There comes a time in every girl's life when her body goes through a ton of changes that may seem unwanted and confusing to her. For an example of one such change, the fact that I couldn't see because the only set of non-ruptured eyes in the thing I had become were being squished by another body, shall suffice. Accepting my hopefully temporary blindness was only a small part of the story, of course. So was the fact that I had too many arms and legs for functional locomotion. And the fact that my body was sore all over and itchy in a way that went beyond surface level irritation. My muscles and my bones itched in a way that almost made me want to separate them from each other for relief. And that was after accounting for my mental skills. Without those, I'd probably be tearing my own flesh out with my bare hands if I were capable of it. Still, that was not the biggest problem. No, the biggest problem was that I was on an active battlefield and defenseless. Ordering Medea to fly over to guard my body from any hungry kobold or stray attack, I tried to take stock of what I had at my disposal.

First things first, I was alive and that meant that a biomancer might be able to eventually fix me. I was not permanently stuck as this heaving, immobile and blind thing I had become. I was not suffocating despite being under the pile so I had obviously commandeered someone's respiratory organs. Second, I could use Medea to look at my body from outside. That was not promising. From the outside, it— no, I looked just like a pile of bodies at a glance. However, a closer look showed that the bodies seemed to have melded together smoothly wherever they met each other, like a cheap plastic figurine sacrificing detail for structural integrity. Once again, I split my mind in two. One took over Medea and flew around to ascertain the relative position of my eyes and brain underneath the heap. The other opened my status. My physical stats were a mess. High numbers but even higher penalties in parentheses over them that left me in a worse state than what I had started with. What was even the point of that instead of balancing them out? Mental stats were just as I expected, other than a minor willpower debuff. I didn't think my brain was conjoined with anyone else's so that was probably just because my body was very weird and uncomfortable.

I had a few new skills. First was Mana Conduction, the merged result of my two mana skills, Mana Direction and Mana Sight. I probably merged them when I decided to create and detonate a mana explosive while holding it. In retrospect, that sounded like a very stupid thing to do. It beats having my head ripped off though.

Second was Chimeric Grafting. It used mana to shape flesh to do everything from emergency healing and grafting to surgery, to even combining and editing organisms with the traits of other organisms. Giving a human the heart of a dragon? Doable if I had a dragon heart at hand and near endless mana. It was exorbitantly demanding on mana but could perform miracles. Miracles like my new body and race.

Finally, the evolution of Blood Sense, Blood Absorber, it was a case of emergent synergy. The skill description mentioned that it could absorb blood to replenish one's own and accelerate healing. That was fine on its own but because of my Blood Mana, it also replenished my mana. When I set off the mana bomb by sacrificing my knife, it almost ripped my body apart and sent me flying into another. I didn't know how I ended from that to being buried under a pile of corpses but all that blood that now covered the ground in red, so reminiscent of that massacre Kalkiin, no, Kalist had committed little over a week ago. It certainly felt longer than that. There was no Kalkiin, the heatless flame made it obvious enough. Looking back at it, the name was a dead giveaway all along. Kalkiin. Broken down into Delish, it was Kal-kuh-ein. Or in English, if somehow a relatively modern language that didn't even exist in this universe had something named in it and it was simply not a coincidence where I was deliriously seeing patterns that didn't exist, the kin of Kalist. I digress though, the point was that there was a lot of fresh blood around when my broken and dying body had slammed into the ground. A lot of mana. And that was the only reason I was alive. I could just imagine a dying version of me grabbing every dead body that I could in a desperate bid to stem the loss of my own life force. My notifications confirmed that I hadn't actually killed anyone though. Or had I?

'Medea, did you kill any humans so that I could heal myself?' I used to get kill notifications from it when it was not sapient but not anymore. It was a while since I called it with its full name instead of just 'Dea but this was probably a justified case. Medea did not answer.

'Answer me, Medea.'

