Morgan Mackenzie was in a very sorry state. She was flat on her back in a crater the size of a small house. A crater that had in fact been her house, even if only for a single night. Cold rain fell in slow lazy plops that hissed and sizzled into steam once they came into contact with the glowing remnants of molten stone and earth around her. The messages notifying her that [Heat Resistance] had reached mastery level were rather anticlimactic and redundant as well, seeing as the melted rock had pooled around her yet only felt uncomfortably warm against her body. Not to mention the the fact that the fire and heat that caused such melting had come from within her own body. She was still alive partially thanks to [Naked Recovery] and [Heat Resistance], and had also gained [Heat Affinity]. The bit of healing and restoration she’d received upon levelling up from defeating what the notification had called a [Wildlands Shadowlynx] had also helped.

Alive did not necessarily mean in good health, however. Her health pool was stable although low at only around a quarter of her total, which Morgan thought was amazing in its own right as her body was not exactly in pristine condition anymore. The flames had spread out from her bones, burning her flesh on their way out, and her skin was a spider web of singed and bloody cracks. For what seemed an eternity, she waited for her Stamina to recover a few dozen points before spending it on another wave of [Naked Recovery]. She was no longer able to ignore what the skill had been trying to show her ever since she had left the Tree. The damage to her skin extended deep into her muscles and other tissue, and to heal it she had to look at it with the senses provided by the Skill.

Her bones had been changed in the aftermath of eating the fruit from the tree, and the changes were disturbing to Morgan on several different levels. What she understood as bones and the stuff that made them up were still there, after a fashion, but they were now interwoven with something else. It was like the solid form of her bone-material was being fused with a riot of various colors of crystals growing out from her very marrow. And she could actually see them, thanks to the stub of fractured bone sticking out from where her left arm ended just before the wrist. Every time her Stamina recovered a few dozen points, she spent it furiously on [Naked Recovery] to bring her health back up and repair the damage. Every wave of healing she could watch another fraction of an inch of her arm regrow, slivers of crystals like a lattice of needles in twisting kaleidoscopic patterns rebuilding the bone. It would be beautiful if she weren’t so creeped out by it. And it wasn’t just where the new bone was growing. Her healing skill showed her in full detail how every bit of damage to her skeletal structure, every tiny crack and microfracture was healing with the same crystalline replacement.

On top of all that she had lost her only friend in this new and violent magical world. Even now anger warred with despair over remembering the jaws closing around Lulu along with her hand, and when she strayed too far into rage her mana would go wild with jolts of power that caused bright and painful arcs of lightning to flash inside and around her body. That was another skill she had gained from the most recent crisis, and she read through the notification one final time before dismissing it with a thought:

You have gained the skill [Spell Surge]! Magic is writ into your very bones, and responds to your will and emotions! Ignite the mana within your body to greatly empower your spells for a short time in exchange for increased mana cost! Beware: Passion without control can be as deadly to the caster as to her enemies!

The skill was poor recompense for losing her little friend. The drizzling cold rain fit Morgan’s mental state perfectly at the moment. The lacey puffball had been a perfect crutch to prop up her sanity, and while ridiculously cute and adorable, it made a huge difference having something to talk to. Even if it could only make warbling sounds in reply.

A few times spending her stamina on [Naked Recovery] had pushed it to level eight. That made it a little bit easier to work the healing, but with each round of healing the skill also used up her body’s fat reserves a little bit. Not by much, as the skill seemed very efficient with the exchange, but enough for her to definitely notice and feel a growing hunger. She was nowhere near to starving just yet, but there was a lot of damage in her body and she had no intention of reliving the experience of the [Starvation] affliction.

Without Lulu to talk to she felt the gravity of her situation quickly turning into a forlorn sort of apathy and depression. She had just about given in to despair, laying back on the cooling stone while raindrops fizzled into steam around her. Her deep introspective melancholy was suddenly interrupted by the most welcome notification Morgan had yet received:

Lulu’s [Exfoliate] skill has reached level 2!

Morgan scrambled to her feet, falling over when she forgot her missing hand and drove the exposed bones into the ground. Even with her high level [Pain Resistance] skill, she could not help crying out with harsh yelps from the spikes of agony. Her feet were still tender and cracked from the burns, and she stumbled her way over to the charred remains of the [Wildlands Shadowlynx]. It had been thrown nearly two dozen paces away, although the muddy rubble and tumbled earth and stone scattered about spread several times farther. She paid the destruction she had caused no heed, however, as she hurried over to the corpse.

