It had been minutes since the goddess had cursed me with this new body and I still couldn't tell for sure what I looked like now. My eyes wandered around, restlessly searching for a mirror, a puddle or a metal plate, anything that could show me my face, but there was nothing to be found nearby.

Naturally, I had felt for those fox ears of mine and sure enough, there were two big furry ears only waiting to be explored by my restless fingers. Each of them felt warm and soft to the touch and was rather sensitive too, though not as much as the base of my even more soft and furry tail.

The goddess had transported me right into the weathered ruins of a temple or a castle, onto a wide platform that easily reached my shoulders in height. It had been built using beige sandstones that each were easily several times my own weight. Some even looked like they weighed tons.

Countless tiles that seemed to be made of something like ceramic covered the surface of the platform. Each of them was painted in dull colors that most likely had been bright and vivid a long time ago when there was still somebody around to take care of them.

Aside from a large round hole in the ceiling right above the platform there was no source of light to be found. And even this one was mostly blocked by trees, bushes and plants of various shapes and sizes. Only vaguely I could make out a slightly reddish and orange sky, which indicated it was either early in the morning or late in the day.

The sunlight didn’t only fall on the platform itself, but on the walls of the hall too, where it revealed weathered drawings of animals and colorful tiles and mosaics that once showed beautiful women. The cracked ceramic pieces gave shape to ears like the one the goddess had and red-brownish or sometimes black hair.

The by far brightest and most sophisticated of these artworks had become my bed and birthplace as it occupied almost all of the surface of the platform I had woken up on. It featured the sole woman that, just like the goddess, had white colored hair instead. If I had to point out a difference between them, it would be that the woman on the mosaics looked much more elegant, mature and dignified.

“Could be her mother...”

The goddess didn’t waste a single word on my discoveries. She had been silent for some time already, for which I was more than happy about.

Even though she was behaving like a trickster and a brat, she was still a goddess that could easily do anything she wanted to me should I ever choose to anger her. Still, it was hard to keep calm, polite and objective when faced by her silly remarks. Especially after all that had happened to me.

My long search finally ended when I found a large crack in the ceiling which let through a few new beams of light and, much more importantly, a seemingly never ending stream of droplets which gathered on the sandstone below my feet, forming a large, algae-infested puddle. The light shining on the puddle wasn’t exactly bright and its surface was covered with ripples, but it was still more than enough to confirm my expectations and fears.

When I bent over the puddle, the vague silhouettes of what seemed to be a more than just beautiful face appeared in front of me. The girl looked around my age, about seventeen years old, maybe slightly younger, and fox-red hair covered her head. It was pretty long, enough for it to cover my bare chest, and slightly wavy just like the white hair of the goddess.

The two ears I had discovered before looked almost exactly how I had imagined them. They hadn’t got short hair like those of a cat, but were rather fluffy instead, making them look even softer than they really were.

“...cute.”

「I know, I know!」 A gleeful voice rang through my mind.
“...”
「So what will we do now?」
“We? Nothing.”
「But Missy~」
“I’m not your Missy!” I shut her off.  “You lied to me!”
「How did I lie?! I would never lie to you!」
“You promised me a healthy new body!”
「I did give you one!」
“But it is a girl’s! It isn’t mine! I wanted my body!”
「I already told you I don't know how you looked down there! I couldn’t give you a man’s body!」
“And what about Mira?! You told me you would be with me!”
「Mira?」The vixen asked 「She- she is here!」
“Show me! Show me the way to her!”
「Okay…」 

It took her a few seconds to come up with more than this short reply. A pale-green, half-transparent screen appeared in front of me, on it several columns of white letters that I was oddly familiar with. The numbers and words, however, couldn’t have been any more different from those found in games and mangas. As if this wasn't enough, there was nothing that even hinted at Mira's whereabouts.

『Status

---Bio—
Name: Rika
Gender: Female
Race: Beastkin; Sub-Race: Fox
Class: None
Level: 1 - 0% EXP

---Attributes—
HP: 5
MP: 5
Strength: 1
Vitality: 1
Spirit: 1
Intelligence: 1
Dexterity: 1
Physical Attack: 2 (+0)
Magical Attack: 2 (+0)
Physical Defense: 2 (+0)
Magical Defense: 2 (+0)』

“So weak ...”