World Seed

Author’s Corner: Yeah… I kind of feel weird not putting anything up here, so yeah… enjoy the chapter! It’s actually a bit longer than usual by a few hundred words!------------------------------------I hadn’t walked more than ten steps when two tiny forms barreled into me from behind, knocking me over and making me groan in pain. At the same time, a series of agitated chirps came from those forms, and I recognized them as the lovebirds Yin and Yang. Somewhat to my surprise, I was able to understand a bit of their chirping, in one way or another.Apparently, they felt the sense of danger over my mental link, rushed over as soon as the fight was over, sensing that I was in pain. I couldn’t help but soften a bit towards the birds when I found out how worried they were about me, though at the same time I confirmed that the Aspect of the Armored Beast hadn’t deactivated when I was briefly knocked unconscious. On the other hand, my Aura Sight skill had been disabled, since it was something I had to constantly focus on. Since I didn’t particularly feel safe before I arrived in town, I kept the aspect spell up for a while longer. First thing I’d need to do would be study the bodies of the two bears. Correction, first thing to do was spend my points from leveling up. I felt like I had enough wisdom for now, but my mana pool was lacking, so I spent all ten points in intelligence, bringing my mana up to an even five hundred. With that, I should be able to shift into a wolf, according to my estimates. I could test that out when I make my way back to the pond. Would also be fun to test out a combination of wolf form, snake scales, and bird wings. Would be like a tiny feathered dragon… sort of.

Either way, about ten minutes after I left the scene of the previous fight, I decided to take a rest. With my current mana regeneration, ten minutes was enough to recover most of my mana. One final Alchemic Heal spell rid me of the last bit of soreness from the fight, and after that I made a small barrier around myself with Earth Manipulation. Nothing major, just a wall to keep random mobs from charging at me while I worked.With that done, I went ahead and pulled out the two bears. Two my surprise, I had managed to grab both a male and a female bear, which made me rather happy. Going by what Jarl had told me before, this would be the key to letting me control my gender when I shifted forms. As for what other traits I wanted to copy from the bears, I was hoping to copy their muscular frames to make myself stronger, but in order to do that I’d probably need to do a full shift. I wasn’t experienced enough to just single out muscle mass and add it to myself.The first bear I studied was the female one, which had been the one unfortunate enough to burn to death. Then again, the other was unfortunate enough to die from a headbutt… I wasn’t really sure which one to feel more sorry for. Either way, I fully studied the aura for this bear over the course of an hour, before moving on to the other one. From there, I compared notes on the two, measuring where they were similar and different. After noting the differences between them, I looked at the male side of the differences, and compared them to the wolf aura I had studied, and finally my own.Although there were some minor differences, I managed to identify four parts of the aura that were nearly identical between the male bear, wolf, and myself. These same aura components were completely different when compared to the female bear and lovebirds. Assuming my assumptions were correct, and yes that is quite an assumption, those should be the parts that determine gender.As such, to test this theory out, I tried it on myself. Seeing how excited the birds almost got, I did NOT turn into a male lovebird, but a female half-elf. That lasted for all of a minute of me oggling my own chest like a mad person before I changed back, glad to be back to my own gender. Though, I had to admit I looked far more attractive as a woman than I had imagined. Now that I knew the trick of it, I would never again need to turn into a woman! Well, not unless there was a really drastic situation.