The transfer magic deposited me back in my shitty little apartment and I fought down a sigh as I walked out to the living room and sat down on my ratty couch. My flat, camel feet made quiet thump noises on the cheap carpet as I walked over it, reminding me of just how run down this place was.
“I really need to figure out something better…” I muttered, staring tiredly up at the cracked and faded ceiling above me. I could see one spot where the drywall tape was tearing and left a large crack in the ceiling. “Suppose that I should just be glad the insulation isn’t utter shit and nothing leaks.”
After spending the last hour in Rieka’s beautiful suite talking with her mother while the queen’s guards stood outside, going from that luxury to my squalor was jarring.
Is it really mine anymore? I thought again, turning my situation over in my head. Am I really trapped here?
I patted my hip where my pocket would have been, if I was still wearing pants, and jumped at the fuzzy sensation of my currently woolly legs.
“Fuck, that’s right,” I snorted and shook my head. Getting up again, I walked over to the kitchen counter where my phone waited on its charger.
No new messages, but who else besides Jameson would message me? I thought before flicking over to my sales window for the Bitsy storefront.
I had a half-dozen messages regarding sales, mostly the stone statues I’d made already. I did a quick bit of math in my head and snorted, realizing that I’d made more this morning off of selling rocks than I did in a week when I was working for the loading company.
“That really was a bullshit job,” I growled. Putting up with my old boss, the fat idiot that he was, had been such a mistake. “Suppose it makes sense, though. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was enough to get by and because of that and a lack of confidence, I didn’t want to risk it.”
My mind drifted back over my girls, especially Kassandra and Rieka, as the two of them had done the most to help build me up as a person over the last few months. They’d given me the boost in confidence to actually make something of myself, to be serious about what I was doing, and to not put up with abuse from others. All just by treating me like a person and caring about me.
I need to do something nice for them. For all four of them. We got through the competition and I won, so they should be set for classes for a while. Which means I can take a bit of time off from training…
Snapping my fingers, I growled at myself for forgetting this long about the mastery alert the System had sent me nearly two hours ago.
Remembering the completion of Shape-Shifting (Moderate) also reminded me that I had hooves currently, so I set my phone back down and shuffled over to the shower, pushing to change back to normal.
“Need to clean up after the fight, might as well review that information while I do,” I muttered, grabbing some clean clothes before padding over to my dimly lit bathroom and getting the water going.
Once I was under the warm spray and just enjoying being there—I knew that I had to figure out a way for Kassandra to experience something like this if they didn’t have hot showers on Cortha somewhere—I closed my eyes and flipped through the skill info to see if any of my other skills were getting near to leveling up.
Shape-Shifting (Moderate) was the only one that had completed, and the next closest was actually my Dimensional Pocket (Minor) ability. I had to admit, that had mostly been because I started storing my wallet and keys in it while I was out, so I’d never have issues. The repeated back-and-forth transferring of those items, as well as me moving pearls, gold, and the finished pieces, were rapidly training that ability up.
“Wonder what it’s going to unlock when Dimensional Pocket hits mastery. Hopefully, a larger space… would be cool if I could bring the girls to Earth somehow,” I mumbled, shampooing my hair before dunking under the hot water to rinse off.
After confirming that there weren’t any other skills nearing leveling up, I reviewed the abilities that had upgrades currently available.
Manipulate Element for the earth element was maxed out and ready to go, while the separate entry for Manipulate Element in relation to the entropic energy was slowly gaining mastery, but that was only bits and pieces, despite being at the minor rank.
Still need to figure out how to talk to Cari about that. If I can somehow use the Shape-Shifting (Elemental Alignment) ability to protect myself… no. I shook my head firmly as the thought crossed my mind. Cari is a friend. It’s better to let that develop first than sweat the attraction. Be happy with the three beautiful women who are interested in you right now, and worry about the rest later. Stop being so whiny.
Rather than let myself dwell on the lingering attraction that I felt for the daemon who was in charge of my case with the DSR, or Dimensional Service and Repair, I quickly flipped to the new entries that were available now that I’d mastered the moderate rank of Shape-Shifting.
There were two entries, one a modifier like the mass control one had been, and the next rank of Shape-Shifting.
Shape-Shifting (Integration) - Cost: 500 SP - When assuming a non-native form that would damage clothing or worn items, the System will temporarily store said items until the user returns to their natural form. Items stored in this fashion do not count towards totals for dimensional storage powers, as the only way the item can be recovered is to return to native form.
