Singing Mountain.

We stand and stretch out our still unstable form, the buzzing of the bees announcing their surprise, displeasure, and steady follow-through despite the adversity as a soundtrack while most of us concentrates on bio shifting to better accommodate our adopted hive. We feel some of the background magics clunking away, reading our purpose, and adapting, almost waiting for permission to fully manifest.

We started walking. Leaving behind the clearing where the world changed, in a similar way that our arrival was a changing of the world. We glance back on occasion, as our path takes us further away and more trees occlude our vision. None of the piles of undead move from their spot, they continue laying there.

Those [Monsters] are idle beyond even the trees that rustle with the wind. Though as we walk, we notice the occasional undeath permeated tree and they do not quite move in synch with the others. It’s as if they aren’t affected by the same forces as the others. During our quiet stroll, we notice other creatures, some of which are tagged as monsters, others not.

The problem snaring in the recesses of our minds at the various notes of no threat and minimal threat upon their inspection windows. There is a part of us becoming angrier and more… defiant, perhaps? Each new thing of note in these woods draws on some part of our minds that we just cannot properly express, despite our voice’s incarnation of its displeasure.

[Choir, Regeneration, and Host linked node: Temple of Sinew Acquired! Mold yourself]

With that breakthrough, the work becomes far less intrusive and uncomplicated as well. It’s as though we can just designate a portion of our body as the task. While the job isn’t completed immediately, we can feel that there isn’t as much a struggle for our residents to manipulate their environment any longer.

[Ironman Redacting Tutorial quest progress: Ripening 5 of 7; Mind and Offense deficient]

It is only because of how internally focused we are that something alerts us to a different sort of shift. We can tell it isn’t in answer to our woes though it inflames them as well. We feel a sense of progress being made. The system does call for us to continue to grow, perhaps we have an idea to complete this tutorial quest.

These thoughts stir up that instinct further, giving better direction and sharpness to their desires. There is a hidden objective for this tutorial that we have, one that we’d fail if we haven’t achieved it by the time it’s finished. It’s so frustrating to work with insufficient understanding.

Yet, that instigation pushes us towards triumph, to true achievement and success. We barely recall the days and experiences that were easy, they didn’t matter, not really. Well, wait a moment, that’s not fair. They mattered but their impact on our life was lower, or perhaps just more subtle.

We glance at our abilities again as a reminder and for inspiration. Just reexamining the data can be very useful for solving certain problems. Having more minds at once doesn’t always let us form grander visions. The system has greatly aided our unity, but discrete minds have their limitations.

[Hydra; MP spell list: Graveflesh, Call of the Damned, Devouring Cycle, Will Beyond Death, Fog of Breathlessness, One with Nature, Temple of Sinew]

Graveflesh seems… middling in some way. It served its purpose of introducing us to MP, but the resonance from it isn’t as potent as the abilities we’ve cultivated since then. We can certainly feel that the depth of it isn’t lacking, it’s almost certainly the only reason we survived our injuries long enough to heal.

But it could be more. Repetition, experimentation, strain, and inspiration, that’s what the system said heralds’ growth. We’d say there’s been strain and a fair bit of repetition, so, how about a jolt of inspired testing.

We don’t wish to inflict our power indiscriminately upon this place, “{But we have a solution to that. For surely there are still those in this false place burning with the desire to destroy. So, let’s give them a target, though perhaps less than our previous song- [Call of the Damned].}”

The pulse we release is far weaker than the one we initially sent out. The nuance available is astoundingly complex and perhaps less intuitive than we might have first imagined. However, we’re used to weaving complex melodies just in the way we bring our voices into the world.

Even just this usage further highlights the discrepancy between the call and [Graveflesh]. There is so much less nuance for us to even reach for in that spell, it definitely needs some enrichment.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

As the magic washes out, we can feel it when it touches those susceptible to its influence. We feel like we could almost do more with it, but the membrane of the spell is too thick to change some of its more fundamental nature. At least for now.

When the monsters arrive, they are less frenzied, even after they spot us as they don’t charge blindly in combat. Our increased mass certainly offers a more intimidating profile, their meager survival instincts stalling them on the outskirts. One perhaps unintended aspect of our spell’s creation means, however, that when enough of them arrive in proximity, they fight in league with one another.