The big cat’s paws and tail and tufted ears were simply gone, burned away by the intense flames that Morgan had called forth. The rest of it was a blackened mass of seared fur and hide, its massive head frozen in a rictus snarl of outrage. With its fur and skin burned away its toothy maw formed a cage and she could just make out the charred remains of her hand still in its mouth. The sight of that made her pause with a shudder, but she had more pressing concerns.

“LULU!!!” she yelled, ignoring the sooty crumbles of skin and meat that came off on her good hand as she pushed at the cat’s body to roll it over. Part of its rib cage gave way with her shove, the crispy burnt layers crumbling away to the merely browned and bloody meat underneath.

She could feel more than hear Lulu’s pulsing scrubbing at the inside of the cat, and tried to claw at the meat with her hand but could find no purchase. Looking at the jagged crystal edge of bone protruding from the stump of her left arm, she took a deep breath to steel herself for the inevitable pain and pressed the edge of the bone shard against the cat’s chest. Bracing the corpse with her good hand she leaned into it, and the pain was less extreme than she had been expecting. The edge of bone parted the cooked cat like a steak knife through a medium rare porterhouse steak. She was dimly aware of her hunger and the drool-inducing aroma of roasted meat but such thoughts took second place to concern for her best and only friend in the world.

Lulu’s [Exfoliate] skill has reached level 3!

The pulsing whoosh-whoosh sort of vibrations from the loofah’s normal scrubbing deepened even further, like feeling the vibrations of a washing machine cycle from another room in a house. Finally she managed to tear open the carcass enough to free the brave little scrubby, and it immediately hopped up Morgan’s arm to her shoulder, giving her a purring snuggle that did wonders for making the girl feel better about her situation.

She simply sat there in relief for a few minutes, letting the rain and the scrubby take care of the soot and mud splattered all over her. The time spent freeing her pet had let her Stamina recover almost completely, and her Mana was full as well. She spent her mana raising a curved wall of stone out of the ground with [Earth Sculpt] and bent it overhead to block the worst of the rain, and then turned her attention back to trying to heal her missing hand. By the time her two arm bones had regrown to the base of her wrist joint, [Naked Recovery] had gained another level, and Morgan was once again looking and feeling as gaunt as a bulimic underwear model.

“I guess regrowing a hand burns up a lot of calories with the healing skill, Lulu…”

The scrubby had given her its trademark full body sponge bath and then had hopped up to the stump of her hand to [Exfoliate] away the dried blood and cracked scabs of skin that were growing there as the flesh kept mending itself around the new bone growth. Lulu did not seem concerned at all about the changes in her bones when Morgan rambled absentmindedly about it to the little puffball, merely giving what looked like a loofah equivalent of a shrug as it inched its way along her arm.

With her reserves of body fat effectively gone, she was now facing a dilemma. With hunger already beginning to gnaw at her belly, the healing was getting harder and starting to draw on her muscle tissue. She wasn’t thirsty thanks to a quick sculpting of a bowl and some caught rainwater, but she needed to eat. Her [Spell Surge] empowered blast had excavated half the hillside and the molten stone and burning rubble had devastated the berry patch and most of the open meadow. The only food source she had at hand happened to be one very well done [Wildlands Shadowlynx], and while the thought of eating any type of cat seemed just wrong to her native Spokane city girl sensibilities, it smelled really good under all the char and burnt bits. And [Naked Instinct] was most certainly agreeing, giving her impressions of “tasty,” “edible,” and “no danger” every time she glanced at it.

With Morgan’s ribs becoming even more pronounced, Lulu gave a concerned trill and hopped over to the dead creature, bobbing up and down in silent expectation and admonishment. “I know, I know,” said Morgan, “I need to eat. But its a cat…” Her stomach chose that moment to announce its agreement with the scrubby with a growling burble of its own.

“Well,” she said as she crammed her reservations into a little box and pushed them aside, “the bastard did try to eat us!” As she pulled off a chunk of still-steaming meat and held it up, the loofah warbled in approval and began scrubbily consuming the outer charred and sooty burnt bits of the cat, leaving juicy cooked portions exposed. Between the scent of the meat and her rising hunger the last of her hesitation fell away and she took a bite. It was stringy, gamey, greasy, and a bit on the rare side, but it was exactly what her body needed.

“It certainly doesn’t taste like chicken,” she professed to the scrubby in between tearing more grisled bites off the chunk of meat in her hand. “But I’ve had worse…”

Her body was already beginning to fill back out and she had only been eating for a few minutes. Only, she thought. Morgan had spent the last ten minutes eating more meat in one sitting than she normally ate in a week or longer back on earth. Her body’s magic seemed to speed up the process of digestion and she could not catch up with her hunger. “I think the magic really affects metabolism, if that wasn’t obvious already,” she said. But it had benefits, as her fat reserves were already replenishing. “I don’t think I’ll have to worry much about getting fat in this world, Lulu, especially if healing always burns up so many calories.”

