Class Stalking Threat (E) was selected.

Bite is empowered. Maw of the Trickster’s growth rate increased.

Mimicking Tentacles is empowered. Alter Physique’s growth rate increased.

Razor Tentacle, Telekinesis, Tentacle Whip are empowered.

Synergy detected! Recuperative Meditation will be merged with Accelerated Regeneration.

Synergy detected! Razor Tentacle will be subsumed as a Subskill of Mimicking Tentacles. Progress and rank of Skill will be set by Mimicking Tentacles.

Upgrade in 3…2…1…

Sand rippled around him, and the water grew turbulent. Motes of light began materializing, many more than any other instance so far, and Henry braced as he bewilderedly looked around. “Wait wha–”

----------------------------------------

Henry opened his eyes. “–t’s happening?”

He looked around and slowly picked himself back up. He’d been lying on the sand. And the interior of the shell seemed a bit tighter.

“I got bigger? At least I can control it if I need to.”

The algae outside was a bit disturbed, but other than that it seemed like nothing had happened. As if there hadn’t been a mini-magic storm building up when he passed out.

Henry stared at the notifications and nodded to himself. “Never do this outside. Got it.”

He saw a few notifications waiting for him, so he brought them up.

Class rank-up completed.

Species rank-up completed.

Trickster Octopus (F) evolved into Mature Trickster Octopus (E). All base stats increased by 2.

Accelerated Regeneration and Recuperative Meditation successfully merged into Accelerated Recovery.

Henry’s inexistent brows shot up. “That’s… 50 levels’ worth of stats. Damn.”

Next, he pulled up the updated Trait.

Accelerated Recovery (F): Recovers from injuries and ailments faster. While meditating, health and mana recovery are sped up even further.

“Traits are still F-Rank. Wait a second…”

Henry pulled up his new menu and looked at his available options. He immediately clicked on Magic Mimic.

Upgrade Magic Mimic (F)

Yes [1 Evolutionary Point] | Cancel

“I’ve got… five of those. Alright.”

Henry paused before accepting the upgrade. He was going to, obviously, but something else came to mind.

“I got those for taking big risks… does that mean I have to keep doing that to keep upgrading my Traits?”

He wasn’t shying away from the challenges, but it meant this wasn’t anything like regular Skills. He’d have to be very deliberate about which Traits to upgrade and which ones to not touch.

“Unless there’s other ways of upgrading Traits. Or other ways of getting these Evolutionary Points.”

Problems for later. Henry accepted the upgrade and waited.

His body began buzzing and tingling, similar to when his Species Skill had upgraded. Moments later, it was over.

Henry pulled up Magic Mimic again to examine the differences.

Magic Mimic (E): By sampling the tissues of a magic-empowered being, a Skill or a Trait can be temporarily copied. Only one of each can be remembered at a time.

“And that’s how I get Traits.”

Henry took the time to upgrade Accelerated Recovery as well, then pulled up his whole status to see how much it had changed. He squinted his eyes as he studied his details hovering in his mind’s eye and grinned at his improved stat breakdown.

“Yes… give me all the stats.”

Status:

Name: Henry Dubois

Consumption Tokens: 79

Evolutionary Points: 3

Health: 100

Mana: 72

Stats: (2 assignable)

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Strength: 12 [3 Base][4 Class][5 Purchased] (6 Purchasable)

Constitution: 17 [3 Base][8 Class][1 Consumption][5 Purchased] (6 Purchasable)

Spirit: 12 [6 Base][2 Class][2 Consumption][2 Purchased] (6 Purchasable)

Perception: 12 [4 Base][4 Class][4 Purchased] (6 Purchasable)

Dexterity: 9 [4 Base][1 Consumption][4 Purchased] (0 Purchasable)

Mature Trickster Octopus - Reincarnated Intelligence (E):

Skills:

Bite (E) - Level 1

* F-Rank: Your bite inflicts more damage. [Class Empowered]

* E-Rank: Temporarily gain an aspect of your target's bite.

* Bite of the Whipcrack Shark.

* Bite of the Riptide Shark

* Maw of the Trickster: Store anything you can fit in your maw in a private storage dimension. Maximum volume: 5L

Mimicking Tentacles (E) - Level 2

* F-Rank: Your tentacles can mimic shapes and lifeforms somewhat accurately. [Class Empowered]

* E-Rank: Mimic some of the physical properties of ingested prey.

* Alter Physique: Gradually increase or decrease your overall size and mass over the course of a few hours. Maximum mass: 11Kg

* Razor Tentacle: Summon a razor-sharp blade along the edge of a single tentacle. [Class Empowered]

Inkjet (F) - Level 8

* F-Rank: Shoot a jet of ink to confuse your pursuers and hide yourself.

Traits:

* Magic Mimic (E): By sampling the tissues of a magic-empowered being, a Skill or a Trait can be temporarily copied. Only one of each can be remembered at a time.

* Accelerated Recovery (E): Recovers from injuries and ailments faster. While meditating, health and mana recovery are sped up even further.

Ephemerals (0/2): None

Class: Stalking Threat (E) - Level 1

Skills (4/7):

* Identify: Get basic information about an examined being or object.

* Hoard Vitals (E) Level 2 - [7 Charges]: Store 10% of your health and mana on your body to be released at will or when severely injured for a burst of healing and mana.

