The next month passed peacefully. The three of us continued going to school, while my magic research also progressed. My illusions, in particular, made excellent strides forward. However, I kept hitting problems when I tried to improve my shapeshifting abilities. Even though I knew what I wanted, I just couldn’t quite make it happen. Finally, I decided to take a more aggressive research policy.

The biggest problem with my research on shapeshifting was how to keep the body stable. There were a lot of bones, muscles, and blood vessels involved in the human body. If I adjusted it without proper planning, the whole structure would fall apart.

Normally, that would have dissuaded me from experimenting on the human form at all. After all, my experiments on animals and plants were nothing short of disastrous.

However, my understanding of the human form had improved dramatically over the past few years. My time in the clinic, as well as my study of the human body in school, had brought me to the level of a novice doctor. Even without magic, I was now qualified to help heal patients. Even if I couldn't shapeshift plants or animals very well, I might have more success with humans. And I needed to grow quickly - the fight to procure more lives would come soon, and we only had a few lives to grow.

So I finally decided to try strengthening my pinky finger. I felt that was a good way to experiment with my shapeshifting powers. If I messed up, I could just cut off my hand and regrow it. It would definitely hurt a lot... but I could stomach some pain. My pinky finger was also far away from the vital parts of my body, so it was unlikely I would kill myself by accident.

So one night after school, I asked Anise and Felix to watch over me in case something went wrong. If I made a huge mistake, Felix and Anise were to chop off my hand and rush me to doctor Trish. Anise seemed a little uneasy at my request… but she acquiesced when I talked about what I was doing and why. None of us wanted to fail our battle to get more lives, and the stronger we were, the safer we would be when the time came.

That night, the three of us gathered in my apartment. My mother was temporarily moved to Doctor Trish's clinic, in case she needed something. We also prepared a lot of medical equipment, just in case I needed it.

I stared at my pinky finger, and focused on the muscles, blood vessels, and nerves that I had knew about. I had already healed these muscles several times while working with doctor Trish. The practical understanding I had, as well as the knowledge I had gained in school, guided my actions.

I started strengthening the tendons at the base of my pinky as well as the muscles related to them, expanding them and increasing the power they could exert. I also expanded the blood vessels, making sure that the new muscle fiber I had the blood flow needed to work. Finally, I anchored the new strands of muscle fiber to the other muscle fibers and bones. As a final touch, I reworked the way binding essence connected everything together. As I reorganized my body, I also paid careful attention to my hand. I wanted to catch any problems before they grew bigger.

I almost immediately lost concentration when I felt unbearable pain radiate from my pinky. I doubled over, and nearly started screaming my lungs out.

“Miria! Are you all right?” asked Felix, as he raised the sword in his hand. Right before he swung at my hand to cut it off, I felt the pain start to subside.

“I think I’m fine,” I said, gasping. Felix stared hesitantly at my hand and the sword, before he put it back down. I sent a small pulse of healing magic through my arm, and felt the strained muscles and nerves relax.

And then I frowned. I felt something in the middle of my palm. I blinked in confusion.

Why did it feel like something inside of my palm? I hadn’t messed with my palm at all.

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I sent another pulse of healing magic through my arm, and felt the healing mana get stuck in the middle of my hand.

I remembered the issue I had when I was thinking about healing my mother’s brain. I had no way to extract the little chunks of hardened mold in her brain, which was why I couldn’t heal her. Maybe there was a similar issue with my palm?

I scratched my head, and then turned towards Felix. "Hand me the sword, would you?" I asked. Felix gave me the blade, and I used it to slice open my palm. After a lit bit of rooting around, I fished out a small blob of flesh and muscle fiber. My hand also bled all over the carpet, which made me wince. I resisted the urge to frown at the mess I had made.

When I had changed myself, it seemed that I had accidentally detached some of my muscle fibers from my pinky finger. These muscle fibers had somehow made their way into the center of my palm. I wasn’t sure how they had gotten there - perhaps they had been carried by my bloodstream? Or perhaps I had accidentally opened a hole in parts of my muscles while I was messing with everything? I was honestly baffled. Either way, the process of fishing out a small blob of flesh from my body was… rather gross.

Felix and Anise watched as I extracted the tiny bundle of muscle fibers and blood, before Felix shook his head. “That… doesn’t exactly look as safe as you were hoping it would be, Miria.”

I winced. “I know. I was trying to create a safe shapeshifting procedure, but if the results are like this..." I sighed. "Well, it's just my first attempt. The important thing to do is learn from it. The real question is whether I succeeded - did I actually improve my pinky, or is it weaker than before?" I grinned. "If I did succeed, I can start figuring out where I went wrong. I don't know why it hurt so much, or why I dislodged the muscle fibers... but that can be fixed." Then, I tried bending my pinky finger, and grinned.

I could still move my pinky. After I saw the bundle of muscle fibers lodged in my palm, I had suspected that I had totally ruined my pinky. But I could still move it. So at the very least, I hadn't completely destroyed my finger. The worst case scenario, cutting off my hand so that I could regrow it correctly, hadn't happened. In fact, my pinky felt a little bit stronger than before.

“Anise, could you give me the dynamometer?" I asked, indicating one of the pieces of equipment I had prepared for today. Dynamometers were capable of measuring people's grip strength. It would help me measure my ‘improvements’ to my pinky finger and see if my improved strength was an illusion.

After that, I started squeezing the measuring instrument. I hadn’t noticed any changes to my Status Screen… but I was still hoping that I would notice a little difference in my strength.

After a few tests, my smile grew much wider.

With my Grade 8 strength and the body of a 10 year old, my grip strength had previously been around sixty kilograms. This exceeded the average grip strength of adult males, who had a grip strength fifty kilograms. While this was already impressive, after my modifications, my grip strength had grown. It was about one and a half kilograms stronger than before.

Of course, that wasn’t a huge increase. but I cared more about what it symbolized.

Even if there were some issues, I had figured out how to do a very permanent improvement to my body! I still had a lot of things to work out - for example, the little blob of muscle fibers and nerves that I had dislodged. But even though there were some problems… I had still taken the first step towards mastering shapeshifting. I had finally conducted my first successful experiment. It would take a lot of work, but I could already imagine how useful this would be in the future. In the future, I might be able to enhance our body in every new world. Or I might find a way to enhance the lifetime of our bodies in the Market. I might even make it possible to shapeshift into animals, or something like that. Being able to become a mouse or an owl would make scouting and spying much easier in future worlds. There were all sorts of applications for proper shapeshifting, if I mastered the art. I still intended to mostly specialize in magic - but I didn’t mind having a few other options when the situation called for it.

At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if I could take any of the lessons from this shapeshifting session and convert it into healing my mother. Obviously, my shapeshifting wasn't safe to use on other people yet. It wasn't even really safe to use on myself. But if I kept expanding my knowledge... perhaps I could shapeshift the bits of mold out of my mother's brain. It was an alternate solution to my previous line of research, and might take less time to develop successfully.

I couldn’t help but grin at the idea. Tomorrow, I would take another look at my mother's brain, just to see if I had any new insights on her condition.