"Many forms of magic have been recorded in these very halls, yet all but a few rely on vibrancy. Even when spells are powered by vigor or vitality, that is only a substitute for vibrancy's absence. Vaticence and vehemence simply don't hold the required energy to power a spell without vibrancy. It surrounds us, fills the bodies of man and monster alike, and is the key source to the stalemate between humanity and the daemonic threat."
Quote from 'The Resources, Volume 3' by Edrius the Wise.
Azotreh returned to their body. Fuzem's words still echoed in their mind. They knew the words were true, horrifically true. They hadn't had more than a moment of peace under the hand of a high ranker, except maybe their parents. Their memories of their parents were hazy at best, even with the power of the Records of Existence ability.
Even so, they returned for two reasons, and neither would be solved by just remaining on the ground like this. They found their body in the middle of a ritual circle, coins sitting in several corners to power it.
They pulled themselves back together, from a mass of slime into their human form. Or, almost human. The proportions were all wrong. Everything was too long and bulky. They tried to move the mass, but it was like trying to rearrange their bones with only their mind, which it kind of was.
They sat in the circle for what felt like hours until Errazorrus entered the bond between the body and nexus and began to help correct the problem. Azotreh didn't feel right in this body; it simply felt wrong. Incorrect in a way they couldn't quite understand. It was still their body, after all.
Errazorrus's consciousness remained silent as he worked. He felt the emotional turmoil from Azotreh, forcefully repressed to push themselves forward. His vague memories of what he believed to be his blue dragon side told him it was strange for a child to act like this, yet didn't tell him how to fix it. He was worried he would only make things worse by trying to help, so he didn't.
Instead, he altered their body to align them slightly closer with their draconic lineage. While adding some horns that curled around their ears and then straightened out behind their head was easy, it also barely expended the excess mass that was the source of this problem.
Wings would help as well, but were ultimately rather light in mass in order to make flight possible, and all they'd do would be massive possible hazards for minimal purpose. The wings wouldn't be much help in the house, especially considering the size needed to lift Azotreh off the ground, even with their flight ability, Wings of the Blue Dragon.
So instead, he focused on the other implanted part of a dragon into Azotreh before they were turned into the Cerulean Slime. The tail of a white dragon.
The tail would be heavy, and probably a bit unruly, but it would use more mass than the wings and horns and wouldn't be as much of a hazard to knocking stuff over.
Atu was rather light on personal belongings, but each thing she did have seemed to be important, so it was better not to knock them over needlessly with massive wings.
So Errazorrus used some draconic instincts and Gelatinous Body to create a large, scaled tail, like that of a crocodile. It solved the problem easily, as the mass contained within easily used the excess mass that was causing Azotreh problems.
[Ability: Gelatinous Body has reached level 3! +1 Concentration to Agility]
[New ability acquired through your actions: Gelatinous Compression (1)]
Errazorrus finished as the notifications rang in his head. He wasn't sure why they were vocal for him when the others described the system windows, as he could also see within the soul obelisk.
Even so, he then returned to the dungeon nexus and soul proper after resolving that issue. He was still investigating his own memories and found it easier within the skill manifestation of Records of Existence.
Atu was worried. Even after the lich had put Azotreh in that formation, they hadn't gotten up after turning to slime in her arms. Asergia had been by in the last day to warn her about a slime's acidic properties, which she didn't really care about.
He had also asked after the child, as he called them, not even bothering to remember Azotreh's name. That irritated her beyond belief. Calling them just 'the child' was insulting, especially since it was what she was called rather often during her own childhood.
Her only consolation was Ruby, the little fox that had spent most of the last day curled in her hair. The fox was warm, and for some reason kept turning the fire given off by the cooking array blue and cold before letting out yips of joy. The tendency had eventually caused her to just leave the other cooking array on all the time so the little fox could play with those flames instead of the ones she was cooking with.
She had to admit, the fox was cute, even if it was annoying to feed her mana into two arrays at the same time. Though it wasn't as if the nightshade forest was lacking in mana.
