Chapter 175 - Beneath the Fractured Moon

“Uhmm… Claire?”

“What?” The fox’s question was met with a discontent huff.

“Can you let go of my face already?” Sylvia’s words were distorted, no doubt in part because her cheeks had grown three full inches in either direction, but the frosty longmoose found them intelligible regardless. Quite the impressive feat, on both their parts.

“No.”

“Pretty please? Come on! I don’t even know why you’re mad!”

“Yes. You do.”

The fox averted her eyes as soon as she was made the subject of the unamused stare. “Okay, fine, maybe I do, but you shouldn’t be! Frosty Longmoose is a great name!”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is!”

“No. It. Isn’t.”

Still grumbling, the pet abuser breathed another tired sigh and set the fox down atop a floating bubble. “I was supposed to be an abyssal hoarfrost scalewarden.”

“Oh, come on! That doesn’t even sound like a race.” The fox pressed her cheeks back into their rightful positions and lightly massaged them with her paws. “I bet the system would’ve rejected it anyway. And plus, didn’t you say that you didn’t like mine because of how long it was? Abyssal horcrux whatever is even longer!”

“No it isn’t.”

“Only because you’re counting my titles!”

“Shush.” Claire reached for her four-legged companion again, but pulled her into her chest instead of assaulting her cheeks.

It was only as she pressed her face into the back of the fox’s head that she realised her body had changed. And not just because she had grown a tail. She didn’t need to retract her shard as far to ensure the fuzzy critter’s safety because her chest was no longer perfectly flat. There were instead a pair of mounds of a size within the regular range, and her runecloak had adjusted to compensate, even without her input.

“Wait a second! What the heck happened to your chest!?” She wasn’t the only one to notice. The fox, who had suddenly found it a lot harder to breathe than usual, crawled a few inches higher and rested her head on the freshly grown platform.

“I don’t know,” said Claire, with a frown.

She didn’t dislike the aesthetic; it brought her appearance closer in line with her mother’s, but she was concerned that they would get in the way. It was a common complaint that she had heard from many of the female fighters in her father’s service, especially those that wielded heavier weapons like halberds and two-handed swords. They, however, were pure-blooded centaurs, with chests as large as their heads. Her breasts were more modest and unlikely to lead to the associated struggles.

“Oh well,” said Sylvia. “I guess it’s comfier this way, so whatever.”

“I don’t think I have them in my other form anyways. So it shouldn’t matter.” Though she could picture herself in her mind, the lyrkress transformed just to confirm. Surely enough, her most draconic body plan was completely devoid of the distinctly feminine structures.

“Wait! Where’d your clothes go?” Appearing atop the draco-qilin’s head, the half-dog paced back and forth, carefully inspecting the much larger girl’s body from within the mane that ran the length of her neck.

“Here.” Claire lifted a leg and revealed the cloak held within her talons. It transformed a moment later, when she gave the command for it to turn into a massive mantle, large enough to shroud her entire twenty-meter-long frame.

“Uhhh… is there really even a point in that?” asked the fox. “All it does is make you look even more conspicuous, and it’s not like you need to cover up.”

“No,” said Claire. “I just wanted to try it.” She shrank the cloak again, turning it into a pair of silvery accessories that sat atop her ears. They were crafted to look just like the ones she so often wore to balls and other public events, intricate and expensive, but not so fancy that they would steal attention away from the princes and princesses.

“Do you wanna go back? I told Boris and Lia that you were gonna be out ‘cause you were ascending, but I think they’re expecting us back by now.”

“In a bit.” Claire took a deep breath. “I need to get used to my body first.”

Though her eyes were no longer blurry, something about their behaviour was still off the mark. Her field of view would distort whenever she focused on an object. She could still see everything in her vicinity, but the target and its surroundings would be magnified as well. It was like she had another eye much closer to whatever she wished to behold.

Practicing on some of the fish beneath the lake’s surface, she found that while the magnification speed remained somewhat haphazard, her use of the ability did eventually improve. It was difficult, but she managed to shut out enough information for the world to become something more than just a canvas of blown-up images.

