(This chapter was uploaded on Wednesday 2/April/2025 9:25 PM, timezone GMT+3)
Sorry for being late. Had to go check on my wisdom tooth and that took nearly 2 hours of precious editing time. I am glad to have finished editing this chapter today and being able to keep my word.
Didn't get anesthesia or remove the tooth. It's still snugly sitting in its place, broken and in need of removal. I would need to go to another hospital that is better equipped so they could remove it for me, which is going to be open by next week at the soonest.
Just one last thing before you proceed to the chapter:
Any ideas you want me to try integrating into the bodies of monsters?
Or any ideas of monsters you wish for me to make?
I will either make them to fill empty floors (floors the canon story did not explore) or to use for Henryk to make. More on that as the story progresses. You could suggest mythological monsters, or completely made-up ones.
Without any further ado, please, enjoy.
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Don't shy from commenting on typos and/or inconsistencies. That and/or suggesting a modification to certain things that didn't make sense to you.
I hope you enjoy reading this chapter.
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(Sunday, 18/10/1058)
(3rd person PoV)
Henryk was awake when Shira's hands and arms started to change structure at a noticeable rate.
'It looks like the skill molds her body anew' He observed. He continued looking closely at her for a while longer.
'It seemed that the skill makes the more drastic changes when Shira's asleep. I hope she wouldn't forget or leave me' He wanted to hug her closer but refrained from doing so. He feared curving a bone the wrong way by accident. Since he did not know what a Claw Eater's bones would look like without the muscles, he did not want to take any risks that may leave Shira with lasting effects.
For now, he simply watched as the extra ears grew fully while the human ears grew fur all over their upper ridges and behind them. Shira's mouth fell open and he saw that all her teeth had transformed. Her mouth protruded forward a little bit as well while her lips darkened.
Her body's total size overgrew her clothes as she almost tore her way out of them. Due to such a rapid growth in size, her body appeared emaciated, lacking any visible muscles even where skin is exposed. After a few minutes, her stomach grumbled very loudly before her eyes opened.
The day prior, the eyes maintained visible sclera, white ones, while the pupils were the ones to change, changing to vertical slits. But this morning, Shira's eyes became all purple. There was no sclera in sight as her irises grew bigger and covered most of it. Her eyes emitted a faint luminescent purple light. After a few blinks, her eyes' glow dimmed and went away. ('1)
When the sun finally shone on her delicate skin, it turned out to be dusted with a layer of gray. There were also some small lines on it that reminded Henryk of the tigers in a further northern part of the forest he owned and resided in. ('2)
'No, those aren't thick enough. But, on the off-chance she turned into a tiger-based species, independent as they are, I'd be likely to lose her even if she was still there inside' Henryk grimaced.
"Why the grimace?" Shira said with a lethargy-laden voice. Sleep pursued her mind still.
"Nothing you should worry about" Henryk said as he brushed a hairlock away from her eyes. His face eased into a more neutral expression.
"I-I..." Shira's face drained of color and reddened at the same time. Her blood pressure rose as she smelled something, purging the last remnants of sleep from her.
"What is it?" Henryk asked, not realizing the situation.
"I can smell it..." Shira said shyly, voice hushed from embarrassment.
"What do you smell?" Henryk smelled his armpit, thinking that that might have been it. "Oh, I should go shower, I guess" He smelled, and wanted nothing to do with what made him so. He attempted to get up.
"Not that" Shira said as she pulled his sleeve. "Your body smells of desire..." Shira dropped a bomb.
"..." Henryk stared at her dumbfounded. He did not expect Shira to pick up on that. He did not expect her nose to develop this quickly, either.
'Loki, I curse thee. Why need thee enhance Shira's Jacobson Organ?' Henryk cursed at his current patron deity.
"And? Me feeling that means nothing. I decide whether to show it or not, and now isn't the time to. Not to mention, you have the right to refuse" Henryk said as a matter of fact.
"But what if I wanted you to act on it?" Shira said coquettishly.
