Self-Modification, my clearest path forward for now, the skill that'll bring in the big bucks! Hopefully. Anyways, lets first try to make something to eat. Self-Modification said something about requiring nutrients, which makes sense I guess since I would essentially be growing new parts, so my empty stomach is a major no go.

I pulled the wolf carcass out of Storage, and attempted to bleed the meat, like I've read about in some light novels. I don't think I did very well though, frankly, I sucked ass at cooking. And I was even worse with survival cooking. So I don't think I can expect anything good to eat during my time in the underground murder wonderland. After getting all the blood out I could, I dissected the carcass with one of it's own claws that I had gouged out with my dagger. My dagger was already damaged from the blood geyser cannon event from before so I needed something new. It had no handle but it was far sharper, pros and cons I guess. Now you might be wondering, why dissect the whole thing if I only needed the meat for eating? Well my good man, I figured getting a better view and understanding of whatever I'll be modifying myself with would be a good idea. I mean, the Body Map does show me all its inner workings like a 3D diagram, but that's all it is, a diagram. Maybe with enough skill I could get it to be even more realistic, but if I fuck up and give myself giga cancer because I didn't understand something well enough before growing it in my body then I'd have nowhere to put my flood of tears. from what I understood, this wasn't like a game where I could just swap things in and out like equipment slots, I had to truly understand these things before doing anything. Similar to those magic casters in certain games that have to study for 10 years to cast something like 'Light Candle' or some shit. I'm exaggerating but you get it right?

A bright cyan glow interrupted my dumb little tangent as a cut I had made revealed a small glowing blue marble in the middle of the wolf's rib cage, bonded to the bone. "Ah so that's the core from the Body Map. Much prettier than I imagined, it would definitely sell like hotcakes if I sold it on Earth." I spoke as I had wrenched it free of the bone holding it and admired it in my hand. It glowed with a soft light as what looked like oceans and rivers of light flowed within. If I strained my eyes I could see that the currents of light within seemed to pulsate like breathing. "Interesting, so this is what allowed it to use water magic?".

A short review seemed to be in order for me, to get my thoughts in order. So MP, one of my highest values, was the measure of the amount of Mana a being had in it's body currently, while Capacity was the stat that determined the maximum MP in a 1 to 10 ratio. However, just having it didn't mean I could just use magic willy nilly, I'm sure smart races could figure out how to use it, but it wasn't a simple imagination thing. I wanted to die with the amount of times I chanted "Fireball!" to myself in that black cavern with zilch happening. So based on what I've learned from this beastie is that monsters seem to have 'Cores' that they channel mana through to use certain elements. At least that's what I'm guessing with my massive sample size of one dead pooch. I'm an astounding scientist, I know. I already can kind of get a feel for how to move mana around my body with Flesh Reinforcement, since that literally embeds my mana into my muscles and ligaments every time I use it. On another note, in this cavern it seems my mana regens at a rate of 1 per 2 seconds, so I'm glad I don't have to deal with "Not Enough MP, take a long rest!" at least. Though in exchange it is mentally draining to use in exchange, especially for an amateur like me.

So if I grew a core of my own, I should in theory be able to use water magic, finally adding a ranged attack to my repertoire. Plus, magic is totally a man's fantasy! So are bigass swords and mechs but I'm sure I'll figure something out later about that. Now's the time for magic! With my dissection complete, I timidly looked out of the passage I was in back into the giant forest cavern of death (Temporary name) and slowly walked over to the trees nearest to me. They were only a little taller than me and looked quite young based on Earth standards. I ran my fingers across the bark, which while having the looks of stone it really felt like bark, maybe a little smoother than a normal tree. I just hopes it burns like normal wood as well though, I tried snapping a few branches but embarrassingly nothing happened until I used Reinforcement to add enough to my strength to break it. I collected a few small branches and leaves for tinder, as well as some small fruits about half the size of an apple that grew along with the leaves.

[Tilla Fruit, also known as stone tree fruits, they grow on Tilla Trees that grow based on the ambient mana in the ground of the area around them. They are edible and more nutritious the larger they are and the more they glow.]

