Delta could feel her energy infuse Giant, the blessing slowly linking to the monster's center. It took everything Delta had not to lose concentration and accidently give the frog an afro or awesome sneakers. The blessing was a wild thing, wanting to be free to cause havoc, but Delta was patient, layering it in place bit by bit until Giant had a rough loop of energy coursing through his body.
Only a few strands of the blessing wriggled loose and got lost in the process but Delta was sure, almost positive, they wouldn't be an issue.
"That feels warm," Giant whispered as he held out his hands, lines of orange mana flowing just under his green and brown skin.
"I think that should be it. Do you feel magical?" Delta asked slowly as she stepped back, seeing no obvious change in his menu. Giant tilted his head as he stood up on the long wooden bridge and tried to wave his webbed hands with little success.
"Maybe it didn't work?" Giant said, sounding disappointed and Delta refused to accept that. She had purposely mutated too many things to get this blessing business down to a usable level!
"Think happy thoughts!" She encouraged and created a simple training dummy for Giant to focus on. The frog's face scrunched up and his body trembled as if happy thoughts were some internal organ he had to stimulate.
Giant took a step forward and punched, causing the air ripple and the dummy to fall over without much damage a second later.
Delta stared at the minor force amplification skill Giant employed. It was something but not quite-
"I have telekinesis!" Giant said with pure joy. Delta tried not to squirm as she was presented with the option of being a paragon of kindness or a renegade of honesty. On one hand, Delta wanted to make Giant happy and he was! On the other hand, it was a little like lying to Giant to his face about what he was actually doing.
"Tele-Fist!" Giant cried and rapidly began shadow-boxing, creating little ripples of displaced air followed by sharp popping noises. The blessing inside him didn't budge, but Delta guessed it didn't matter. Giant's happiness came first and the study of the Shapes second. Magic was a distant concern in the grand scheme of things.
"Tele-jump!" Giant went on and vanished high into the sky where the beautiful sunny day flickered and glitched out as Giant smashed head-first into the very solid ceiling.
"Maybe the blessing will manifest as safety gear and cushions?" Delta mused aloud as the monster fell into the river with panicked cries of 'tele-fly'. She watched as Rale helped his brother out with a boisterous laugh, making Giant look pleased but embarrassed.
"Giant Heart of the Fist!" Rale declared and Giant brightened like that was something he hadn't even thought of.
Delta smiled, watching the scene with deep warmth in her chest as a single thread of 'self' began to weave its way through Giant. It wasn't magic, but it was magical how sometimes the small things were enough.
As she wandered off for a moment, Delta frowned as she held out her hand, the blessing of magic and 'her' glowing. The thing was unpredictable and finicky. Honestly, she much preferred using the Dungeon system due to its more reliable input and output.
Faith and magic were prone to irony- Delta just knew it.
There was also the fact the magic tended to cause eyes to grow everywhere which was weird. She didn't understand why that was a thing. Anything she blessed haphazardly would grow eyes and forever be watching the target, like some sort of overbearing stalker.
"Nu?" she called and the screen appeared, pulling Nu away from his new pastime of watching idiots in the mirror dungeons fail repeatedly.
"What happens when you bless something?" she asked the blue screen.
"Nothing has earned the privilege," Nu said bluntly. Leave it to Nu to be stingy with his blessings...
"Why don't we see together, so there's no surprises," Delta suggested as she pointed to a rabbit nearby. Nu gave off the feeling of grimacing as he eyed it.
"It's not really impressive. Its kill ratio is 0/0," Nu protested.
"It's a critter," Delta stressed.
"You weren't saying that when you fought Mharia," Nu grumbled but he floated forward. Delta finally got to see the blessing magic work from the outside as Nu glowed with a blue so deep it was almost black, but slowly golden lines flowed across his screen, coalescence in an orb in front of his form.
It was beautiful and when it washed over the rabbit, something absolutely unacceptable happened.
The rabbit semi-stood up on its hind-legs, picking up a nearby branch and brandishing it like a sword. It bowed to Nu like he was some sovereign and the rabbit was a knight. It was so cute! Delta felt stiff! Cheated!
This was unfair!
Knighthare: The Burrower of Justice
A knightly rabbit with basic sword skills. It will stand for no crime against its king!
"Urgh what a pathetic increase in combat abilities. This was a waste of my energy," Nu said and Delta was silent.
"Delta?" Nu asked, turning and paused when he saw Delta's fingers trembling. Delta grabbed him, fingers digging in deep as she looked visibly upset.
"Give me your blessing, I want it! I want it! Take my monster making blessing!" she demanded, shaking the screen hard in despair.
"That's not how it works. You invoke monstrous self expression. I seek servants to destroy my foes. Of course the blessing would be expressed differently!" Nu cried out. That gave Delta an idea.
"Let's bless something together!" she decided and Nu didn't even argue, the idea becoming intriguing to him instantly. They both slowly turned to a Pigglecap emerging from a nearby bush, oblivious to the attention on it.
"This could end badly," Delta admitted aloud as she slowly moved closer, Nu right on her heels.
"Of course it will. I just wish to see how badly it will go," the menu admitted. At the same time, without speaking, they blessed the little Pigglecap, the twin blessings rolling over it and making it oink in surprise. The creature trembled before its entire body turned into a tiny sphere of pure brown crystal.
"What happened?" Delta blinked as the thing radiated a tiny sprinkle of mana. Before Nu could answer, a screen appeared.
