At first, Millie didn’t even appear to notice that anything was happening. Zoe considered that to be a good sign—especially since her burns were rapidly smoothing out and fading away. Of course, Millie soon noticed as well, and that’s when she began freaking out again.

After it was all done, Millie took to completely ignoring Zoe. For her part, Zoe suspected that the girl wasn’t actually particularly upset with her, but rather she was just obstinately acting that way in order to make some kind of point.

That didn’t bother Zoe, though. She considered the whole endeavor to have been a roaring success. First, she had successfully undone the injuries she was technically responsible for inflicting, and Millie was now as good as new. More importantly, it had provided Zoe with both a start to understanding {Morph} and a level in the ability as well.

The fact that it could be used on other people was fantastic. In fact, it had been even easier to use on Millie than it had been for Zoe to use on herself when she tested it a few minutes later. She suspected that this was because of the corruption affecting her.

It wasn’t quite efficient as her old {Heal Wound} ability had been, and that wasn’t just because of a difference in level. Thinking back to her first injuries in the cultist lair, Zoe figured that low level {Morph} took about twice as much mana as {Heal Wound}. This actually added up to a significant mana cost if she wanted to do anything intensive.

But {Morph} was more powerful. {Heal Wound} had simply returned the body to its most recent healthy state. {Morph}, on the other hand, could manipulate living material in far more flexible and diverse ways. Zoe had gotten an intuitive sense for this while healing Millie. In fact, she had to consciously direct the ability to just do basic healing.

That opened up some more questions. Did it have offensive combat potential? Zoe wasn’t sure. When Millie had finally realized what was happening and started resisting it, the difficulty of effectively applying the ability had increased dramatically. If she were trying to use it on someone with a higher level instead of an unawakened child, would it do anything at all?

Something to test.

In the meantime, Zoe returned her attention to her self-experimentation. With her companion now sleeping and the fire having died down to just a few thick logs and smoldering coals, there wasn’t much to distract her.

Studying her upper right hand under the dim moonlight, Zoe flexed her fingers. The pitch-black scales and chitin had completely receded all the way down to her wrist. Her enormous claws had transformed back into fingers. They still were obviously inhuman, though—the flesh was a pale, semi-glossy grayish-white, and it had a very different texture. Smoother, mainly. I guess this is what I look like underneath.

While Zoe had already seen her new insides, this was the first time it wasn’t in the context of a serious, blood covered injury. Interesting.

It had taken a fifth of her maximum mana—sixty-eight points—just to do this to her hand. And while she had gained another level in the process, bringing {Morph} up to level three, there was a small but noticeable constant drain on her mana required to maintain it.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I hope I can figure out a way to make this more efficient.

Even if it turned out to be infeasible to remain transformed permanently, Zoe hoped that she would still be able to take a more human form for reasonable durations. Better keep practicing I guess.

Zoe continued until sunrise. She used up all of her mana twice, but a combination of {Meditation} and {Mana Manipulation} could make her regeneration quite fast, especially now that the second was maxed out and the first was just one level away.

While Zoe considered ranking up {Mana Manipulation}, she wasn’t sure what to do with it yet. She didn’t have any other abilities that she felt good about consuming for it at the moment. Of course, she remembered that she could also rank it up as it was. She suspected that that was probably what she would do, but there was not much downside to allowing herself some more time to think it over.

At first, Zoe focused on just one hand, trying to make it increasingly inhuman. That turned out to be difficult, as beyond a certain degree of manipulation she couldn’t figure out how to continue. Then, she moved to repeating the process with another hand while keeping the first one transformed as well.

Once she ran out of mana, the changes reverted within seconds. The speed at which the corruption changed her back certainly explained the constant mana cost of upkeep. In fact, Zoe was surprised that it didn’t take even more mana, once she witnessed that.

Sadly, she didn’t gain another level from that. She did gain a level when she moved on to manipulating other organisms again. Ripping a large fern out of the soil at the edge of the tree line, Zoe began probing at it with her ability. She found that she could cause individual leaves to wither and die—confirming that the ability might have offensive applications. Well, for very weak enemies, at the very least.

What caused her to gain the level was when she made the stalk regrow a root. The root was quite small, because she quickly ran out of material—specifically, water. The fern was actually made mostly from water and air—the soil only provided a quite small proportion of various other nutrients. Therefore, she was able to literally increase the mass of the plant by effectively accelerating its growth, with her mana as the energy source.

It wasn’t very good at absorbing humidity though, and the river was contaminated—so she ended up limited by how much surplus water was present in the stem and leaves.

After running out of mana a second time, and then recovering it, Zoe switched to idly practicing her fine control of {Kinetic Manipulation} until dawn. While she didn’t gain any levels, she felt that she had significantly improved in actual skill, and that the levels wouldn’t take much longer. Also, making little streams dance around was relaxing.

So relaxing that Zoe wasn’t aware that Millie was watching her for at least several minutes. The first rays were peeking over the mountaintops, and birds which Zoe had yet to actually see were chirping in the trees.

“I didn’t expect you to have that kind of magic.”

While Zoe was mildly surprised, she didn’t flinch or drop her sand. “Why?”

Crawling into view, Millie shrugged. “I guess I just thought you would have more close up physical abilities.”

“Even after the fire?”

Millie scowled. “Well I never actually saw how you did it.”

“Fair enough.” Standing up, Zoe flexed her body and scanned the far bank of the river. “So, ready to continue?”

“Yeah.”

It didn’t take the girl long at all to organize her belongings, and then they resumed their steady trek upstream. Belatedly, Zoe asked if Millie needed to eat anything, but the girl said that she would look for ‘a fruit or something’ along the way.

All in all, it was a pretty contented morning, until an hour or so later when Zoe started suspecting they were being followed by something. Great.