Accepting the contract was simple, and did nothing other than add an ‘Active Contracts’ section to Serenity’s Status. He wondered for a moment why Margrethe wasn’t able to see hers, then dismissed the thought. He could ask, but the answer was almost certainly that the contract included where it could be viewed. He couldn’t remember if that were true of the contracts he’d signed as Vengeance; it must not have seemed important.

“Do you have a way to disguise yourself?”

Serenity looked away from his Status at the Tirmanak. “What? Ah, yes, I do. Why?”

The daa’il grinned. “This seems like a good time to go see that slave dealer you mentioned. If we can get him alone, we can get the information you need.”

Serenity frowned. “You’re not going to sneak in?”

“That sounds boring. This is a low-Tier world; it’ll be fine. Just make sure to disguise yourself so that you can keep operating here; I have to be gone tomorrow anyway so we may as well get as much done as possible before then.” Tirmanak waved in Serenity’s direction. “We only need to be careful enough that whoever’s behind this doesn’t connect us to what’s happening. Anything else is irrelevant.”

“I was hoping we wouldn’t be noticed yet. I want to have some idea what we’re dealing with before we let them know that anything’s happening.” If it was simply a matter of killing people and taking names, Serenity wouldn’t need help.

“I’ll be in disguise, too. Go, get your disguise on. You’ll see when we’re closer.” Tirmanak grinned widely. It was clear he had a plan but wasn’t going to explain it, so Serenity shook his head and headed to his room. If he was going to shapeshift, he might as well do it somewhere everyone couldn’t watch.

As he closed the door behind himself, Serenity debated what to do for a disguise. He wanted to look as different as possible, different enough that no one would mistake him for being the same person. Most of his options could be as simple as hair and eye color; that wasn’t what he was looking for.

He’d found when practicing that he could manage a more severe change if he wanted to, as long as it was something that could naturally develop from the bloodline. Specifically, it had to be something that came to mind for him when he thought about the bloodline. It meant that he really needed to spend some time studying the different bloodlines, but first he’d have to find somewhere that had the information.

A few of his possible chimeric bloodlines seemed more suited to disguise than others. Asura brought to mind six-armed demigods, while Nightmare Wraith seemed like something that would be naturally shadowy like the Wraith itself. A Child of Time would appear blind; that was obvious enough that it would probably work, though Serenity wasn’t certain if he could manage that particular transformation. Godling simply wasn’t specific enough, and Serenity wasn’t about to choose Lich.

Serenity decided to try the Mana Elemental first; he’d have to be careful to remain substantial, but if he pushed that in a different direction than he had the very first time he tried it, he ought to get something interesting. Perhaps he’d resemble a water or ice elemental? One of the humanoid variety, of course; there was only so far he wanted to go.

He pulled more Potential from his Origin Rift than he had in the past, since he wanted to do something bigger, something more, than he’d done before with the exception of his very first attempt. If he got it wrong, he could fix it, so there was no reason not to try. It would simply cost time, and that was something he wasn’t that short on right now.

He fed the Potential into the Realize Potential Skill, concentrating on his Mana Elemental Heritage; it was hard to visualize when he could name attributes from almost any elemental he’d ever seen that he wanted as well as ones he didn’t want, but he didn’t know what a Mana Elemental was like. An Essence Elemental was likely crystal, like his core and the crystalline network throughout his body; that was why he’d chosen mana. If Essence was the strength and rigidity, mana was the flexibility.

This was only the heritage, and it was the heritage laid on a human body. His human body.

With that thought, it seemed to click and he felt the shift happen. The bit of heritage-tainted potential he’d used to shift that day drifted out of him, replaced by the far larger amount of potential he was using now.

Serenity’s time sense warped for a moment, telling him it took forever and no time at all, but he was getting used to that and knew that even with the time he’d spent thinking, he’d only been in his room for a few minutes.

He tapped his head where his horns normally were to make certain they were still missing; fortunately, they were. As he lowered his hands back down, he got a good look at his right hand and stopped. It was white, truly white, yet at the same time it wasn’t. The entire range of colors shimmered from his skin; while most of it seemed to be from light reflecting off the surface, some even seemed to emanate from below. The colors shifted as he moved.

Was he really glowing and opalescent?

Serenity turned off all of the mana lights in the room and drew the curtains to cover the single window. It didn’t block out all of the light, but it was enough to answer the question: yes, he was glowing. A little. It wouldn’t be noticeable in even moderate sunlight unless someone was looking for it.