Critter turned into Dungeon Seed. Type-Pigglecap! Benefits: host becomes much cuter and grows mushrooms on their head.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"Oh lovely, we create class seeds to infect people's seeds faster. I can't wait to see people lining up for the 'Pigglecap' Class," Nu grunted, vastly unimpressed by the result.
The Pigglecap consumed by the process reappeared with bewilderment as its respawn timer kicked in instantly and Delta was happy to see it was mostly okay!
"So 'self-expression' mixed with 'influence and enhanced abilities' makes these things?" Delta mused and Nu stared at the orb for a moment.
"On Dungeon monsters, yes. However, there's no telling what it will do to actual people," he warned.
"I wonder if it'll feel like my Dungeon monsters are able to leave the Dungeon due to the mana-vibes? It might be weird," Delta replied as she moved the orb to the Core room for now, the orb being suspended in the concealed spot in the fourth floor star where her core was hidden.
"I'm sure that will just thrill the outsiders," Nu said sarcastically as he told his new loyal knight to swing his 'sword' a thousand times before reporting back to him.
Delta just stared at the cute bunny with a longing expression clear on her face, trying to ignore the scuttling eye monsters wandering past. Needing to get back to work, she asked Hob and Gob to request Ruli to visit.
Since she was having no luck on finding Durance's Shapes, Delta figured it couldn't hurt to ask those closest to him in life if they had any idea. Ruli was the perfect person to ask.
She was tough, hard-working, and would only take occasional booze breaks.
Meanwhile... It occurred to her that when Mharia talked about Shapes, she managed to slip away before Delta could figure out how to study the girl's! It would still be attached and working, even in her new form.
Anything that could get Delta closer to letting Durance the Mimic grant her access to that Echo it had trapped was one more step to helping everyone in this world.
---
"You're a real pal, pal," the sword commented as Amenstar dried himself off slowly with a towel in his room. The sword thrown aside by that strange girl just did not stop talking. Amenstar eyed it before he sat down on his bed, Gamma leaning against a wall nonchalantly.
"You upset that girl pretty badly," he commented and Gamma hummed as if it was a thing that just happened around him.
"Beheaded the wrong vampire," he admitted and Amenstar barely had time to digest that when Gamma continued, "thrice," he added.
"That's a lot of murder," Amenstar said slowly, wondering if he brought a cursed tool into his home when Gamma snorted.
"I didn't want to slow down and she did the swinging. I just told her there was a vampire coming up. I only got details of their faces when we were already shooting past," Gamma admitted.
"That seems reckless. Vampires could die from that, you know," Amenstar responded. From what he learned from Mr Jones, Vampires grew increasingly hard to kill as they aged to the point that beheading was merely a step in the process for some.
It was something to do about the mana they drained from people's blood or something.
"Vengeance is swift, not logical. The girl wanted dead vampires, I obliged," Gamma said, sounding increasingly bored of the conversation as if fault and responsibility were things he found tiresome. The sword's tone changed to something more 'interesting'.
"Enough about her. Let's hear about you! The little savior of moi! What does the strange goth desire in the house of god, er, some god?" Gamma asked, causing Amenstar to raise his brow at the tone.
"This is my home," Amenstar said without any hesitation.
"My deepest sympathies," Gamma said bluntly.
"Not a fan of the gods?" Amenstar asked, knowing the tone a little from other children who found the concept of a higher power weird to work with on a daily basis like his father did.
"Not a fan of religions," Gamma corrected.
"There's a difference?" Amenstar frowned, not following as the sword slowly floated to the nearby window, the action taking a decent chunk of mana in which the sword had a considerable amount of.
"Gods can be 'mercy' and 'love' but when left alone, their followers learn to be selective about the lessons. You have some luck around here, gods actually get testy if you get ideas," Gamma teased, spinning lightly on the spot, causing a small groove to appear in Amenstar's wooden floors.
"I'm sorry you experienced that," the boy said, thinking about how his own childhood had mostly positive influences aside from his father's long absences to perform saint-work.
"Don't be! It was sooooo long ago. I have plenty more things I despise more these days," the sword promised brightly as it came to a stop. Amenstar was almost afraid to ask since there was something about the sword that caused a knot of unease to rise in the teens stomach.
He spoke with a happy tone but the emotions felt like a performance. A front he offered to the world to hide something darker.
"Like?" he decided to ask, taking the risk.
"Queens and idiots," Gamma said flippantly, "but hey listen, I was hoping to go to the local Dungeon for reasons. Mind being a pair of legs? I'll reward you... I have many treasures," Gamma said and he shifted to a gaudy gold scepter that radiated a weak holy light.
"The judgment rod of Steef, able to influence others with similar sounding names!" Gamma tempted.
"No thank you," Amenstar refused politely, having toys from his childhood that gave off a stronger purity.
"Ah a tough customer! You're clearly a rebel!" Gamma said, as if spotting how Amenstar dressed in darker clothes in comparison to the bright church abode. Gamma shifted once more to a staff of yellow bones that radiated an aura of darkness.
"The accursed lich staff of Bonerotter! She was able to overcome a whole town using chicken bones until she assembled a dinosaur skeleton squad!" Gamma purred, sounding softer and more teasing.
"I'm not really a staff user," Amenstar declined again, remaining polite. Gamma kept shifting as if they could just find the correct shape, the perfect form, then Amenstar would be agreeable to their wishes.
"The Dark Claws of Loghan!"
"They look dirty."
"The gleaming blade of the sun knight!"
"It hurts my eyes to look at it."
"The bow of the hunter queen!"
"I don't have arrows."
This went on for sometime.
All Amenstar really wanted was a 'please'.