[You have chosen the Subdomain of Transition, Safe Passage, and Soul Reaping]
[You will now ascend from your mortal body]
[Welcome to the God System, Momo Lim]
…
Ascendance, for whatever terrible reason, seemed to start in the stomach.
And Momo was eternally glad she decided to finally choose her Lesser Goddess class in the quiet of her own bedroom, away from anyone and anything, because she threw up immediately. And what coated her bedroom floor was not her morning’s breakfast, but pure, black, Nether. Almost as if she had swallowed it down the wrong pipe, and now—
“Oh god,” Momo cried, covering her mouth. But she was already a goner.
She threw up three more times before the fits ended, her vision blurry and her blood pumping like race cars inside of her veins. She was so grateful for the end of the nausea that the pain that then began to radiate throughout her entire body felt like nothing much in comparison. And it was not just pain, but chills, like she was a child again with a high fever. She hugged herself and took long breaths in and out, feeling as her teeth clenched and then chattered.
Praise be! You have acquired a new skill: [Death’s Many Forms]
Death’s Many Forms: When in the presence of something dead or undead, you can take on another form. If only surrounded by the living, you will not be visible.
Remaining skills will be acquired during Onboarding
She could faintly hear a courier rattling off in her ear as the pain began to slowly dissuade. She expected to feel herself soaked with sweat, but when she pressed her hands to her forehead, she felt a cold absence of… anything at all. She furrowed her eyebrow and looked down at her lap, trying the same exercise of pressing her hand to her leg instead. To her surprise, it floated right through her, making contact with the floor instead.
“Ah,” she said, throat tightening. “Cool. So I’m a ghost now.”
“Meow.”
Momo turned around to find Dusk looking tremendously confused. The cat pawed at her skin, but the paw went straight through Momo, just as her own hand had. It was an unnerving experience to feel something float through her like that—she felt like a pool that someone was swimming in.
“Dusk, stop it,” she said hoarsely, grabbing the cat’s paw.
To her surprise, she was able to grasp the paw.
The moment she did, her hand became real again, firm and meaty and no longer shimmering in the light.
It seemed that whenever she interacted with the physical world, her body would momentarily become tangible again. Seeable to the naked eye.
But Kezko had warned her that doing so would drain her Mana significantly…
Momo’s eyebrows shot up.
Wait, am I… am I using Mana?
“Mana status,” she said.
MP: 9,500 / 10,000 (500 currently in use while sustaining tangible form)
“Oh my god.”
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She nearly hyperventilated with happiness. Had ascending cured her mana disease?
Not only that, but dear god—ten thousand mana points? She had only had access to one thousand of them back when she was a mortal. God, what was she even thinking? Back when I was a mortal. That was ten seconds ago!
Overcome with emotion, she tried the first spell that came to mind.
“[Polymorph – Dokkaebi]”
ERROR! Polymorph skills do not work in conjunction with [Death’s Many Forms]. Please use [Death’s Many Forms] for all polymorphing and shapeshifting.
Momo’s eyebrows lifted. That was the first time she ever got an error before, especially about her spells not being compatible with one another. But she supposed it made sense. The God System and the Class System weren’t supposed to be connected. The System Administrators had made it very clear just how much work it’s been to tie the two together to make them mutually intelligible.
She made the courier give her a review of the [Death’s Many Forms] skill, since she had been too deep in pain-jail to hear it properly.
Interesting.
According to the skill description, it seemed that as long as she was in the presence of something dead, she could change her form at will, but otherwise she would be intangible—as in, effectively nonexistent to the mortal eye.
“Courier,” she asked, tapping her ear. “What is the mana cost of this spell?”
[Death’s Many Forms] has an upfront mana cost of 2,000 MP.
“And how much mana am I burning every second that I sustain a tangible form without using the skill, like I’m doing right now with Dusk’s paw?”
She looked down at her hand, which was still grasped around Dusk. To the cat, all it saw was a magical, floating fist. That had to be disconcerting.
Momo would be sure to feed her extra tuna later to make up for the trauma.
The cost of creating a tangible mortal form through pure mana is variable based on how much matter you are creating. Right now you are only creating two {human hands}, which costs a combined total of 500 mana points continuously while active.
Huh. Assuming it cost way more than 500 mana points to construct her entire body in space, it was definitely cheaper to use the skill. The only downside is that she would always have to be in the presence of something dead in order to do it. She didn’t want to carry around a corpse every time she visited Sumire, so Dusk would just have to chaperone her.
Of course, given that Dusk was here in front of her, there was no reason to be wasting so much mana. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine herself.
“[Death’s Many Forms].”
She felt another stirring in her stomach and feared the worst, but it seemed the universe was smiling on her for once, because the disturbance passed just as quickly as it came. And when she opened her eyes, she found that she was looking down on pale hands once again—but both of them looked equally healthy, alive, real.
“Meow,” Dusk said again, beginning to purr in confusion as the cat wiggled its paw out of her hold and rubbed up against her side. Momo gave Dusk a good rub on the vertebrae and a promise of many snacks later before rising, stepping over the puddle of Nether in the middle of her room, and finding her mirror.
When she made eye contact with her mirror image, she froze.
Oh. Oh my god.
A tear instantly tracked down her cheek.
The girl she was looking at in the mirror was an entirely different Momo than the one she had gotten used to seeing there. This Momo was… the old Momo.
Gone were the horns, the wings, the blackened hands, the scars.
She sniffled, more tears falling down her face.
She hadn’t expected ascension to make her feel so terribly human.
Her hands threaded carefully, reverentially through her hair, now a deep brown, nearly-black, pin-straight but soft to the touch. It caressed her shoulders and framed her cheeks. It looked and felt so healthy. Even her cheeks had a warmth to them now, colored faintly pink instead of pale and dour.
I guess when I imagined myself for the transformation… I imagined the old me.
The version of herself in her head had never caught up to the present.
She brushed away her tears with the back of her hand, feeling silly.
“I can’t wait to show Sumire this,” she whispered to herself. In fact, she wanted to show her right now. There was no reason to wait. She grabbed Dusk, and headed for the door. But just as she grabbed the handle, her hand sank through the door again. Her skin went from full to glittering. She felt a sensation as if she was being peeled away from reality.
Momo groaned.
“Wait, wait, can’t a girl just have five seconds to enjoy something—”
[You are entering Lesser Goddess Onboarding]