'Even yesterday, her hands were shaking, and she had an aversion to sex due to the awkwardness of not experiencing it and wondering how she should do it, fearing that she may fail to find a cruel truth behind the act. But something about her is different today, and it happened too fast and the change's too drastic' He thought.
"Wait! WAIT! What was I doing?!" Shira put some distance between them as her eyes sharpened into vertical slits and her eyes widened, showing the slightest bit of her sclera. ('3)
"You were trying to seduce me first thing in the morning" Henryk said with an amused yet worried smile as he walked into the shower, leaving Shira to her thoughts.
When he returned, he noticed Shira huddling under the blanket, hiding all but her head.
"You remain inside today. I'll bring our breakfast so we could eat it in the room" Henryk said. He started doing her hair, calming Shira's nerves slightly.
"Henry, what would you do if I become too big?... too... different?" Shira asked. The uncertainty in her heart showed up in her voice.
"Then so be it. You'd still be you at the end of it all" Henryk said. He started brushing her hair. "How a human expresses his or her personality doesn't change who that human is. I won't let go of you" He patted her head. When Shira looked at him with a questioning gaze, Henryk continued.
"Also, remember? I'm a possessive man. I won't let go of you just because your body changed, not that your body has anything to do with me marrying you. I married you for your person, not your body. You being beautiful is the extra sweetness of something already sweet" He whispered before getting up.
"Henryk" Shira sternly called Henryk's name, not his nickname. He turned back to her, facing her with all his being. She understood that he dedicated all of his focus to her. "You said yesterday that you just started forming romantic love towards me" Shira's eyes refused to meet Henryk's eyes as she struggled to get the question out. She took a deep breath then continued. "Honestly, tell me why you agreed to marry me"
"Are you sure you want to know? After all, ignorance is bliss" Henryk asked. His tone tested her resolve. After taking a breath, Shira prepared her answer.
"I think I know what you are thinking. I purposefully pushed away any thought about the reason why. I wanted to avoid suffocating over it... Not anymore. I need to face this fear of mine, Henryk" Shira said.
"I married you for more than two reasons, but let's stick to the most important duo" Henryk said as he walked back to the bed. "One was to not make you feel chronically insecure. Having your first relationship fail before even starting could be mentally debilitating. Look at me, I almost became an extreme pessimist. You may have taken it better than I did, but that still is a possibility with no guarantees. I didn't want to take this risk" He sat down, stuffing himself under the blanket with Shira for no apparent reason, startling her slightly.
"The other reason was to let your father know that I don't take you lightly. I wanted to show him that I wouldn't play with his precious daughter's emotions, your emotions, using some mere unspoken engagement as an excuse, not after all of your dedicated efforts" He said. He looked her in the eyes as he remained under the blanket for a bit longer. "Thankfully, for the both of us, I started developing a budding romantic love towards you"
'My sorry ass would've remembered this and regretted it once I grew old with no one by my side. That's the case especially because lady Artemis wouldn't have had anything to do with me if I was willing to play with someone's feelings. She wouldn't have seen me as a man with a pure enough heart by then' He chuckled after having the thought. 'Not that I would ever agree to being with lady Artemis anyway. Getting with a goddess like Artemis could end with an arrow in my heart because of an accidental misunderstanding'
After Shira felt a fading anguish, her heart settled down on contentment.
"Sorry... I don't have any clothes my size to-" "Fuaah~! Good morning~!" Fey woke up, being very vocal about it. Henryk sneakily got up from under the blanket as Fey yawned another time. She shook her whole body violently before curiously tilting her head at Shira's current predicament.
"Big Mama~!" Fey, bless her pure heart, saw nothing more than her Mama getting bigger. She failed to notice the extra ears. She flopped on Shira in a big, feathery hug.
"Good morning, Fey" Shira's heart calmed down. Fey's warm hug, filled with her oblivious innocence, made Shira smile.
