“Well? What do you think?” Micky asked Elaine.
His cousin circled him a few tis, scrutinizing his appearance carefully before eventually nodding. “It’s good. You look just like Grandpa! I wouldn’t be able to tell if I hadn’t seen you transform.”
Micky’s smile widened. Technically, the lower grade of his mana cores would give him away rather easily, but it was nothing that a few concealnt runes wouldn’t fix.
“How about now?” he asked again, shifting his appearance.
Unlike before, he didn’t bother to reconstruct his entire body from scratch. Only a thin layer on the surface squird as shards of soul-freezing ice and droplets of soul-freezing water rearranged themselves, adjusting his shape and colours slightly.
Soon after comncing his latest project, he had realized that he didn’t need to have light pass through his entire body. He only needed to create lots of tiny crystals of various shapes that would bend, reflect and disperse light into distinct colours, and have his trait dynamically arrange them as necessary. The resolution he could achieve was frightening, as modifying his appearance was the part of his transformation where his trait excelled.
Perfecting his new spell had ended up taking about a full month, aning that he was cutting it close with the affinity-granting treasure that he had to deliver to Nesha. Micky had always found it difficult to pause in the middle of a project that he found interesting. This was definitely a trait that he had inherited from Percy, as his Huehuan side wasn’t like that.
“This is… quite unsettling,” Elaine said as soon as he was done transforming. This ti, she sounded less than pleased. “Is it , or did you make
look a little fat around the waist?”
Micky chuckled, though he opted not to say anything. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t made a mistake – his cousin had gained so weight in the last couple of years. She was still quite lean, but clearly not as much as she would have liked.
Unwilling to give her another reason to slap him, he quickly transford into sothing else. This ti, he picked Galahad – a person that he had never possessed. Technically, that made it harder to copy one’s appearance, but morphing just his exterior wasn’t much of an issue as long as it was a species that he was already used to.
“Yeap. This one’s perfect too. You even got his clothes right,” Elaine confird, before poking his cheek with her finger. “Your skin even feels and bends like a human’s!” she added, before frowning. “Though it’s still as cold as ice.”
He shrugged. “Not much I can do about that. Or well… there’s probably a way to fix that too if I want, but it sounds like too much effort for too little gain.”
Next, he spent a few minutes cycling through a bunch of other forms. He had grown better at transforming into most of his sapient hosts – except for those that he hadn’t spent much ti possessing – and he could even freely adjust their appearance into a customized mber of their species.
Sadly, his cousin hadn’t seen any of those people before, so she wouldn’t be able to tell if he made a mistake, though he was confident by now that his own enhanced instincts were good enough.
His Status clearly agreed.
[Congratulations! You have mastered a new spell: Hybrid Art: Chaleon’s Skin – Refined!]
‘Finally,’ he thought, exhaling in relief. ‘Straight to Refined too!’
It didn’t really matter whether he registered the spell or not, because this wasn’t one that synergized with his mutated eyes. Hell, he didn’t even have them in this body. Still, the notification was proof that he had grown proficient enough to potentially trick sobody if necessary.
It also felt good to have his efforts recognized.
As for why it was a Hybrid Art – that wasn’t much of a mystery. It made use of both a mutation and a spectral trait, so it was a mixture of a Wild Art and a Spectral Art. Apparently, Phoebe’s Decree was more than happy to lump it in the sa category as his Core Bestowal, despite that one being a mixture of a Spectral Art and a Secret Art.
If he ever incorporated his bloodline into Chaleon’s Skin, it might even turn into an Ultimate Art like the Symphony, though he doubted he would create another Extre spell anyti soon.
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Then again, it could be argued that he had already sort of included his bloodline into the current version of the spell, because the knowledge of many of his current forms had been acquired by him possessing them. However, that wasn’t a strict requirent for it to work, which was reflected in the spell’s na.
“What are its limitations?” his cousin suddenly asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
“Anything that’s not human, Huehuan or crow takes a few seconds longer to turn into, though the difference is small. I think I’ve had enough practice with the spell to turn into most of my past hosts and other mbers of their species, though so of the more bizarre ones will probably still collapse the mont I start straining myself,” he explained.
Elaine nodded thoughtfully. “What about creatures you’ve never possessed before?”
