An old woodsman relaxed in his camp, one he’d used a thousand times over a forty-year career. He’d lived in the region his whole life. He knew the dangers. He knew what to look out for. He knew how strong the monsters were and how to handle everything he shared the forest with.

When [Danger Sense] niggled at his mind, he was more confused than anything. “Probably just another one of those wood sprites,” he muttered. They were annoying, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He casually reached down and curled his fingers around the haft of his wood-cutting ax.

Climbing to his feet, he peered out past the flickering shadows his campfire threw across the trees. The warning sensation in his mind steadily grew from ‘forgot to lock the door’ to ‘being watched by something in the dark.’ Chills went down his spine and he felt a bead of sweat start to roll down the side of his face.

What the hell is that?

His eyes darted back and forth as he slowly spun in place. Blindly, he reached down for the bow he’d left propped up against a log. Whatever was out there, it wasn’t something he wanted to face with a tool in his hands instead of a real weapon. He jabbed three arrows into the log for quick retrieval and put a fourth on the string.

“Morgus save me and deliver me from this trial,” he prayed quietly, his lips barely moving.

[Danger Sense] screamed in his mind suddenly, so overwhelming that he almost dropped the arrow from sheer fright. Something raced through the darkness, something massive and powerful, a titan covered in black fur. The woodsman’s hands shook so bad that he could barely raise his bow to lease the arrow, and his attempts to lead the blur of the monster’s body failed utterly.

It didn’t matter. If the monster had stood still, he’d still have missed. The arrow disappeared into the brush, nowhere near the charging monster, and the woodsman knew his death was upon him.

Then the monster disappeared, rushing past him without so much as a sniff in his direction. The woodsman collapsed on the spot, a quivering mess of sweat and terror. He clutched at his chest, feeling his heart slam against it wildly, and thanked Morgus for hiding him from the monster.

* * *

Torwin was old, but he was also high level and in possession of a class that excelled at overland travel over harsh conditions. He was fast, almost faster than Velik. That was why Velik had cheated. He ran through the darkness, tireless on four paws in his wolf form. He passed dozens of camps, mostly merchant wagons bedding down for the night, but occasionally a hunting team or even loner. One of them even noticed him, though the arrow he shot off was so laughably inadequate that Velik almost turned around to go talk to the man.

He didn’t though, because despite everything, Torwin wasn’t that far behind. Velik had maybe a ten-minute lead after close to four hours of running, which was frankly insane. The problem was the size difference. They weren’t on nice, wide, flat roads, and weaving through trees was a lot harder with a shoulder width of over three feet.

It might have actually been faster for me to take the roads, but then I’d have to worry about running into patrols or towns and explaining why I’m a giant wolf. Easier to just cut across the forest than to make up lies.

Besides, he needed the practice. Though his skill in using [True Form] had increased greatly, he still had a long way to go. The time to shift back and forth was down to about four seconds now instead of ten—still too long to use in a real battle, and he was still struggling to pull on the power of more than one piece of gear at a time. On that front, at least, he was pretty sure he was close to a breakthrough. He could feel all of the gear stowed away in the spatial storage, and he was actually reasonably certain the only thing preventing him from drawing on multiple pieces was the gear itself.

Simply put, it was too good. If he’d been using a bunch of weakly enchanted equipment, he was sure he could have managed to connect to all of them. It was like they had some sort of weight to them, and the stronger they were, the heavier they got. He didn’t have the power to hold multiple pieces, yet, though the massive weight of the traveler’s bracelet definitely wasn’t helping.

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So, he ran through the night, dodging through trees and racing Torwin while he practiced. Sometimes he had to shift back to his human form, and that was fine. It gave him more chances to try speeding up that transformation, which seemed to come more quickly both from becoming more familiar with his wolf shape and from being able to properly visualize the change.

