It didn’t take Zoe very long to find a maned sloth. In fact, it was the first sloth she found at all. Even better, it seemed to be a particularly fine specimen—large, fluffy, and well-groomed. Amusingly, it actually had the poor sense to attack her first instead of trying to flee.

Not that it would matter either way. Zoe was far faster—and bigger and stronger too, which was what allowed her to grab the sloth around the neck with her claws. It tried to pry itself from her grip, but she barely even felt its much smaller, duller claws scratching against her own.

Finally, it went limp. Satisfied, Zoe resumed her hunt. While she had obviously acquired the most important ingredient for her plan, there was something else she needed as well. Annoyingly, it actually took her twice as long for the next part. She even found another wild boar before she found her next sloth, and even then, she found the sloth to be unsatisfactory.

Much too tender looking.

Finally, after what had to have been at least a half hour of aimless searching, Zoe found what she was looking for. The dozen or so sloths—none of them maned—peered at her cautiously. As she advanced, one of them dropped down.

Zoe didn’t bother activating {Corrupted Strike}. The force of her blow was more than enough when combined with a small amount of {Kinetic Enhancement}. The latter ability was becoming increasingly natural and automatic, such that she barely had to thing about using it or moderating its mana consumption.

In any case, that was enough for the rest of the animals to either attack as well or run away—with the exception of one, a particularly small, sickly, mangy sloth that tried to tuck itself deeper into the space between several large branches.

Ripping the foolish attackers out of the air, Zoe advanced upon the specimen she had been seeking. It was even worse—or better—than she had hoped for. Grabbing it before it could shrink back, she immediately set back off for the river.

With the beautiful maned sloth and the pathetic in one hand and the pathetic runt in another, it didn’t take Zoe long to get to the river. From there, she just had to travel downstream a few dozen meters, following the light of the campfire.

“That took you a while.”

Upon reaching the fire, Zoe only grunted in acknowledgement. Without a word, she tossed the mangy sloth down in front of Millie. She discreetly kept the maned sloth concealed behind her back.

Millie just stared. After a moment, she poked the carcass with an unburnt stick. “Wow, this is awful.” She looked up. “It’s not even a maned one! You couldn’t find anything better?”

Circling around to the other side of the fire, Zoe cocked her head. She held up the other sloth. “You mean like this?”

The girl’s eyes widened. “That’s perfect! Why did you even bother with the other one?”

Remaining quiet for a moment, Zoe let the silence stretch out before finally speaking. “Well you needed something to eat too, right?”

Zoe couldn’t help but be terribly amused as the girl’s face went through a series of expressions as she came to the realization. Snickering, Zoe bit off the her own sloths head. Honestly, she didn’t even know if it was good in the conventional sense. Even before her transformation, her prior ability of {Lesser Vampirism} had cared more about the potency of whatever she ate more than its flavor.

To Zoe, meat was meat. There was only one flavor, and it was power.

So really, the sloth was absolutely nothing special.

Millie watched her devour it for at least half a minute. By that time, Zoe was almost finished when Millie finally looked away. Withdrawing her knife, the girl began slowly and bitterly carving up her own miserable carcass, tossing away scraps of matted fur with unconcealed disgust.

“Thanks by the way,” Zoe said as she licked her fangs and claws clean, “I never really considered that some of the sloths might taste better than others.”

To her credit, Millie didn’t acknowledge the taunt at all. Finishing skinning the carcass, she moved on to cutting the flesh into strips and sticking them onto sticks to cook. Zoe eyed her work skeptically. While she wasn’t very experienced with this sort of thing, she didn’t think just meat alone tasted very good. There wasn’t even any salt! It was also probably pretty tough and gamey.

Sure, she had just eaten an entire one herself—raw—with skin and bones as well—but that was totally different. Of course. In any case, Millie didn’t seem particularly concerned by it. Even if she did state a preference for the maned ones.

Zoe spent the rest of the meal staring into the fire. She thought about experimenting with her new {Thermal Manipulation} ability on it—after all, it was a perfect situation to experiment and practice. It would definitely be more logical to do it now than to try to figure it out halfway through some unexpected fight.

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And yet, her mind kept drifting. Every time she began to think about how to approach activating the ability, her train of thought diverged elsewhere. By the time Millie curled up under the tattered remains of her cloak, Zoe still hadn’t even moved.

Belatedly, she realized she was actually using {Meditation}. Surprised, she almost canceled the ability. I guess leveling it up so much has made it quite automatic. As a result, Zoe’s mana was still significantly overcapped—it was barely even ticking down at all.

Sighing, she looked out at the dark water of the river, shimmering under the moonlight. A brief flash of {Predator’s Eyes} revealed the corruption simmering within the currents. I wonder if that’s deliberate, or if it’s the equivalent of industrial chemical runoff.

Finally returning her attention to the fire, Zoe activated {Thermal Manipulation} before she could get distracted or second-guess herself. Unsurprisingly, it accomplished absolutely nothing. But that wasn’t entirely true, because Zoe had now taken the first step and was now primed to continue.

