The couple was currently exploring the underground maze the wolves had built. Their progress was relatively moderate, though. They activated a few traps and got lost a couple of times by running in circles or reaching dead ends. The two were currently in a hallway that was connected to a jumbled mess of corridors that led up and down, made all kinds of weird zigzag turns, or simply made no sense at all and looked very confusing.
"Now that's the type of straight I can get behind." Sophia initially didn't want to take the straight path just because it isn't her style but this confusing mess resonated strongly with her for some reason.
"Ahaha."
"You don't think the wolves planned this, right?"
"What do you mean?" Maya tilted her head.
"Well, I'm pretty simple, right?"
"Yes."
"Hey... Hesitate at least a little!" She made a short pout before continuing. "Anyway, me making that straight joke wasn't that unexpected, was it? Aura was also there when I mentioned the dark side of homosexuality in my old world. Seeing how now the straight path was the only right one and everything else was just trolling us..."
"Hmm... I think you're reading a little too much into it. Well, then again, I wouldn't be surprised if she did it on purpose, though. She is a playful one." The cat-girl couldn't rule out the possibility.
"Alright, it was fun, so whatever~." Even though the topic was heavy in theory, there was no malice behind it, and they had a good laugh while playing around. "So, where should we go next?"
"Uhh..." She looked around, but there were so many paths that making a decision was impossible. "I'm not even going to try." Saying so, Maya closed her eyes and spun around a couple of times before eventually pointing to her right without looking. "That way!"
"God, why are you so perfect?" Sophia really liked the way her cat decided and how cute she was while doing so.
"Hehe." Maya, too, enjoyed being playful.
----------------
Afterward, the two entered the corridor she had chosen on a whim. Unfortunately, it ended up being a dead-end right after the first corner.
"..."
"..." They went back to the hallway with an awkward expression.
"Let's, uhh... Let's try this one!" This time, Sophia chose a path by pointing at a random one, and they tried their luck again.
The two followed that way for a while. It twisted and turned a lot and was generally all over the place. It went up and down before leveling out again to continue in a zigzag way instead.
"You know, more than any of them doing a playful job at our straightness..." Maya looked around in the confusing corridor. "I more and more get the feeling Fen was just drunk when he made this area."
"That's, uhh... That's not an unlikely explanation, either." There was nothing she could say here.
"So, anyway, what do we do about this?" The cat-girl pointed at the slight problem the two were currently having.
"That's a good question." Sophia then, too, looked at the big hole at the end of the path they were following. It was so deep that with Maya's current illumination, they couldn't even see the bottom. It seemed just like a black void. "Jump?"
"How about no?"
"That's probably a better idea." Even the tiger wouldn't do something like that.
"I guess we're heading back?"
"Hmm..." Sophia got closer to the hole and looked down.
"If you're actually going to jump now, I'll kill you if you survive."
"What?" There were all kinds of things she wanted to retort to in this sentence. "No, I just think there's something odd about this hole. It actually feels darker than it should be?"
"Isn't that just because it's really deep?"
"I don't know. Is it?" Sophia stared at it for another moment before snapping her fingers. Immediately after, the hole was bathed in a bright light.
"Eh?" The cat-girl was confused about what she saw. The hole actually wasn't even 15m deep, but its walls and ground were made with pitch black and smooth rock. Thanks to that, it only looked bottomless with little light.
"Our wolves sure are having fun with this maze." She was impressed. "Oh?" The tiger then noticed a small exit at the wall near the bottom of the hole.
"That's pretty clever."
"Yeah!" Sophia liked these kinds of things. "Seems like we have to jump after all, huh?"
"How about some stairs with earth magic instead?" She didn't feel like jumping down a 15m deep hole.
"Sure, knock yourself out."
"In other words, I have to make the stairs myself?"
"You think it, you do it."
"Alright." Maya got closer to the hole, closed her eyes, and concentrated for a few moments. A little while later, a couple of pedestal-like footrests around one meter apart from each other spiraled around the walls towards the bottom of the hole.
"Good work. Not really stairs, but it does the job nonetheless."
"Yeah, stairs seemed like too much work."
"A valid reason." Sophia's favorite one, actually.
Afterward, the two jumped on Maya's makeshift steps and reached the bottom of the hole in no time. There, the couple looked around to see what was going on.
"It looks a little like the basement Fen made." Maya touched the black walls. "No, they're actually way darker. Very interesting."
"I think this here is closer to obsidian or other volcanic rocks." She, too, touched the smooth and perfectly black surface. "Is the capital built on a volcano?"
"Not that I know. Though, we're quite deep... I think? Nobody would probably know about it."
"That's true. I hope it's inactive." Sophia casually said something worrisome.
