Chapter 130: Chapter 130

[You have successfully completed your fourth evolution! +50 to all stats!]

[ Your new species is {Undercover Princess Rabbit Changeling}! Strength +50, Agility +50, Dexterity +50, Fortitude +50, Charisma +350, Intelligence +75, Willpower +75, Mana +75, Mana Control +75 ]

[ You have unlocked the skill {Royal Presence} ]

[ You have unlocked the skill {Royal Decree} ]

[ You have unlocked the skill {Subtle Royalty} ]

[ You have unlocked the skill {Don’t Look At Me, Peasants!} ]

[ Skill {Lesser Transformation} has been upgraded to {Transformation} ]

[ {Aether Sense} (Skill Quest): Discover the existence of Aether. Reach Tier 5 in your class or species ]

[ You have completed the Skill Quest {Aether Sense}! You have unlocked the skill {Aether Sense}! ]

As soon as she broke out from her evolution cocoon, Elise was stunlocked by the notification windows. She had been expecting a lot, but a whole 400 Charisma in one go to add on to her already absurd number was a lot. It brought her total to over 2000. And the fact that the rest of her stats had gotten boosted by 100 at minimum was nice too. That was a full 1.5x multiplier to her admittedly low Strength and Fortitude, and she could feel the effects of both.

The skills looked good as well. Just based on the names alone, they sounded powerful and useful, though she had some concerns about {Don’t Look At Me, Peasants!}. The naming style was different from every single one of her other skills, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

{Lesser Transformation} upgrading to {Transformation} filled her with immense satisfaction. After months and months of being forced to deal with Lesser Transformation’s downsides, finally having this upgrade felt like a massive weight being lifted off her shoulders. And then finally, the access to {Aether Sense} was something she had also long awaited, and hopefully now that she had it, she would get some more insight into exactly what the {Rune of Fate} was and how it worked.

Before looking any deeper into any of that though, she had a new physical form to check out. She had already noticed that she had once again gotten bigger. This time, though, the size difference was much greater. In her last evolution, it had mostly been her legs that got longer, while her body remained relatively the same size, but this time, both her legs and body had grown.

Her legs and paws had changed in more than just size as well. Not only were they longer, but they bent slightly differently. She shook them out and walked in a circle in the massive bathtub to get accustomed to it, but it still felt strange. Then she sat back on her haunches and almost toppled over. Before catching herself by putting a front paw on the side of the tub.

For a few seconds, she sat in that awkward position, then pushed herself up slowly until she was sitting on only her hind legs, her front legs hanging at her side.

She stood up a bit higher, still on only her hind legs, then took a step. Then another. Then, she walked all the way across the tub, hopped out, and walked over to the mirror, all without her front paws touching the ground. What she saw made her flinch. In her last form, she had tried her best to deny the fact that her appearance was uncanny. This time, she had shot straight past uncanny and gone well into creepy, stopping just short of terrifying.

I thought I said I didn’t want to be a skinwalker…

Despite her body getting bigger, her legs had still grown disproportionately, and especially her paws, plus the fact that she could walk on her hind legs didn’t help. She could imagine a grainy photo of her would be used as evidence of the paranormal back on Earth.

She got back down on all fours to see if that helped the impression, but if anything, that made it worse. Her legs were more like deer legs now with how long they were, but they still had wide, fluffy rabbit paws on the end. Her snout looked the same, but her eyes had moved further toward the front of her head giving her a much more predatorial appearance than before.

I hope I can at least eat meat now, she thought.

She glanced around, paranoid that someone had somehow snuck in while she was evolving, then stood back up on her hind legs and started trying to strike some poses in the mirror. She balanced on one leg, crouched down in a squat, tried to strut like she was on a fashion runway, and a few other things. She almost burst out laughing when she saw what she looked like with her paws on her hips.

Her new body had mobility about halfway between a human and a rabbit. She could run or walk like either, but it looked awkward. She could move her front legs kind of like arms, but they didn’t have the same range of mobility, so she was still limited in what she could do. Her paws had changed though, and while she didn’t have thumbs, she could spread her toes, and managed to grab a few things like towels and soap between them.