Deer and wolves, hawks and foxes, boars and tree-things, the strange bedfellows come in slow waves. Their madness is not all consuming as even small injuries on them are sometimes enough to break them from the siren’s hold. Many of them flee from the skirmish to lick their wounds as their minds and souls are cleared of the taint of corruption.

As we fight, we get a better appreciation of our new size. The change happening while we slept somewhat difficult to gain a solid understanding of, compared to what we had before. Being able to body check a charging deer after uppercutting their jaw to prevent ourselves from being gored is hugely different now that it was earlier. Then we would shift under the weight and hit their legs, making them trip and roll over us. Now we can slam into their chest with a shoulder and just muscle them to the side.

Size isn’t something we really think about for ourselves, being fixed in place by our prior mountainous girth for hundreds of years; just being able to move without breaking the world was a benefit. That’s something we’ll have to solve as we move forward, because we’re certainly enjoying the difference in mass from human to bear. We don’t want to get so enormous that our teeth are larger than livestock.

Battle, such as it is, with these beasts is almost meditative. The cursory inspections we give the occasional opponent allows us to drift off a bit, just rely on our stats to endure and react well enough. While really concentrating on that far more tenuous thread that are these powers we have.

The deeper we explore this new Undeath the more we believe that we may be uniquely suited to its use. It has a well of ravenous hunger at its core, torn between the dichotomy of life and death while opposing and being defined by both. Life is over in death and death is nothingness without life to delineate its bounds. Undeath wants all of each of them, to consume all of life and reinterpret what death represents.

It's a power that has a fundamental need to be used, to spread, and it rails against any cage or denial of its purpose. But that has been the whole of our existence. Wanting to live, to be free of burdens, surrounded by our own choices and decisions, unbound by the structures of the world that bore us into the shackles of our previous life.

Blending that understanding and all the experience we’ve had at maintaining the discipline necessary to ensure we didn’t accidentally break the tiny creatures that made our living corpse into their home, we compose magic. We start with the basics, something simple yet vast in its own right, [Graveflesh].

The tangle of regeneration and endless hunger is a strange one. On the one head, they feed into each other quite well and adapt quickly to their purpose. But so much of what they are is in defiance of each other, and so they need a bridge. The skill we made for the battle royale was quite adept at crossing that divide.

Perspective and persistence can change the purpose of a stone between being a non-thing, to an obstacle, a tool, a weapon, or even art. So, with that in mind, we filter in that grasping need alongside a channel well suited for it but twist it in the way that [Graveflesh] has already done.

Instead of Undeath lightening the burden, acting as scale and tendon and muscle, we sing for it to eat that same property from others. To curse alongside its blessing. Already we know that the numbness it provides, blocking pain could be disastrous for a living body, our regeneration always finding flaws after even casual use.

During battle however? Not being aware of the wounds you’ve suffered is a way to certainly make mistakes. And it is during these skirmishes that we feel the power split and then resettle into place. We feel it blending and direct our focus to shift and stir it delicately. We cannot allow the curse from simple contact to infect our allies with a casual brush, yet we feel a strain to reach for total amnesty.

[Graveflesh mesh polyp grafted with Gobble, Cursetouch sub-node Acquired!]

[Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. Find new ways to express your MP, the world is always waiting]

We allow our call to lapse and fade. The remaining combatants collapsed under the weight of the affliction and their wounds. Whatever driving force to which our call was tuned crumbles under the retaliatory power of our magic. Its ubiquity discernably weaker than it was even a few hours ago when we began this new training.

The journey back to our nesting place a supremely easy affair. Despite not forgetting our traveling path and distance, the periodic trail of bees ferrying supplies would ensure our inability to become lost to its location. When we arrive back, it is to the expected yet unsettling scene having remained essentially unchanged.

None of the creatures that were altered by our power, that chose to stay by our side as we slept, have moved. We know that at least some of them can move, our waking did startle some out of place before their return. But not one of them has since chosen to move, not even to follow us. It is unsettling.

And yet, we take our previous place of rest, to allow the bees easier access to their old hive. While we are relegated to thought and the digestion of the remains of our meal. That is the hydra way, many mouths, one stomach, our minds will focus on the task ahead and our body shall grow. Our expanded size is not quite sufficient to support enough of the hive for our liking, not while ensuring tolerable protection within us, at least.