"Scarry!"
"Well, if it's active, the capital would've noticed by now. There should be some frequent earthquakes if it is the case."
"Y-You're right..."
"Okay!" The tiger faced the dark tunnel inside the wall of the pitfall. "Wanna find out where this leads to?"
"Of course!" Maya was having a good time during their exploration. As there wasn't anything extraordinary happening, Sophia was relatively behaving herself, and the cat could let loose.
----------------
It was a perfectly straight tunnel around 500 meters long and led to a gigantic cave. The path's exit was slightly elevated, so the two could perfectly overlook the dimly lit area.
"Seriously?" The cave had several supportive pillars, but it was easily 1km by 1 km wide. That wasn't the surprising part, though. Looking down, Sophia noticed that the entire floor was a gigantic actual maze made with roughly three-meter-tall walls. All of them were arranged at perfect 90° angles.
"Wait, didn't the two start building this maze once we moved in? How?" Maya was amazed by just how much the wolves did.
"Well, now we know why we've barely seen them lately."
"Fair point. Though, I thought they went on dates or something like that. There's a nice mood between them lately."
"Like when Aura and I immediately sold him out to save our skin earlier in the day?" The tiger let out a small chuckle.
"Idiot. You know what I mean."
"Yeah, they do feel closer. Maybe building a maze together is just their type of date? I mean, I'm exploring one with you right now, and I'm having a great time!"
"I don't think I can call exploring a dungeon a date... I'm still a girl, after all."
"I am one, too, though?"
"Yeah, I've noticed." The cat-girl looked at her from head to toe. "I'm very well aware of that~."
"Haha, no, I get your point. Even for me, that's a little eccentric. Well, it's fun and enjoyable, so I don't care what we call it."
"Yep~." She gave a big nod. "Let's have a date date in a café or something like that soon."
"Sounds great. Oh, how about we see if that bakery Kira told us about has a café attached to it?"
"That! Let's do that!" Maya was a big fan of the cake the queen brought with her the other day.
"Ehehe." Chuckling at how adorable Maya was for a moment, Sophia then looked at the maze beneath them again. "Wanna clear it?"
"Absolutely!"
"Good answer."
"Do you think the tunnel exit ended up being elevated on purpose? Maybe we're supposed to memorize the pathing of the maze?"
"Uhh..." The tiger took another glance at the gigantic 1 by 1km large thing. "You don't expect me to remember that, do you?"
"Well, it should help if we even memorize a little, right?"
"Sure."
The couple looked at the maze from above for around 15 minutes before eventually making their way down to it by ascending some stairs next to the exit of the tunnel they arrived from.
The entrance was a three-meter-tall gate, and the couple was immediately greeted by the choice of turning left or right after stepping through it.
"Alright, this way!" As the couple paid good attention and memorized a good part of it, they were confident with their decision as the two exclaimed the correct direction at the same time.
"Eh?" Unfortunately, the couple was pointing at the exact opposite paths. Clearing this maze might involve a bit more work than Sophia and Maya had previously anticipated.
For those wondering about the comments, there was a poll for a new cover and whether it should have tiger Sophia or not.
Feeling cheated having to deal with her human version for 60+ chapters?
Definitely this.
It happened with another story I was reading. Not only was the most important point of the plot spoiled, but I had to suffer through several dozen chapters in anticipation of the exciting transformation that seemed like it was never going to happen.
Personally, I wouldn't mind now that I've already made it this far, but I'm certain many new readers will feel cheated.
Like me, everyone will be biased based on what we feel now, having made it this far. We're not taking the feelings of potential new readers into account when we vote for the tiger lap pillow.
If you ever publish this as a book, you could use the tiger covers for later volumes with a human cover for the first, and keeping that one up here as the first.
Hmm... I do see your point, yeah.
---
Anyone reading this who's good with Photoshop and could remove her tail and ears, and change her hair collor a bit?
@Teanam Could you send a link to a full-resolution version of the cover?
@TadaFireworks Seriously?!
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/872496792569270382/882611938796912660/1.png
I think her tail isn't that hard to remove, but the ears might be. The hair is probably the most complicated because of the stripes and the different colors. She originally has more of an ash/silvery tone to it, after all...
@Teanam So progress:
[1/3 The ears are gone]: https://i.ibb.co/NYjJYjX/boostedr.png
In cases like this, I personally think it's better to not make the transformation a twist. It's a bigger annoyance when:
* the cover doesn't match the start unexpectedly (cover is tiger, character is not, no explanation),
* an interesting part of the story is missing from the synopsis/tagging (her tigerness is important to the bulk of the story and a big point in the decision to read)
* there is an obvious contradiction that must be intentional, but you'd have to risk spoilers to clear it up before deciding to read.
