Shapeshift

Transform into a learned Monster Form, gaining access to its abilities.

5 Fauna Charges. 30-second transformation time. No cooldown. Self.

Sub-commands:

Cancel. Return to Human Form. No cost. 0.5-second transformation time. No cooldown. Self.

Quickshift. Rapidly shapeshift into a Monster Form that has been saved into a Quickshift Slot (presently: 0/3). 1 Fauna Charge. 0.5-second transformation time. No cooldown. Self.

He now knew the bread-and-butter ability of the Fauna domain.

The limited number of Quickshift slots existed because Earthfriends could learn thousands of Monster Forms and whipping out too many of these on the spot would bewilder even the greatest adversary. Related to that, Earthfriends specialising in the Fauna Path could add slots, increasing their versatility.

The option to enter a Monster Form into the Quickshift slot appeared after via the normal method.

Since Henry didn’t even have a monster to transform into yet, he collected 10 more Charges and clapped again.

‘I was too frightened to enter its den at first. Fear, I soon learned, is scared off by a growling stomach.'

Your aims resonate with a higher being. They have granted you .

Heart of the Beast

In Monster Form, stats will be adjusted to suit the new body and access will be given to the monster’s passives.

In Human Form, convert 20% of Magic Power to Strength and 20% of Magic Affinity to Vitality.

In both, 1 expended Fauna Charge can be refreshed at a maximum rate of once every 3 seconds by receiving or dealing physical damage.

Castable in any form.

1 Fauna Charge (Continuous). Instant cast. No cooldown. Self.

This was a companion ability to , enhancing its power drastically.

Especially valuable was removing the Earthfriend’s need to return to their vulnerable Human Form to replenish Charges in the heat of battle; the method was slower than standard Energy Charging, but shapeshifted Earthfriends were normally gated not by Fauna Charges but by Stamina costs and ability cooldowns.

The ‘Continuous’ cost meant that the Fauna Charge expended to activate it could not be employed for another spell until the ability was deactivated, limiting the Earthfriend to 9 total Charges instead of 10. The trade-off was usually worth it.

As he activated now, his skin was encased in a dirt-brown glow while the hairs on his arms and legs grew an inch longer.

His hairy fist, punching the air with an strike, contained a notable increase in force.

Following that, he created two final spells.

'Unable to produce the tuition again, Grandma consoled me with a peasant's proverb. A school or a squirrel, the knowledge contained by both are equally useless to us.'

Study Beast

Learn the shape and ways of a living monster within the same Tier or below.

10 Fauna Charges. 60-second channelled cast. No cooldown. Touch.

'The cub's mangled foot was in need of mending, but the lioness would not let down her guard. Don't you see that I'm a friend! How frustrating that we could not talk it out.'

Pacify Beast

Induce a hostile monster into a pacified state. Duration depends on number of Fauna Charges spent. Damage taken by the monster will end the effect.

Variable cost. 3-second cast. 2-minute cooldown. 60-metres.

Shortly afterwards, Karnon stopped by to drop off a man-sized, bipedal Chameleon Monkey, a pseudo-Cutthroat without the assassination capabilities.

Under the effects of the God’s Tier-11 , the creature seemed like it’d smoked a rainforest’s worth of genetically-perfected Californian Superkush.

“Curious choice,” remarked the God, before disappearing again.

It wasn't really.

Henry’d chosen it because it was one of three Monster Forms sanctioned for use in his recruitment tournament, along with Silverback Gorilla, a pseudo-Fighter, and Savanna Cheetah, a pseudo-Cheetah.

Acquiring this form was a small victory against the mostly fruitless saga that was hanging out with Karnon. The other two he would learn later by visiting a zoo.

Using , he circled the stoned creature while moving his hands around it like a reiki practitioner. Steam the colour of the scanned features channelled into his palms, becoming a pleasant current flowing up his arms to his heart and brain.

After a minute of literal hand-waving, a notification popped up with wishy-washy jargon about fusing essences.

Dismissing it, he cast .

Since it was his first time using the form, before the spell initiated, his vision filled with an editing screen similar to what one saw during character creation.

A 3-D avatar of the Chameleon Monkey was in front of him, its height, weight, body proportions, and colouration modifiable with a thought. In customising the avatar, one needed to keep within the realistic bounds of the monster’s species – so no fifty-metre long arms or shrinking to the size of a virus.