"You know, sometimes, I get jealous while looking at you, you two" Henryk said while laying sideways, being smug for no appearance reason.
"Mama~! Get up~!" After that warm moment, Fey enacted her tuggy antics and grabbed the blanket with her talons. As her talons were still covered, the blanket was saved.
"Fey! No!" Shira, panicking, held onto the blanket for dear life.
"Please stop, Fey" Henryk patted Fey's back, making her drop her hold on the blanket. "Your Mama doesn't have clothes to wear right now. She needs that blanket"
"Thanks", was all Shira said before covering her head with the blanket as well.
"Let's go" Henryk took no more than half a step before he heard a thud behind him. He turned around to find Fey sitting on the ground with her legs stretched in front of her. (AN: Imagine a cat sitting down like it owns the place and you pay rent to it. Fey is sitting down in a similar way)
"Fey'll stay with Mama~" Fey said. She then corrected the position of her legs as Henryk walked out of the room.
'We're making good progress with smoothening Fey's voice into that of a human child's, which she seems eager to try using. We should work on that a bit more' Henryk thought, some pride forming in him as he thought over plans for how he should change Fey's syrinx.
Understanding that Shira did not want to talk at the moment, Fey remained silent. After a prolonged yet amicable silence between them, Henryk brought the meal inside.
"Shira, our meal is here" Henryk said, getting no response. He lifted the blanket to witness Shira's defenseless sleeping face.
'Cute. Now, how to wake her up without irritating her?' He thought. In his peripheral vision, he saw Fey getting up. He was glad that the carpet muffled her footsteps.
Getting an idea, he patted her head and whispered her name close to her ears. After her ears twitched, she woke up and opened her eyes. With her eyes half-lidded with sleep, she subconsciously licked Henryk's face. Her tongue stung him as it slid over, almost tearing some of his skin off. He powered through it and did not show any pain.
Shira sat up and stretched her body before her brain finally caught up to the shame of acting like an animal and being naked for no reason. She flared red as her hand stretched for the blanket. Not finding it, she turned around to find Fey already in possession of their only blanket. Shira wanted nothing more than for the earth to split apart and swallow her at the moment.
Standing up, her total height was more than Henryk's, her head nearly hitting the ceiling ('4). She felt out of it with the sudden change in perspective. But, weirdly enough, she did not feel the strong rejection she felt the day before or this morning.
"Fey, hand it over" Henryk took his leisure walking towards Fey to retrieve the blanket.
Fey, however, had a different plan in mind. She had opened the room's large window in advance.
"No~!" She flew out and took the blanket with her.
"Well, that just happened. Now I know why mom always said that children should never be given wings" Henryk mumbled while pinching the bridge of his nose. ('5)
"Your mother said that?" Shira asked. She went for the next best thing, the bed sheets. She covered herself with them.
"You heard that? 'Twas barely a mumble" Henryk said, feeling both astonished and amazed. "That's actually a good improvement to your hearing. Congrats"
*GRRRRrRrrRrrRrrRrrr*
Shira's stomach could not wait any longer. And with it, Shira's body took over for her. She started eating everything her hands could reach. By the time she came to, she ate everything, leaving nothing to Henryk.
"What... was that?!" She was startled. She was looking at her hands in distress over her loss of control. Her not using spoons and forks and dipping her hands in her food did not help her currently ingoing existential crisis.
"That is what we call extreme hunger. You lose control as your body decides to keep you alive for you. You can prevent it simply by eating on your own" Henryk said while patting her on the back, an attempt to console her.
*GrrRrrRr*
"Can I... have some more?" Shira bashfully said while wrapping her arms around her abdomen. She was a light eater. Thus, this sudden spike in appetite made her shocked with herself. Forget about the shock, she forgot the shame of being naked unnecessarily and had all of her focus on eating.
"I'll go bring more" Henryk noticed how Shira's skin was tinted a shade of reddish grey with some vapor visible under the light. He also noticed how her body did not look as emaciated as before.
