After returning to the Admin Room, I decided that I should probably wait until the group of seven were sent off to invade Grudge’s world before doing another large fast forward. They were expecting to be training for a week, after all. Having them come out after that week and find that the time was not yet right would put a damper on their morale.

As such, I simply chose to observe what was transpiring in my world at the current time. It had been a while since the last true ‘catastrophe’ struck, and I couldn’t be sure if that was because the world had been handling all of such things on their own, or if those dangers were simply lurking beneath the surface.

Pulling up my map, I first looked at Deckan’s realm. After the more militant golems had found their way into that world, I’ve been waiting to see what the first contact between these two civilizations would be like.

Looking at the galactic map, I had the feeling that it would take about another two or three years before these two forces actually met. While they weren’t particularly close to one another, each of them was sending forces out to scout in different directions. It was only a matter of waiting and hoping that they didn’t miss each other in the utter vastness of space.

“Hello!” Chel shouted as she opened the door to the lab, suddenly announcing her presence in the early morning. There was a wide smile plastered across her face as she stepped into the room, before she noticed the somewhat awkward atmosphere.

Off in one corner, huddled together were the kitsune sisters, as well as the lycan assistant. Seeing that, she let out a light laugh, looking towards James on the opposite side of the room. “You finally finished it?” She asked with a knowing look.

Now that he had all the components that he needed, it was only a matter of isolating the genetic markers that he needed from each research specimen to create the evolution he was aiming for. After which, he had to combine them in such a way that it produced the desired result, as opposed to some horrific abomination.

All things considered, six months to achieve this was still quite fast. However, Chel knew that James would find this type of speed lacking. This world simply didn’t have the testing equipment to accelerate the process any further.

James let out a dry chuckle, looking at the frightened beastkin, and then back to Chel. “It should be working this time… they’re just scared to try it because I messed it up the last time, and had tails growing out of their ears instead.”

When Chel heard that, she couldn’t hold back the laughter that erupted from her. “Wait, really!? Why didn’t you call me over to see something fun like that?”

Even as she said that, she could feel the mutinous glare of the three beastkin in question, who had been subjected to that treatment themselves. “Why not just test it on me?” There was an innocence to her tone that caused James’s expression to soften.

“I would, but you’ve already shed your physical body. I have to use this on someone that hasn’t achieved perfection to get the full results.”

Chel nodded, tapping her chin with a finger. “Have you asked the new queen? She’d probably be able to ask for volunteers.”

James let out a dry chuckle at that. “I tried. She said that she would if we couldn’t find anyone ourselves. But, since it’s been less than a year since she took the throne, she is working to stabilize the people and clean up various messes. Looking for volunteers for a genetic manipulation experiment could cause things to go south for her.”

Chel clicked her tongue in annoyance. Turning to look at the three research assistants, a playful glint appeared in her eyes. She walked over in such a manner that it made the three retreat back further into their corner. “Thea, could you do a tiny favor for me?” She asked in a sweet tone, causing one of the kitsune to gulp.

Before Thea could take the initiative to refuse, Chel threw out the bait that she knew would be able to entice her. “I’ll trade it for a formula to create a stealth energy that isn’t too hard to train in.”

Nora’s eyes went wide as she looked at her sister, the implication behind the words clear to the two of them. Chel was offering an energy that they’d be able to share with their elders. More than that, it was an energy practically made for the ninjas, if the girl’s words were to be believed.

Thea, feeling the gaze of her sister, clenched her fists to steel her resolve. Denying this trade would be denying a chance to help her people in front of her sister. Though, she knew that Nora wouldn’t blame her if she did choose to refuse, given what happened the last time. However, she couldn’t bring herself to do that.

“Okay, I’ll… I’ll do it.” She muttered in a weak tone, slowly standing up. Thea felt a hand gripping hers, and saw Nora looking at her with a comforting face. “What’s the worst that could happen?” She muttered, as if trying to assure herself more than anything.

Seeing her volunteering, James sat up a bit straighter, looking forward excitedly. Naturally, he was able to hear the deal that Chel made with Thea, but that deal didn’t particularly matter to him. James had never restricted Chel from spreading any type of energy to outsiders, and he had no intention of starting now. If anything, he was touched that she was willing to make such a trade on his behalf.

Once Thea was in front of him, he waited just a moment for her to calm down. Afterwards, he held out a hand, suffused with a yellow-green glow. Thea gulped when she saw this energy, knowing that it was the mutating energy that he had tested on the lot of them last time. The exact details of the information contained within this glow was impossible to recognize, so she could only lift her own hand and place it in his.

