I heal my nose. Yeah, I should not have taken her form in front of her. Who knows what kinda instincts that triggers. Let’s scrap that body. I want to make a body for shapeshifting, though.

Actually, let’s try to make an eastern dragon type body. I think I can use more than one animal aspect when I make the body from scratch like this.

To begin with, let’s take about two and a half times my body mass and start forming a serpent body. The head will have to be wolf, since I don’t have the [Aspect of the Lion], but that should be fine. It’s mostly just an experiment, anyway.

While I do that, let’s play with Tåke to appease her.

“How did you do that?” Oh, Wolfkin girl is still here.

How the crap do I communicate what I did to her? Ahh, screw it, I’ll just turn to the Wolfkin form myself. I transmit a human covering their eyes and a person turning around.

“What is it? Oh, there’s something you don’t want me to see.”

Good. She turns around. I quickly take on the wolfkin form. “Don’t turn back around yet.”

I retrieve my underpants and shorts from the bag and start putting them on. She turns around, only a moment after I told her not to, but that’s not my problem. Besides, this form is covered in fur, so she only gets to see my furry behind.

“Lars?”

I finish pulling on my boxers and grab the shorts. Tåke has run off somewhere, but she seems much less angry now, instead radiating something I can’t identify.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Oh.” She says, and I feel her reverting to human form. “It’s me, Hilde.”

Ahh, I thought her wand looked familiar. I grab my T-shirt and turn to her. “Didn’t recognize you under all that fur. Also, it’s easier to talk if you leave your throat more human.” I look off to wherever Tåke went and click my tongue. It doesn’t work very well with an elongated face and tongue.

“She ran off before I got to test it. Can I test a spell on you?” I turn back to Hilde.

“Maybe, what kinda spell?”

She agrees, but only after I explain what I’m going to do and what I hope to achieve. And to, I pull out the gunstaff. At which point I have to explain it as well. At least the eastern dragon form is done, having the serpent body, wolf-like head and a set of short-ish arms.

With explanations done, I grab the staff like a scepter, and surround her in mana. I push against her, and when I find spots where her own mana does not push back as much, I send small amounts of mana into her. The trick, however, is disconnecting it from my own mana.

That way, her own mana greedily absorbs it. At which point I can use the mana, which I have only the tiniest bit of control over, to [Mana Inspect] her from inside her natural mana armor. After repeating this quite a few times, I get a decent idea of how much mana she has, her general physical stats, her power level, and how to improve the spell.

I think about the points of improvement for a moment, compiling it into a version 2 of sorts. This time, in addition to probing her for stats, I probe the something I detected. And indeed, it’s there, loud and clear:

Name: Hilde Amundsen Power level: 99(weak) Primary class [Proto-mage] Secondary class [Artificer] Tertiary class - Current Abilities [Spatial Magic] [Summoning Magic] [Meditation] [Inspect] [Aspect Magic] [Regeneration]

We discuss for a while, including things like the government hearing, the party, and the recent incident where some kid apparently managed to summon a demon in a suburb outside Tokyo. We both have [Summoning Magic], so that last one in particular is interesting.

We decide to try summoning our beast companions. Or rather, she will summon hers, I point out that I should not do more things to annoy Tåke right now. Well, she seems kinda happy through the bond, and are now coming closer at a lazy pace.

After I get home I write down notes about what I learned today, then make dinner. Having truly decided on the trip to Denmark, I sit down by the computer to check if it’s feasible to go there in the time before the hearing. With four full days I conclude it is, but I might be a bit bound by transport.

I should properly do the speedometer test when flying tomorrow, to see if I can just fly down there. I should also try to get some more bird aspects, and then try to make a shapeshifter form for flying. A small one should be pretty good, something the size of a large bird.

I also do some more research on breathing underwater. Specifically, I have an idea that will let me bring a lot of air, but I would rather not get hurt from too much or little oxygen. From what I can see, my plan should be safe.

After a late, lazy breakfast, I take on the serpent form. This time, however, I make use of the extra mass, taking on a much more natural looking shape. Well, my body is a bit too long for using in smaller spaces, so I shorten it a bit. Yeah, this should still look fine.

It’s a bit too slow if I’m pressed for time, but otherwise this should do wonderfully. I revert to human form, then take on a drider form. Drow-spider, thought in this case I’m more human-spider. ‘Hider’ or ‘huder’ somehow doesn’t sound as good, so I’ll stick to drider. Upper body of a human and a spider body taking the place of one’s legs.

I’ve thought of this before, but how is something with this body meant to sleep? Human body face down in front of the spider body? The same goes for centaur type bodies, but at least they can just lie on their side. Which reminds me, I should visit a place with horses. I should also find more of the [Thorn-Antler Deer] and get their aspect.

