I had to decline a few requests. They just weren’t possible or practical for me to do, or they’d cause serious harm to the patient. Giving someone the ability to eat grass. Give someone wings - that was a full-body set of modifications, on top of large, heavy structures. Extra arms required so much work and arcanite I couldn’t even begin the attempt. Replacing lungs with gills would just flat-out kill the person asking for them. Someone asked me to remove their refractory period, and while that modification was in theory small enough for me to change, it involved serious messing with their brain, and I was not going there.

Some of the declines burned me deep inside.

I couldn’t fix someone who was seeing hallucinations and hearing voices. I could only refer them to an apothecary, who might, might be able to brew up a potion to stop the voices. Temporarily.

I couldn’t split apart conjoined twins, not at the age they were at and level of fusing. Fascinatingly, they had two Systems, one each, but their physical stat adjustments to their body was the sum of the two stats. There was no line in the middle, nor did the stats multiply each other. The stats also summed with each other before getting refactored into the multiplier.

I did escort them to the main School hospital though. The people working there would love a project of that size, and I foresaw dozens and dozens of levels for numerous people in the future.

I swung by Marcelle’s office on the way back.

“Hey Marcelle!” I knocked on her door. “Got a minute?”

She put down a paper she was grading.

“A quick one, yes. Found something you can’t handle?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, conjoined twins. I sent them to the hospital, that’s why I’m up here. Anyways, noticed their System was additive on their body, which was a bit of a surprise.”

Marcelle gave me a tired look, and broke out a bottle of wine. I scurried forward and grabbed a seat, slightly disappointed as she only poured one glass.

“I am not sending an even slightly tipsy biomancer to work. Not in a thousand years.” She glared at me.

“Ah, fair enough.” I wasn’t about to say “Hey, I can purge it out of my system, I’m totally not a lush, can I have some free booze please?” I was bad at social stuff, I wasn’t a complete idiot.

“Anyways, quick version. Congratulations, you’ve stumbled upon one of the slightly darker biomancy secrets. You might’ve noticed that conjoined twins weren’t covered in any of your classes, and that’s on purpose.”

I thought about it, the puzzle immediately clicking. I pulled a face.

“Ooooohhh… because anyone inclined towards power, regardless of the price, is going to start grafting heads to themselves.”

“Exactly. Usually takes the form of a cabal or a cult, where the people whose heads get removed and attached to the greater whole are voluntarily joining.”

I shuddered at the image.

“Since they’re willing, they’ve got all the skills available.”

“Quick study. You’re correct. The Exterreri Empire has a standing bounty on them, along with most other nations. They technically don’t violate a divine decree.”

Marcelle shuddered, and tipped the entire glass back, immediately refilling it.

“Right. I need to work, and you’ve brought back a number of terrible memories. Please don’t spread it to other biomancers. The fewer people that figure it out, the fewer monstrosities are made.”

I left, fully onboard with Marcelle’s suggestion. I could imagine it now. A vast flesh-blob, a huge mouth in the middle, and dozens upon dozens of heads grafted onto it, each one with their own skillset.

Interesting that it didn’t apply to hydras. Maybe that was a case of “one being, many heads”, as opposed to “many heads, many beings.”

I made it back down to my tent on the fairgrounds, waving to Auri as she continued working her half-dozen baking stations, luring in customers with the delicious scent of baking food.

Which, ironically, seemed to be frustrating Auri somewhat as her rival-in-baking was also making brisk sales off of her delicious smells wafting through the air.

I grabbed her attention as I dodged the line filled with students and tourists.

“Hey Auri!”

“Brrrpt!” A pair of mage hands flew over with a delicious smelling pie. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I’d gotten a little too deep in the zone, and I’d been neglecting food.

Again.

“Thanks!”

With that I went back to work.