After he adjusted the avatar’s proportions to be identical to his real body’s, the transformation began.

His clothes were absorbed into his skin, which became scaled and green.

His eyes, growing further apart, bulged from out of their sockets.

His face and neck morphed to accommodate a long, hollow tongue sheathed around an elongated bone.

When the transformation was finished, he summoned a mirror from the Spatial Bracelet still dangling on his wrist and stared at his reptilian reflection with satisfaction.

If Chameleons could blink, he would've winked at himself.

Not bad...not bad at all.

Adding the form to a Quickshift Slot, he immediately began familiarising with his altered body by jogging around the cavern, treating the dead Tunnelling Cowmoles as obstacles in a course.

Activating converted 30% of his Magical Power to Strength and 30% of Magical Affinity to Technique. It also made his skin tougher and gave him a passive, , which altered the Stamina consumed by abilities depending on the ambient temperature. The cavern was slightly too cold at 18.6 degrees Celcius (65.5 F), hitting him with a 2.5% increased cost penalty.

As he vaulted over two stacked Tunnelling Cowmoles, a fly enticed into the cavern's new opening by the stench of blood was stabbed mid-air by his tongue.

Tongue Poke (Basic Attack)

Shoot the target with the lengthy Chameleon Monkey tongue.

1 Fauna Charge. 17.82% of current Stamina pool. 0.5-second preparation time. 3-second cooldown. 3-metre range.

Its damage was equal to a full-force strike with a spear, while having half the cooldown length and costing half the Stamina. This didn’t, however, mean that it was strictly superior, since its inflexibility made it easier to avoid or block.

Being a ‘Basic Attack’, its cooldown was synchronised with all abilities of the same classification, along with , such that any of them being on cooldown made the others temporarily unusable, too. All Martial Classes had this restriction, which prevented them from bursting people to death in seconds.

While Chameleon Monkey Henry was running around like an anime ninja, he steepled his fingers, causing his scales to change colour and blend with the background.

Camouflage

Merge with your surroundings, becoming invisible. Use of spells or damage received from others in this state will cancel it.

1 Fauna Charge. Drains 0.89% total Stamina per second while active. 6-second cast (mobile). No cooldown. Self.

Aside from the casting method, the spell was identical to the Cutthroat and his Spelltome , right down to the numbers, so it didn’t require significant testing.

For now, those were the only Chameleon Monkey skills available. More would be unlocked with later Tiers, like blocking attacks with the tail or rotating the eyes sideways to grant 360-degree vision.

Generally speaking, the Chameleon Monkey form was designed for scouting, fighting in it being inadvisable due to its fragility. Even compared with the Human Form, its tougher skin wouldn’t compensate for the inability to wield a shield, shapeshifted Earthfriends being incapable of items.

They could, however, still their body parts.

So, if one happened to have studied a hyper-difficult martial art centred around the flexible use of without weapons, then perhaps the Chameleon Monkey’s combat capabilities would change.

Karnon, having depleted the Princes’ mineral stores, was watching his curious protégé fighting an imaginary opponent, repeating the same combo of knees, punches, , and leg sweeps.

The God yawned. “Those two strikes in the cycle starting at 5.57 seconds are wasteful.”

Henry, after finishing with ‘headbutting’ his chameleon horns into the grounded opponent’s face, changed back into a human.

“We’re not all gifted with Godly reflexes. If they strike back during that opening, I’d have to waste to dodge.”

A speeding dirt pellet that he failed to duck shattered on his forehead.

“Pathetic!” said Karnon, who’d thrown the missile. “How’d you learn Nine Fists?”

Henry wiped the dirt from his face with his shirt. “How’d you learn ?”

“Back to your sneaky shape! For your next lesson, you’ll be jumping straight into the action!”

Heimland, Neeshif Republic, Koti City.

A starting city and the intellectual capital of Saana’s north, Koti was a snow-covered sprawl of majestic white stone buildings. The material they were made of had been imported about seven centuries earlier from Kanaru, back when Koti had governed a globe-spanning empire.