Shape-Shifting (Major) - Cost: 6400 SP - User is able to draft major changes from beasts of many types. Limit of different types is now increased to five. Increase modifiable mass to 100% of user’s base mass (before modifiers).
“Huh,” I muttered. “That first one would have been useful before. Maybe I can stop tearing up so many sets of clothing. Wouldn’t have lost my pants today.” I set aside that thought for another day and studied the next rank of Shape-Shifting. This was going to be a rank I spent a lot of time at. Considering how slow the moderate rank had been to gain mastery, I knew the major rank was going to be even longer.
“Okay, so easy notes. Five forms I can pull from rather than three, that’s good,” I mumbled, just standing under the showerhead and letting the hot water fall down on me, banishing any memory of the chill from the fight with the polar worm.
The only good thing about this apartment complex was the fact that it worked off a shared water heater, so I could get as much hot water as I wanted.
“And one-hundred percent of my base mass can be shifted, times three because of the mass control modifier,” I mumbled with a grin.
Six hundred pounds of modifiable mass was a lot to work with. It opened up avenues that I had ignored previously because I’d forgotten I could lower my mass too. While I couldn’t give myself a serpent tail like Kassandra’s yet—at least not matching my normal torso size—there were other options.
I made a mental note to check and see what my minimum size was, as I knew there had to be a bottom limit of size to still be functional.
Flicking over to my main screen, I checked to see what my current SP was at. I knew I’d stocked up on a fair bit, especially with the completion bonus from the fight with Gyrallia.
Current SP - 5,220
Hmm. Okay, so not enough. But I do have those pure mana crystals still. I’ve got nine on hand and that’s another four and a half thousand SP, so I can snap three of them to SP and be able to grab the major rank of Shape-Shifting if I want to.
I grimaced as I turned the idea over in my head. Since Cerebaton had been forced to cancel his training with me, it wouldn’t be as easy to chat about which to go with. I wanted to snatch up the new rank of Shape-Shifting immediately, but it was also something that stretched beyond what the daemon knew. He had never gone beyond my current rank of the skill.
You could just message him, Liam. Just like you could message Cari to talk, I reminded myself, growling under my breath at the mental image of Cariad in the shower with me that popped up.
“One track fucking mind, Liam,” I snapped and slapped the water off. “You just hooked up with Shayla, and you are already planning on trying to seduce Cari, too? What the fuck, man,” I growled while fumbling for a towel.
I continued to chastise myself while I dried off and on through getting dressed. I stomped back out into the livingroom to sit on my threadbare couch and glare at the wall, my desire to brainstorm about the new power wilting in the wake of the irritation I felt at myself thinking like a man-whore.
Cerebaton was the one who put the idea in your head, my traitorous mind supplied and I growled again.
In an effort to distract myself from the thought of what Cariad might look like underneath the sexy office wear that she always had on when she visited, I messaged Cerebaton.
Liam
Hey Cerebaton. I unlocked the next rank of Shape-Shifting already. I’m debating if I should jump on it or use my SP on something else for a while. You always said stats never abandon you, so curious about your thoughts on this?
With the message sent off, I flopped sideways on the couch and threw my bare feet up onto the arm with a sigh.
Staring at my toes for a few minutes, I idly used Shape-Shifting to stretch them out like fingers before returning them to normal. My feet then shifted into hooves, then fins, then back to feet once more.
I’ve got a lot of flexibility already. Do I need to boost the mass that I can shift? Wouldn’t it be better to dedicate myself to training how to actually use what I have? I thought while staring at my toes again.
A rapid tap on the door to my apartment broke me out of my thoughts. I knew that it wasn’t Jameson. That idiot always pounded on my door like he was trying to drive a nail through it.
“Huh, wonder if Cerebaton just decided to drop by,” I muttered, rolling to my feet and straightening the black t-shirt I had on before I headed to the door.
Twisting the knob, I pulled it open to greet my large, sometimes-green friend but stopped dead when I saw the smiling face of my daemon caseworker outside the door.
“Hello, Liam! Mr. Cerebaton advised me that you were in need of help deciding what way to take your ability progression?”
<><><>
Of course he sent Cari over, I grumbled silently. This kind of stuff is actually her job, after all.
I ushered the peppy daemon woman into my apartment. Unlike Cerebaton, Cariad wasn’t able to shift her body to hide her appearance, so leaving her on my doorstep was a bad idea.
