The next morning, Niphru woke up to the sounds of Dawn taking a shower, making him wonder if she had even slept or if he had simply been asleep deeply enough to miss her.
Figuring it was unimportant, he headed onto the balcony and began absorbing mana, as he had been staying at a low overload for some time now, and he hoped to improve his body as well.
Eventually, he heard the shower stop, and headed back inside while reducing how much mana he took in. Momentarily, Dawn emerged from the bathroom and headed toward the kitchen to prepare breakfast. Fortunately, she didn’t appear tired, so she must have gotten some sleep, and he had just been too deeply asleep to notice.
As he ate, Niphru asked, “Were you going to go back out and meet with our group again today, or were you planning on staying in?”
“Oh, I was planning on practicing with the group today; were you still aiming to go out again after all your work?” replied Dawn as she paused in her meal.
He replied, “Yes, I can’t wait to show off what I’ve managed! It will be good to see everyone again, too, even if we didn’t get too close so far.”
Dawn nodded as she resumed eating.
A short while later, they both headed out to the common area outside their residence, walking a short way around the spire to meet up with everyone else.
The first to react was Richard, who exclaimed, “Hello again, Niphru! We were starting to get worried about you! Are you doing okay?”
In response, Niphru nodded before stating, “I was busy practicing with my force magic; I kept thinking I was about to succeed in my goal with it but kept ending up just short. I can do it now, though!”
He then leapt into the air, but didn’t come back down, instead standing on an invisible platform around the level of everyone’s heads.
Miana hummed to herself upon seeing this occur, while Viera remarked, “Well, I wasn’t expecting to see a flying fox today. I can see how that would be difficult to learn.”
Thomas also responded to the unusual sight, “That is impressive, Niphru! Unfortunately, I don’t think any of us will be able to copy you, we just weigh too much. And that is ignoring the ability to use force magic to begin with.”
Miana nodded before speaking up, “I can see that being quite useful if you have to fight. Typically, when your opponent jumps, they come back down immediately after.”
“I hadn’t considered that yet; I was just focused on being able to keep myself from falling, as well as making it easier to move around,” Niphru remarked as he dropped back to the ground.
Following this, the rest of the group brought up their progress in their practice over the past several days, leading Niphru to ask several questions about his own attempts at basic manipulation.
During this entire time, he continued absorbing mana at a slow pace, feeling his reserves getting more heavily overloaded as time went on. Curious, since he hadn’t checked before, he used his telekinetic grip to remove the mana stone from the pouch around his neck to look at it. Unlike usual, it seemed like it was faintly shining.
Oddly—and alarmingly—once he focused on it, the crystal began drawing in energy at a rapid pace, actually absorbing all of the ambient mana in the area, dragging more in from outside. Despite his best efforts, he found himself unable to even slow it down, let alone stop it, even as his instincts screamed about the dangerous amounts of mana he was absorbing.
Dawn jumped up, feeling the panic over their bond, and rushed over to try to help, listening as he stuttered out an explanation of what was going on. Similarly, upon hearing what was happening, the rest of the group began trying to block the incoming energy or draw it into themselves.
Despite their best efforts, mana slipped from their grip, or even found itself torn from them as Niphru’s mana stone began to glow more and more brightly, soon becoming the brightest light on the floor. As the glow increased, the crystal seemed to soften, edges becoming more rounded as time passed. Eventually, crackling noises began, this time from Niphru himself as he fell to the floor in pain.
Before his vision went dark, Niphru noticed his perspective slowly moving upward.
Eventually, he awoke again, finding himself back in bed, Dawn resting beside him. Standing up, he almost toppled over, his legs too long for his muscle memory. Looking around as Dawn stirred, he additionally found himself surrounded by three orbs of foxfire rather than the two he expected, each slowly spinning around the two of them.
As he returned to full awareness, he noticed that he was missing the pouch he had previously worn around his neck, and instead was wearing a harness with bags on either side. Quickly spreading his senses outward, he found that his mana stone was not in either of the bags but instead in Dawn’s grasp.
Jumping down from the bed, he actually collapsed this time, bashing his head into the floor as he tumbled, much to his annoyance, though it didn’t hurt. Fortunately, no one witnessed his lack of coordination, so he pretended it just didn’t happen as he stood up again.
From looking at the bed, he figured that he was now almost half again as tall as he had been before the events before he had passed out. Focusing back inward, he found, surprisingly, that nothing seemed to have gone wrong, his mana-sense telling him that he had slightly higher internal mana than before, but nothing overly-concentrated, nor lacking. Likewise, he didn’t feel any pain anymore.
Oddly enough, however, he felt two faint bonds besides the one with Dawn, neither of which had been there before. As he paid attention to them, the two seemed to shift uncomfortably before suddenly snapping together and merging with one another.
Dawn finally finished waking up, quickly turning around before panic flowed through their bond for a moment, ending as she saw him standing beside the bed. She practically flopped out of bed in her haste to reach him, scooping him up into her lap as she tightly hugged him, pressing her face into his fur.
“I was so worried! You just fell over and started growing, and the mana kept going into you and your mana stone, and we couldn’t stop it, and your stone even cracked several times before it stopped, and it has been days without you moving at all!” Dawn exclaimed in a rush, muffled by her position.
After comforting Dawn and reassuring her that he was okay, she finally remembered she was holding his mana stone, and she set it down for him to look at. Unlike the lumpy stone before, it was now a nearly perfect orb, with small lines crossing each other on the inside, showing that it was slightly transparent. After a moment of inspecting it, he levitated it into one of the pouches on his harness and followed Dawn to the kitchen to help with breakfast.
Unlike what he expected, however, it appeared his grip was much stronger than before, causing several minor accidents as he assisted with the cooking. Fortunately, it was difficult to damage potatoes or scrambled eggs by squishing them, so breakfast was still fine despite the few mistakes.
I was expecting him to get a second tail, but yay to growth
Still a ways off for that one, unfortunately. 3/4ths there though, and with faster growth, it shouldn't be too long.