As with every single invention, people used it for weird sex things. SO MANY weird sex things. Every third client of mine wanted modifications for sexual gratification. Bigger penis. Smaller penis. Hooked penis. Extra penis. Larger breasts. Smaller breasts. Perky breasts. More breasts. Extra nerves. Extra sensitivity.

Tentacles.

Dear gods and goddess, why. Why would anyone want to graft tentacles onto their body just for sex?

Enlarged prostate. More accessible prostate. Extra lubrication.

No levels in [Smooth as a Baby’s Bottom]. I was hitting areas that the System seemed to think I knew perfectly.

Requests to render people sterile, both male and female. Those were both easy, and incredibly hard. Easy in the sense that I just needed to snip exactly the right place, hard because I needed to do a deep dive and investigation to make sure they knew what they were getting into, and more importantly, that they weren’t getting coerced.

Vibrating… everything.

Split, longer, ridged, bumpy tongues.

Fluid… manipulations…

The less said on that topic the better.

Rewiring nerve clusters in unusual positions to trigger massive responses. I was judging some of these people, a few of them quite a lot, but I did quietly file that one away for Iona. I bet she’d love something like that, and the ethics of it were fine.

There were a few more ideas that I quietly filed away in my mental filing cabinet.

The entire thing wanted me to pour bleach into my ears so I’d never have to hear the weird requests again. If I had to explain to one more overly cocky teenager that nobody wanted a 20 inch by 4 inch penis anywhere near their parts, I was going to scream.

I raised my eyebrows when a scrawny teenage girl came in. Not my usual demographic, but hey, practice was practice. Plus I could do my little part to help people.

I was not going to fast-forward puberty though. I checked her level.

[Laborer - 32]. Probably waiting for the right circumstances for their next class. If they were an [Apprentice] right now, and they got promoted at their job to [Journeywoman], then their next class up would offer a stronger [Journeywoman] class.

The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Kids, almost the world around, still started working at 8 when they unlocked the System.

“I can see the future!” I proclaimed once again. “You need… BIOMANCY!”

She flinched at my pronouncement, and I immediately felt bad. She looked around, like she was going to bolt.

“Come on in, sit, sit.” I gestured to the chair in front of me. “Tell me what’s going on?”

Like a skittish colt, she sat down in the chair across from me.

“I, well, you’re a biomancer, right?”

I was no good with small talk, but I could see gigantic flashing mirage signs and everything.

“Yes.”

“Ok, well, um, I…” She trailed off, clenching her fists and looking down.

I let her be, my mana rapidly ticking up from my last patient. Finally, she found her courage.

“I don’t think I’m in the right body.” She whispered, eyes darting back to the tent flap.

“Can you tell me more about that?” I asked her.

“I’m a boy.” He whispered. “I feel like I’m a boy. I should’ve been a boy. But I’m stuck in a girl’s body.”

Oh fuck this wasn’t going to be an easy one. Not by a long shot.

“Alright, what else can you tell me?”

Encouraged, he started to get some steam.

“Everyone around me says I’m a girl. They say I should act like one. Dress like one. But I don’t want to! I’m a boy. Can you fix me?”

“How long have you felt like this?” The only thing saving my inexperienced butt were all the classes I’d taken, and more than a few checklists I’d read. I was mixing and matching hard here.

“All my life!” He brightened up. “I’ve always known. Now my body’s changing, and it’s becoming even more icky, and I just can’t stand it!” He practically burst into tears at the end.

We continued to have a long discussion, where I teased out every aspect of his story. His thoughts and feelings. Making sure it wasn't a quick lark, or spur of the moment thing.

I tapped the table with all my fingers, thinking.

He was definitely transgender, no question about it. The question was, what did I do about that?

A proper transition was mana-intensive, among other things. It wasn’t quite a full-bodied transformation, but it was close. I’d need to impact nearly every part of his body, although…

Hmmmm…

I could cheat on a large number of changes. Benefit of working with kids.

Okay, time to work through a few more questions.

“Do your parents know you’re here?”

