“Today’s been mostly wasted, but we needed the rest.” Lancaster carefully didn’t look at Serenity, but Serenity knew he was a lot of the reason they hadn’t continued on; they couldn’t, while he was in an egg. “We should head back to the surface, see how the other groups are doing.” He turned to face Serenity. “I already warned them to take any cities they see slowly. I don’t want to go through that again and I’m sure they don’t either.”

Serenity nodded. “Glad you warned them. This really should’ve taken…” Serenity trailed off, thinking about it. “Three or four days minimum, planned for a week with some margin. There are five of us, so we can take it a bit faster. Please let me know if anyone says anything interesting.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

Serenity gestured at himself. While his new armor did cover most of his scales, it didn’t cover his feet and his old boots no longer fit at all. The cloak poorly hid his wings.

“I’m not sure I should. I’m supposed to help people be confident, not-” Serenity wasn’t sure how people would take his new appearance.

“Path changes. That’s what the instructors called them, anyway.” Everyone turned to look at Echo. “You’re not the first, though you’re definitely the most extreme. C’mon, you guys must have seen Susie and Edwin?” Everyone looked at her blankly. Serenity shook his head. He didn’t know either Susie or Edwin.

“Susie’s the one with a series of circles in her eyes and Edwin has horns and a couple red streaks in his hair? I don’t mean like a redhead, I mean really and truly red? No one? Sheesh you guys.” Echo turned back to Serenity. “Better people know now than surprise them later. Might help. The point was to get attention, right? You’re definitely you, only different. That should get attention.”

Serenity felt like he’d been hit with an Echo-shaped battering ram. Again. “You’re sure it won’t hurt?”

“If it does, fuck ‘em. You’re trying to help and they can get over themselves. But no, overall, I think it’ll help. Really you shouldn’t look like you’re hiding it. Just be what you are. Add to the Serenity legend.” Echo nodded sharply as she finished talking.

Serenity would wear the armor and the cloak, but other than that Echo was right. If he started off hiding what he looked like, it wouldn’t get easier. And Paths did change people. He was probably the only person here who knew that a single Tier 1 Path couldn’t cause as many changes as he had at once. Even for higher Tier Paths, it was unusual and really only happened with the relatively rare Paths that came with Species changes. Even for one of those, this was extreme.

For all the concern Serenity had had with his appearance before going to the surface, that wasn’t the problem he actually encountered.

He got a lot of startled looks at first, and people gave him some extra space, but most people seemed to treat him like they’d have treated someone who was in costume - startled but not particularly bothered.

He was finally able to see his reflection in a pool of water. His first reaction was that he was looking at himself, followed immediately by noticing all of the differences. The biggest difference was definitely his eyes. Instead of white, the sclera were a solid black. His iris was purple instead of green, and his pupil was a vertical slit that reminded him of a cat’s eye.

Once he managed to look away from his eyes, his hair looked like someone had done a very odd dye job. The roots were the same deep purple as his eyes, but each strand faded into a dark blue near the tip and ended with a sharp shock of silver - not gray or white, but metallic-looking silver. His eyebrows and eyelashes were simply silver, possibly with dark purple at the very bottom. It was hard to tell in the water.

In comparison, his teeth and ears seemed almost mundane. Yes, they were the teeth of a carnivore (fortunately all the same length, more or less) and the ears of a Vulcan … but compared to multicolored hair and black eyes, who was going to notice?

On his way back to the central area, Serenity was hungry, so he pulled some jerky out of his pack. Meat seemed like the safest thing to try. It wasn’t at all appetizing, but he was hungry. He managed to swallow the first bite, and almost immediately found himself vomiting it back up. As soon as it was gone, he felt fine (but still hungry).

After cleaning up the mess, Serenity went a ways outside the camp to see if he could figure out what was going on. Rissa joined him shortly after he arrived, and the two of them worked together to figure it out.

After a lot of trial and error, the basic issue seemed simple. He couldn’t eat. Whenever he tried, he almost immediately threw up. He was able to keep down water, but even a simple broth made him slightly nauseous. It didn’t make sense.

He eventually found the answer in the description of his Path, from before he selected his new Species.

Commonly found on highly elemental worlds, Element Eaters are considered minor pests, and usually remain as animals. Some have been successfully raised in captivity, though the pet market is believed to be limited due to their low power ceiling and strict dietary requirements.

Element Eaters are magical animals that grow throughout their lives. If they grow large enough, they can develop a core and evolve. Once an Element Eater develops a core, it is a more serious concern, as it can directly drain the area of the element, allowing the Element Eater to gain some magical ability.

The preferred food of an Element Eater is elementals of their element. Death Eaters deserve special note, as they have a second preferred food: undead. Element Eaters cannot gain sustenance from food that does not contain their element, and therefore if an area has an elemental shift, a change in Elemental Eater abundance is often the first sign.

Note: Your Death Affinity will be locked into absorbing Death energy until your Death Aspect finishes healing.

He needed food that contained Death energy, and apparently the tiny amounts of Death energy that were generated when something died wasn’t enough.

