Since pathways were too difficult for now, I focused on partial and regular shifts instead. The latter was fairly simple since it only required to practice Shift and learn how to move around while transforming.
Transforming from a raging elephant into a small avian monster was cool and all, but it was also a little complicated. The difference in size, movent pattern, as well as weight played a crucial role–not only because every wrong step could lead to death, but because Shift didn’t allow to transform from one monster into another in an instant. It took a mont, sotis even a few seconds. Those seconds were the most dangerous.
I was vulnerable while transforming. Thus, I had to cut down how long it took to transform. It was that simple, or should be. But not all transformations were that simple. Transforming from a Hnoll into a human was easy. At this point, I was proficient enough to finish the procedure in a fraction of a second. But even without months of practice, it would be faster than transforming from a quadruped into a winged monster.
Even human to quadruped took longer, which only made sense. After all, Shift had to work a lot more to complete all changes.
I spent the rest of the midday going through dozens of transformations. Using every bit of ti in every form to get used to them, I learned a lot. So of the things I learned were still hard to grasp and required more study until they would eventually make sense, but I knew I was on the right track.
After draining Shift completely for the first ti that day, I left to get so food. The residents of Cintre were still gossiping and studied with a mixture of curiosity, wariness, and... excitent. It was almost like they had never seen a human before, which made no sense considering how many Hunters Cintre had.
I paid a dozen iron chips for a decent al at one of the few food vendors on the street across from the inn and returned to the room. Or so was my initial plan, before the inn owner told to "do whatever the fuck I was doing" outside his establishnt. Apparently, transforming into a Silverback Elephant had been too much for the floor. More precisely, the ceiling of the room below mine suffered greatly. It creaked and cracked like a damn witch being snapped in half–according to the inn owner.
Accepting the situation for what it was, I searched for a nice place to keep practicing Shift. To rest a little while the Essence of my Core recovered enough to use Shift again. There wasn’t much greenery in Cintre, but I found a few nice trees beside a wooden bench etched with a filigree design depicting a noble house–House Gaia in this case, displaying the brown figure of a woman. At least, I thought it was a woman.
Ignoring the bench and its design, I sat down beside the tree, resting my back against the thick trunk as I recovered a little. Then I practiced partial shifting once more, and how to maintain those partial shifts, of course. First, I shifted my entire hand to the claws of a Hnoll. The bone structure of my hand did not change all that much when compared to other Accessible Shifts, but the difference was obvious nonetheless.
I loosened my control of Shift after no more than a minute or two, which ended the partial shift almost imdiately. While that was expected, it was not what I wanted.
"I need to pin the change, anchor it to my main form. But is that really possible?"
To maintain my Accessible Shifts permanently, I only needed to be stronger than them. Precisely, all it took was for my Core to be stronger. It was no problem for to stay in another form permanently as long as I wanted...
"Am I blocking myself?" I blurted out loud.
Shift and its Accessible Shifts never said anything about forms or partial shifts. Those were terms I ca up with to explain everything to myself. In my head, that made sense. It was only logical that everything had to be like that. Permanently maintaining another form was feasible only when I was stronger. I had enough energy to walk in the form of yet another being, after all.
But were those really "other" beings at this point? Weren’t they part of as much as my Power and Core were? Shift created all these forms from the monsters and humans I’d killed. From that point onward, they were no longer other creatures. They were .
That ant there should not be an issue to transform, partially or fully, permanently as long as I was stronger.
Shift was not only restricted by my Core’s saturation. It was restricted by my mind as well. I restricted myself, thinking my main form was sohow different from the others, and that it could only prevail as long as Shift was actively being used. But not all Powers had active effects. In fact, every Power had both active as well as passive abilities.
All Accessible Shifts were part of myself. They all belonged to my true state.
As I told myself that, sothing in the back of my mind clicked. My hand transford into a Hnoll’s claw once more. This ti, however, I barely touched Shift after the transformation ca to be. The claw felt weaker than the rest of my body and like it wasn’t supposed to be there, but I knew it belonged to . I knew it was part of , and I considered it as such.
Changing the way my mind thought was not easy. It took the rest of the day as well as most of the night just to maintain the Hnoll claw for seconds after Shift stopped. But by the ti I knew it could work, my mind adjusted much faster.
And once the first sun rose beyond the horizon, casting its brilliant light upon Cintre, I was fully convinced. The claw persisted for an entire minute before a System notification popped up.
[New discovery has been made. Shift has been updated.]
A new form had been added to the Accessible Shifts–but at the front of the list rather than the end.
Accessible Shifts: Chira (Main Form),...
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