Well they're not dangerous at least which is nice, and these are Tilla Trees huh? Curious, I activated Bio Analyze and was pleasantly surprised when it started drawing a Body Map for me. "Hell yeah! So It really is more than just animal life that I can Analyze, maybe I can use something from this tree as well?". As I pondered, the Body Map was finished soon after, I guess it really is faster on non moving or dead subjects than living ones. I had to wait for the wolf to die to finish the Body Map after all.

I slowly meandered my way to the small stream ahead of me and gingerly cupped some of the crystal clear water in my hands and drank it praying to whatever was listening that there were no bad bacteria or parasites in it when I suddenly noticed my own reflection in the water. It hadn't occured to me with everything going on so far but I had no idea what I looked like. My skin was a pale white, not vampire pale but surely shut-in pale, but other than that I knew nothing else. I waited for the water to somewhat settle and took a good look, and noticed the face of a fairly good looking young man looking back at me. Certainly not the kind of face you'd double take at but not ugly by any means, then I noticed the deep black hair like short mop on my head. Understandable since I've done nothing but throw my head around since I got here. It only came down to my ears but luckily didn't obstruct my vision. Nothing weird so far nice, that is of course ignore my eyes. My eyes glowed like golden jewels with what looked like magic circles and lines reminiscent of tree roots or rivers in my pupils. Was this the effect of Analysis Eyes and Bio Analyze together? I didn't think they would have an actual change in my appearance, but maybe that was exactly allowed me to use them? Like the wolf needed the physical Water Core as a crutch to use water magic, I needed these changes in my eyes to use the skills, and they functioned more like magic? That's something I'll need to research more later when I can, because based on Earth standards, they stood out a ton. Out of curiosity I activated the skills in question and the magic circles started rotating for Analysis Eye and the roots started 'breathing' for lack of a better term with Bio Analyze. Well shit, this is practically screaming "I'm doing some weird shit with my eyes! Target them!", what bullshit, what about those light novel protagonists that can analyze anyone with no one noticing at all? Give me that! I mean it looks cool but it's super impractical to use stealthily.

Sighing, I picked myself up and made my way back to the cave I called my temp home and after about 2 hours of floundering I managed to light a fire, thank goodness this Tilla wood was flammable, I was about to give up hope. As I made a small stand with sturdier sticks and rocks around the base to hold them up, I skewered some meat and hung it over the fire and slowly rotated it by hand. While doing this I decided to put my 10 free stats into Intelligence and Capacity, my reasoning being that Self-Modification would handle my physical stats for the most part, while I was not keen on playing with my brain too much and turn myself off by accident or something. So 5 for each I say! With that my MP was now 150 and my Intelligence was 12, and I resolved myself to this long road to getting smarter.

"Oh its done. Hopefully its not too terrible." I exclaimed as I held up my makeshift wolf skewer. I let it cool a little then began to tear into it rabidly with how hungry I was. It was a little bloody still, and the lack of seasoning showed, but it was surprisingly better than I was thinking, and I quickly started to make more skewers. The wolf was huge and it had like 100 lbs of edible meat on it, there was no way I could go through all of that right? Since I now had my nutrition secured, I decided to finally use the star of the party, Self-Modification. I went with the Mana Core first, since it was so vital to me currently. When I used the skill, a menu popped up interestingly enough.

[New Available Changes]
[Musculature] 
[Skeletal Structure]
[Claws]
[Fangs]
[Mana Core]

I clicked on the Mana Core section and it felt like I had changed to a 3rd Person view of my own body and I could look through all my components easily like a technical drawing. I could also see a small marble I could move around my body and how it would change the surrounding tissue and mana flow if I put it in different places. However I knew it also didn't tell me other things, like how comfortable I would be with a new organ in certain places or long term effects, it only gave me info on things relevant to the new feature, which in this case was the flow of mana in my body. I chose to bond the marble sized organ to the back of my sternum, faced towards my inner organs so that you'd have to go through the bone if you wanted to hit it head on. I didn't want to find out what would happen if the small compressed mana bomb in my chest broke thank you very much. As I clicked confirm an immense feeling of weakness overtook me as I felt my body being emptied of mana too quickly for the regeneration to keep up, luckily I had just barely enough at I was sitting at a nice 5 MP left, nice going increasing that me. I then noticed the odd feeling of a new object in my chest as the very little mana left in my body started to pulsate like a second blood stream throughout me.

[Water Mana Core successfully installed.]