He looked terribly guilty for a moment, then nodded.

I gave him my best incredulous look.

“Really?”

He shook his head.

“Please?” He begged.

It wasn’t changing my decision, but I still gave him a hard look.

“Alright. Things you need to know. First off, I don’t want to get your hopes up too high. You’re a lightweight, but any changes I need to do are going to be massive. It’s entirely possible that your weight and your vitality combined are going to be too much for me.” I said.

“If I had less vitality, it’d be easier for you?” He said.

I nodded.

“Yes, but-”

A cold flash of horror went over me as the classic classing-up lights started dancing around his head, and he smashed his head onto the table.

“No no no oh no don’t do this to me.” I scrambled out of my chair, healing him and readjusting his body to be more comfortable.

“FUCK!” I swore, confident that my privacy runes would stop the noise from escaping the tent.

There was no way in hell I wasn’t going to give it my best efforts now. Not after watching him torpedo his entire class just for a chance.

I popped my head out of my tent, catching Auri’s eye.

“Brrrpt?” She asked.

“I need, like, two of everything. Stat.”

“Brrrpt!” She gave me a little salute, and I got dirty, dirty looks from the people in line.

I shot them the finger as I retreated back into my tent, feeling much better.

Significant calories were going to be applied to this problem. Half stress eating from me, half the sheer amount of work I was about to do was going to be hungry, half making sure the kid had a solid meal in him before I did major work, half the kid looked poor in the first place and needed a meal.

If I ended up with as many people halves as I did food halves, I’d be in trouble.

Hands flew into the tent, loading the table up with pies, breads, scones, biscuits and more.

It didn’t take long before he jerked and gasped in his chair, looking suspiciously at the food once he reoriented himself.

“Okay. A few things. First, don’t do stupid shit like that without talking with me first.”

He meekly nodded his head.

“Second, let me finish everything I wanted to say!”

I debated throwing the rest of the biscuit I was nibbling on at him, but that would be overly mean. Kid was jumpy enough.

“Now, what’s your name?”

His mouth twisted in a grimace.

“Desi. I hate it.” He was looking at the food longingly.

“Right, ok. I’ma call you kiddo.” Oh gods kiddo was a terrible nickname. What was I doing? Where was Iona when I needed her to bail me out of awkward social situations? I did know if I tried to defuse the awkward I’d probably just make it worse, so instead I aimed for professionally solving his problems as quickly as possible.

“Kiddo, you should eat up. Grab a bunch. It’s free, don’t worry. Let me give you the rest of the speech.”

I took a deep breath.

“If - IF - I mess with your body, it’s practically irreversible,” I mentally cursed as his eyes started shining, and I just knew almost everything I was about to say was going to go in one ear, and out the other. “Technically, another, stronger biomancer could come along and reverse the changes I’m going to perform, but we’re a rare breed, and usually cost an arm and a leg. Permanent. Forever. Unless something happens that I’m not expecting, you’re likely going to never have kids. System might come along and offer you a skill that solves that problem, but expect no kids.”

The kid nodded, and I started to doubt myself. I’d met him all of fifteen minutes ago, and I was about to perform life-changing magic on him.

“I have no idea what your parents will say,” I did know I wasn’t afraid of them trying to absolutely murder me, but that was only because of my levels. “But there will be people out there who’ll be unhappy. Because life is filled with idiots, and there’s no pleasing everyone. Someone will always find an excuse to dislike someone else. Heck, I got grief once because my hair is brown! What a dumb thing to complain to someone about.” I was rambling, and I shut up.

“Yeah.” He quietly agreed.

“Right, also…” I went over every aspect I could think of. He seemed to follow, and without ceremony, I found myself touching his hand, using [Elvenoid Visualization] to start flickering through a dozen different views of his current body.

