"So, today's the day," commented Cluma, looking nervous. "Sure you want to go through with this?"

The previous day, we'd rushed the Obsidian Spires dungeon, seriously confusing the guards by entering twice without exiting in between, and getting back to floor thirteen. Still far from reclaiming our previous progress, but a good start. Today, we'd hopefully reach twenty.

"Yup. Even if they're floors we've already visited. Another couple of days, and we'll be back where we were."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it!"

... It had also been a full week since I started working my way through Grover's bag'o'tails. Ten days of attaching progressively longer tails, all for the purpose of wearing a full-length, rank five enchanted version.

"Why not? Nothing interesting will happen today."

Cluma peered doubtfully. "And tomorrow? Or the next time you need healing?"

An interesting question. Assuming my soul grew into it at all, would it take the same amount of time to fill it, or would it grow at the same rate, in which case filling it would take weeks. Would the way I only wore it around the house, using [Detach] to leave it behind while we went delving, make any difference? There was science to be done!

"Dunno. But you know the end goal. Wear it until my body decides it's supposed to have a tail, remove it again, then get my missing tail healed. If you're lucky, I might even let you touch it."

Cluma responded by vanishing. I immediately flipped on [Soul Perception], just in time to catch her leaping from my shadow, but not quickly enough to react to stop her grabbing my current, almost full length tail.

"Gah!" I exclaimed through clenched teeth as I successfully remained standing, despite feeling like someone was giving mild electric shocks to my back.

"Don't need your permission," she giggled. "And the finished one will be even more sensitive! Are you really sure?"

"It doesn't do that when I touch it, or if it accidentally brushes against things."

"Yeah. You need to feel comfortable around someone for it to react like that. A monster biting it is no worse than it biting a leg, and bumping into random people on the street doesn't do anything either. Dunno why they do it. Caught me completely by surprise when you brushed mine the first time."

I smiled at the memory. Having Clana walk in on us had been utterly mortifying at the time, but in retrospect, I found it almost as hilarious as she did.

The final tail of the set was over a metre long, coloured a dark brown to match my ears, the coloured fur still a contrast to Cluma's pitch black despite its dark colour.

"I wonder what Adele made it from?" I commented, before using [Detach] on the previous model and attaching the new.

"The hide of a fluffy monster, presumably," answered Cluma, but I didn't really hear her on account of all my willpower being required to resist the urge to pull my short-sword from my [Item Box] and slice my backside off.

"But what monster?" I managed five minutes later, once I'd finally got some control back. "The only furred monster we've encountered so far has been the dire wolves, and they were more bristly than fluffy."

I watched carefully with [Soul Perception]. Was my soul growing, or was it just wishful thinking?

"We've hardly seen a large sample of all the monsters in existence," pointed out Cluma, playfully grabbing at my latest tail, but her hands passing straight through.

ding
Skill [Shelter] advanced to level 12

"True. Well, shall we get back to the dungeon?"

A [Detach] and clothes change later, and we were back in the dungeon. This time, we didn't bother playing fair, and I killed all monsters on floor sixteen to twenty with spatial affinity the moment they came into range. The explosions from floor seventeen onwards destroyed the cores, which left us with no loot beyond the chests, but since that let us move a lot faster, we ended up completing floor twenty while there was still an hour or two of daytime left.

"Another floor?" I suggested.

"Nah. We've done enough. Let's check our new house is still where we left it, then you can enchant me some steak."

"Really? Haven't you got over that yet?"

"No! And not only that, but don't think I haven't spotted what you've been up to."

"Umm... Whatever do you mean?"

"You haven't been fully charging them! You know I can see mana. And to that, all I can say is thank you for the [Mana Control] levels."

Damn. Scheme failed.

To be fair, I think I'd already accepted my failure at the point I got a kitchen apron enchanted with runecrafting enhancement.

The house was, of course, still where we'd left it, because no-one in this world was going to make off with a pile of hides and building material. While we were there, we each left handprints in the curing foundation, because why not? Then we went home and the steak was carefully constructed and ungracefully inhaled. All in all, an uninteresting day.

Aside from the fact my detached tail, which I'd left on our dining table, clearly contained soul. Quite a lot of soul, in fact.

"Okay, I know I'm going to regret this," I said, as I undid [Detach], "but give my tail a poke."

Cluma gave my tail a poke.

Once my legs felt slightly more sturdy than jelly again, I climbed back up from the floor, rubbing my head where I'd bashed it on the way down.

"Oh, I am going to have fun with this," declared Cluma, leaving me with second, third and fourth thoughts about what I was doing.

"Please tell me you get used to it..."

"Changing your mind?" she giggled, and I imagined two different Peters. One was a Peter who dropped the whole idea. He was a sensible Peter. He paid a professional to finish his house and was well known for not accidentally vaporising his eyebrows with experimental flame grenades. He found a few more like-minded people to join his delving party; adventurous but not suicidal. His levelling speed slowed down, but he kept it steady. He might even manage to reach rank five.

That... actually sounded like a damn good description of Dafydd. That Peter probably even wore a suit.

On the other side was a Peter whose eyebrows were in a near constant state of regrowth. Performing extensive body-mods out of pure interest in what would happen, delving deeper and deeper into dungeons with no regard for safety, and following through on every harebrained scheme he came up with as long as doing so had a chance of granting skill levels.

And that was the Peter that earned [Self-destructive]. He wouldn't be seen dead in a suit. He probably wouldn't be seen dead in anything, but only because the way in which he inevitably killed himself would be unlikely to leave a body.