Suddenly, the fox stood bolt upright before leaping off Atu's head into the room with Azotreh. She could hear the fox yipping for a moment as she turned off the fire by pulling the mana from the arrays and eventually followed.
When she saw the weirdly elongated kid in the array, she almost literally jumped for joy. With her capabilities, she might have made a hole in the ceiling, which was not ideal, so she kept herself from doing so.
Instead, she watched as they turned from a nearly 8-foot-tall elongated humanoid into their more normal proportions, with a thick white reptilian tail emerging from the small of their back before moving downward to just about where her own tail was.
It was a bit disconcerting to see the lagomorphic features combined with the massive tail and crimson horns, but she didn't really care too much. She'd barely known Azotreh for a week and was happier than she realized to see them safe again.
Ruby kept nipping at their tail as Azotreh stood up, naked again. Every time they appeared in her house after some event, they were naked, but that was common enough. Acid and fire were common enough weapons, and while the body was strong, most clothes really weren't.
Only once Azotreh stood up fully did Atu move to their side to make sure they were okay. As she leaned down, the raw mana flowing into her leg gates almost made her fall over. Ruby-rank was no joke, she knew that. But there was quite a difference between feeling the aura of a ruby-ranker pressing down and feeling the concentrated mana that made up a ruby-rank alchemic coin.
She stayed up, however, instead looking over Azotreh. The scars around their eyes were the same, as were the ones at the bases of their shoulders and at the spot where the new tail connected to the body. There was only one new scar, just over the heart; a perfectly circular scar had appeared. Though rather than a pale white or even pink and fresh, the mark was ocean blue and pulsed with their heartbeat.
She didn't know what it meant, but assumed there was something behind it. Other than that mark, there was another very small one she barely noticed, even with her senses. A golden spot right between their shoulderblades, at the base of their throat. She wasn't sure what it was either, but hoped it wasn't something she would have to worry about.
Only after making sure they weren't actively dying, she straightened up and pulled them into a tight hug.
Azotreh's eyes had widened when she was looking over them, their body trembling just a bit at her intense gaze. But when she pulled them close and wordlessly reminded them that they had a home, they relaxed.
Small hands hugged her back, still trembling a bit. She felt some of her fur dampen as tears began to flow from Azotreh's eyes, but she didn't care. She just kept holding them.
Ruby fuzed back into Azotreh's face before emerging again to climb to their head. She wanted to curse the little fox out for that. She had no problem digging claws into Atu's skin to reach her head, but she knew this wasn't a moment for that kind of banter. This was a moment she needed to prove that she was there for Azotreh, no matter what happened.
Azotreh finally lets go of Atu after nearly half an hour. Her eyes were about as wet as Azotreh's. But she let go of them, feeling that they wanted to do something else. She understood that feeling well, so she went back to her own task.
Azotreh, in the meantime, returned to the ritual circle. Their mind was somewhat steadied by Atu's presence. So they worked up the determination to keep pushing forward. To advance in the only way they could. During that half hour, Atu had told them that they weren't supposed to leave the house yet.
So Azotreh sat in the array supposedly made by the lich whose mere presence had granted them a title. They felt the immense mana density within the circle and the way it pushed inward from the coins. The piles of coins didn't diminish in size to their eyes, but they could feel the mana being pulled from the coins into the circle.
They began to use their basic mana sense to gently push and pull the mana around them. For now, they could only move mana within about a centimeter of their skin, but they knew that would improve with time. It was the only thing they were truly sure of.
[Technique: Mana Manipulation - Altered Motion has advanced to Crimson (0002)]
They felt the same fluctuation as they did the last time their concentration was broken, but this time, they forced that sense away to keep focusing on the mana around them. They pushed and pulled on the energy without too much finesse, but with sheer effort and concentration that helped make up for what they didn't have in skill.
[Technique:]
Before the system window could appear and their aura could fluctuate again, they felt a second presence reinforce their will. It felt foreign and strange, yet still felt like a fundamental aspect of their being. It was cold and distant as anything could be, yet still clearly tied to their well-being. They didn't understand it, but it held their aura steady and stopped system windows from appearing, so it was definitely helping.