Early puberty meant hormones had started to ramp up, but not necessarily make huge, sweeping changes yet. The hormone production and their effects was one of the biggest ways I was cheating. Instead of going through and reversing every single change that had been made so far, then making the changes that should’ve happened, I was going to adjust the hormonal balance and let that do most of the talking. Right now, the body wanted to produce more estrogen and progesterone than testosterone, and I needed to make tiny, subtle adjustments so it’d produce more testosterone, and less estrogen and progesterone.

Kids were easy in many ways, but one tricky part was I needed the body to still give off the ‘we’re done with puberty’ signal. Otherwise, kiddo would never stop going through puberty, and down that path lay a quick heart attack after a short life as a giant.

It was one of the most well-studied biomancy phenomena. After all, most biomancy was done on young teens, exactly like kiddo. It was tricky, but the answer was a well-worn groove in my memory.

There might be some tiny traces of the earlier hormonal balance, but I was able to impact things early enough that it wasn’t a huge deal. Add in a bit of vitality, almost any general appearance skill, and everything would come right out in the wash.

No, the tricky, mana-intense part were the parts. He had female reproductive organs, and I needed to turn them into male reproductive organs, even if they were semi-decorative. As a fetus developed, they made proto-organs, which quickly developed into the male or female equivalent. For example, the proto-organs which turned into ovaries on a girl, would turn into testes on a boy. It was ‘easier’ to change the organ into what it ‘could have been’, than to simply force everything into a correct position. ‘Easier’ meant ‘a better image that saves mana’, and I wanted all the mana I could manage.

The clitoris needed to expand, and combine with the urethral opening, which I needed to elongate. The labia minora and majora would turn into the scrotum, and the entire pelvis needed serious rearrangement.

The sacrum was going to be widened along with the coccyx, effectively closing off the former birth canal. The Iliac crest needed to lose its flare, while the ischium went from a boxy shape to a smooth shape. The pubic bone was going to get filed away from a fat bone to a skinny bone, which all in all made the pubic arch go from wide to narrow.

The fallopian tubes were turning into the vas deferens, and the list went on and on.

I wasn’t touching head size or height. I was going to let puberty handle those. The worst case of leaving it alone was he’d end up shorter. Oh no. I was going to play around with the thorax, torso ratios, femur thickness, and spinal angles, along with the hundreds of thousands of tiny other extra changes I needed to make.

I started flicking through the different views I had of his body, making adjustments to my rapidly expanding mental model each time I noted a different place that needed an adjustment. I felt him occasionally moving under my hand. I ignored the distraction. My other hand was on my arcanite ball, ready to pull in extra mana.

View after view, system after system went through my mind as I continued to check and double check my work. I mentally laid over my new system over the old system, and realized I’d neglected a few minor veins, mentally unhooking them from old places and reattaching them to new ones.

Only after I’d exhaustively checked every system, from sweat glands to nervous three times without making a single change did I pull the trigger.

The kid screamed. His face contorted as he writhed under my hands, and I immediately recast [Elvenoid Visualization], furiously checking what was wrong.

I also wrapped him in [Mantle of the Stars], not letting him move while I looked into things. Last thing I needed was for him to run away screaming in agony. That’d cause problems, problems that would stop me from fixing what happened.

I immediately sprinted to the nerves, using the pathways of what had lit up to trace where the problem was.

Everything I touched was on fire.

I made a snap decision.

I was fully confident in my abilities as a biomancer, and as a healer. I was fully confident nothing I’d done was lethal, or would kill him.

[Permanence] flashed through him, making what I’d done stick, then I blasted him with healing. The screaming immediately stopped.

I opened my eyes, kiddo squirming uncomfortably in the chair.

“It itches.” He complained, scratching furiously.

I shrugged.

“Eh, it’s the new nerves. They’re complaining that everything’s new. You ok? Everything good?”

He checked in his pants - crude kid - and looked up at me, eyes shining.

“I’m a boy now.” He gasped.

I snorted at him.

“You always were.”

The little shit tried to strangle me with hugs.