Once their hands touched, she could feel the energy racing through her body, causing her to inhale sharply. She could feel her blood starting to boil from the changes. Although she knew that the change would revert itself if he ever withdrew the energy, it was still incredibly uncomfortable while the changes were taking effect.

That was when she heard it, a soft thud of something dropping behind her, as well as a horrified gasp. She turned her head in fright, only to see that the tail she was so proud of always grooming to perfection had disappeared from her lower back. Instead, it fell to the floor as a soft bundle.

She had asked what the worst that could happen was, but she never expected her tail to be amputated. Even if the change was reverted right now, her tail would likely not grow back on its own. The thought of that made tears well up in her eyes as she whimpered softly.

“Ah, it’s okay, don’t panic. This is normal.” James spoke, causing her to whip her head to look at him, the gaze in her eyes almost venomous as she realized he knew that this could happen. “This just means it’s working. You can regrow your tail. Try to focus, there should be something different in your energy network at the base of your spine.”

Forcing herself to calm down, she closed her eyes, both to focus on her energy and distract herself from the appendage missing from her body. As she swept over herself with both mana and ki, she did indeed notice something strange. Nine small voids had appeared where the base of her tail once was, arranged in three triangular clusters.

“How do I use this to get my tail back?” Her voice was pleading rather than accusatory, wanting to regain her dignity as a kitsune before she considered how she wanted to beat his head in with a chair.

“Just like you’d create any energy core. You know the path to establish already. Choose an energy to fill the gap.” She didn’t know how he was able to sense what was going on in her body as accurately as she could, since this was clearly his first time performing a ‘successful’ experiment with this energy. However, she did know that he had some sort of extremely powerful detection energy.

Not wanting to waste any time, she chose the simplest and most commonly used energy within her body, ki. She gathered it in the centermost void, and created herself an energy core. As she did so, she felt a chill along her skin at the small of her back. In the hole of her clothes where her first tail had vanished, a small bud formed and began stretching outwards slowly.

“If this turns into a lizard tail…” She muttered, opening her eyes to stare at James, who gulped.

“It… shouldn’t?” He asked, though he himself didn’t sound entirely confident in that assertion. Realizing that, her face drained of its color, and he quickly tried to comfort her. “Just keep feeding it more energy. I should be able to help you get your tail back if this doesn’t work.”

She had no idea how he planned to do that, but could only follow along for now. Her new tail was initially bald, and seemed like an endless glutton for ki. Only after she had fed it fifty thousand points, more than half of her total amount, did it begin to show signs of sprouting fur.

When Thea noticed that, she let out a sigh or relief, turning her head to look at her new tail. There weren’t many hairs yet, and they were still short, but each one carried the same earthen yellow color as ki, giving it a blonde appearance. Then, she looked at her own black hair. “It doesn’t match…”

“That’s fine, that’s fine.” James chuckled. “You can use your ki to change the color of the tail, like you could with your normal hair. It just defaults to the color of the energy that you used to create it.”

Thea was more relieved when she heard that, and focused her ki to change the color of the fur to black. Although this left her almost exhausted, she could feel more and more fur growing along her tail. Each one seemed to start sprouting when it accumulated about ten points of ki, and would grow longer as more ki was fed to it.

Now that the matter of having a tail was… mostly fixed, she decided that she might as well work on the rest. Although she didn’t have nine energy types to affix to the voids, she had a few. The next one that she worked with was mana, which unsurprisingly resulted in blue fur before she changed it.

After mana, she thought about creating a tail for spiritual energy, before deciding against it. For most energy types, having such a tail would be a strength, but such was not the case when it meant exposing her spirit directly to physical attacks. Instead, she chose to use the two energies that create the one that got her and her sister in the team to begin with, Destructive Balance.

Two more tails soon sprouted, one white and one black. Thea was thankful to have a tail she wouldn’t need to change, but was surprised when she saw sparks flying from these two new tails whenever they brushed against one another. It seemed that the energies within were interacting with those brief collisions.

Finally, for her fifth tail, she decided to use the pilot’s essence, as that was the only other energy she kept within her body. James might be disappointed when she failed to produce nine tails, but she wasn’t entirely concerned about that. She didn’t have the ki reserves at the moment to create elemental ki in any substantial quantity, so it was best to settle for what she could do.

The purple tail that appeared was no surprise to her. However… what did come as a surprise was the fact that it immediately began to burn once the hairs started to grow. Not only did this burn away the growing hairs, it also burnt the sensitive, bald tail.

Thea could only shout in pain as she hastily extracted the energy from the latest tail, hearing another dull thud. Turning her head, a second tail had dropped onto the floor next to her original one, this one bald and with signs of charring. Once again, she felt wetness forming at the corner of her eyes.