Azotreh remained there, sitting still for nearly ten minutes before Atu returned with some of the vegetables Azotreh had eaten before.
Atu was shocked by the change in Azotreh. Her advanced senses could naturally pick up the slight fluctuations in their aura. It was common for all lifeforms to have slightly fluctuating auras, as no being existed without emotion or without a sense of self that could be disturbed. Yet the aura she felt from Azotreh was calm as the surface of a pond. It sent a small shiver down her spine.
Soon enough, though, their aura returned to its normal state, and she felt herself relax a little. She hadn't even realized she had been on edge, as if she were facing down a predator. But without that weight on her back, she calmed down quickly.
Azotreh, naturally, didn't notice the slight discomfort in Atu or her relaxation. High rankers easily kept their emotions from low rankers. Even though Atu was trying to be so honest with Azotreh, it was still instinct to not show too much to someone a rank or two lower than yourself.
The pair enjoyed the food as Ruby kept biting a slab of meat. It was barely cooked, and much too big for Ruby to have caught it herself. Atu said she had caught it for Ruby while Azotreh had been asleep.
[You have gained 2 BM]
[You have gained a new node through unconventional means! +120DX]
[You have consumed a new source of BM/RM: Unate. +1 BM, +1RM]
Azotreh pushed those windows away. They didn't want to consider that right now, even with their desire to get stronger, they didn't want to focus on system windows or developing their dungeon right now.
After eating, Azotreh returned to mana manipulation. Ruby didn't want to stay in the ritual circle, instead deciding to go chase rabbits or something. Having a familiar bond had already made her a little more adventurous, even if the other half of that bond was inconsistently present.
Atu, on the other hand, soon joined Azotreh in training. She had long since bottlenecked, with a couple of her origin potens refusing to advance to the next grade for her advancement. They would take more work. But it gave her more time to advance her skills and abilities, so she wasn't too unhappy.
She settled onto a proper mat to begin meditating. She knew Azotreh had plenty of mana, and would for some time yet. She was going to do something else.
As Azotreh sat there, the same phenomenon of an extremely stable presence appeared with Azotreh, stabilizing their aura and allowing them to focus for far longer than would be possible with the normal aura fluctuations they were sensing.
The presence also shut off system notifications, which was nice. Even if they didn't make a sound as they apparently did for Errazorrus, the flashing windows were still plenty distracting.
So they sat there in silence, working on pushing and pulling the mana in the air, and eventually stumbled on something else as they did so. Something else moved slightly with the mana in the air, something they could barely sense.
They didn't focus on that, more intent on mana manipulation, but the other presence noticed the oddity. Its alien mind latched onto the distraction and began to pull it from the air and into Azotreh very slightly, using their aura. Its goal was to make Azotreh's task as easy as possible, and if pulling that out of the air made it easier to focus, then it would.
Only after Ruby returned and had to be bathed from her excitement of chasing rabbits did the presence return from whence it came, and Azotreh was pulled free of their near-trance.
[Technique: Mana Manipulation - Altered Motion has reached Crimson (0010). To advance to Crimson (0011), create a Technique Nucleus]
[Skill: Meditation has advanced to Apprentice-15]
[Skill: External Mana Manipulation has reached Apprentice-19]
[Skill: Mana Manipulation has reached Apprentice-14]
[Skill: Aura Manipulation has reached Apprentice-5]
[Ability: Gelatinous Compression has reached Level 4]
[You have become attuned to mana (0.02%)]
[You have gained new skill: Absorb EXP (A-1)]
[+14 EXP]
[+16DX]
[You have gained new skill: EXP Manipulation (A-1)]
[You have gained title: Skillful VIII]
[Skill: Absorb EXP has reached Apprentice-2]
[You have gained new technique: Ki Absorption - Aura Dragging (C-0001)]
That was a lot, and Azotreh was stressed out. So instead of actually reading all of that, they just decided to go to bed.