materials. I found something that could make an excellent roof," she answered cheekily.

I put my arms back to hold the wings down with my hands, "Not my feathers."

"Yes, feathers! They'll grow back really fast anyway."

I stared at her and said seriously, "I'm strongly against harvesting my own body parts for these nefarious purposes. Or any, at all. It's just unnatural."

I knew she was just teasing and after I expressed my wishes she didn't push further. Instead, she shifted the subject. "Pretty set you got there, bro, but do they even lift? Can you fly on your own now?"

I tried to spread the wings but I just kicked with my front leg. This was going to take some time. I flexed the wing with my own hand and focused on the feeling. Once I found the muscles, it became easier. I felt like a newborn bird, trying to move awkwardly. A few minutes of physical therapy later, I got the wings to spread fully. Damn, those things were huge. We could house dozens of fairies under each wing. My wingspan from tip to tip was much more than six meters. Sparkly white. It almost glowed under the light of Ayla, the silver moon.

Nenandil darted from one side to the other, giggling. "You know what they say about the beetle, right?"

I rolled my eyes, "Yes, they only fly because nobody told them they shouldn't."

"Soooooo..." She made a cartoonishly long face.

"The Perk says I can fly, silly!" I mocked her voice tone. "So take it to the System."

She grumbled something about me being a spoilsport. I flexed and beat my wings. They were pretty strong and I batted some loose grains of dirt away from me. Standing up, I reared on two legs and beat the wings, creating a gust of wind in front of me. Nenandil darted into the wind and laughed as she was blown away.

"Here it goes. Up, up, and ahead!"

I had plenty of experience flying like a bird. But as a creature with four limbs, it was pretty much flexing one's arms. Now I had to coordinate my arms-arms, my arms-front-legs, and my arms-wings. I kept my upper set of limbs tucked over my chest, hands held together but I couldn't help but kick with my front legs. I flapped my wings and jumped up. Then I messed up and fell down on the grass, chest first. I only didn't get a mouthful of grass because my horn poked the ground sideways first.

"This is hard," I whined and cleared my arms

"An insect can do it on their brain budget," Nenandil taunted. "Six limbs, two wings. Check. Step up your game, sis."

A couple more tries and I was up in the sky. It was clumsy. My behind was too heavy and tended to dangle. I had to put a lot of strength on my back muscles to keep myself from flying like a wasp if a wasp had horse rumps. Forget about those elegant pegasi that flew with the legs stretched and moving as if they were effortlessly galloping through the sky. It wasn't going to happen. I learned as a bird that legs go tucked close to the body.

Worse, I had to keep moving forward. With my current dexterity, my stall speed was 61.5% of the full speed. I had maneuverability class "poor". I bet there were Perks to fix that but I was a bit disappointed.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Nenandil was playfully teasing me and flying circles around. She came close to mocking. I needed to get more Perks. This flying centaur thing was tough.

----------------------------------------

I went back to the ground, where creatures weighing half a ton belonged.

"What are we doing now?" Nenandil asked, clearly bored.

"Shapeshifting. I want to try to transform into a griffin or a hippogriff."

She squealed, "Oh, this will be nice. Go ahead. How are you doing that?"

"First, the hippogriff. I'm going to transform my upper body and front legs into an eagle's, and keep the rear body as is."

"Okay!"

I shapeshifted, focusing on transforming my upper body into an eagle's, and my front legs into eagle legs. I knew I'd failed when I hit the ground with the bird's sternum. I twisted my raptor head around and saw what I messed up.

I had six wings, an elongated body, and an eagle behind. It was like someone stitched the upper body of an eagle on the neck of another and then added two more wings.

Nenandil was almost bursting her tiny belly from laughing. I tried flapping my wings but my brain melted. They just moved awkwardly as none of the three sets knew who should beat when.

"Dammit!" I screeched and returned to my normal shape.

Next try. Eagle upper body, only. It went without a hitch. The lower body was still a horse with wings. Then just the front legs into an eagle's. The talons sprouted from the hooves, and the legs changed and shortened, causing me to flop forward.

I needed a bigger bird. And fewer limbs.

Fortunately, from my experiments with my horn, I knew how to put my pegasus wings away. I just had to shapeshift my shoulder blades into an animal that didn't have wings. A normal horse's did the job. it was good to know I could still pass as an ordinary centaur.

I imagined a giant eagle, like those in the Tolkien stories. Then I redid the transformations slowly, paying attention to the length of the front legs. Finally, I tried to shift the front body into a bird's rear body, but it failed. I flopped again.