Serenity took a look at his clothing and selected a set that seemed relatively generic, closer to what “ordinary nobles” wore on a daily basis, then realized that his armor was a giveaway right now. It was simple enough to change; he’d had quite a bit of practice. All he did was shift the scales darker, so that they were nearly black. It gave an interesting contrast to his skin; more importantly, no one would assume it was the same armor even though it was similarly made. His sigil didn’t shift, but that would still be covered by his clothing.

As he put the clothing on, Serenity realized that his hair was far longer than it had been, and seemed to be partially insubstantial. It took a few minutes to figure out what it was doing, but it seemed like much of it was visual but not physical at any given time, and it floated instead of hanging like normal hair. It hung nearly to his feet, and Serenity had no idea what to do with it. Hopefully he could simply ignore it; he didn’t exactly have any ties or anything to use in it. While he could theoretically make some, he only vaguely knew what to do with them.

He also didn’t know if the oddly insubstantial hair would even take hair ties. At least it didn’t glow; it was also iridescent, but without the inner light of his skin.

He wondered what color his eyes were, but that wasn’t really important. He was sure they’d be multicolored, as well, since that seemed to be the theme for “mana elemental”. He supposed it made sense; mana wasn’t one thing, it was changeable and could be colored by all sorts of different Affinities. He didn’t know what that had to do with long hair, but maybe that was a side effect of trying to overcharge it with Potential?

There wasn’t a manual, which meant he had to guess and hope he got it right, or at least close enough.

Serenity turned the mana lamp next to his bed back on before he headed back to the dining room. Andarit and her father were still in the room, finishing breakfast; they both looked at him in shock for a moment. Kalo recovered first. Grinning, he gestured to a chair that wasn’t visible from the entrance. “Sit, sit! I don’t often have a chance to completely surprise someone, especially not Tirmanak. This will be fun.”

Serenity took the seat and watched Kalo and his daughter attempt to ignore him. They weren’t very good at it; Andarit in particular kept sneaking glances at Serenity, but it wasn’t long before Tirmanak walked into the room. It was clearly him, but his clothing was entirely different; he could have been any poor noble or more likely a rich merchant. Serenity wondered if his clothing came from the same tailor’s as Serenity’s.

There were glows scattered around Tirmanak’s person, as well as a vague light coming from all over. Serenity was certain the glow was magic items, and the general glow was either a shield or mana infused into his aura. Serenity hadn’t turned on his Mana Sight, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Tirmanak almost immediately noticed him. “Who are you?”

Serenity couldn’t keep the grin off his face as he went to greet the person who’d asked him to put on a disguise. A glance at Kalo and Andarit told him they were better at keeping a straight face, but were still not fully successful. “Hello. My Name is Serenity.”

Tirmanak’s mouth actually dropped open slightly. “By the Order, how did you do that?”

Serenity’s grin grew wider. “A Skill. If you look closer, you’ll see that my features are about the same; I still look like me. It’s not technically a disguise skill, but it works pretty well despite that.”

One of these days, he was going to have to look into what, exactly, the Heritages let him do other than change his looks. It was a side effect that he was using as if it were the goal!

So far, he’d noticed that he couldn’t turn off Mana Sight in his overcharged Mana Elemental Heritage shape. Perhaps what he was thinking of as “overcharged” was what he was actually supposed to do? The original forms had been chosen to look like humans with a bloodline, after all, so he’d gone about as minimal as he could. He certainly hadn’t noticed any extra abilities about any of them other than what seemed inherent to the shape.

“I take it we’re heading out now?” Serenity was impatient to deal with Djen, now that they were both ready.

“Your Skill doesn’t take any effort to maintain? How long will it last? Can it be interrupted?” Tirmanak fired the questions at Serenity; he didn’t seem ready to go without answers.

Serenity’s grin faded, but it didn’t disappear. However impatient he was, they were reasonable questions. “It’ll last the rest of today unless I make an effort to end it. It might disappear if I’m knocked out, but short of that it’ll be fine. I haven’t run into anything that can interrupt it, but I haven’t exactly been looking for that, and I don’t expect to find someone who can in Zenith. They’d have to have a very specific Skill, and I’m not entirely certain what it would be. Something very unusual; it’s not a maintained Skill so most interrupts won’t work on it.”

Tirmanak seemed to consider that for a moment before nodding. “Good enough, and better than I expected. I should have known to trust the Voice to make a good choice.”

Serenity didn’t think he would ever trust the Voice enough to not ask questions. “So, what’s the plan?”