* Telekinesis (E) - Level 6: Spend mana to control the movement of a perceived target. [+Potency][Class Empowered]

* Tentacle Whip (F) - Level 3: Strike out with a tentacle to create a sonic boom that stuns the target while delivering a powerful blow. [Class Empowered]

Traits (2/7):

* Universal Tongue: Can understand and be understood by all intelligent beings.

* Nothing is Lost - Stalking Threat: On death, a being’s power is condensed into a Core. The Core is automatically collected from any being that succumbs to your deathblow. Such Cores can be claimed, consumed, or exchanged for Consumption Tokens at any time.

“Lots of changes. Class Skill and Trait slots went up by two. The Class-Empowered tag showed up. Nothing is Lost’s title and description has changed. And most importantly, this fusing business. So if a Skill or Trait are close enough to a species' ability, they can be merged? That’s… very good to know. Does that mean anything I do with Razor Tentacle will now level-up Mimicking Tentacles? Seems like it.”

Tentacle Whip wasn’t merged, though. After he thought about it, it made sense. Razor Tentacle was altering his limb, which was in line with Mimicking Tentacle.

He hummed. “Alright. What else… oh. Do I lose the upgrades? Dang. That rigidity upgrade would have been nice to have. Oh well… I’m sure I’ll eventually encounter something that does the same.”

Henry sat down on his tentacles and took a moment to appreciate his progress over the last month. Or more like, two or three weeks?

“The days are kinda melding together. But this is good progress. And I still have some perks to go through. But before that… can I upgrade a Trait beyond E-Rank?”

He tried with the Accelerated Recovery, but got a “requirements unmet” prompt.

Henry shrugged with two tentacles. “Alright. I’ll try again in a few levels.”

That one in particular was worth upgrading as far as he could possibly manage. In the meantime, it was time to see what Bahamut Whales had for him.

A layered piece of gray and red popped in front of him. Deepcaller’s gift.

Henry examined it for a moment, and his brain showed him a close up of where the piece had been taken from, then it overlapped a picture of a fingernail on top of it.

“Ugh. Dammit brain. Don’t overthink it. It’s barely a bit of skin.” He paused and would have thrown up a bit in his mouth if he could. “That made it worse.”

He braced, then tried to bite off half of the piece.

It felt like trying to chew through a tractor tire. He shoved the whole portion into his mouth and swallowed it whole, hoping the magic would come through. A few moments later it did.

Telepathic Message (F) was copied by Magic Mimic.

Telepathic Sense (F) was copied by Magic Mimic.

Mimicking Tentacles: Resilience of the Bahamut Whale acquired.

Ephemerals (2/2):

Telepathic Message (F) - Skill: Send a telepathic message to a target you can see. (Time remaining: 21 hours, 42 minutes)

Telepathic Sense (F) - Trait: Vaguely sense nearby mental signatures. (Time remaining: 19 hours, 11 minutes)

“Oh man… this was worth the wait. Was that how the whales found me the first time? Theirs must have been at a higher rank. And I get their resilience? I wonder how long that’ll last. Or how effective it will be.”

Henry was immediately on his way to purchase both Skills and add them to his arsenal when he saw the prices. He glared at the prompt quietly.

Acquire Skill: Telepathic Message (F) - 10,000 Consumption Tokens

Insufficient Tokens

The Trait was at the same price.

“Dammit, System.”

He popped his second Whipcrack shark core and converted it to Tokens.

“With the Riptide tokens… and this one…. I have 3837 Tokens. Hmm. I guess I can take the new class for a test-run. Yeah. One last big fight in the reef. Then I start moving.”

Henry swam back out and began making his way toward his new hunting grounds.

“So the System can manipulate what is shown in Identify? That would be a–”

Henry stopped and looked down at his tentacles. “Wait. What do people see when they Identify me? Does it say octopus?”

Henry thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “The whales would have recognized my species when we first met… no? Unless my disguise hides me from Identify?”

Henry rubbed the back of his head. It felt weird doing that with tentacles, so he dropped his appendages around him. “How did I not think of this? Who can I ask?”

Henry continued swimming. “I’m gonna have to figure this out before I approach anyone.”

He glanced up. “System?” He waited for a moment then shook his head. “Dang it. I should have asked. But then again, I might have not gotten an answer from him. Maybe I can ask him on the next class upgrade… Unless I meet some new sapient species before that. If they’re friendly.”

Henry arrived and looked up. Above, a few Whipcrack sharks were roaming. One of them veered down and snapped its tail into a shoal of bluefish, stunning–and vaporizing–a few of the small fish before it swallowed them.

“A Skill to lure my targets down would be nice. Though… If I could attract a few down, I could train up Inkjet. The earlier fight worked pretty well. Hmmm… what if…”

Henry swam upward for a couple of seconds. His eyes landed on the closest shark. “[Hey! I’m food! Come get me!]”

The closest shark–around 30 feet away–twitched and grew agitated.

Henry spread out his tentacles and made himself bigger. “[Over here!]”

The shark’s eyes finally faced the right direction, and it began swimming down. Two more sharks followed.

Heny grinned nervously. “Alright. Let’s do this. Let’s see what these empowerments can do.”