Lemme tell you, taking the bus with a backpack with several bags of plants strapped to it and what must be a hundred meters worth of giant silk thread bound around three hovering, slightly transparent, bluish rods will get you some strange looks. The Wolfkin form probably helped.

Finally home, I put the bags of plants on the balcony and the thread, now wrapped around planks, in a corner, next to the remaining chitin. Not that I have a lack of space if I’m willing to clutter my VR space. I also check up on the work in progress gunstaff. It seems to be dry, but the guide said to wait twenty-four hours.

I want to take a shower to clean myself and get out of the T-shirt, which feels a bit strange after being drenched, and while I’m naked, I figure I can try to, ever so carefully, transform with my new aspects.

But before I do that, let’s look up the anatomy of the relevant animal species. I’m not sure how much I actually change when I transform, but I reckon it’d be safer if I at least know how their vital organs work.

Some research, and a pleasant shower later, I stand naked in front of the mirror in my bathroom. Before I start experimenting, though, I repeat one of the exercises I did last time I practiced: I apply the Aspect of the Wolf to my eyes, ears and nose.

With it, my eyes take on a dark yellow hue and my ears grow slightly larger, pointier and a bit furry. As for my nose, it extrudes slightly and my nasal opening grows slightly larger, tilting outwards. Aside from the nose, I could look like a weird elf, especially if my ears had no fur.

I’m trying to get an elven look while also getting enhanced senses, but the ears aren’t much different, and the nose, which is the biggest sensory change, just looks strange, in a creepy way. That’s the uncanny valley right there…

I revert the changes and shake my head. Right, let’s start with the (probably) least harmful: The plant aspects. From my steadily growing understanding of the ability, a large part of which seems to be supernaturally granted by the [System], I know I actually do two different types of transformations.

The first one is what I do to take on the Wolfkin form. I change my actual, physical body, and as I understand it, the change will last forever unless I turn myself back.

The second is what I do with the elemental forms. As opposed to the first type, I need to continuously use mana to stay in the form, and if I stop I will revert, like what happened earlier today. On the other hand, it seems to swap my body for, well, something else? An alternate body? Something like that.

Wait, the Aspect of Grass might not be elemental? No matter, I intend to do this carefully anyway. Let’s see, I can probably do fine without the skin on my left arm. I apply the aspect, and my arm turns green!

No wait, nothing happens. In fact, I can’t seem to make and control enough of the aspect. Huh, is it because my affinity is pitiful? No really, according to my aspect status, it’s ‘pitiful’. That’s just… pitiful.

I let out a deep, slow sigh. I suppose it’s good that I found out now, so I can make sure to get my affinities as high as possible. The next level of affinity up is ‘weak’, which the Aspect of the Lizard happens to be at. Let’s repeat the procedure, then.

Well, I guess it does work. I pinch my pinkish, scaled skin. Sort of. It’s slightly stiffer than the rest of my skin. It’s also oddly pleasant to the touch, so I find myself petting my own arm. Good thing I’m doing this in my own home. Being naked and all.

I revert my arm, then sit on the lid of the toilet. I repeat the process, taking it slower and trying to get a good feel for the aspect, like I did when I first took on the Wolfkin form. I don’t repeat the potential mistake of covering my entire body in the aspect, though.

This time, the result is better. Most of my arm is covered in scales. They’re hard and stiff, too. I expand the affected area, and soon my hand is covered, too. It makes it a bit hard to do fine movements, but is otherwise unproblematic.

I gradually cover more and more of my body, while also manipulating the size of the scales for comfort and movement, and maybe a little bit of protection. Though, I’m not gonna rely on these puny things to protect against anything more than the claws of a particularly large housecat.

I avoid changing my head, but soon my entire body is scaled. I have darker line down my spine, where the scales also extrudes slightly, not unlike the spikes on many lizards. I take a deep breath. Should I do the head as well? I let out the breath. Once burnt, twice shy, huh. Well, nothing ventured…

I blink. Then blink again. The completely close my eyes. So many colors, I’m getting dizzy. I slowly open my eyes again. Is this UV light? The Wikipedia article said many lizards can see UV light, and it’s either that, or I’m hallucinating.

Well, that’s one way to improve my senses. But it’s a bit unpleasant. I suppose I can get used to it. The scales look like some sort of disease. I should probably change my body structure and head shape when I transform. That or only affect certain areas, the head being a big no-no.

I revert most of the scales on my head, leaving only some at the lower parts and my jaw. Yeah, this could work. Can I change the colors as well? I think a darker brown could work. Good, good. If I also make my legs slightly digitigrade, and grow a tail. A short one, no longer than my forearm.

This looks pretty okay. In fact, I could totally see this as an alien species in some budget sci-fi movie. The tail is somewhat annoying, as it forced me to stand. Can’t really sit when it grows from the end of my spine. Ah well. I turn back to my human form. Next up, Aspect of the Serpent.

I heave a strained breath as I lift my right arm above my body. In this form, my upper body is human, but scaled, and leads into the long serpentine form of a snake. It has the familiar leopard-like pattern often seen in pythons, with larger, wider, beige scales along the entire underside and my chest. The scales stop at my neck, with patches at certain spots on my face.