Walking proved just as difficult. It took a certain degree of focus to stay upright, though the amount required shrank with each continued repetition. Strolling along the shore required far more effort than she had expected. Swimming and flying both came much more naturally. She had no trouble navigating the world beneath the waves, nor the one suspended above it. Because air and water were both fluids, and the necessary adjustments to her buoyancy therein provided perfect control of her height. Flapping her wings aided in remaining stable, and her vector magic did the rest.

Once relatively adjusted to the basics, she landed back on the ground and curled into a large mound, her head resting atop her soft, silken tail. It was a brief respite that would last maybe a few minutes at most. She knew that she was going to have to engage in combat for a more thorough examination.

It was with that thought that she finally turned her eyes on her status and spent the 250 levels that Alfred had left her. She was tempted to dump them all into her racial class and immediately follow her second ascension with a third, but a moment of thought saw the foolish idea dismissed. She had racked up a grand total of zero notable achievements in the thirty-odd minutes she spent toying around with her new body; there were unlikely to be any options as potent as the ones present during her second, and her fourth slot could not be allowed to meet the same fate as her third.

Adding to her reluctance was the manner in which her levels were skewed. Most fighters had their racial classes lagging far behind their others, and none of her acquaintances had been exceptions to the rule. Natalya, she had long marked as a blademaster, a swordsman above level 500 with a focus on technique, and Sylvia had outright stated that her racial class was barely half the level of her highest. Nymphetel, she knew to be in a similar boat, and the same appeared true for Zelos and his half-dead entourage. Being a monster, Boris was the only exception. He, like Claire, derived most of his power by investing heavily in his race.

It was not an incorrect choice, but she disliked the idea of having all her eggs in the same basket. Losing her third class slot had robbed her of an increase in utility, and focusing heavily on a single set of strengths would undoubtedly expose its weaknesses as well.

Of the 250 levels, only 1 was put into her racial class, so she could determine the number of points it gave, while 120 were poured into her primary class, and the rest into her secondary.

Log Entry 6099
You have leveled up. Your health and mana have been restored and all harmful status effects have been cleansed.

Your racial class, Frosty Longmoose, has reached level 251.

Your primary class, Llystletein Essencethief, has reached level 349.

Your secondary class, Cloudburst Sorceress, has reached level 332.

You have gained 8344 ability points.

Claire scrunched up her face as she tried to work through the mental math. She gave up soon after she started and scribbled the calculation in the mud instead. After a few attempts, to double, triple, and quadruple check her less-than-consistent result, she came to the conclusion that it gave a flat 100 points per level, far more than she had expected.

All the points she acquired were immediately spent. She poured about a thousand into spirit and vitality, because she doubted she would be able to evade much with her true form as large as it was, and roughly split the rest between everything but wisdom.

“Okay. I’m done.” The sudden dramatic change left her body feeling even more foreign than it already was, but she turned her eyes to the fox on her snout regardless. “Let’s go.”

Boris and Lia were still waiting, and she would have plenty of time to experiment, once they got to spelunking.

___

“There you are!”

When the pair stepped out of the portal and onto the beach, with both in their humanoid forms, they found themselves greeted by an angry cat. Both her hands were on her hips, her tail was standing straight up, and her face was marred with an obvious frown.

“I’ve been looking for you two all day. Where were you?”

The question, of course, prompted Claire to cast a suspicious glare in the fox’s direction. “I thought you told her that I was going to ascend.”

“I did!” said the two-legged catdog in protest. “I made her dream about it.”

As a totally reasonable person and the local authority on lucid dreams, the former lyrkress turned her eyes back to the Paunsean swordsman. The cold look tensed the cat’s nerves; she took half a step back before shaking her head and stepping forward again.

“W-why are you looking at me!? She’s the one being unreasonable.”

“Dreams are reasonable.”

The cat blinked a few times before lifting her glasses and rubbing her nose. “Even if dreams are reasonable, which I should add, they aren’t, the dream I had was definitely not.”

“Huh? What do you mean? It was perfectly reasonable!” said Sylvia. “I made you dream that we were going away and coming back with Claire ascended.”

“Then why was she a giant talking tomato?”

“H-huh? A tomato?” The fox tilted her head. “Why did you dream that she was a tomato?”

“I should be the one asking you that! You’re the one that made it!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t add anything about a tomato! I just made you dream that she would come back ascended! If you dreamed up a tomato then that just means you think Claire was gonna become a tomato when she ascended.”

“That makes no sense,” grumbled the cat.

