James continued doing all the tasks given to him and looking at the animal's souls without modifying them. This went on far a week. So far, no particular advancement were made in the use of "Idle Transfiguration" but it wasn't completely useless. Far from it, during this one week James made multiple discovery that made all the time training completely worth it.

Firstly, the soul of animals and of humans were not all that different. The only difference between them were some function that were more developed. For example, the instincts of a cat were much more developed compared to humans while a human had a bigger consciousness.

Secondly, when James and the now dead Mahito first entered this new world, Mahito was rejected and killed by the world. However, it seems that Mahito was not the only thing the world changed. It also completely removed any trace of cursed energy and transformed all of his cursed technique into something extremely similar to what a quirk is. Instead of making "Idle Transfiguration work with cursed energy, it now function with something akin to stamina just not physical one. Even if James used "Idle Transfiguration" too much, he would still be able to move well enough.

Lastly, James managed to earn more trust from Hideo Koji which means that he has more unsupervised time with the animals. Now was the time to start experimenting more seriously.

A brand new day started and James did all the things he was supposed to do when he entered the animal shelter in the morning while planning exactly how he would tackle what he needed to do. The plan was fairly simple. There wasn't any need to make a big deal out of it, simply going to walk one of the dogs and using "Idle Transfiguration" to modify it wasn't the hardest thing James ever had to do. Certainly the weirdest but not the hardest. The only part that would take a lot of caution was using "Idle Transfiguration" on the dog without leaving any permanent damage. If he harmed the dog too badly it would be obvious he did something to it intentionally and he would lose all of Hideo Koji's trust.

James picked up a leash and got one of the dogs ready. So far, so good not that he doubted it could go wrong without doing anything different from the usual yet. Finally, when he got to a place with less people James crouched and touched the dog while ignoring the confused and fearful whine it did. This time James would only change something unnoticeable in case he didn't manage to get it back to normal.

It was in moments like these that James wished he could just be invisible like cursed spirits so he could just get stronger without having to bother with these annoying things like having to talk with the other employees at the animal shelter. Already, the effects of not being able to bond with people were showing.

Refocusing on the task at hand, James focused on the part of the dog's soul that he knew was associated to it's tip of the tail and simply poked it using "Idle Transfiguration." It came naturally to him afterwards. Almost as if he was molding, James felt the soul melting where he was touching and then when he slid his finger the melted part of the soul rearranged itself. Obviously, without any prior training all that did was change the dog's tail as if the tip retracted while the dog started crying in pain which James quickly stopped by putting his hand around its muzzle. James then hurried to try to put it back to normal by using "Idle Transfiguration." It worked. Not perfectly, but it was acceptable. Instead of the tail missing a few inch, it only looked like it had a bald spot there. That would be easy to just say the dog was stressed and lost hair there. Things like that happened pretty often so it was a good excuse for what happened to the dog.

Afterwards, James continued with his day as if nothing happened while doing the same thing to other dogs but t different places. So far James had done a few on the tail and the paws but as he got better, he would try more important places like the face. Throughout the day James got vastly better with his ability compared to before. Souls were clearer and he got more confident.

The next day James continued what he did the day before but this couldn't go on forever because the animals in the shelter were already starting to fear him. James didn't care about that but if Hideo caught on to it he could get in problem. Doesn't mean that James will stop looking at their soul but modifying them was out of question if he didn't want to get in trouble. In the meantime that the animals forgot about it or were switched to new ones, James needed to continue progressing. It was unacceptable that his progress was stalled by anything so finding a new way to get stronger was important. Also, simply looking at his own soul was starting to be pretty useless. No matter how much he looked at his own soul he wouldn't learn anything new. Good thing that the time he just freed for himself was during the night. If it was the day James would have to look for something mostly lawful but if it was the night, a lot of options suddenly opened up.

After his volunteer work was done, James went back to the park earlier than usual and began preparing for the night.