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I’d known that she was my best option, but had disregarded the thought because I was still conflicted over my attraction to the daemon woman. Before, I’d always been able to hold up the fact that even touching her would cause my body to start to corrode, but after Cerebaton had put the idea in my head that it wasn’t a guarantee, my mind wouldn’t stop dwelling on it.
Cariad was dressed like always in smart office-wear. She had on a pencil skirt in a dark, charcoal gray that looked good against the pitch black stockings she wore to cover her legs.
A white blouse with two buttons undone covered her upper body, leaving the gentle, blue-gray curve of her bust showing through the open V at her neck. Long, black, opera-style gloves covered her hands and arms, vanishing up the short sleeves of her top as well.
Her long, strawberry-red hair hung down to below her bottom, held straight by sheer weight except for the last foot or so, which bounced back upward in a single thick curl. Cariad’s sea-green eyes twinkled happily as she strode past me, a leather folder held to her right breast with that arm. The other set of eyes, the special ones, remained lidded and hidden just above her temples on either side of her head. I only saw the faint line of the lashless lids because I knew where to look.
“Hey Cari, I am sorry that you came all the way out here. I just needed to do some brainstorming to figure out what to do with my current crop of SP and if I should keep focusing on my Shape-Shifting. I didn’t expect Cerebaton to send you out when I poked him,” I apologized, but she waved it off with one long-fingered hand.
“Not to worry, Liam. I’m happy to help you figure out what to do. Normally, a Traveler has a much larger support structure in place in the form of family or mentors to help them decide, but you are on your own, the first human Traveler from this world in centuries.” Cariad’s voice was throaty and joyful, and it was clear from the twinkle in her regular eyes and the bounce in her tone that she was excited to help me.
“Well, would you like some coffee or juice? I did manage to scare up some disposable mugs so you don’t have to worry about dissolving anything,” I offered, gesturing for her to make herself at home and trying my hand at teasing her to break the ice.
“Coffee would be grand, actually. How did that competition you’ve been training for go?” Cariad asked, pulling out a chair at my chipped kitchen table and setting out her document folder.
She flipped open the folder to reveal a sky-blue legal pad lined in green as well as a stack of loose paper sheets covered in angular print. Cariad carefully laid out the pages before producing a pen from inside her shirt somewhere. The gesture made me swallow hard once, as it had flashed the edge of a dark gray bra that barely contrasted with her skin.
Makes sense, she wears white after all. If she had on a brightly colored bra, then it’d show right through, I reminded myself before turning to hurry over and start working on the coffee.
“It went well,” I answered, clearing my throat before continuing. “I won, but the last competitor tried something shifty. Rieka’s mum, she’s the queen of the local kingdom if you didn’t remember, was impressed with the fight. We also came up with the idea of me bonding with the queen to be able to pass messages from Rieka to her and back securely. The queen was rather enthused with the idea.”
“That’s a clever idea. Most Travelers wouldn’t deign to respond for such banal tasks, as they only are worth a small handful of SP, but it’s a fair use of your skills. You have the Dimensional Pocket skill, so you can carry packages and sealed missives too!”
Cariad’s smile grew even wider, and I swore a hint of pride shone in her eyes as she looked up at me.
Coughing, I turned back to the sink and set about filling up the battered kettle from the faucet.
“It’s less about the SP and more about helping them out,” I said, going about getting the coffee set up.
“I figured as much, Liam. Your girls really lucked out getting you when their summon went awry.” Cariad paused to give me another sunny smile before clicking her pen a few times and glancing down at the blank sheet of paper in front of her. “So! What options do you have to look at, and what kind of budget for SP do you have?”
Letting out a quiet sigh of relief, I began listing off my options to Cariad. She listened carefully, nodding along while making notes on her sheet of paper. A few strands of her hair fell over her face and she brushed them out of her vision with an idle flick of her hand.
“I feel bad that you came all the way out here for this, Cari,” I said while she studied her list of options, chewing lightly on the end of her fancy metal pen. Behind me, the kettle quietly rumbled while heating on the stove.
Cariad glanced up at me in surprise. Her primary eyes wide and the secondary set flicking open as well, revealing the electric-blue eyes that sat high on her head for a moment before they closed once more.
“Why would you be sorry, Liam?” Cariad asked, setting her pen down before looking back up at me. “I’m your caseworker. This is my job to help you with stuff like this.”
“Oh, I know. I just feel bad because you came all the way out here. If I’d known that Cerebaton was going to bounce the job off to you, I’d have just messaged you directly. I was trying to not be a pest,” I said, grimacing slightly at the excuse and how weak I knew it was.