'This one will not answer unless you force the issue. I would prefer it if you didn't force the issue.' There was a tone of finality to Medea's telepathic voice that I had never heard before. Actually, I don't think I had seen it exhibit any real sense of agency before the tier up now that I thought about it. Leaving the implications of that for a future me to worry about seemed logical right now though.

'Why?'

'If no human was sacrificed to save mother and this one tells you so, then in the future any refusal to answer will be a confirmation of the contrary. And if there was any sacrifice then confirming it at the moment will be detrimental to your survival. This one will not allow that. Focus on your flesh, mother. It is not yet ready. Be reborn into something greater.'

Fine. Surely if Medea had been going around murdering random people then it would have been attacked after being thought to be working with Kalist, right? It didn't look like anyone was paying much attention but Medea could be stealthy when it wanted to and the palace was a chaotic battlefield. No, I couldn't be sure. The question was then, did I trust Medea to not do that? I would have snorted if I could have. Even I was not saintly enough to sacrifice myself like that. Medea was right that telling me would make me spiral and I couldn't afford that at the moment. Back to my changes.

NAME: ANANYA HARTFORD

RACE: FLESH AMALGAMATE

I was not a human anymore. That was obvious, of course, but what did that actually mean for me was a different question altogether. I focused on my race and it opened up on a new window over my vision.

\\Race: Flesh Amalgamate

\\Family: Elvenoid, Homunculus

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

\\Class Factor: 5, 11

\\Created from the remains of multiple elvenoids through unnatural means, such homunculi have no common strengths. Similarly, they have no shared weaknesses to be exploited.

Meh. At least I knew what class factor meant now. It simply defined what level classes I could normally unlock and take. If the maximum level of a class was a multiple of one of my class factors, I could unlock and take them without penalties and class downgraded like with [LARVAL HIVEMOTHER]. 11 was not a great number. That just gave me level 11, 22 and if I was lucky 33 classes at the moment. Still better than only five of course. The description was lacklustre but my old race was not much better on that front either.

\\Race: Human

\\Family: Elvenoid

\\Class Factor: 5

\\The most numerous of all Elvenoids in the lands of the former Catrian Empire

So that was really all the changes I could see immediately. Could be worse but could be a lot better. I had two factors right now and I had a skill that could let me combine with even more stuff. Once I was out of this mess, I had to see if I could hypothetically get so many factors as to effectively have a class factor of 1, of course after researching whether it was safe and would not make me a mindless animal or damage my soul or something else like that.

I was not even bothering to freeze time as I made my plans. As it was, I couldn't do anything but wait. Wait for the steady wet trickle of blood to touch my distorted flesh so that I could replenish my mana. Mana that I could then use to regain control of my mass. The outermost limbs, the only free ones, were all vestigial after I had rerouted nerves inwards to create a rudimentary but large respiratory system to keep myself alive. I was large and needed more oxygen to match. A single set of orifices and lungs simply didn't cut it. Smushed faces drew in ragged and labored breaths across my surface. And then, I had reconnected paths from ruptured organs to functional ones and hooked those up to the new oxygen distribution system. And because it was so large, three hearts beat in unison within me just to pump enough blood to prevent necrotization.

It was ugly, it was inefficient, it was hacky, it was barely even working, and I could feel the burgeoning hints of a forming migraine caused by oxygen shortage but it was impressive nonetheless. Chimeric Grafting gave me a general diagnosis of an organism I touched and it worked on myself so I could understand the sheer extent of the damage I had suffered, if through nothing else then seeing what organs were being replaced wholesale and what were being used as extras.

As I waited for my mana to refill to the point that I could do anything at all, I switched over to Medea's view. Kalist was still holding Ayn and the enforcers back single handedly. Vinny's body was caked in blood and I could see cracks in the skin that spilled forth that same fire. Enforcers surrounded him while Ayn zipped around with beams of light that barriers of fire intercepted.