[Water Magic 1 has been added.]

Hell Yeah! Fucking magic time baby! I danced around in a little jig before I crouched down clutching my head from the terrible migraine. "Ow fuck ow, I guess this is what I deserve for literally emptying almost all my mana in one go." The headache got a little better as my mana recovered but it didn't wholly go away. I guess that would be a good incentive to keep you mana topped up as much as possible and not cast a huge spell every time you mana recovered, soon enough you'd be in so much pain you couldn't even think. I sat down to recover as I ate one of the Tilla fruits I picked, it had a slightly sweet and sour taste to it that I quite liked, like a grape with a mild lemon flavor I guess. There was only a single seed in the center of the fruit about the size of a small acorn and it looked like a big apple seed. I put it in Storage and continued eating wolf meat and kept cooking it as well even as I was getting almost too full to eat since I knew the next Modification would eat up nutrients like a motherfucker. Yup, I was going for Musculature next. I reeeeeaaaally wanted those sweet sweet Strength and Agility increases.

I clicked on it in the menu and it decided I didn't need to choose anything, not that I had any ideas to, I had no idea how to set up muscles for a whole body after all. Since that was the case what this would do is replace all my muscles with the same structure as the wolf's, thereby increasing my strength. After clicking on it I felt nothing. "That's odd, whats going o-" and then I fell back unable to move anything as the worst pain of my new life assaulted my senses. It took everything I had to not black out. Evidently, the mana core hadn't really hurt outside of a dull ache since it only shifted a few things a tiny amount and it was mostly just crystallized mana in a structure. The muscles however, were a tried and true part of my body I could feel just fine. Me in my immense stupidity got lolled into a false sense of security by the underwhelming pain from the core and clicked on muscles halfheartedly. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure if I could be allowed to even pass out at this stage no matter how much I wanted to. I was possessed by fear of if the skill would stop halfway if the user fell asleep, and I'd wake up to a half functioning body with the other half of my muscles being protein soup. It felt like my insides were all on fire and being torn apart all at once and then being knitted back together like a sweater. Just as I was nearing the limits of my willpower the process finally finished, I had no energy to move however. That was until of course my body cried out for food desperately. I haltingly crawled over the cooked meat I'd prepared to save and gorged myself on it as it felt like it would never be enough. Finally, after eating half of all the meat from the wolf I was full again and I laid back trying to get my bearings.

[Strength has been raised to 15, Agility has been raised to 25.]

I see, so that's how it works, the stats of my prey had replaced my own in this case. I was worried about the next process after how painful this was but hopefully it would work out since it's much smaller. I painfully clicked on the last process I wanted to do.

Pain, oh lord the pain. My fingers split open as blood pooled beneath them and the claws I'd taken from the wolf and my dagger lightly shook from some external force.

[External compatible materials detected, do you wish to restructure?]

I gaped even as the pain assaulted my mind and quickly confirmed with my thoughts. The claws flew up to my own fingers and shrunk as they became more dense and melded with the remains of my bloodied fingers. The blade of the dagger however shattered leaving only the hilt, with the fragments becoming like mercury as it applied itself to the edges of the claws. In front of my eyes as the process finished were 10 beautiful claws that rode up to the first joint in all my fingers with the stone like texture changing my skin all the way up my fingers. They looked like the same lightly curved claws as the wolf's but with one difference, the shiny silver metal that coated and made up all the cutting edges of them. My fingers looked like something you would see on the gauntlet of a demon lord.

[Claw Combat 1 has been added, Self-Modification has leveled up!]

[Name] Aura  

[Class] Biomancer  

[Subclass] None  

[Race] Human(Half-Monster) 

[Level] 4

[HP] 100/100 [MP] 150/150  

[Vitality] 10  

[Capacity] 15 (+5)

[Strength] 15 (+9)

[Agility] 25 (+16)

[Intelligence] 12 (+5)

[Charisma] 5  

[Fortune] 2    

[Stat Points] 0 (-10)

[Unique Skills] Unsteady Life, Abnormal Growth

[Class Skills] Bio Analyze 2, Flesh Reinforcement 2, Notepad, Self-Modification 2

[Skills] Analysis Eye 2, Storage 1, Dagger Combat 1, Unarmed Combat 1, Water Magic 1, Claw Combat 1