“It’s no trouble,” Cariad replied, smiling once more now. “Besides, I wanted a chance to see you, Liam. Mr. Cerebaton let me know that he had to cancel your weapon training, so I wanted to take the opportunity to come by when it came up.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but caught the words before they could make it past my lips. Cariad was a friend, or at least I thought of her as one. I’d previously made an open invitation for her to swing by whenever if she wanted, and I wasn’t about to rescind that invitation just because my attraction to her was growing.
Just be her friend for now. If things develop in the direction of a relationship, you can worry about testing your power out then, I reminded myself, and nodded.
The kettle began to whistle, so I set about getting the beat-up French press that I used for coffee ready before carrying it and a pair of mugs to the table. The one I had for Cariad was from a stack of insulated coffee mugs made with recycled paper. They were sturdy enough to reuse, but I’d gotten a pack of a hundred for ten bucks, so I wasn’t worried if touching her lips dissolved the cup.
Once the coffee was poured and I sat across from the gorgeous alien woman at my kitchen table—it startled me again when I thought about the fact I had an extra-dimensional babe in my boring kitchen, even after the last few months—we set about talking shop.
“So, you would have to tap into some resources you were saving for a rainy day to get Shape-Shifting (Major) right now and you are uncertain if you should?” Cariad was chewing on the end of her pen as she stared at her notes.
“Yeah. I know that if I hold them for too long, then I lose the opportunity to make the most of them, but I can’t help the decision paralysis right now.” I sighed, looking down into my coffee mug again and taking a sip of the scalding brew. “Sort of the same with my living situation. I could move somewhere else, somewhere nicer, but I have no idea how reliable the flow of cash is going to be, so I hesitate.”
Cariad nodded again in understanding, her hair bouncing in response to the motion, and she smoothed her collar down with one hand, flashing another glimpse of her chest idly.
“And your other options were?” Cariad asked, looking up at me with just her primary set of eyes.
“Mostly tossing up between getting the moderate rank of Manipulate Element for earth or buying up more stat increases. I also can’t help but think I should be expanding my power base more. I’d like to open up some other abilities.”
“Don’t think about that too much,” Cariad said, waving the hand holding her pen in the negative while she picked up her coffee mug and took a sip, carefully rotating the cup so that she didn’t dissolve too much of the recycled paper with her lips.
Watching as the firm paper simply fizzled away and vanished in a quarter-inch wide strip after her lips pulled away made me grimace slightly and nod. The other half of what worried me about pursuing Cariad: what might happen if I let my attention lapse and whatever protection from imbuing myself with entropic energy failed at the wrong moment?
Instead of dwelling on it, I focused back on our conversation, glancing down at the list Cariad had made of the available skills that I hadn’t taken.
“That’s one that I was wondering about too,” I tapped the page above one entry that had been on my mind for a while, and I closed my eyes to reference it.
Grant Power (Minor) - Cost: 100 SP - Able to grant specific abilities to contracted partner for a short window of time. Power is reduced two tiers from what the Traveler has mastered. Parameters are preset at time of grant.
“Admittedly, that is a more traditional path to power for those who contract with Travelers,” Cariad explained, making a small triangle mark on the page next to the power. “It’s cheap enough that you could snag it without an issue, but the only power you have that you can grant someone is your Shape-Shifting and even then that would be at the minor rank, because it reduces it from your highest mastered level.”
I grimaced at that. Up until Cariad said something to that effect, I hadn’t considered that part. I’d assumed that just having the rank of the ability would work, like buying the moderate tier for Manipulate Element or something. But having to master it?
“I don’t know if I plan to up my Manipulate Element to the point that it would make sense. Earth was always meant as a utility power, and I have far more destructive options,” I mumbled.
“I know,” Cariad said with a grin. “Have you had much luck practicing with the entropy magic? And before you ask. Yes, Mr. Cerebaton told me that he talked to you about it, and for what it’s worth? I’m glad you picked entropy over time.”
Cariad gave a full body shudder at that, and her response to the idea of me taking the time school of magic broke me out of my surprise. So much had been going on that I couldn’t actually remember if I’d talked to her about which to take or if that had just been Cerebaton. Either way, she knew now, that much was obvious.
“Why is that?” I asked, taking another drink of my coffee before setting the mug down in front of me.
“Time magic is like entropy, in that it handles one of the primal building blocks of the universe. Time is a measurement, and thus an agent of order, while entropy is the opposite and an agent of chaos. Not to say one is good or evil, but daemons have a side of the proverbial fence they are on, and that is not on the side that time and order favor.”