This evening, the fathers of the city were walking in silent groups from their places of work to the public baths where they would drink into the night. The cobblestone streets had become a slurry of ice that’d melted during the warmer day, causing many of these commuters to lose their footing. On the ground, their bottoms wet, they would be temporarily relieved of the melancholy and shyness that’d settled on their people after the sunset of their empire by fits of embarrassed laughter.

In the city’s Old District, standing on a roof, hidden behind its ridge, a Chameleon Monkey was sign-talking its exasperation at an azure Harpy.

The reason for being silent was across the street from them, in an unremarkable-looking stone cottage.

“End of the hallway, room to the left,” the God signed back. “The treasure you seek, the key to the world of flowers and fruits and herbs, is there, locked in the top-right drawer of her dresser. We’ll meet at the market in ten.”

Karnon then flew to the top of the largest building nearby, a white stone cathedral with thousands of towering statues of dead Gods, a religious holy site.

Perching on the cathedral’s central dome, he began to shout. “MINDOBELI, MINDOBELI, I’VE BROUGHT YOU A PRESENT! MINDOBELI, MINDOBELI, MINDOBELI, MINDOBELI...”

His voice wasn’t being projected by Peopleworker magic; he was simply yelling very loudly.

The racket caused the city’s dogs and cats to bark and screech. The players watched on with amusement, while the NPCs scurried across the ice back to their homes.

Chameleon Henry, still positioned on the roof, ducked when the door of the stone cottage was swung open by a muscular blonde woman.

A hastily-adorned winter coat was pulled up to her jaw, its fluffy collar covering the twelve blood droplets that lined her throat.

This was the Zone Guardian of Koti City, Mindobeli, a Tier-11 Cutthroat.

She was actually one of the six Gods that’d joined Karnon in slaying the Rangbitan God. The temporary expansion of her Neeshif Republic into an Empire that conquered the southern lands had been her attempt to eradicate that God’s lingering influences there. Suchi’s polytheism was one by-product of her efforts.

Despite Mindobeli’s violent past and her manly features, in her retirement, she possessed a delicate, feminine grace, like a Japanese tea ceremony, which made her quite pretty in person.

“What do you want this time, Karn—“ Her composure faded when she spotted the portrait dangling in the harpy’s mouth. Making a hand gesture, she vanished in a puff of smoke, materialising above the cathedral an instant later with her sword drawn.

While Karnon distracted her, Henry activated , jumped down from the roof, and ran across the slippery street, through the door that’d been left ajar.

There were no security measures inside, since who in their right mind would burglarise the home of an assassination God?

Following Karnon’s instructions, he snuck to her bedroom, recognising the full-length mirror from one of the creepshots.

In front of her dresser, he paused a bit.

If he didn’t have a reptilian blood system, his face would be beet red.

Sliding the top-right drawer open, he caught sight of a colourful collection of underwear rolled neatly into tubes. When he recognised the pair he sought, a mote of green energy sprouted from one of their sunflowers and fused with the hand stealing them.

Flora, spirit of the plants, rewards your deeds! 1% of the Energy necessary to build a connection has been accumulated.

Suchi. On the northernmost edge of The Slums, The New Suchi Arena.

The venue was finished that Henry'd commissioned for practice before his acquisition of The Cap made it kind of overkill.

Although it had been unscathed by the Giant Vampire Moth Attack, the opening ceremony to mark its completion had been cancelled so that the local staff could return to their families. Operating the building was a skeleton crew of foreigners from Chayoka in their ash-grey military uniforms.

At the entrance gate, a handful of players were being processed by clerks, including a Beast Tamer with a Grey Wolf for a companion. The clerk inspecting his Attention-issued Identification Emblem pointed to a line of text in his profile.

“You’re a journalist, Mr London Tremor.”

“Only an intern. Is that a problem?”

He was visiting the stadium as part of a month-long gonzo piece for Channel 5 investigating Suchi’s quirky Tier-0 duelling scene.

“Just thought it was an interesting job,” replied the clerk. “You could be wanted for murder, but as long as your 1v1 Rating’s high enough, we’ve been told to let you in.”

By 1v1 Rating, the clerk was referring to The Company’s unofficial ladder, for which players submitted the outcomes of their duels to have their ranking calculated with an Elo-like system. Admission to this stadium, which offered free access to maintained practice arenas, was restricted to those in the zone’s top 10%.

“And yours seems to be,” continued the clerk reading another line. “Take this.”