Right. Maybe it was the upper body that had too many limbs. I transformed into a horse and then added the pegasus-centaur shoulder blades. Six limbs, one neck. I changed my neck into an eagle's, the front legs into an eagle's, the wings I dyed in eagle colors with {Chameleon}. Then I added some feathers to cover my front body and did some minor shifting here and there.

I brought a mirror from my item box. Nailed it.

"That's weird! A lot of weird!" Nenandil said as she examined my new form.

I shifted the neck and head back to my centaur upper body. Now I was a hippogriff-centaur.

Now the griffin. This one went without a hitch. I shifted my upper body back to an eagle's neck and head, then my behinds into a lion's, adjusting the size of the front limbs to match the lion's squat. I was a small griffin. To fix this, I added {Dire Transformation} to my animal parts.

"I got it!" I shouted.

"Now fly, you fool!" Nenandil mimicked some wise wizard.

I took off and had the same problem. The lion's buttocks dangled. I tried to pull it up using my back muscles but that unbalanced me. We didn't have hippogriffs but the griffins didn't fly this way. What was I getting wrong?

Again, I went back to my normal form and took off. Flapping my wings, dangling my romp, my tail flailing like a streamer underneath and behind me. frustrated, I kicked. It felt as if my hooves had hit something hard and my butt went straight.

I couldn't believe this! "Motherfucker!" I was angry at the System for sticking up to these misconceptions. But I got how this shit was supposed to work. I stretched all my four legs and flew as they moved on their own as if I was galloping in the sky.

It was just like with the {Amebiasis} power and the... the... the... who? A monster? My head hurt. Pekothas looked like it was nuked. The wound on the ground could very well be contaminated by unstable isotopes. Did I have radioactive--

----------------------------------------

I woke up on the ground, halfway inside some rocks. My {Rockwalker} Perk made me dive into the rocks instead of crashing onto them. Nenandil was sitting next to me. My head felt like a split melon.

"Did you try to remember something you shouldn't?" She asked me.

"I am this close, ugh!" I winced and pushed against my temples with both hands. "Fuck, this sucks."

"I can see it. But you know the System won't let you, right?"

"Remember? Why? Because I might re-learn how to cast the spell that blew up Peko-FUCK!"

This time I was bleeding from the nose, the coppery taste of blood in my tongue.

She held my thumb and begged, "Please, stop. You'll only hurt yourself more!"

"Thanks, sweetheart!" I cooed and rubbed the fairy's head with my other thumb. "No, I got it now. I'm going to fix this. System, were my memories erased or just blocked?"

> ACKNOWLEDGED. It is impossible to erase your memories. A block was placed to keep you from repeating certain events.

"System, did I agree to a block?"

> Negative.

"System, you cheated. Remove the block."

> Denied. The issue will be escalated. Waiting for Admin response. Denied. Denied. Abstain.

"System, admit you cheated."

> Affirmative.

"System, how many Perks had to be used to create the spell that destroyed Pekothas? More than twelve?"

> Affirmative.

"Would the same effect be possible without the interaction with Perks and System aid? No Perks, Proficiencies, abilities, Attributes, nothing. What's the probability."

> Calculating... Infinitesimal. Negligible.

"Limit the use of the forbidden spell element to absolutely no System aid. In fact, invert all multipliers greater than 1 and subtract all additions. Assume all System-enabled creature has a thousand points of natural damage reduction against it. Then remove my block because that magic is basically useless."

> Count of affected individuals with knowledge of this magic type: zero. Denied. The issue will be escalated. Waiting for Admin response. Approved. Denied. Approved. Your memory block will be removed. Changes are implemented. Complete.

"Now send a message to all Administrators. Open quote, Wyxnos, comma, you asshole, comma, stop McGuyvering around your job and implement a decent solution, comma, for crying out loud, exclamation mark. And go fuck yourself, period mark, end quote."

I wouldn't ever mention to him that I too was McGuyvering but my game was in a whole different level.

> ACKNOWLEDGED. Message sent. You'll be rendered unconscious while the block is removed.

I groaned when I woke up. "Stupid lazy Administrator." Then my belly uttered a gormandizing groan on its own because I was hungry. I ate some monster jerky.

After some self-reflection, while I ate, I found that I could remember everything. The dream, what really happened, the spell that exploded the city, the mind-bender academy, even Carcinodon.

"What happens now?" Nenandil asked and smiled as she gave me good news, "My restriction got lifted too, thank you."

I got back on my feet and dusted my fur, "I'm going to find Marlowe. Are you staying or coming?"

She straddled my horn and pointed ahead. "Onward! Princess Snowdrop! To centaurville!"

I had to make her stop watching cartoons in my memories.