“Yeah, I know, right?” said the fox.

After flipping back and forth with each rebuttal, Claire’s cold stare eventually settled on their feline companion. “I’m not a tomato.”

“I know you’re not,” said Lia. “Trust me, I’m just as confused as you are.”

“I’m an abyssal hoarfrost scalewarden.”

“What the heck, Claire!” The claim was met with a dissatisfied tug of the sleeve. “Use the super cool name I gave you! Not whatever that lame thing is!”

“It’s not lame.” Claire averted her eyes and offered no further comment, so Sylvia stepped forward and puffed up her chest, the detailed effects of which differed starkly from when she was just a fox.

“She ended up with an unknown class and let me name it. So now she’s a frosty longmoose.”

The proclamation was followed immediately by a stifled laugh. “That’s a great name.” Natalya choked out the words as she tried her best not to giggle. To no avail. “Congratulations, Claire.”

Averting her eyes, the former lyrkress bent over, lifted the lizard that had been silently listening in, and strapped him to her back. “Enough about me. Let’s go. It’s dungeon time.”

Natalya met the suggestion with a grimace, “Right, about that,” and pointed a finger at the half-destroyed boat parked on the beach. “I think we’re going to need a new boat first. I won’t be able to fight in any of the more watery parts without it.”

“Then don’t. Wait with Sylvia while I handle them.”

“I know you’ve just ascended, but that’d mean leaving you to do over half the dungeon by yourself. We should go back to town, get a sturdier ship, and maybe a larger party,” Natalya flipped through her book and ran the back of a quill down a particularly jam-packed page. “The Spiraling Abyss isn’t the sort of dungeon we can plough through without a plan. It doesn't have floors, and is generally unsafe because high level monsters can come out of nowhere. I was only okay with us exploring a little because I assumed we were going to leave once you finished ascending.”

“Then we can fight around the entrance,” said Claire. “I need to test my new abilities.”

“We can do that without the dungeon. One of the nearby reefs is a known danger zone. I think my master said that their levels go as high as 300.”

“Oh wait, I know!” Sylvia raised a paw. “If the problem is that she can’t fight without standing on something, then how about you let her ride you? Then she can stay on top of the water, while you blow up all the stuff beneath it.”

“Absolutely not,” said Claire. She pinched the fox girl’s nose with one hand and covered her mouth with the other.

“Mmmrrrmph!”

“I know you can’t breathe. That’s the point.”

“You’re gonna have to let her ride you eventually anyway! We’re not getting back to town otherwise with the boat the way it is.” A phantom shaped just like the half-elf’s vulpine form appeared atop her head and chattered away. “Oh, and can you please let go of me already? I’m starting to get kinda dizzy.”

“Fine.”

Releasing the two-legged vixen, Claire breathed a sigh and headed away from the shore. “I’m going to bid Kal’syr farewell. We can go to the reef when I’m done.”

___

Claire

Health: 62620/62620
Mana: 264320/264320
Divinity: 137/137
Health Regen: 12.6/second
Mana Regen: 70.2/second
Divinity Regen: 13.7/hour

Ability Scores - 0 Points Available
- Agility: 6681
- Dexterity: 6186
- Spirit: 4192
- Strength: 6804
- Vitality: 4830
- Wisdom: 12000

Racial Class: Frosty Longmoose - Level 251.00
- Corpus Imperium - Level 18.01
- Eyes of the Deep - Level 32.16
- Realm of Eternal Frost
- True Ice Manipulation - Level 57.60

Primary Class: Llystletein Essencethief - Level 349.00
- Catgirl Detector V. 1.00 - Level 8.04
- Charm Catgirl - Level 18.17
- Death’s Dance - Level 34.13
- Essencethief - level 21.70
- Envenom - Level 41.01
- Phantom Blade - Level 37.94

Secondary Class: Cloudburst Sorceress - Level 332.00
- Force Resistance - Level 10.33
- Detect Force Magic - Level 23.16
- Spirit Sorcery - Level 47.19
- Vector Manipulation II - Level 24.99

Unclassed Skills
- Artifact Manipulation - Level 6
- English - Level 25
- Llystletein Authority++ - Level 13.85
- Marish - Level 19.13
- Singing - Level 1.72
- Weapon Mastery - Level 27.43