As Medea watched, one of the enforcers managed to touch him between the barrage of fire and light. It did not end well. Vinny's arm clasped down on the enforcer and the fire spread. In seconds, the mask shattered to reveal the enforcer in a soundless scream with his eyes resembling pilot lights and a dull fire pouring from his open mouth. Then, he simply burned up into ashes that drifted below.

After that, the other enforcers kept their distance and stuck to long range attacks. The fire barriers appeared and shattered while jets of flame snaked around in search of victims. A bolt of gold sheared off an arm but it didn't affect Kalist. In fact, even as the arm fell, a new one made of fire replaced it.

I had some mana now so I focused on creating a functional arm first. I had too many to choose from but I chose the biggest one I could, it belonged to a rugged hirsute man. I simply shriveled up the connective flesh for the rest and watched them fall away. My flesh bloated as a round lump formed on its surface. The lump moved before finally giving up and tearing the flesh open to free itself in a shower of gore. With that, I could control my skill better. Ripping off a few arms and legs stuck in places that were inconvenient and poked my sides, I groped around while constantly switching Medea until I grabbed a chunk of flesh. Another expenditure of mana made it like putty and I tore it away with a sound like that of ripping cloth. I gasped when my actual nose and mouth were freed and I could breathe better. I still couldn't see anything but there was a light that told me that there wasn't much obstructing them anymore. Another switch over to Medea and a mental note to observe how the mana flowed when I was using this skill, I utilized my oversized hairy arm to clear up some of the extraneous flesh around my body. I was not trying to look like a normal human girl, not yet, I just needed something that could actually move around.

Then something really strange happened. All the free mana that swirled in the air seemed to go still before rushing towards something high above Medea. It, and thus I, turned to look.

Vinny's face was completely gone now but it rippled, as if roaring, and a pulse of fire spread out from it. The fire rippled in the air and I felt the same revulsion that the Aetherite slimes and that dog's mana had invited, but even worse if possible.

Medea dove but the pulse didn't disperse before it reached it. Medea's mana spasmed painfully and it crashed to the ground. I was shunted out of Medea for a second before I made my way back to it. Medea's reserves were all empty and there was something else in there that prevented regeneration. The pulse continued and I could see the Aetherite lights flickering, the already cracked mirror-like floor shuddered before going dark. People twitched and the kobolds froze up. The crystal spires of the palace shattered. The pulse was not fast but it didn't stop at anything at all so there was no place to dodge. It spread out, an inexorable, inevitable sphere of pale orange and red fire that disrupted anything and everything in its way, like some mana EMP. Or rather a solar storm. Carrington Event.

I desperately tried to use up as much mana as I could before it reached me. Something told me that the less mana I had available when it hit, the better it would be for me. Pushing myself, I sliced off numerous arms and legs internally. My head protested but I ignored it. Ignored that some of them weren't quite as vestigial. Many fell off and rolled away but some just fell on their side on top of my mass. My mana hit nil right as the pulse hit me.

The first thing I realized was that this repulsive mana was not just similar to the slime and the dog. No, it was the exact same thing, just not diluted. The slimes had been touched by Kalist all along. The wave made its way slowly through my body, everything it touched went numb, and I could feel it unravelling things. A long list of new debuffs raced at the corner of my vision in angry bold text. Organ failure after organ failure. Hackjobs that only worked because of mana that no longer obeyed it. It reached the first of my hearts and it stopped. And then another. And another. I didn't lose consciousness however. And so I waited for either my hearts to reboot, my mana to recover so that I could do it manually or die.

Medea could still see and so I moved its head around with effort. Lady Ayn had turned back into a human and seemed to be struggling to stay afloat. I couldn't even say that about most of the enforcers. Kalist had taken advantage of the pause and had stabbed Lady Ayn with a claw of fire. Wait. Were there two Lady Ayns? No, the one now impaled on a solid claw of fire was a body double. An enforcer. Her disguise rippled before falling away like water. The maw of fleshy flaps and fire that had once been Vinny sneered in disgust before turning towards the high councillor.

But for whatever reason, Ayn didn't look scared or even resolute. No, she was smiling in triumph.

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