“They should still be too hard at the mont, but every new appearance I master makes it easier to learn more,” he replied.
There were only so many ways to structure an arm or a skull. The more forms he added to his repertoire, the more reference points he would have in the future. Micky hoped that he could slowly expand his capabilities to include any living creature – including not only those that he’d never possessed, but even so that he had never personally seen.
Perhaps, he might even grow capable of transforming into other structures eventually – bypassing the need for a consistent biology entirely. His new trait and spell were rely the starting point for a brand-new area of research.
Obviously, completing his artificial advancent and finding a way to strengthen Kassorith were more urgent – especially since the Amorphos wouldn’t really help with either – but he still intended to make so ti to practice his new ability on the side.
Micky chatted with Elaine for a few minutes longer, though his cousin eventually bade him farewell to return to her guard duties. He was about to pack up his things to finally head to Twilight City, when sobody knocked on his door.
‘Hmmm? Did she forget sothing?’ he wondered, willing the concealnt runes on the door to deactivate so that he could scan his visitor with Mana Sense and Soul Vision.
To his great surprise, he found nobody standing outside his house. It was like the person had vanished instantly upon knocking.
Frowning, he took a couple of deep breaths to flood his channels with mana, preparing himself for a fight in case he was about to be attacked by an enemy. He obviously knew that an enemy wouldn’t have bothered to announce themselves before ambushing him, so this was more likely sobody pranking him, but he wouldn’t relax until he was sure.
Opening the door, his eyes widened in shock as he saw the last person he had expected to see – not just outside his hut in Bogside town, but anywhere on Remior. His Mana Sense and Soul Vision still showed nothing, yet the figure smirking at him in his regular sight looked as real as a heart attack.
He was a tall man with a head of dull grey hair, his gaze intense and intimidating. He was wearing expensive-looking robes, a series of roots erging from the underside of a cloud on his insignia, indicating that he was a mber of Remior’s leading Great House.
More importantly, Micky recognized him, which only made it harder to accept that this person was standing before him, alive and well. After all, Micky had personally killed this man.
“Deimos!” he exclaid, his frozen heart leaping into his equally frigid mouth. “How?!”
The fallen Violet’s smirk brightened, though he remained silent, the bastard clearly happy watching Micky squirm. He made no move to attack either, sohow entirely unconcerned as he faced the very person who had executed him.
Sure, Micky had only managed to defeat Hers’s son after fusing with Percy, and his human body was dozens of kilotres away at the mont. However, he still had access to their powerful, shared domain with either of his bodies, so it might not be impossible to even the playing field and hold his own against the noble.
The man’s indifference to the danger he was in seed almost as unreasonable as his unexpected survival.
Almost.
‘No, wait. I’m an idiot. There’s no way he’s alive,’ he quickly realized, forcing himself to calm down.
His mind raced with possibilities as he considered every other reasonable explanation. Did Deimos have a twin brother, or was this Hers himself, sporting an unusual resemblance to his deceased son?
Even if the god cared about his dead progeny, Micky didn’t think that he would take direct action against him. The worst-case scenario would be that this was Machaon in disguise, as Micky wasn’t ready to fight against a White – certainly not with one of his bodies missing. However, Machaon’s mory-erasing bloodline was well known, and it shouldn’t have allowed him to transform into sobody else.
Silence stretched for several seconds, neither man making any further moves. Eventually, Micky settled on a guess that he felt fairly confident in, his shoulders finally relaxing as he realized that he wasn’t in any danger.
“Very funny,” he spat, his features twisting into a grimace. “I’ve been expecting you for weeks, and you decide to pull this stunt the mont you show up.”
‘Deimos’ chuckled, though his crisp laughter rang through the small hut like a gentle bell, sounding nothing like the deceased noble used to. At the sa ti, his body lted like wax, transforming into another.
“I arrived here a while ago, but I didn’t want to interrupt you as you were working on your new spell. After spending days watching you shapeshift, I couldn’t resist,” the prettiest woman that Micky had ever laid eyes upon said.
He sighed, not bothering to argue with the titaness.
The visitor was naturally Phoebe, and she was clearly here to honour her promise. It was finally ti to segregate the Lone Wanderer’s mories and truly reclaim his separate identities as Percy and Micky.
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