His quest to survive suddenly took on a new meaning. There was more than three weeks left until the end of the Tutorial; he needed another solution if he wanted to be in decent shape when he left. He needed to find food he could eat or get out of the Tutorial. Death elementals were rare, and he didn’t really want to eat undead, so no matter what he needed to figure out how to lift the restriction.

Two possibilities seemed likely ways to remove the food limitation: changing his Path and evolving again. It’d taken long enough to finish his Core originally that that was probably not going to happen while he was in the Tutorial, but he was only 50 XP from his next Path selection. He’d go hungry until then.

Unless he saw some Death elementals. Thinking about them made his hunger flare, which emphasized how he’d changed. Still, if he saw some on the next dungeon level …

The other thing to remember was that completing the Great Tutorial Dungeon would let him exit the Tutorial early, and he did have a quest to survive that ended with that. Perhaps the Voice had something in mind that would let him survive longer as long as he exited the Tutorial. What did “assistance in healing Death Aspect” really mean, after all?

Serenity was only able to sleep that night because he could use Blossoms’ Sleep on himself. Until he did, his hunger kept him awake.

He was out of healing. The hunger was only going to get worse.

Rissa woke up before Serenity did. It was hard to wake up. He was still tired as well as hungry.

“Ohmygawd you’re so cute like that!”

Serenity opened his eyes. He was back in the hatchling dragon form, and Rissa was running her hand along the down on his wings. It felt good. “And it’s so soft!”

He was going to have to remember to set his alarm earlier in the future so that he could shift shape before anyone else woke up.

“Why haven’t you shown us this before? Echo would love to see it!”

That was exactly why he hadn’t shown anyone. Well, that and Echo’s laughter when he first woke up in the form. He still hadn’t asked what was so funny.

“Such a cute baby dragon!”

Serenity triggered the transformation. He didn’t want to risk anyone else seeing the “cute baby dragon.”

He could deal with Rissa seeing him like that. At least she seemed happy - happy enough that he might let her pet his wings again. But please, no one else!

Certainly not until “cute” wasn’t the first reaction!

Sunrise Dungeon, Asihanya

The morning of Earth’s integration

Raz finished healing the cut in his leg. The Crazed Wombat had been easy to kill once it latched onto his leg, but before that it had jumped around and avoided his claws almost entirely. All of the monsters here - deeper than Aki’s crystal - were like that. None of them should have been a threat, but they were all fast and insanely agile until they latched on to you. Then they wouldn’t let go.

Raz assumed this had something to do with the “Crazed” prefix they all had.

Raz hadn’t taken this much damage in the dungeon in years. It didn’t help that he didn’t have any equipment with him other than his rolled-up flying carpet; he hadn’t been planning a dungeon expedition when he headed into the city.

Third left, down the hall, second right, look for a pile of rocks in the hallway … there!

Raz touched the wall above the rocks and tried to insert mana into the old spell matrix that should be there. It felt almost like talking to Aki, only there was no response other than part of the wall disappearing, leaving an alcove with a couple shelves in it. At the bottom of the alcove - roughly knee height - Raz saw a sack sitting next to a message cylinder.

Raz opened the sack first.

Etherium. More Etherium than he’d ever seen in physical form. Raz hastily absorbed it into his Status.

3000 Etherium. It was more than he’d ever had, but at the same time it seemed incredibly skimpy for what Aki had described as the “Clan’s emergency savings”. His mother had given him 50 this morning - had she really given him a significant portion of the Clan’s savings to celebrate reaching Tier 2?

The only thing left in the bag was a key-shaped object. It was too large to be a normal door key, but Raz didn’t know what it went to. He tried to [Identify] it, but all he got back was

Access Key

Grants higher-level access to the location it is connected to. Level and location are unknown.

He touched it, and was given the option to absorb it into his Status. A new Keys section appeared, but all that was displayed was Access Key (Unknown, Unknown).

That left him with the message cylinder. Raz ran a little mana into it to activate it, and he saw a small image appear in front of him. It looked like another Sunrise-Clan draykin, but he didn’t recognize her.

Greetings, child of Stallet and Sunrise. I am - no. If you are watching this, I am no longer among the living. I was Sunrise, bonded to Aki. If you can see this, you are my heir, and Aki is in danger. Please protect her as best you can. If all is lost, give her the cylinder. It has some secrets that only she can use, if you have to flee.

Your father Stallet also left some things for you - a book, a ball, a key, and a bag. I don’t know what they do, but he said they were for emergencies only.

That’s all I can tell you and still have room for the instructions for Aki. My blessings on you. I wish you luck.

[Blessing of the Sunrise Clan Founder] gained

There was no ball or book anywhere in the alcove. Raz took another careful look at the bag and tried to [Identify] it.

[Identify] didn’t work.

Raz paused, then picked up a rock and used [Identify].

Rock

This is a rock.

Yet the bag couldn’t be identified. Raz tucked it in the pouch tied to his belt that he’d intended to use to carry whatever he bought at the market.

He channeled mana into the same rune he’d used to open the alcove and it disappeared. It was time to get back to Aki and get out of here. He should be able to leave before anyone was able to get to her by the normal route, but it was going to be closer than he’d like.