A few anatomy lessons probably wouldn’t go amiss, but Velik was a hunter and a killer. He’d cut up plenty of wolves, and he knew how they were put together. Humans were a bit more of a mystery, but more so because he hadn’t butchered any of the people he’d killed than because he’d never had occasion to defend himself from another person. Still, he was familiar with the basics, and he’d been slowly refining his mental image of how all the pieces lined up.

Plus, once, Giller had gotten hold of a scroll detailing organs and bones and muscles on an average person for him to look at. It wasn’t as good as speaking to an actual healer, but it was better than nothing. That had helped a lot, and it formed the basis of what he’d been attempting for the last few weeks.

He leaped a ravine in wolf form, his body turning almost liquid as it flowed back to his human shape midair, and when he landed on the other side, he rolled back to his feet and easily slipped through the wall of trees. For the next thirty seconds, he darted around, looking for the wider spaces he knew were coming. Once he found a trail, he activated [True Form] again.

His body flowed through the change—three seconds this time—and he took a moment to sniff the air. Torwin wasn’t far off, maybe a mile or two away. Scent tracking was another thing he’d spent a lot of time practicing, both because it was a valuable tool his skill granted him access to and because he was reasonably certain the biggest hold up to instant transformations at this point was that he didn’t fully understand the physical mechanics of his new senses.

Rather, it was more honest to say that was Aria’s theory. Velik was confident that she was right though, not in the least because talking with her and applying her suggestions had netted him a rank up in a skill he’d been struggling to advance on his own. He just needed to take it further.

The two ended their race in a village four hundred miles southeast of Ashala just as the sun was coming up. Torwin’s face was red and his chest heaved, but he’d only been twenty minutes behind Velik. They stood together, a mile away from the town near one of the small farms that always tended to circle such places. The owner of that farm was already awake and tending to his business, but other than a single curious glance over at human-shaped Velik when he’d first walked out of the woods, the man had ignored the stranger.

“Good warm up,” Velik said once Torwin finally caught up. “Ready for the next leg of the trip?”

“Gods above and below, kid, no. We’re going to take at least an hour so I can catch my breath, maybe two. I admit it: you’re faster than me. No surprise considering I’m pretty sure your physical is thirty or forty points higher and you’re a third my age.”

“Excuses?” Velik asked. “I thought you said experience was more important than raw stats.”

“For hunting down prey! Not for a foot race!”

“Still sounds like an excuse to me,” Velik teased.

Torwin reached out to shove him, but Velik didn’t budge. Blinking down at the hand pressed against Velik’s shoulder, he asked, “Did you… uh… put on some weight?”

“Actually, now that you mention it, I kind of do feel different,” Velik said. The two of them started walking around the outside edge of the farmer’s field, ignoring the dog barking at them while its owner shushed it. “I think it might be a side effect of one of my skills. Swimming is a bit harder, too. Nothing I can’t overcome, of course, but it’s a noticeable difference.”

“Huh. That’s mildly concerning. Did you tell anyone?”

“Kept it between me and Morgus until just now,” Velik said. “Seemed like it was probably related to… you know… so it was better not to be casually asking about it.”

“Good idea,” Torwin agreed. “I don’t know if you’re right, but I can poke around and see if it’s a common side effect of people with shape shifting skills. I don’t think it is, but I’m not an expert.”

“Supposedly all the extra mass is magicked up, from what I was able to learn,” Velik said.

“You mean from what Aria told you.”

“Same thing.”

Torwin chuckled and said, “That’s the way I understand it, too. Maybe your skill is physically reshaping your body, though, trying to push you closer to the shape you take when you use it.”

Velik felt a chill at those words. All that practice trying to speed up his transformation speed had paid off, unless it hadn’t. What if it’s not about the visualization? What if it’s just that there’s less to change because [True Form] is making me less human? It did come from that cursed class orb that turned Chalin into a monster.

And it does have the golden blood of a divine beast. That’s another complication.

“Maybe I’ll just stop using that until we learn a bit more,” Velik said softly.

“Might be for the best. Too bad, though. It’s a potent skill.”