She held up her stump and looked at it with a sense of morbid fascination. The partially regrown thumb tingled when she wiggled it, and the new muscles felt stiff and sluggish. With the meat from the cat providing such ready replenishment of calories, she felt a lot better about pushing [Naked Recovery] to its limit to hurry the healing. By the time the rest of her palm and the first nubs of fingers had regrown, she had consumed several more pounds worth of meat from the cat. Her push with the healing led to another notification:

You have mastered the skill [Naked Recovery]!

With the skill mastered, it was only a short time and another couple of fist-sized chunks of roasted meat before she had a fully regrown hand. The skin was sensitive and slightly pink, and her nails were still soft. It was extremely odd to hold it up next to her uninjured hand and compare both. It was even more odd and sickening to see her previously bitten off hand and its burned flesh and bone laying in the dead cat’s mouth. As was the stone band that had caused her so much trouble in the first place. She glared at it with a shudder and sighed.

“That was horrible, Lulu. I’ll just stay naked before I go through something like that again, and I don’t mean just the cat and the burning,” she rambled out loud to the rather gluttonous scrubby as it continued to feast on burnt kitty. “When I put the bracelet on and lost my magic it felt like being torn in two, with me on one side and my soul on the other. I don’t know if i can do that again, even if it means gettin’ stuck with no clothes.”

Lulu finally seemed through with its meal and shuffled back over to her and hopped onto her regrown hand to inspect it with comforting purbles of approval. Finding nothing amiss about the new appendage, the scrubby sluggishly worked its way back up her arm to rest in the crook of her neck and shoulder. It definitely seemed well fed, judging by its slow and ponderous movements. Morgan had no idea how the loofah stuck to things, as it did not feel sticky or anything remotely unpleasant like that. It simply stuck where it wanted to, whether that was on her or on the ground or on the trees or whatever else it decided to climb on. From its hushed burbles she had the impression that the adorably poofy thing was sleeping, or whatever equivalent a scrubby would experience.

While she had been eating and healing herself, the rains had tapered off to a drizzle and finally nothing as the clouds broke. Soft sunlight cast long evening shadows and she realized just how long her day had been. She had made a lot of progress practicing with magic before her equipment mishap locked her Aspect that morning, and then she had been attacked a few hours into trying and failing to remove the bracelet.

The demise of the shadowlynx had pushed her to level nine, but more pressing concerns than the rewarded points had occupied her attention. She took a wary glance around, checking for more surprise dangers like the shadowlynx before she pulled up her status menu once again. She spent her stat points first to boost her other attributes closer to the much higher Vitality one. Though she proceeded slowly, the memory of the backlash of bodily changes she had gone through yesterday - was it only yesterday? Or the night before that, rather - slid unpleasantly through her brain. It prompted her to cast an eye on the remainder of the charred cat and contemplate if there was anything left on the corpse that was worthy of salvaging.

Status Information for: Morgan Mackenzie

Level - 9

Primary Class: [Locked]

Secondary Class: [Locked]

Health - 230/230

Stamina - 252/252

Mana - 289/289

STR - 20

AGI - 20

CON - 20

VIT - 28

INT - 21

Stat points available to distribute: 0

Current Skills:

[Naked Instinct]

[Naked Athleticism]

[Naked Recovery(Lvl 10/Mastered)]

[Naked Camouflage]

[Naked Resilience]

-[Pain Resistance(Lvl 9)]

-[Heat Resistance(Lvl 10/Mastered)]

-[Lightning Resistance]

-[Mana Resistance(Lvl 10/Mastered)]

[Naked Magic]

-[Mana Pulse(Lvl 10/Mastered)]

-[Spell Channeling(Lvl 5)]

-[Spell Surge]

-[Mana Affinity(Lvl 6)]

[Naked Elementalism]

-[Fire Affinity]

-[Heat Affinity]

-[Water Affinity]

-[Lightning Affinity]

-[Earth Affinity(Lvl 2)]

-[Lightning Bolt]

-[Water Bolt]

-[Flame Bolt]

-[Candleflame]

-[Earth Sculpt(Lvl 4)]

-[Earth Wave]

[Runic Enchantment]

-[Candleflame Rune]

Skill Points available: 15

Titles, Mantles, and Aspects

[Worldwalker(Title)]

[Blessed of the Guardian Tree(Title)]

[Naked Affinity(Aspect)]

The list of skills was getting longer, and Morgan was glad it was starting to hide information she was already intimately familiar with, like the true ramifications of [Naked Affinity]. She quickly opened the list of available skills to see what, if any, new options presented themselves. She was immediately interested in the skill [The Naked Eye] that she had passed over previously.