As she continued channeling the ability, she realized that she was getting a small amount of spiritual feedback from the fire. That was the best way she could describe it—a sensation pinging her new sixth-sense that she identified as magic.

Curious, Zoe tried to see if she could sense the relative temperature of her surroundings. While she already had {Predator’s Eyes}, a thermal sense might also turn out to be useful.

It didn’t work. Zoe was just as blind to it as she had been before. The only thing she could feel was a fuzzy conception of the flow of heat within the fire itself—and that was clearly only while channeling the ability. But what if…

This time, Zoe moved the target of her magic around her surroundings. Much to her delight, she realized she could feel the change in temperature as she floated the magical blob representing her control over the ability around. It was still quite foggy, of course. It reminded her of an analogy for how her astronomy professor had described the workings of a radio telescope. Specifically, it was as if she put a piece of thin paper over the end of a straw, held it up to her eye, and looked around. She could only see one small, blurry spot at once—but by moving it, she could get a vague picture of the difference between different areas.

It didn’t have a particularly far range though. Once she tried to push up to two or so meters, her control faltered and the spell started to collapse. Zoe felt instinctively that she could likely force it farther with brute mana manipulation, but that would be quite wasteful.

Therefore, she returned her focus to the fire and began trying to actually manipulate it.

{Thermal Manipulation has leveled up! Thermal Manipulation is now level 2.}

Oh, well that’s nice. Zoe supposed that the level came from just her experimentation with moving the target of the spell around in order to feel out heat differences. Pleased, she refocused on the fire again.

Her first attempts at actual manipulation were entirely futile. She was completely unable to sculpt the flames—they refused to so much as budge. After a few minutes, Zoe realized that she was probably approaching it wrong. It’s not FIRE manipulation—it’s THERMAL manipulation.

Instead of trying to shape the flames, which were basically small jets of hot plasma, she tried to really feel the heat.

Heat is basically the transfer of energy, right? Temperature is average heat? I think that’s mostly right…

While her sense of temperature difference within the fire was quite blurry, she was still aware that there were hotter and colder spots. Feeling out the difference between them, Zoe tried to see if she could condense the heat into a smaller area.

Shutting her eyes to better concentrate, she bumped up her mana use slightly and began nudging the heat into one particularly intense area. It worked, to her immediate delight. In fact, it worked exceptionally well—even the system recognized it.

{Thermal Manipulation has leveled up! Thermal Manipulation is now level 3.}

Resisting the urge to pump her fist in the air, Zoe kept at it. The heat flowed even easier now, and her thermal imagery was both a bit bigger and significantly clearer. Within seconds, the outer edges of the fire were almost as cold as the surrounding sand, and the central spot was definitely more than double what the maximum had been previously.

Cracking open her eyes, Zoe observed it visually. Flames around the edges of the fire had been extinguished, while those near the center were more active. But most importantly, a small lump of charcoal in the center was glowing almost white. It wasn’t even flaming, as it was fully burned—it was just really hot.

Can I turn it blue?

Leaning forward, Zoe poured in more mana. There was a sharp crack, and then her left eye was stinging, her vision was swimming, and then someone started shrieking.

Corrupt Wound! Corrupt Wound!

{Thermal Manipulation has leveled up! Thermal Manipulation is now level 4.}

It didn’t take much to fix her eye, but that then left Zoe with the problem that the burst of hot coals had also landed on Millie, who was now freaking out as she scrambled backwards. Fortunately, the girl’s face was fine and nothing was on fire, but Zoe saw several small but nasty red marks forming. Oops.

Clenching her jaw, Zoe tried to think of what to do. Millie wouldn’t be able to hold it under the river—it would have been perfect except there was the corruption in it to worry about. And while Zoe could still heal herself just fine, {Corrupt Wound} would probably make things worse for a normal human.

At least Millie had calmed down slightly, giving Zoe more peace of mind to think. Running over her abilities list, she picked out something that she both suspected might have a slight chance to work and that she had been meaning to test anyway.

Let’s test out {Morph}—I think that’s the one that will let me alter my body. It looked like it was temporary, but that might be because the corruption reverts me to this ‘true form’ or whatever. So if I can use it on OTHER things…

Grinning, Zoe crawled over to join Millie. The girl glared at her. “That was your fault, wasn’t it.”

“Uh, maybe?” Zoe peered at her burns. They don’t look TOO serious. “Anyway, I think there’s a chance I might be able to heal them.”

Millie blinked. “Wait, you can do that?”

Zoe gave her a small shrug. “Well, I haven’t actually tried it yet. Here, stay close and hold still.”

Singling out the ability, Zoe prepared to feed it mana—but naturally, the child wasn’t content to do as she was told and instead started panicking even more. “Wait! No! What are you trying to do? What if it doesn’t work?”

Zoe sighed. “Okay fine, I won’t try it. You can calm down now.”

Millie breathed out a sigh of relief, calming down quite quickly. Good.

Zoe activated {Morph}.