I feel that here the real twist of becoming a tiger is in the various side effects and consequences rather than the transformation into one. The cover wouldn't give away that it was a somewhat unintentional and rather permanent change of species, particularly if the synopsis avoids mentioning those bits.
Join Sophia as she explores a new world, new friends, new powers, new looks and new feelings. This is a world with magic, cat-girls and nobody to tell her not to experiment.
@TadaFireworks [2/3 the tail is gone too]: https://i.ibb.co/R0JLr3R/boostedr.png
@kaithar
an interesting part of the story is missing from the synopsis/tagging
It was tagged since the beginning. I never said what "Appearance Changes", "Beastkin", "Personality Changes", and some others really refer to, did I~?
One issue really would be that people come for the cute tiger, but it takes quite a while to get her. I actually had a similar concern when I made her a tiger because some might came for her being a human.
Waiting for tiger Sophia could help new readers bear with the human stupidity in the beginning better, though...
The tiger part is a surprise and changes the core of the story quite a bit because she isn't a human anymore and some might would've like to be warned about it, but I think most are like me who prefer her tiger version and it was a pleasant surprise.
------
@TadaFireworks did/is doing a fantastic job with editing the picture so far, and if she looks like her human version, later on, I think that's the best out of both worlds. The ambiance looks much better than the current cover, but it doesn't spoil a major plot point that has no explanation whatsoever for over 60 chapters.
@Teanam [2.5/3 the color of hair matches, now only the stripe removal]: https://i.ibb.co/7JSWbgV/boostedr.png
Honestly, here you can already see what it will look like. Contrary to @Teanam's expectations, the hair color was actually fairly easy to match. The brightness matched and the hue matched too. Basically the "dirty blond" is just a really desaturated orange, that just happens to be the same hue as the tiger color. And even if it wasn't, it would be easy to just do a hue shift to nudge it in the right direction. The stripes seem like a bigger challenge.
@TadaFireworks Looks great!
I always mess up when I try to change the color of something when trying to edit a picture... Ash-blonde what I had initially had in mind for Sophia does have some black in it. Your edit already fits closer to what I had in mind than the illustration in ch. 2.5.
https://livetruelondon.com/ash-blonde/
@Teanam [3/3 clean head] https://ibb.co/JpQHXX9
As it is currently, the image is ready. I found out that the links i sent you before were not full-res so here's the full-res link for the previous one: https://ibb.co/SX6nJQ0. But you mentioned that you liked the stripes, so I have an idea. Take the clean version and open it in Photoshop/GIMP/any other image editor and open the striped version as a new layer. Then you can fiddle around with the opacity slider to your heart's content and make the stripes appear and disappear with various intensity.
Just, please, DO NOT IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCES add the Fen image to the side. Please, it looks mismatched and horrible. At least shade it if you do it, maybe make the artist do your dirty work, but the Fen image is basically just colors and linework while the rest is properly shaded. Also, it breaks composition. He just looks like a sticker you put on a microwave oven.
@TadaFireworks Thank you so much, it looks great!
I didn't necessarily mean that I like the stripes, but more like that ash-blonde has some black elements in it. That said, the stripes do look good xD. I'll play around with blending them in a bit, though the res of covers here are so low that you probably don't see a difference, anyway.
You're right with Fen that he doesn't fit style-wise, but I kinda liked that part a bit. The "stickered-on" look was somewhat intentional. Just as @Aniel said in his comment. He has this 'the heck are you looking at' feel to him like this. Maybe I play around with some shadows on the weekend and make him a bit smaller. I might test the design with the "sticker" Fen on RoyalRoad first to see how I feel about it. I might leave him out if I don't like it.
@Teanam If it's intentional, you could make it a little more obvious, I even think it would be funnier if he would be rotated at a 90° angle, so that the physics are obviously impossible, like he was doing like a little little peek-a-boo, maybe even put him upside down. A cute thick outline or a shadow that looks like it was cast by a piece of paper would do wonders. I think the idea is great, but for a person who didn't know that it was intended it kinda looked like a bad edit.
@TadaFireworks W-Well... It's a bad edit of an intentional idea that I made 5 minutes before posting the chapter after I finished talking with my current artist for the upcoming illustrations.
This Fen also isn't mine but found on google, so it would actually be much better not having him on it, but he just fitted so damn well... May upside down and just the ears and eyes for a little cameo as a joke...
@Teanam I derped...
It was tagged since the beginning. I never said what "Appearance Changes", "Beastkin", "Personality Changes", and some others really refer to, did I~?
What I was trying to convey is that those things are more frustrating to me than having the transformation spoilered ahead of time, I wasn't suggesting you'd done them.