“Can I ask what exists on that side, though?” I inquired, not meeting her eyes and studying my mug. I hadn’t really questioned it as much before, being so caught up in the idea of being able to touch one of the daemons safely to consider it.
“They have many terms to refer to them, but the more common one is a deva. I know humans use that to refer to gods, but it’s not entirely true. No more true than angels or demons, really. But deva are… inflexible,” Cariad said with a shrug, as if the revelation wasn’t really anything important.
Which it probably wasn’t, at least to her, I thought, smirking as I tapped the outline of a green, flaming dumpster on the side of my mug. This used to be my life, but not anymore. No more dumpster fires for me.
Shaking off the introspection, I glanced back up at Cariad, who had been watching me with a small smile on her face.
“Based on your options currently, Liam?” Cariad said, and I blinked in surprise before I remembered the original conversation we’d had. “You should boost your Shape-Shifting to the next rank. The major rank is going to take a while to fill out. Sure, you have to dip into your ‘rainy-day’ fund to get it, but the sooner you have it, the sooner you can experiment and start building it up. I guarantee that the last rank, the true master rank, will be expensive enough that you will have to hoard SP to acquire it, but it’ll be worth it.”
“But what about the other powers?” I asked, tilting my head and tapping the Grant Power ability. “There’s also the Empower Reservoir one that I can put to good use.”
“Those can come later.” Cariad shook her head in denial to my statement. “Shape-Shifting is the foundation of your skill set. Also, you can take the Grant Power ability and start working on it too. I believe the higher ranks of it will not penalize the power gift as much.”
“That… actually makes sense. Okay…” I mumbled, rubbing my chin thoughtfully. “I’d wanted to use it to gift the girls the Mana Reservoir power, that way they wouldn’t end up without the ability to cast because they didn’t have the infused metal with them.”
Cariad nodded and tapped the sheet of paper again with her pen.
“That makes sense just fine. But you couldn’t actually train the ability until you had one that you could give. Now you do. So my recommendation is to take those two: Shape-Shifting (Major) and Grant Power (Minor). That’ll tap out most of your available SP, but honestly, it’s not good to just sit on it. You should be spending the SP or planning to spend it as soon as it comes in.”
“The only trade-off is the stat points,” I said, unwilling to give up on playing devil’s-advocate just yet. “I could boost every one of my stats by sixty points for roughly the same amount of SP.”
Cariad shrugged, setting her pen down on the paper in front of her and collecting her coffee mug for another sip. When she finished, Cariad spoke again.
“That is an option, and a good point to make,” she said at first. “But again, Shape-Shifting (Major) is going to take a long time to master. Meaning you can always pour SP into your stats later. Liam, you are probably six to eight times stronger in every aspect of a normal human right now.”
That thought made me pause and do the math. It wasn’t quite clean, but based on my stats when this had all started—which were in the low teens mostly—Cariad was underselling the difference quite a bit.
“I… hadn’t thought of it like that,” I said thoughtfully.
“Exactly. And while the stats will help you, you do need actual powers. Plus, you’ve been boosting your stats for a while now, you should let them settle out and grow used to them before you surge again.”
Cariad had made good points so far, and I couldn’t honestly argue beyond the fact that I knew Shape-Shifting (Major) was going to take a long time to increase, and I’d gotten a bit addicted to seeing the steady climb of numbers and stats.
Ability points go ‘brrrr,’ I thought, smothering a smirk before nodding.
“Okay, you make good points there, Cariad. I’ll grab those two then.”
It took only a moment to pull the three pure mana stones out of my Dimensional Pocket and consume them, bringing my total SP up to six-thousand, seven-hundred and twenty. That left me with six more of the stones in reserve.
Cariad waited patiently, a small smile on her lips, as she watched me.
“I imagine it never gets easier spending this much of anything, whether it be cash or points,” I muttered when I hesitated again before sighing and mentally selecting the two new powers.
A flare of light on the edges of my vision, and the powers getting a glittering outline confirmed that they were now mine.
“Well, with that out of the way,” Cariad said, tucking her papers away into her folder before flipping it closed. “I want to hear about this artist of yours. The moth girl? I saw the System generated mission log that you were summoned for a certain type of study to help her with her art?”
Snapping my eyes up, I saw a wicked smile on Cariad’s features as she teased me. Though there was something else in those eyes as she stared at me, but it slipped away, hidden behind merriment, before I could pin it down.