Ten days passed in relative peace.  Queenie woke up that first night that he had started having the faerie follow the others and watch.  Her head was a little larger, as well as her thorax to compensate.  There was some pale blue in her fur around her head now as well but that was it for visual changes.  As soon as she sent and actual word as greeting through the link instead of a feeling got him so excited that he rushed forward to hug her.  Carefully, of course.  She seemed to appreciate the sentiment more than the action.

Regarding Jelin himself, on the last day of his human transformation he finally decided to see if he could eat cores like normal.  He was happy to see that he could and after waiting for a few hours to make sure it didn't cause any problems he decided that he was about ready to get back to his normal self.  For a final test he had Conk put a decent sized cut on one arm, and on the other she rubbed two poisonous plants.  One plant irritated human skin only and the other irritated the skin of both humans and monsters.

The faerie actually watched with intense fascination as he finally transformed back into a Terror.  The sudden gasp and flinch from her as his features seemed to just melt away from being human actually caused him to chuckle a little.  It barely took a full second to change back and he immediately checked his arms afterwards to see that the cut was there but slightly smaller while the irritation from the human only poison was gone.  While he was washing off the poisons and getting healed by Conk he had turned to the still recoiling faerie with a smirk and only sent a quick telepathic message.

<I told you so.>

Everyone took a vote and decided to let Conk evolve next since she really wanted to work on flying and already knew she was going to pick 'Speedster' for it.  After that they went ahead and decided the rest of the order was going to go Claw, Legs, Scar, and then the rat if possible.  As Conk was slipping into her evolution state she mentioned the next two evolutions she saw in her choices that she intended to go for before making her choice and slipping into unconsciousness.

{Greater Child Poison Mantea}

{Greater Child Curer Mantea}

After about two and a half days, Conk woke up again.  Her mantis half gained a kind of fin ridge in the middle between of her wings about 2 cm high at the highest point and stretching across half of her back with another two similar fins of about a quarter the size on the sides at the very back.  Her legs were all slightly flanged backwards now.  Her human half had slimmed slightly practically all around and her breasts had shrunk very slightly and become a little firmer. 

She looked a little unsteady as she tried to walk outside to test her new abilities but once she was outside and able to run she seemed to do so smoothly.  It was surprising just how much faster she could not just run but move in general.  At one point she turned to head towards the clearing while leaping into the air and was soon flying around even faster than she had been running.  After playing around for a while she let everyone know that as great as she seemed to be doing, she was having a lot of control issues and would likely take some time to really adjust.

Claw then pulled him off to the side for almost an hour of consultation about her evolution path.  She had evolved the least of all the girls because she knew what direction she wanted to go in but didn't feel like her choices were allowing her to go in that direction quite as straightforwardly as she wanted.  

The end of the talk brought them to the decision to ignore certain evolutions that they remembered being in her choices that she had been considering, such as 'charger', 'magic', and 'destroyer' as long as he helped her set up some new training to try and push to get some new evolutions that were more aligned with what she wanted.  Once she settled down to evolve they took as long as she dared to look over her options again and then finally, with some minor reluctance, she decided to evolve into a [Lesser Child Blood Mantea] this time.

Her evolution left her mantis half with a bunch of blood red speckles all over and put some highlights of the same color in her hair.  The abilities that came with the evolution seemed to be a little more subtle.  After almost a whole day of trying to figure it out they determined that she had a better sense of smell only when concerning blood and could even smell when someone's blood was "wrong" as she put it, like when she got near Conk while Conk was poisoned from experimenting.

The more interesting ability that came with the new evolution was what seemed to be a severely limited and weakened version of thermal vision added to her sight.  According to her it was like there was just a little bit of a glow that was hard to see around most things now that was brighter and larger the warmer it was.  She couldn't explain it more or better because it's hard to explain a sense that others don't have.  It apparently didn't affect her normal vision in any way, though.

Legs still seemed to know exactly what she wanted while being as mysterious as usual and emerged from her evolution as a [Child Supporter Arachne].  The only change in her human half was a very slight breast size increase while her spider half got a little thicker around all over, barely enough to be noticeable.  After running off to do her own experimentation she announced that she could produce more threads with a new kind of softer thread in her arsenal.  She let drop some hints that there might be a little more to her abilities as well but she wouldn't say anymore about it.

She did team up with Scratches for a few days to do some crafting with the new thread type.  Scratches' silver marks on her hands and wrists allowed her to manipulate practically any webbing regardless of who or what it came from, change some of its properties slightly, and even produce minor variants of her own webs directly.  The pair together, with only a little advice from Jelin, managed to make some towels, sheets, and blankets that were surprisingly soft and comfortable.

Scar, after some consideration, decided that there might come times where she would need to take over the hunting for Claw.  Since it was still aligned with what she wanted to do and be she delay her 'Charger' choice and become a [Child Blood Arachne], especially now that they knew some of what that kind of evolution provided.

The evolution provided the same kind of blood red hair highlights for her human half as Claw had gotten while her spider half got two red spots on her abdomen about 5 cm in diameter, one on the top and one underneath.  From what she could tell, her new blood senses were basically the same as what Claw had gotten but maybe just a little stronger.

The rat provided an interesting learning experience for everyone while trying to make it able to evolve.  Being a skeleton allowed them to see pretty much everything that happened inside of it.  It was able to gnaw some of the smaller and weaker boned they had collected and everyone got to see the powder almost crawl over the skeleton and melt into the bones.  It was hard for any observer to notice if they weren't looking very closely.

Following up on that idea, they also fed it some of the smallest cores and as they watched closely about where the almost microscopic powder went, they were finally able to notice a very small monster core inside the rib cage and against the spine.  All of the powder from the eaten cores went directly to its own core but even eating their three smallest cores, each of which was at least twice the size of its own, the core in its chest didn't seem to grow any.

Jelin once again chose the evolution and it became an [Infiltrator Skeleton (Rat)].  This time it had a visible change and the bleached white of its boned became more of a light gray.  After as much testing as all of them could come up with, the only thing they noticed other than the color was that it no longer made as much noise when it moved around.  The nice thing was that the two "programming instructions" he had given it were kept through the evolution.

The faerie had become a lot more respectful after finally having proof that he wasn't human.  She spent the mornings listening to his lectures and asking any questions she had come up with.  The afternoons she either flew around to watch them doing various things or did her own thing.  Jelin told her she could do whatever she wanted as long as she didn't leave their territory, didn't try to fight anything or anyone, and made sure to have questions for the next morning.

Overall, the whole ten days ended up being very productive.  The next day seemed like it would be full of excitement as he intended to set up some training for both Queenie and the faerie while Claw announced that she was ready to evolve again and wanted to do so after going hunting with Scar.  Jelin did some more teaching for the girls that night while including Queenie, then snuggled in further and thought about how the next day would go as he fell asleep.