Skill Acquisition Menu:

[The Naked Eye(Channeled)] - [10 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Affinity], the skill [Eagle Eye] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. You can’t hit what you can’t see! While active, this skill enhances your visual acuity, allowing you to see with much greater clarity things both far away and very close. The [Naked] version of this skill shares synergy with the skill [Naked Instinct], passively improving your ability to see in all conditions except total darkness at all times. Also shares synergy with [Naked Elementalism], allowing you to see the ambient flows of mana in the world around you.

[Naked Might(Channeled)] - [10 Skill Points] Due to earning the Aspect [Naked Affinity], the skill [Enhanced Might] has been modified and purchase cost reduced by 50%. Sometimes a little extra elbow grease is all you need! While active this skill increases the overall physical capabilities of your body, enhancing strength and speed and toughness by reinforcing your bones and muscles with Mana. The [Naked] version of this skill shares synergy with [Naked Resilience], passively increasing the effectiveness of all resistances at all times, reducing damage taken from most types of sources.

[Elemental Fury(Channeled)] - [20 Skill Points] Sometimes unbridled rage is the only answer! When activated, this skill amplifies within your body any Element you have gained an Affinity for, allowing you to temporarily become the living embodiment of the Element you choose, at the cost of mana. Requires at least one Elemental Affinity to have been learned, and not all Elements are compatible with Fury.

[Natural Traps(Passive)] - [15 Skill Points] Sometimes the environment can be altered to do the work for you! This skill provides increased dexterity and enhances your ability to assemble basic types of traps such as deadfalls, pits, and snares.

[Natural Traps] was still there, and remained of no interest to Morgan. With her Earth magic skills, things like pits and deadfalls would be no problem. [Naked Might] was extremely tempting, and [Elemental Fury] was interesting, to say the least. But both of them either had downsides or only seemed useful in desperate situations. It had been a struggle to pass up [The Naked Eye] before, and now that it also synergized with her Elementalism skills Morgan’s mind was made up. She could already sense her own mana with her body and that which she moved around, and the chance to see the magic everywhere else was too good to pass up. Without hesitation she chose [The Naked Eye], and immediately went blind.

Through the use of her healing skill she was able to make some small amount of sense as to what was happening. It was as though something had reached out and switched off her connection to her vision, but the senses from [Naked Recovery] allowed her to feel the concentrated and extremely tiny threads of Mana that were weaving themselves into her eyeballs. The magic was moving much too quickly for Morgan to be able to make any sort of detailed sense of how and what it was doing, exactly. Disconcertingly, it also felt rather itchy.

Within a few dozen heartbeats it was over, and her vision slowly went from black to grey and then colors faded back in. She blinked a few times. “Well, that was a lot less unpleasant than I was expecting, all things considered…”

She looked around, and it definitely seemed that the shadows cast by the forest canopy did not hinder her sight or ability to see details, or at least she could see into the depths of the forest with greater clarity than before the skill. With the merest touch of mana and the simple intent to look, the skill activated and she felt her vision shift. The nearest tree, a distance of at least a football field away, was revealed in crystal clarity as if she were examining a super high definition photo on a computer with a very large and fancy screen.

It was disorienting to try to shift her gaze while the skill was active. It definitely seemed to work better when she chose a target point in the distance and looked. What Morgan found much more fascinating were the subtle flows of mana she could now see around almost everything. The earth was like a low thrumming sea, calm on the surface with the magic and material she was already used to working with thanks to her [Earth Affinity] and [Earth Sculpt] skill. But she could sense deeper currents of mana far below. Much farther down than she knew she could ever reach. The trees pulled Earth and Life mana up from the soil. It was less of a seeing and more of a knowing, as it did not hinder her normal vision in the slightest.

A childlike grin of wonder on her face, Morgan looked around at her world with new eyes, literally. She thought she finally understood why she had been having so much difficulty with Elemental Air. Looking up at the sky she realized that the air did not hold mana like stone, or combust it into energy like fire, or flow with mana like water.

No, the Elemental Air mana danced. While the wind was invisible, she could feel the breeze on her skin and see the Air Mana swirl around everything the wind encountered, dancing with the leaves as they shook on the trees, and waving back and forth with the shifting grasses of the meadow. She had no time take advantage of her new understanding of the Element, however, as [Naked Instinct] began prickling at the back of her mind.

Morgan suddenly knew she was being watched.