She couldn’t do anything complex like dancing, though she didn’t try very hard. She was never good at dancing, so she didn’t really know how, and ended up falling over when she tried. As she lay on the ground, she saw herself in the mirror, and decided to strike another pose.

“Draw me like one of your French girls,” she said, before bursting into laughter.

When she calmed down, she got into a more comfortable pose and thought about the implications of her new form. It hadn’t been quite as obvious in her last evolution, but now, it was clear that her evolution path was taking her toward a more humanoid base form. She was all for that, and wanted to continue along that path, but with how slow progress had been thus far, she was a bit concerned about what the in-between stages would look like.

Am I going to look like a furry next time? she thought.

That was a long way off, but she wondered if there was a way she could just skip to the end. Maybe if she did enough important things, she would get a Unique evolution option that would have a completely human base form without needing to go through the awkward phases. That would be nice, but it was also relatively low on her priority list, now that she had {Transformation}. And now that she had finished checking out her base form, it was time to finally use it.

She checked the description first, and found it was identical to the {Lesser Transformation} description, just without the restrictions. She switched to her human form and checked in the mirror to verify that it was the same, then checked the description again. Seeing the lack of a timer made her smile. No more would she have to be constantly checking the time and looking for ways to escape the public eye. She could walk the streets freely without worrying about staying out too late. No more potential rabbit Cinderella moments.

She reveled in the lack of stress for a moment, then went back to her experimenting. While the description for {Transformation} was identical aside from the restrictions, it actually had a few features that weren’t listed in the description that Oberon had told her about. For example, she could now change her own hair and eye color without needing to depend on dyes or illusions. She could also manually sculpt her features to change her face around so that she didn’t always have the same base face.

She messed around for a few minutes, making her nose swell, then shrink, then extending her earlobes like a buddhist monk, then moving her eyes so far out to the side that she looked like an alien. It was like she suddenly had access to a video game character creator, and as with all good video game character creators, the limits of each parameter were probably a bit further than was plausible. She was able to make her face truly absurd with some of her modifications.

When she was done having fun, she then tried to make her old face from back on Earth. She started with her default human form, then worked back from there, starting with her hair and eyes. After about five minutes of fiddling, she was frowning, unsure.

What… did I look like?

She was sure that she looked more or less like a more plain version of her default human form here, but “more plain” wasn’t a very useful descriptor. She hadn’t been one to look at herself in the mirror back on Earth, so she didn’t have every contour of her old face memorized, and spending a full six months now in the new world didn’t help her memory. She fiddled with her face for another five minutes or so before she gave up. She had gotten something sort of similar to before, but she instinctively knew it wasn’t right. Something was wrong. Content orıginally comes from novel⸺fire.net

I can’t remember what I looked like.

It was a sobering realization. She stared into the mirror at the face that wasn’t quite hers as she racked her brains, trying to dredge up any memories she could, but her memories from Earth were hazy. Not in that they were fading, but that she was now realizing they had never been all that clear to begin with. In this world, Intelligence strengthened memory, and compared to her older memories, the new ones felt much sharper. Like they were in 4k, while the ones from Earth were 480p.

She reverted back to her red-eyed, white haired form, and found this face to be much more familiar. Much more her. It was definitely a shame to lose the old face, but at the end of the day, it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t like she needed it. And she honestly liked this one a bit better.

The old Elise is dead anyways.

Then, she noticed something else. There was something strange about her eyes. She leaned in closer to get a better look, and found that there was a faint pattern on the irises, and she recognized the pattern as the same flower-like pattern that was the Rune of Fate. With {Transformation}, she was able to hide it, but when she wasn’t actively doing so, it reappeared. Even when she changed her eye color, the faint pattern remained, only changing in hue.

She wasn’t sure what to think about her Rune manifesting in a way that was visible to the naked eye. Being visible to the dwarves was one thing, but having everyone able to see it was completely different. She checked the description of the skill to find that it remained the same, so whatever had changed, it wasn’t reflected on the Status window yet.

She shrugged and decided to move on. It was something she would have to keep in mind, but it wasn’t anything worth worrying about just yet. She could ask Oberon about it, or maybe Maggie, next time she saw her. For now, she had more skills to test out.

