World Seed: Game Start (23 page)

And
for those of you wondering, yes, I did inspect Celeste’s mana
signature, or at least the one from my bracelet. It was strange,
rather than the natural, gentle formations that were in plants and
animals, the mana signature of my companion bracelet was rough. Not
rough like the snake scales… more like jagged, as if I were
staring at a crushed car in a wireframe view. I guess that was the
difference between something natural and artificial.

Anyways,
enough about my little procrastination rant. My point was that it’s
difficult to truly understand an entire aura, but once you have, it’s
not nearly as difficult to remember. And that rather helped me when
analyzing Yin’s mana signature, because I already had pieces of
the puzzle that I could fill in, her wings and skin. Using that as a
starting point, I was able to much more quickly finish analyzing her
aura, after only 45 minutes or so.

Once
I had finished analyzing the aura, I had Yin go over and play with
Yang and Sharon. For some reason, though, I could feel a sense of
anxiousness from them as they watched me. I really hoped that they
didn’t realize what I was about to do, and were simply putting
on an act to have me hurry up! They shouldn’t be that smart
yet, right?!

Shaking
my head, I quickly dispelled that thought. I had other things to
worry about right now. What I was about to do wasn’t grafting a
mana signature onto myself, or even overlaying an aspect. I was
completely changing my mana signature to match another. For that, I
had to be very careful, because if I messed up the positioning of the
mana, then I might end up with my foot in my mouth.. literally!

Thankfully,
I didn’t find it too hard to reshape my own mana signature, so
I just had to take my time. At this point, it was like shaping clay.
If I was careful, and took my time, then I would get the result I
expected. If I rushed it, everything would collapse.

The
entire process took nearly five minutes, during which I felt almost
nothing. My eyes were long since closed to concentrate, so I saw
nothing different until it was over. Once it was done, I opened my
eyes carefully, and saw two giant birds charging over towards me!
Wait, they weren’t giant birds, that was Yin and Yang! I was
suddenly tiny!

There
was a ding in my head as a notification appeared, but I did not pay
attention to it. Turning around, I attempted to immediately fly away,
but I was not used to this body yet. As such, I fell flat on my beak
after jumping into the air. I could only weep silently as my doom
flew closer and closer… and then stopped.

After
a few moments of not being molested as I had expected, I turned
around and saw the two lovebirds collapsed on the ground, their heads
down with their upper wings covering their faces. The two of them
just looked so pitiful for some reason… and that’s when
I noticed it.

I…
I was not a male bird! Mini-me was gone! I didn’t know whether
to laugh or cry, but I finally had a chance, so I immediately began
the process of changing back into my half-elf form. This time, the
process was faster, only taking one minute to complete itself.
However, changing back and forth once had used almost my entire mana
pool! It was also at this time that I noticed the windows that had
appeared earlier.

While
the second one had me a bit excited, it was the first one that I
really enjoyed. Finally, I had started on the path to becoming a
Xeno-Shifter! Naturally, I immediately selected yes and accepted the
Sub-Class.

Seeing
the two messages pop up after I chose my Sub-Class, I was even
happier. Now, I would no longer need to hold an object or creature
between my hands to study its mana signatures! Though, this likely
didn’t let me detect the ‘feeling’ of the mana
signatures, so it would be harder to memorize. Still, it shouldn’t
be that hard right?

Before
I had noticed it, there were two small birds nuzzling up against my
head, seemingly glad I was back to being a man. And nearby, still
sitting where she had been, was Sharon, who had a wry smile on her
face. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she had managed to
guess what had happened during that brief exchange. Though, any
doubts immediately disappeared when she spoke.

“
Turned
into a girl bird, didn’t you?”

“
Yup…”
I let out a sigh, while propping myself up. I didn’t want to
always turn into female creatures in the future. Especially if I
ended up studying a female alien for my Xeno-Shifter abilities! I’d
need to find some way to secure my manhood.

At
this time, there was a light clapping coming from the edge of the
grove. Surprised, both Sharon and I looked over to see Jarl there,
accompanied by his usual wolf. However, there were also six horned
rabbits, two young wolves, a small doe, and what looked like a white
raven accompanying them. “Good, you’ve finally worked up
the courage to take the next step.” He said, looking at me with
an amused expression.

“
You
knew… didn’t you?”

To
my question, he could only grin. “Of course I did. But it was
too fun to watch your hesitation over it. If you want to know, the
way to change a form’s gender is simple. Just study both a male
and female of the same species, and find the components which
determine gender. After that, just make sure you leave those bits
unchanged, and you won’t have another gender accident.”