Coming to this world had changed me. There was no way I could deny that. 'Surviving' death had a big enough impact all on its own, even before throwing magic and the System into the mix. Not all the changes were good, but neither were they all bad. I didn't want to be either of those people. I wanted the high points of both.

Which required careful thought about which bits of each were the high points.

"Nope," I replied, using [Far Reach] in an attempt to take my revenge.

"Too slow!" she giggled, nimbly dodging.

Some were easier than others. Cluma, for example, was a point so high as to be stratospheric. "Don't ever change," I giggled back.

"Huh?" she went, her forehead creasing in confusion.

"Sorry. My head is a weird place. I was giving serious thought to your question, but I branched out slightly."

"Remember I said I needed [Tracking] to keep up with the amount your mind wandered?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I was wrong. I need Darren's ability to open interdimensional portals."

"Wow. Rude."

"It's not rude if it's accurate! Still..." she added, glancing at her empty plate, "at least it comes back with souvenirs."

I laughed as I flopped back to the sofa. "Well, this tail is definitely doing the same thing as my ears, but it'll take a few more days before it can be 'healed'. Back to the dungeon tomorrow."

"Nope! Well, maybe in the morning. I want to see my parents in the afternoon. I've been away for two weeks!"

"Wait... Today is the last day of mating season?"

I checked [Clock]. It was indeed the last day of mating season.

"Wow!" exclaimed Cluma, looking at me gobsmacked.

"I lost track, okay?" I muttered. It wasn't as if I woke up every morning and wondered what day it was in relation to the beastkin sex calender.

"No, not that. You called it by its real name, and didn't hesitate, flinch, stutter or anything."

"Uhh..."

"Don't spoil it!"

I wisely chose to keep my mouth shut on that topic, spending an enjoyable evening of banter and cuddles instead.

The following day gave us another couple of floors of dungeon progress, before we broke off early for lunch, and then onwards to visit Clana and Camus.

"Aren't you going to change?" asked Cluma when I declared myself ready to leave, causing me to look down and check I'd remembered to put clothes on.

"I already have?" I tried, hoping to pick up on what she thought was wrong. I'd removed my helmet and armour, and was wearing normal town clothes. That was right, wasn't it?

"You're going out with your tail on?"

"Well, obviously, now that it's finished. I'll keep removing it while delving, unless it really helps with balance or something, but there's no reason not to walk around town with it, is there?"

"You're weird..."

"Yes? I don't think anyone is disputing that."

Also, I really wanted to see Camus's reaction when I turned up with a tail.

"Didn't mating season finish last night?" I asked as we walked through the streets of Dawnhold. For the first day in a while, beastkin were out and about, albeit some of them walking with odd gaits. "Why did you want to wait till the afternoon?"

Cluma responded with one of the disappointed looks she reserved for when I said something particularly stupid.

"To give them a chance to clean up," she answered when it became obvious I legitimately didn't know. Right. Obvious in retrospect. When it came to thinking about the logistics of beastkin mating season, most of my questions were around things like 'who's been cooking in the institute all this time' or 'what if someone in the village needed a tool repaired'. It wasn't like they were off sick, so everyone had warning, but few Earth corporations would be willing to let half their employees take a two-week vacation simultaneously. Or three weeks, really, given that a week was ten days long here.

She burst in to her parents' home, distributing the usual hugs. My new addition got a grin from Clana and a sigh from Camus, which was rather boring. Had I really done so much stupid stuff that suddenly gaining a tail didn't earn a proper reaction? I'd bet I could elicit a better response by pointing out my ears were now real, but frankly, there were more important things that had happened since the start of mating season, and these were Cluma's parents, not mine.

"I cleared Serpent Isle on my own and reached rank three!" she exclaimed, getting the biggest news out of the way.

Camus radiated surprise. "Impressive. And what class did you pick?"

"The one that let's me give the best hugs, obviously!" she answered, vanishing. Camus stumbled moments later, Cluma having leapt from his shadow and hugged from behind. "And then we went to Obsidian Spires, but I got beat on floor twenty-four and we had to start again. They have really weird monsters in there. And we started building a house, and it's gonna have a bouncy room. Oh, and it turns out that you can enchant steak and Mum really needs to get a runecrafting class."

"Wait, what?" asked Clana, immediately focusing in on the part that related to food.

"Enchanted steak! Best meal ever!"

"Also completely inedible to anyone who isn't her," I pointed out.

"No! Don't discourage her! Mum needs to learn to cook enchanted steak!"

I saw a small grin fighting for space on Camus's face, Cluma's antics breaking through his stoic facade. "You'll need to explain in a little more detail," he said.

"It's actually straightforward," I answered in the place of Cluma. "Take a steak, load it up with enchantments that store mana, fill them up, and to Cluma, who partially lives off mana, it tastes great. Personally, I can't eat a single mouthful without gagging."

"And why do you want me to learn to make it?" asked Clana.

"Because your cooking skill is higher, so it'll taste even better!" replied Cluma.

"It's a bad idea. She's addicted enough already, without making tastier versions," I opined.

"I said not to discourage her!" said Cluma, and I saw the arm-imprints around Camus vanish.

I flipped on [Soul Perception], but it was too little, too late. The squeak I emitted as Cluma grabbed hold of my tail was definitely one of the less manly noises I'd ever made, and wasn't helped by my legs giving way beneath me and sending me crashing to the floor.

The nascent grin that Camus was attempting to keep suppressed finally broke through, spreading across his face like a tide.