She looked the new skills at the end of her list, then decisively chose {Aether Sense} to activate first. The other skills looked like they used aether, so she wanted to be able to sense what was happening, if possible. She checked the description of the skill first, which was disappointing, then activated the Skill.

[ Aether Sense, lvl 1: Sense nearby aether ]

She felt a brief spike of pain in her temples as her new sense overloaded her mind with information, but after a second or two, it died down and she was able to focus on what the new sense was telling her. First, she was a beacon of aether. She could sense a few other sources of aether in the distance, probably maids and such, but of them all, she was easily the strongest source and it wasn’t even close.

She looked closer at the aether within her body and emanating out of it. It was very different from mana. Unlike mana, which existed naturally in the atmosphere and only gathered in the body, aether existed only in the body, and dissipated in the atmosphere. Her body produced it constantly, and also released it constantly, The other aether signatures around her did the same, though at a much lesser level.

She suddenly understood why she instantly caught the attention of anyone with {Aether Sense}. This was absurd. No wonder carnivorous monsters were so desperate to eat her. She immediately turned to her new skills and found {Subtle Royalty}.

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 1: Reduce your presence so that you don't draw the attention of the peasants ]

She frowned at the description, but then activated the skill. Immediately, the amount of aether she was releasing lessened, though not by much. Then, she heard a ding, and the aether lessened even further.

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 1 → 2 ]

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 2 → 3 ]

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 3 → 4 ]

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 4 → 5 ]

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 5 → 6 ]

The leveling continued rapidly, more than a level per second for almost a full minute before it began to slow, but it still continued ticking up until it made it all the way to her current level cap.

[ Subtle Royalty, lvl 99 → 100 ]

Huh, she thought. That’s convenient, I guess.

Currently, she was giving off less aether than the servants walking the halls. She could still sense the massive amount within her, and she still emitted a fair amount, but with this, she at least wouldn’t be drawing too much attention passively anymore. She immediately decided to just keep it permanently active. Even with it at level 100, her presence wasn’t completely mitigated, and she worried what over 2000 Charisma and an aetherborn soul would do if she went out in public.

She next looked at the rest of her new skills.

[ Royal Presence, lvl 1: Let the peasants know who's boss ]

[ Royal Decree, lvl 1: Let the peasants know who's talking ]

[ Don't Look At Me, Peasants! lvl 1: Subtly influence peasants in the vicinity to keep them from noticing your royal self ]

What the heck is up with these Skills?

She didn’t really like the emphasis on looking down on peasants that seemed to come with her new princess-related skills. She also wasn’t sure exactly what the skills did because of it. She activated {Royal Presence}, and suddenly the flow of aether from her body increased and gained direction. It spread out like a cloud in a sphere around her, and through {Aether Sense}, she noticed a few of the maids stop moving for a moment when it washed over them. Elise immediately cancelled the skill. She would have to ask Oberon exactly what it did before experimenting with it. She didn’t want to interfere with the others in the palace.

When she tried activating {Royal Decree}, nothing happened, but she got the subtle sense that she was supposed to have a target for it. Or maybe targets plural. Either way, she couldn’t test that either.

{Don’t Look At Me, Peasants!} had a similar effect to {Royal Presence}, but it felt a little different. It was hard to explain, but she could somehow tell that the aether was doing something different. She would need to ask Oberon about those as well.

She wasn’t quite ready to go see him yet, so she went back to experimenting with {Aether Sense} and {Transformation}. She got a level in {Transformation} and a couple levels in {Aether Sense} as she did this, but otherwise didn’t gain too much. She couldn’t quite sense those connections that Maggie had described, but she could sense the aether working within her {Transformation} skill as she altered her body. It was something she would have to work on, and she still had no idea how to sense her soul like Maggie had, but it was progress.

Once she was satisfied, she switched her clothes and walked out the door. She had a bit of a pep in her step and was in an excellent mood as she walked toward Oberon’s office, and she smiled widely as she flung the door open. Then, his next words made her face fall.

“I was out for how long?!” she exclaimed.

Elise's new form (canon):