'Her metabolism has been ramping up heavily. Hopefully, it lasts no longer than her transformation' Henryk pondered. 'It could be an adaptation to hasten the transformation' ('6)
'With her presumed height after the transformation is over, I may need to bring her food as long as she wants to eat. Obtaining enough mass to construct the human anatomy on such a scale demands lots of food' Henryk thought long and hard. All the while, his body was going on autopilot and grabbing everything that could be fit into the food cart. He went on what he later called 'Gathering Runs', blind and deaf to everything that does not impede his 'Gathering Runs'.
The end result was a drowsy blob of a woman. After Henryk left the room, his heart and mind both barely functioning after being filled with nothing but worry, Shira collapsed on the bed. Her transformation finally started in earnest.
(In the manor's library)
"You were largely unresponsive throughout the morning" Riveria said. Her tone suggested a question without the pressure of answering one. Henryk felt a small amount of gratitude build up for the gesture.
"Thank you for your concern, lady Riveria" Henryk stood with a straight back. He folded his left behind his back as his right hand's palm was covering where his heart is. The practiced precision with which he performed did not go unnoticed by those present. "I was preoccupied with my concern for my wife's health. My body was moving on its own as my mind drifted into the horizon" Henryk sat down opposite of her.
"Then, shall we start with an overview of what we will discuss?" Riveria dipped her feather pin in ink and prepared the papers. Henryk did the same.
"Let us start with what is the name of each field of knowledge we will dive into..." Henryk wrote the equivalent of the various names in Koine. He proceeded to list their related studies as he wrote them down.
"What will we start with?" Riveria asked after she was done writing down the terms, each on a separate notebook.
"We will start with basic mathematics, as most rely on it. The reason is that I expect you to know the things we need from that field, considering the papers you deal with regularly" Henryk said.
"Do you understand the concept of power in math?" He asked. He prepared to be looked at with questioning eyes filled with accusation and a defensive attitude after his question.
"You mean multiplying the number by itself a number of times?" Riveria said. She addressed the question without making a problem about the obvious. What is obvious to her might not be for him, and she knew that.
"What about square roots? Polynomial functions? Power functions? Negative numbers? Absolute value?" Henryk rapid-fired his questions one after the other.
"Square roots are used to find which number, when multiplied with itself, would give us the number under the root. Polynomial functions take one variable and give it different powers and coefficients to find the value of another variable. Power functions put a variable as the power of a known number. Negative numbers and the absolute value function are things that were discussed, but I did not find much information on them yet" Riveria said as she cupped her chin. The fact that she did not know these two pained her inquisitive mind. Thankfully, she knew how to separate her personal interests and her life as an executive, and which of the two mattered more.
"Then we could scratch math out of the list for now. Some of these concepts and the simpler mathematical processes leading up to them are what we needed from there" Henryk scratched a line over math. "What field do you want to delve into first?"
Riveria pondered for a few moments before choosing anatomy, as it was the most relevant to her skillset.
"Before we start, I want to tell you that our lessons will get shorter once I start going to the dungeon sometime later. I need to get to level 2 within the month, you see" Henryk said as he asked for a blackboard and chalk and started the lesson.
(See side story for this lesson and say it if you want any more of them)
(Late into the night)
"It's late. We should go rest" Henryk said. He admired Riveria's concentration during the day. If anything, the only problem he had with their lessons was the number of elven parasites that wormed their way into the lesson to 'guard' Riveria, against her will no less.
"That is true" Riveria said, only now noticing that it was getting late.
They both, along with some of the elves that stayed, reorganized the table and wiped the blackboard they used before exiting, each heading to their own room.
'I wonder, what happened since last I checked?' Henryk thought. Throughout the day, Henryk stopped the lesson every hour or so to check on Shira's condition. At the end of the lesson, he told Riveria to analyze what he told her and cross it with the information she learned throughout her life.
His mood kept getting worse as Shira's body gradually melted into a cancerous-looking, indiscernible blob.