Well…
at least he told me that part. I let out a tired sigh as I heard him
talk. “So, I’ve got to ask… what’s the
difference between animals, magical animals, and monsters?” I
recalled that bit being mentioned in my notifications, so wanted to
clarify. This entire time, I’ve been pretty much considering
all animals as video game monsters.

He
looked surprised at my question, however. Perhaps he hadn’t
expected that we wouldn’t know? “Well, there’s
really no harm in explaining. And the difference is pretty simple.
Regular animals are those who have evolved naturally, and not had
much of a reaction to the magic in their surroundings. Magical
animals, on the other hand, have incorporated this magic into their
evolution. Unicorns, for instance, are magical animals capable of
manipulating water and light.

“
It’s
common for magical animals to have some special powers, by the way.
And no, this forest shouldn’t have any in it. Now, monsters are
a step further. They are races that, rather than evolving naturally,
were spawned by magic itself. Slimes, for instance. In areas thick
with certain types of mana, a slime might appear. But there are other
examples as well, such as elementals, goblins, and even certain types
of elves are all considered monsters by this standard.”

The
last bit threw me for a loop. “Wouldn’t elves of any type
be, at most, magical animals?”

He
smiled, as if having expected that question. “If they had
evolved, then yes. Though, sentient species are no longer classified
as any of those three by these standards either. There are cases
where the world will spawn a race which is very close to an existing
race. Those are the ones considered as monsters. Though, out of
beasts, magical beasts, and monsters, the latter are the most likely
to gain sentience. I mentioned slimes and goblins as monsters, but
there are also sentient goblin tribes, and even a race of slime
people. Though their races started as monsters, they have transcended
that level to become a sentient creature.”

I
nodded, and began going over the information in my head. So it’s
mostly dependant on the magic concentration, right? Low levels are
found in normal animals, moderate levels in magical beasts, and high
levels in monsters. And once a race gains sentience, they add a
further layer of control to their own magic. That could explain why
the races have different difficulties for my shapeshifting skills, I
guess.

Now
that he had finished explaining, he turned to look at Sharon. “And
you must be the new apprentice Rita was sending. Your friends found
me a little bit ago.” He waved his hands around to indicate the
various animals around him. “Though, for the most part I would
say you have advanced your training on your own far past the normal
level.”

Seeing
that he was about to start teaching her the basics of druid elemental
magic, I decided to tune him out and begin cultivating my own three
affinities. Later I can learn what I can from the wolf corpse, then
see about learning new shapeshifting powers!

Chapter 21: The
Claw

After
a couple hours spent cultivating, I was somewhat annoyed that I
hadn’t made much progress. Though, I also should have expected
it. Although I managed to raise Earth Affinity to 6%, neither of my
other affinities increased. Back when I was solely focusing on one at
a time, it’d take several hours to gain a single percent, and
now my attention was divided between three of them.

Maybe
I should practice them one at a time until 10%, and then work on them
in the background while I practice the next? I thought about it like
that, and decided that I’d start working on it after I did some
more training with Nature Magic. And in order to do that, I’d
need to study the wolf corpse I had collected.

But…
better safe than sorry. So, breaking out of my trance-like training,
I looked over and saw that Jarl was sitting near Sharon, watching her
practice her first session of cultivating mana. “Jarl, quick
question.” When I saw I had his attention, I went ahead and
asked. “There isn’t a penalty for studying the mana of a
dead animal rather than a live one, right?”

He
thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Yes
and no. If they have an activated ability like your birds, you won’t
be able to study it. But… if they’re just normal
animals, you can still see the aura left behind, as long as it’s
not been dead for too long.”

I
winced slightly at that. “How long is too long?”

“
Twenty-four
hours, typically. After that, the aura begins to degrade. That’s
why resurrection also has a twenty-four hour window. Once the aura
begins to degrade, it shows that the soul has left the body. So,
unless a corpse is magically preserved so that the aura isn’t
damaged, you only have that long.”

I
nodded my head, a bit relieved at that. It had definitely not been a
full day since I killed the wolf, and if I remembered right, I had
not quite killed the snake twenty-four hours before I studied its
scales. Taking another look at the armor’s mana signature, I
discovered that the paths of light that I had previously memorized in
the snake scales had started to shrivel up and lose their glow.

Having
resolved my doubts, I pulled the body of the wolf out of my
inventory, and decided to use my new skill, Aura Sight. What I saw
caught me off guard for a moment. I could still see the wolf, the
grass around it, and myself, but inside of each there were the
strands of light I have come to associate with mana signatures. Even
floating between the wolf and myself, thin, nearly invisible wisps of
white light which seemed to be wind mana were mingling with straight,
yellow rays descending from above. The latter, I decided was like
light mana.