"Template shift to Pipler Bird..."
The next moment, the world tilted.
His bones shrank, feathers started erupting all over his body, and he began decreasing in size.
The world around him started to become brighter and more colorful. The dark green shades of leaves, the muddy brown soil, and the dark brown tree trunks. All the colors just popped in front of him.
Then the sky changed to dark blue with shades of violet here and there.
It was like he went from a dull, greyish world to a new, vibrant, colorful one.
It was just that this world felt a bit flatter. His range of vision also expanded—almost 360 degrees.
He could see everything around him, except for directly behind his head.
Then, this empty forest came to life.
The bizarre forest sounds, from leaves moving along with the wind to insects crawling onto the ground.
It was like an entirely new version of this forest came to life—a version he never got to experience as a human player.
Even the sweet, distinct smell of wet soil and green leaves made him want to just stay still and enjoy this whole new world.
The entire transformation happened within a moment, but he felt like the world slowed down for him during that moment.
Finally, he became this foot-long white bird with a small, 2-inch straight beak and tiny feet.
If he had to compare, this Pipler Bird looked more like a long white dove with some distinct features, such as a wide wingspan and golden eyes.
He tried to speak in this bird form, but the next moment, he heard this sweet call: "Cooo coo coo."
This call resembled more of a raven's sweet tone.
Well, in the future, he would definitely avoid speaking in this bird form. This sweet voice would just crumble all his dominance over his enemies.
This new world, from a bird's perspective, made his head spin for a moment, but the experience from his past life came in handy.
The hard part was getting used to the vision. For that, he used his past life's two-layer method—where at the front was his current bird's 340° vision. And behind it, a second human-sense layer, where he limited his focus to the usual 120°.
It was just that now, his vision was more like an extra-sensitive camera, which he could use to look around anywhere—just with a bit of depth loss—but overall good for examining everything around him.
For one moment, he focused on the front, and the next, he was looking at the left-back, then switched to the right-back.
Another thing different about the Template Wilder from other shapeshifting classes was these senses.
This bird template wasn't good just because of its flying ability.
That was just one thing—but the biggest of all were these new senses.
Especially the bird's eyes. They were so powerful that in his last life he used to change into a bird just to check the world around him.
Being a bird for a moment worked much better than having 3 to 4 people looking in all directions as scouts.
He stopped thinking about all that as he finally got used to the shift in senses.
Finally, he looked at the ground. It looked much closer to him than what he remembered in his human form.
That's another area where his class shined.
After all, each creature had their own limits of senses—but when he combined the different perceptions from these forms, he got this super-enriched world experience.
Like in human form, he had better depth perception, but as a bird, he could see different trees all around him in a zoomed-in version.
Like he was looking at the world through a powerful magnifying lens. He could even see this lizard walking on tree bark on a tree that was tens of meters away from him.
Heck, he couldn't even see those trees clearly as a human, but as this Pipler Bird, it felt like all those trees were right next to him.
He blinked himself out of his thoughts and checked his mana.
This small transformation barely took 2 mana points.
So, even at level 1, he could change about 25 times into these common template forms.
He nodded his head and then looked at the ground.
It was time for some movement. At first, he just jumped on the hard branch and flapped his wings to get the feeling.
After taking a small bird's breath, he jumped down and started flapping his wings as hard as possible.
At first, it didn't look like it was working, but then he felt himself flying forward.
He was flying—for the first time. The excitement was short-lived as he suddenly crashed into a tree.
"Fck."
While falling, he thought aloud, 'Template shift to human.'
The next second, mid-air, he felt his body expanding back.
This time, he felt a sting in his right shoulder as his clothes flashed out of the tattoos.
He was back to his human form in midair. Not wasting any moment, he used his experience to turn his body mid-air and land on his legs.
Thud!
He safely landed on the ground and said, "Template shift to Green Hook Snake."
The moment he said that, his body once again started compressing.
This time, it was more of a horizontal compression than the earlier overall compression.
The world around him once again changed.
If earlier he felt like he was going into the world full of color, then this time it felt like someone stole all the color from the world.
The entire world was just shades of green and blue.
He could still see the world around him with no problem, but there was a bit of a lack of clarity.
But if one thing became dull, another world opened up for him.
This time, it was the hidden world of the forest floor. He started feeling the vibrations from all around him.
By instinct, his now forked tongue moved on its own as he smelled everything around him.
The moment his forked tongue flicked in the air, the clearer this blue-and-green world became.
It was kind of interesting to change into this small, common green snake.
But then he faced a big problem. His experience in a snake's body was minimal, so moving with a snake's body became a challenge of its own.
He tried to wiggle his body, but all he could manage was to coil himself, roll around, twist, and turn—without making any real movement at all.
He sighed as he realized it would take time for him to get used to flying as a bird and moving as a snake.
But the vibration he was getting from deeper in the forest filled him with excitement. He just could not want to get used to these forms and use them in battles.
The little green hook snake, with its bright red eyes, looked at the forest and then awkwardly began wiggling around the floor again.