'Just in case' Henryk went to the kitchen. He thought that Shira might want to eat something, again. He was more than willing to give her what she needs and what she wants. And in this case, she wanted and needed this food.
As Henryk entered their bedroom, he saw Shira's body starting to form nobs in a way that hints at limbs forming.
'So, it took today and will only take a day more, at most... I hope so' He then remembered that her brain might have had its neural connections severed so they could be reformed as well.
'That might be a problem' He scratched the back of his head in frustration.
He put the food near Shira's supposed mouth, watching in worry as her supposed mouth slowly approached the food and sucked bits of it in.
"Could you hear me, Shira?" Henryk asked as he patted her where he thought her back should be.
"H-... He-...Hh-..." Shira unconsciously attempted to reply, seeing as her brain was not as properly structured to support conscious thought at the moment.
"Stop if it hurts" Henryk whispered to her ears, which formed way so rapidly just as her mouth did.
'Maybe what she subconsciously desires forces the priorities of what is formed first' He thought.
Shira stopped attempting to form words and slipped back to sleep. Henryk then knew that Shira's memories were at least partially intact.
'I hope... I hope her memories of me don't fade away' He thought with a heavy heart. He forced his mind's state to go back to normal so he could sleep. He slept on the floor with Fey, who returned the blanket sometime during the day. They left the bed for Shira to make her as comfortable as possible.
'I should order a new set of clothing for her. With her current mass, she should be somewhere around what Loki said. That should be around 6-6.4 meters. Also, along with the new dress, I need to order her a shirt and a pair of pants in case her preferences in clothes ever change. Considering that the human form she should be able to assume would mostly take the form of her body when she was still a human, I think I could work around the fact that we don't really know about her final height' Henryk thought of all the designs he could. He chose the designs that are the most adjustable.
(End of Chapter)
'1:
A symbiotic bacterial colony lives on her eyeballs. More on that as the story progresses.
'2:
Remember how his lore is that he is a noble family's descendent? They owned the land of the entire forest on one side of the continent and protected it for centuries. Attempting to at least partially domesticate Harpy Eagles, a personal obsession that turned into a tradition down the family line, they succeeded in progressing down the right path. By Henryk's time, the eagles were not just non-apprehensive towards humans they are used to but played and hunted with them regularly. Henryk took a few into hunting sessions, cycling through them daily. Also, I said that he took out a few at a time because they taught them how to hunt in a group of at least 3-4 eagles instead of hunting solo or only with their mate most of the time.
'3:
Feline sclera is usually covered. If you could see it, then the feline is feeling threatened, excited, or anxious. Here, Shira felt an excessive amount of anxiousness.
'4:
The rooms, especially ones on the top floor, have high ceilings. They are high enough for two Ottars to be stacked on top of each other to be able to reach the ceiling.
No, I am not American. I am using Ottar as my measurement as a joke with one of the readers. The height of the ceiling was around 4.25 meter. Sitting down once the transformation was done, Should be able to sit down with a strait back.
'5:
Here, Victoria was not saying that about every eagle. This specific harpy was one she raised and this comment was given endearingly. Henryk took it out of context purposefully.
'6:
For those curios, metabolism does more than that. When metabolism is hyped up, the cells involved divide faster. This is an application of that concept. Way more cells are needed to go through this safely, and more than that in food as well.
By the way, the skill made it magically so that Shira does not... ugh.... well... Her skill made her unable to go do her business, utilizing magic to bend the rules and transform waste matter into useful matter yet again, barely excreting anything.
Of course, Henryk had a mini heart attack before consulting Loki.
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Greetings, dear readers
I have not that much to say. I just want to go to sleep after writing this foot note. And as such, I will keep it short today.
I am done writing up to chapter 31, with the need for some many needed edits for each chapter before uploading them. Tomorrow, I will probably upload a side story chapter or two, depending on how quickly my work on them would reach an end I am satisfied with.
Stay well, ladies and gentlemen.