After a long rest, Basil was walking in his new "base." investigating the rocks with the shiny crevices. He didn't know what was inside, but he wanted to, the problem was that his claws were too weak and he couldn't bite one of those things, because they were round and big for his mouth, he needed something to open it.

While he was thinking another drone was going his way, Basil was getting accustomed to the invisible being, and by now, he noted that it was actively looking for him. It was weird. Why was it bringing him "gifts"?

This time four orbs got dropped near him, he looked around for something that could hurt him, but he was alone in this area. Still, Basil was getting more cautious.

Knowing he was out of his comfort zone, Basil took one orb with his mouth and tried to roll the other ones. He didn't know, but with time he was getting brighter. Not most reptiles would have thought of doing something so simple as rolling a ball, it was crazy, but Basil didn't notice and just continued.

When he considered himself calmer with the area, he dropped the orb, and all of them opened simultaneously. These gifts were as rare as the first ones he ate. The one near him was another piece of meat, but it was green, and there were some roots?.

It made Basil remember the thing he ate from the Sikara Mother. He didn't know what to think of it, but he ate it. The food was fibrous, and indeed those were roots intermixed with a lump of quite rubbery meat. It didn't taste bad. The next one was a crimson tentacle. Basil had mixed feelings about tentacles by now, more when he was impaled by one.

The tentacle looked like it was trying to grow too but couldn't grow more than 5 cm before crumbling to dust where it was severed. Basil ate it either way. It tasted funny and dusty at the end, weird.

The other orb contained some little transparent sphere with a violet liquid inside. Basil was curious about this one. He wanted and didn't want to eat it at the same time. His instinct was telling him it would be good, his brain did not, it's like it would cut something inside him, not something important, but more like a sense, he didn't know.

Maybe it didn't have that direct effect on him. He was surprised at the taste because It was very unpleasant. He didn't know that flavor. It made him feel his mouth like the dust the tentacle released. He tried to salivate many times until the taste finally disappeared.

The last orb contained a blue bone splinter. By now, Basil has seen many and ate some in his passage through this area. Maybe this one was different in some way, and the color was at least attractive. When Basil was about to munch it, that thing morphed into a spike and pinched the interior of his mouth.

This pain alarmed him in many ways, and it was getting worse because he couldn't break it. The bone was trying to drill towards his brain. Basil was getting anxious about the thing. He wanted to pull it out with one of his claws but couldn't. They were too short for reaching inside his mouth. Basil was beginning to panic; he didn't want to die.

The palate of his mouth and his tongue were already bleeding. The pain was making Basil run, roll, and jump around the place for a way to liberate himself of the thing and the agony, but he couldn't find something, and the fragment drilled enough to break the bone in his mouth.

Basil fainted on the floor. The splinter stopped drilling and began to seep in cracks inside the palate. It was looking to enter in each of the bones inside his body. Basil was not awake. It was better if he wasn't, for the pain would be excruciating for him.

The fragment was dividing itself and melting in the marrow of all his bones, making them break so that it could introduce itself inside. Basil was out for seven hours in total. He woke up several times and fainted quickly from the pain of all his bones broken. Even the joints and the sinew were being affected by this intrusion.

The pain affected Basil so much that his body to heal began the process of shedding and growth. All his scales began to fall in his coma. His skin was not pink anymore because It got tinted in a pale orange. His body was getting broader, his legs got more extensive, and with even more muscle and mass to support him,

his head was getting a little bit longer like some snakes. Still, he maintained his gecko appearance. His tail deflated by the expense of nutrients, his reserves of fat were also getting sucked to repair Basil's body. His claws were expelled from its fingers and began to be replaced by new ones, who were more prominent, thicker, and serrated below.

His skin had scars in it, but new scales were starting to form and cover his markings. These new scales had the form of a leaf with a line in the middle. They were a bit more durable than the old ones and had a dark gray tinge as a base, the end was the same murky green, and the line in the middle was utterly white, giving him a dark pattern. The scales in his head got molded to fit perfectly. Two of them with a pure red color in them were almost protruding from his head above his eyes, like two nubs who wanted to become horns.

But that was not all, his Bones were getting repaired as well, and little murky white spikes in his column got out. His two gems remained white but got hidden by his scales, getting more prominent, but inside were various energies moving around, wanting to get out. As a result, the crystals transferred whatever excess energy they had to the skin, bones, and scales, making them attuned to the powers inside.

Basil got up some hours later, and he looked around. His eyes got changed. They had a black contour in the eyelids; the iris was orange with a tinge of red and deep green. Basil felt weak; he lost fat, nutrients, and blood for his healing. His longitude size was 45cm, his legs were longer and made him taller and detached from the ground.

Basil felt different. Most of his body was fine, but his bones felt heavier and a little rigid for how he always had them, but there was something more to it. Basil could feel them change with his will. It was weird, almost instinctual. Was this because of the blue bone? He didn't know if whatever it did was good or bad, but he was scared of the experience. However, Basil wondered if it was a good idea to keep eating the gifts from the invisible creature.

Either way, he began to eat his old skin, scales, claws, everything, he needed food, and this was the only one near. For now, the rocks could wait. He needed to hunt something outside.

Basil was thinking of looking for those egg tubers. With their mother dead, the pheromones would not affect him now. It was a good plan. The problem was that he didn't know where the tunnel was. There had to be something else in this desolated cavern, the common roots were still not a good source of nutrients, and it didn't suffice him.

The lizard looked around and changed to his strange vision. It was getting more evident with each change his body went through; There were even some new colors.

From where he came, some black particles were floating in the air. That was not a place Basil wanted to return, even if the parasites provided some meat. Maybe he would need to move entirely and forget about the stones, this was not a place to linger, and he knew that.

He looked at the other caverns and was surprised to see some colors. One cavern had turquoise particles floating, from the other gray and some orange mixed.

Basil knew that the gray color implied dirt and rocks, the orange he did not. Still, the turquoise was a familiar one. It was water, he hadn't drunk something in a long time, and water could be helpful for him in many ways. He felt thirst creeping in his mouth and knew that his body had decided for him. He embarked in the tunnel, not knowing the many eyes looking at him in the crevices of the dark hall.