I let my arm fall to my side and raise my upper body. Huuh, it’s a bit hard to breathe in this body. It might be a result of my limited knowledge of the form or lack of skill, or it might be because the form itself is not very efficient - I just merged two quite different animals. That said, it becomes easier to breathe as I make some more changes and get used to the form.

I wanna see what my entire body looks like, but the floor is so comfortably warm. Ahh, better just do it. With an unfamiliar motion and some effort, I unsteadily lift body upper body from the floor, looking into the mirror. Ugh, I go light headed from lifting my head too fast.

Now that I can actually see my face, I slide my finger over the fine, tan scales on my forehead and cheeks, and touch the larger, more distinguishable scales right above my nose and to the side of my eyes.

The form ended up somewhat strangely proportioned, since I can’t create mass from nothing. I’m not an overly buff or fat guy, so the mass I can use for the transformation is limited. Instead, I distributed mass by changing the proportions of my body.

I didn’t dare do anything to the part of the skull my brain is in, as I don’t want to accidentally do anything to my fragile brain. I don’t even have the Aspect of the Vegetable. I’ve ended up with proportionally smaller arms, and larger head and eyes.

On the other hand, my body looks pretty thin for a human. Compared to a snake, though, it’s quite short. Well, I’d need a lot more mass to make my body the ten or so meters for it to look neither thin(for a human) nor stubby(for a snake).

Hmm, I can’t create mass, but if I can make it less dense, I can be larger with the same mass. Air is not very dense, so maybe I make air bladders? Something like lungs, but stiffer and not for breathing. Would need to ensure I don’t breathe with them, though.

I don’t think I can really expand my lungs any more… Actually what if instead of expanding my human organs, I instead make extras in the snake body? That might make it easier to move and breathe, too.

I twist in pain as rather delicate tissue is formed and wheeze as I struggle to fill the newly created lung with air. Oww, let’s be careful when adding organs. I should probably expand my respiratory tract to allow for more breathe more efficiently. Done. I wonder how this affects my voice.

“Tesssthing tesssthing, one-two-three!” My voice booms in the relatively small apartment, pitch surprisingly high and much louder than I meant to. So my lungs (and thus voice) are pretty powerful now, and speaking with this tongue causes a sorta whistle-like lisping. The long ‘S’ sounds are entirely intentional, though.

With this, I have a significantly easier time breathing, and my body is slightly longer and thicker. The lower density would probably make it easier to lift myself off the ground, as should the large surface area. I’d be a flying snake, huh. Oh, an eastern dragon kinda form would be cool. Into the mental to-do list!

For now, let’s transform back to human form, and then try to take on the Serpent form, this time faster and hopefully avoiding pain. I should also make extra organs in the snake part of the body where applicable, instead of just expanding the existing ones.

Having learnt from the first time, I lie down before I change my legs, or anything else, really.

I look in the mirror. Perfect. It only took- Huh, I keep flicking my tongue, I didn’t even notice that. I did notice my sense of smell improved, but I’m kinda used to that from the Wolfkin form. Come to think of it, snakes usually have heat perception as well. I look around. Hmm, it’s not infrared vision at least, but I do get a vague feeling of how hot things around me are.

Let’s try to improve and get used the thermal sense, it could come in handy. I close my eyes and try to enhance the sense. Wait, no. Yes! This is it! I can get a very good general sense of the room around me, but aside from the lights, floor and my body, there’s not enough difference in heat to clearly pick things apart, and I don’t really get a feeling of distance.

That said, being able to ‘see’ with my eyes closed or covered could be convenient, I guess. It’s a bit tiring to process this extra sensory information, and I’m getting a bit dizzy. I’ll just have to get used to it, or maybe reduce the effect. I want to get used to it though, it would be amazing if I can use thermal perception and great hearing and smell and sight at the same time.

On that note, many birds have great vision. I should try to get some bird aspect. Besides, that should let me grow wings, which should make it easier to fly. But no pigeon form. Screw pigeons.

Mmm, I suppose I should make the actual mechanisms I will use for the gunstaff. And as a sort of experiment, I’ll do it in this form. That should get me somewhat used to it. But first, dinner.

First off, this was a very fruitful session. I’m not gonna go into detail on how long it took me to even be able to move, but this body… Let’s just say I’m still getting used to it.

On the other hand, I learned the [Mana Crafting: Wood Shaping] sub ability. It’s pretty much exactly what it says, it lets me shape wood with magic. It’s very nice for making details or attaching two pieces of wood without glue. Or in my case, without copious amounts of twine.

Now as for what I was making, it’s this experimental plank. Specifically, on the experimental plank. On one side I have a slot into which I can put spell tablets. They are, simply put, a plate about the size of a medium-sized smartphone, with enchantments or spell diagrams to cast spells.

On the other side I have four regularly spaced attachment points for power sources. They look kinda like the ampules on the side of many sci-fi energy weapons, but don’t stick out since that’d be stupid and impractical.

The power sources themselves are just mana stones stuck between two small pyramid shapes. Right now I only have two of these, and they consist of two artificial mana stones each, but I’ve made it so that I can replace them with bigger and better mana stones.

This way, I should be able to use the gunstaff as a wand/staff/focus to cast magic as usual, but I can also use spell tablets to have specialized easy to cast spells, and the power sources would let me cast with minimal expended mana. That’s the hope, anyway.

I’m a bit tired, but I should hang up the clothes from the washing machine.