The intern was handed an admission token.

Receiving it without fuss left him a bit disappointed. He was already in an anti-climatic mood after waking before the sun had risen over England to attend the stadium’s now-cancelled opening ceremony.

Walking through the guarded entrance with his wolf, he skimmed over a pamphlet that’d been included with the token. It detailed the facility's rules: regulation gear was mandatory, killing at the end of a duel would warrant a warning, dropping below the top 12.5% for longer than two days would result in expulsion...blah blah. Similar rulesets had been enforced in the duelling venues he’d attended elsewhere in The Slums.

The main differences were the exclusivity of this place to Tier-0 players and its size.

And what a beast it was.

Gazing over an interior spanning over 600-metres long and wide, housing a 100 arenas replicated from Saana League, a workshop for repairs, food suppliers for replenishing Stamina, and on and on...he was finally struck by the scope of the monstrosity that someone had been quietly rearing in their midst, fattened on the shiploads of supplies being dropped off at Suchi's port hour by hour over the past few days.

Huge...excessively huge.

In awkward contrast to the stadium’s grandiosity, less than a hundred players were in attendance, most participating in The Slum's restoration.

Yet, despite the emptiness, the unused arenas were still manned by officiators, waiting to referee matches and enter their outcomes into the ranking system. (...and secretly record everything about the players, from weapon choice to preferred pathing on each arena).

The intern joined a crowd of forty or so observing a seemingly-empty arena with a skeleton dragon.

He nudged a familiar Bowman he’d befriended during his investigations. “Who?”

“Nisha challenged Wilted. I’ve got a hundred on him winning.”

The intern didn’t need to look the names up in his Mental Library. Nisha31 was an Earthfriend from Poland who favoured a kiting-based style. Wilted Azaleas was a Cutthroat from Russia and member of The Garden of The Grotesque, an international, all-female assassination guild. Both players were within the top 100 of the 1v1 Rankings.

“Come on!” yelled an Arcanist to their side, whom the intern recognised as Archmage7000, the region’s current rank 9. ”Unstealth him already!”

Near the skeleton dragon’s tail, a Chameleon Monkey phased into view, its tongue shooting out and piercing the unarmoured butt of a Cutthroat, inflicting damage to her and drawing her out of stealth as well.

“Dirty bitch!” She sprinted away.

The Earthfriend croaked with laughter and gave pursuit, firing another that the Cutthroat blocked with a small round shield.

From the intern’s understanding, the Cutthroat’s goal was to reach the skeleton dragon’s ribcage. Nisha, the Earthfriend, happened to be less skilled in melee combat, so he was maintaining his distance to be within range of but not so close for her to attack him back. The skeleton’s massive ribs could be exploited to force him to give up the chase; whenever she ducked around one, he wouldn't know if she'd paused to wait for him.

Surprisingly, the Cutthroat dropped her shield and cast , shrouding her position in an impenetrable black cloud.

The Earthfriend, assuming she was using the cover to restealth, back to his Human form, planted his feet, and summoned a from four Celestial Charges.

As he was deciding where to aim the spell, though, an arrow shot out of the smoke, piercing his foot and pinning it to the ground.

Before the arrow struck, the Cutthroat had emerged from the with a spear summoning into her grasp.

“DAMN IT!” yelled the Bowman beside the intern. “When did she learn archery? Motherfucker!”

The Earthfriend into a Gorilla to defend himself, but the observers, having seen this part play out before, knew how it concluded.

While the others were bringing out their lost gold and the Gorilla was being poked to death, the Beast Tamer intern noticed an officiator installing a board near the stadium’s entranceway.

Entitled ‘Day 1, 1st Tournament’, the board contained a bracket for a tournament set to begin in 10 minutes with empty spots for participants to sign up.

His Grey Wolf prodded him with curiosity at his rapid mood change.

What the...

He’d seen tournaments offering Slum Points and gold, but...a fully-furnished Tier-4 Alchemy Lab...a Metalworker’s Workshop....like entire facilities? How were the prizewinners supposed to run them? Did they come with staff? (They did).

For a Tier-0 tournament?

What insane moneybag was funding this? WTF?

The intern saw a Miracleworker stroll past the board, jot down their name, then walk away with their hands discreetly tucked in their pockets, hoping not to alert the rest.