“So, how was it?”

Fiddling with her countless tentacles, Darkness sat at the edge of light cast by Joe’s bonfire. It took them nine days to complete the dark elf and make her ancient after which, Joe spent another two weeks using solely that new body. He ate, slept, run, fought with monsters, went through all the transformations this body allowed and… did quite a few indecent things. Not that the Darkness would know. She did not look and for sure she did not count how many times…

“It’s comfortable. It does what it’s supposed to. The buffs are there. There’s no pain while I shift.”

He toyed with his arm, changing it between its fully human and fully feline version then trying out several in-between.

“I think we’re ready for mass production.”

“If you say so.”

Fascinated, Darkness watched as Joe’s milky skin lost its shine and began forming shapes and patterns of the fallen log Joe was resting against. A moment later, he was gone! Though, she could still feel him there… Oh! He was again using those chroma-somethings to blend in with his surroundings. An ability he copied from a squid or something.

“If you don’t move, I can’t see you at all. That’s some scary creature that squid must be.”

“Well, yeah. I suppose.”

Joe Relaxed, cancelling the skill then toggled on his fur. The mimicry skill worked only if he removed all hairs beforehand, otherwise it created some odd results. In theory he could also use it to adjust patterns on his fur to better blend in, but the result wasn’t as good as using it with nude skin.

He considered pulling out a blanket out of his item box since nights were cold in these regions but instead, he opted for adding a bit more volume to his fur. One more test before they’ll try to cross that desert.

“You are sure we’ll need to go there? I still haven’t spoken with that broken soul. If the place doesn’t match up, I’ll be toast.”

“Umm… I’m sorry. D says I can’t tell you… too much. Umm… you may want to level up on the way too.”

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“Level up you say? So, wherever I’m heading isn’t going to be fun.”

Joe leaned back and sighed. Was this all worth it? The new race worked wonderful but leveling those up going to be a chore. While adding a plethora of buffs and bonuses, the ‘ancient’ name tag slapped them with a whooping twenty percent penalty to exp gained. Then there was the cost of converting a single body to this new type. That shaved off an arm and leg worth of exp. Depending on the level someone possessed, that could be anything from ten to fifty levels of experience gone in a puff. If he converts his furballs, it will bring them back to somewhere in their lower thirties or upper twenties. Farming back that many levels will be a pain in the ass. Still not as horrible as what would happen to freeloader. Conversion to dark elf would nuke her back to zero or if she’s unlucky it may take her into negative. Then he will have to make a new body for that swordswoman, another for that wraith since he still had no idea how to get rid of her and last one for the elven priestess they liberated from that pyre. No matter what he tried in his calculations, the results were similar. His main will go into negative and he’ll reset his alt.

His alt. A smile crept up on Joe’s feline muzzle. They made a perfect specimen. An ideal workhorse for his future industry… and not much else.

He sighed and dropped his humanity factor down by another five percent, lengthening his muzzle and deflating his chest from double D to much more manageable C. Reinforced bones and iron muscles aside, his back was killing him. He’ll have to get them some specialized armor with extra support otherwise there’ll be no end to complains.

But there was no other way around it. A shifter needs excess mass to burn while shifting and the healing factor eats up an insane number of calories. These mountains, his rear bumper and the additional layer of fat all other the body, necessitated a peculiar configuration of his dimensions to retain the eye candy effect. And Joe, as any professional gamer, was a true believer in the eye candy effect. If he’s going to spend an unforeseeable time staring at a body, at least let it be nice on his eyes.

Joe cringed at his own memories. He spent a fortune on cosmetics across all those games he played. Well, whatever. That was an investment in his own sanity. Breaking the daily monotony with some jiggly wings of glowing lollipop instead of a weapon.

Regardless, their ancient dark elves turned out nice. Genuinely nice. A shame this was a female only race but, Joe could live with that. He had his old body to boot and a whole bag of spare parts. He sure will come up with something satisfactory.

Switching his body into sentry mode, he curled up and waited for sleep to engulf him. On second thought, he also gave himself several fluffy tails to use as a blanket then waved Darkness goodnight and drifted away.

But first he did a bit more testing. Just to make sure everything worked fine.

Yup, his dark elves were the best.

The blushing mass of wiggling tentacles had similar opinion.

And no, she did not peek at Joe.

Not that much at least.