For now I’ll do the crafting in the drider form. Easily available thread and all that. Not that I really need thread. I break a piece off of one of the growing mana crystals, then conjure a disc the size of my watchface around the mana crystal ‘seed’. I then make a band from string, so that I can wear it like my watch, but on my other arm. I try it on. It fits pretty well and doesn’t slide easily. Good, that will do.

A while later, after stopping by a few places with horses (in human form) to get that aspect and then increase the affinity, I land on the lake, about a dozen meters from the cliff above the Water Dungeon. Since the sun has returned from its vacation and is yet again sharing it’s radiance with us, there’s plenty of people out.

That’s fine, though, as I don’t intend to leave my bag behind. I left my phone back home. It’ll be useless anyway. Also left my watch, since I’d rather not break it and the ‘water resist’ mark is bullcrap. The only things in the bag are the gunstaff, the pickaxe, and the travel kit. The travel kit, at this point, consists of the first aid kit, the small tools I bought back then, and new newly made artifice and crafting kit.

I stretch my arms. Mmm. As pleasant as the sun I after a few dreary days, I’m not going to see it much. I let myself sink into the water, bringing a bubble of air and stopping a meter or so below the surface.

I tap the wristband I made earlier. It’s really just a wearable subspace storage. On the trip here I filled it with lots and lots of air. I don’t know exactly how much, but that’s what I’m gonna find out.

First, absorb the bubble into the breather, making sure to hold my breath. I then start pulling air from the wristband, forming a bubble around me, expanding it downwards and outwards. Hoo boy, this thing has a lot of air all right. In fact, the diameter of the rough sphere is something like four meters. That’ll do just fine.

I reabsorb most of the air, leaving a bubble around my entire body, create an {Orb of light} then start descending. I keep a constant rate, making sure to pop my ears every few meters. As far as I could tell from my research, as long as you make sure to equalize the pressure of your head cavities, going pretty fast is okay. At least when going down. I have both air and time, though, so I make use of it.

It does not take very long to reach the depth where I can see the faint light from the dungeon. As for the air, I replace about a quarter of the air in the bubble with every equalization stop. That should keep carbon dioxide low and oxygen high enough.

I make a final stop above the seaweed, then absorb most of the bubble, leaving only a ‘helmet’ around my head. I make my way over to the entrance of the dungeon proper, entering the wall of air with half my body, leaving my right arm and the air storage outside.

I take out a small stone from my bag. It seems fine with the transition, so I dump the larger rock I had stored in it. I assume the same should be the case for the wristband and pull it through.

Yush! Enter the Water Dungeon: Complete! It’s really stuffy in here, though I suppose the pressure would do that. Let’s lighten the pressure a bit with magic.

I carefully make my way forward with levitation, looking around with every sense I have, both magical and mundane. I stop at the T intersection. Both options continue for a few meters then turn. A maze?

If I assume there is no magical stuff where the dungeon changes over time, making sure to keep a wall at one side of your body at all times is guaranteed to work… eventually. I would not say that’s a safe assumption at all, but I want to at least find out if it is a maze.

I decide to follow the right hand wall at all times. I go around the corner, after which the path goes a few meters, then turn the same way, once more. I go there. Uhh, I don’t think this part is a maze at all. I break my previous rule, going straight instead of into the large room to the right.

Indeed, by following that path, I just return to where I started, with the two stones on the floor, even. Sigh. I feel silly for being so careful, but I should still be careful the next time I encounter something like that. Better safe than dead.

I return to the open room. There’s small tiles on the walls, a large part of which depicts some sort of story. Before I read the story, I take a look into the open door to one side. It leads to another, smaller, room, with water covering most of the floor, except the pathway from this room and a platform of different design.

My Zelda-sense tells me that it’s a floating platform I can lift by raising the water level. I would rather not flood the entrance here, though, and I can just levitate if I need to get up.

Aside from that, the room has a really big double-door with elaborate designs opposing where I entered from, and a closed door. I decided not to go anywhere near the obvious boss-door, but the other one is locked.

As for the murals on the wall, they depict a lot of long, thin things seemingly coming from a vaguely circular thing. Huh, saying it like that it sounds like a jellyfish or maaaybe a squid, whoever made this should’ve used bigger tiles or learnt from pixel artists, because this is waaaay too ambiguous.

Well, consider there is a similar oval something in the image next to it, but without the things sticking out, and in a darker color, it could be a portal. Assuming this story is read left-to-right, which it might very well not be. As for the would be tentacles, the other neighbouring picture shows a serpentlike thing. Might be something like eastern dragons. Or maybe eels, the light blue background could be water or the sky.

On the opposing wall, there’s some fancy pattern. It might be writing, or maybe they just threw a bunch of gray tiles on a wall and attached them wherever they hit. As for the roof, there’s just a long wavy line that continues above the closed boss door.

Well, if I want to explore, there’s one way to go.