It took Ambrose an hour to follow the river from where they’d dove in, to the inlet of the river to the Royal capital. She might have made it there sooner, had Henric not been such a pest the entire journey. Once the troglodytic buffoon had gotten it in his head that he was in no danger, he’d started letting his hands wander and had tried several times to take advantage of her allowing him to breathe from her and turn it into a kiss. She’d nearly succumbed to the urge to drown him several times, taking him deep into the river, near the jagged rocks at the bottom and threatening to drag his face along the riverbed until he’d been properly cowed.
Even then, that didn’t stop her from throwing him onto the stone walkway bordering the river in the kingdom once she’d swam past the walls, nor did it stop her from slapping him after she’d washed her mouth out in the water several times in a desperate, but futile act to feel clean again.
“Ow! What was that for!?” he asked as he cupped his own cheek, still eying her body.
“For being a pig!” Ambrose hissed, pulling herself from the water and shifting back to her human form just to get his eyes off of her body. She was pleasantly pleased to find that all of her things were with her human form, and that she ended up as dry as she had been when she’d first taken on the Lambda form back in the cart.
“Hey! You kissed me first!” he protested, standing up. His normally wild, ruddy brown hair plastered to his scalp. His clothes sagged on him like they wanted to drag him to the ground, dripping pools of fresh river water.
“It was not a kiss. It was me helping you breathe so that we could travel without surfacing and risking being attacked!” Ambrose huffed before shaking her head and turning, looking for a stairway up to the waterway so she could try and find a guard. She’d rather warn the city than stand with the loser and have him try and make absurd claims.
She was lucky enough to find one nearby and started walking towards the stairs, ignoring the soaked whiner behind her. Once he figured out that she was ignoring his infantile fantasies about how she “liked kissing him”, he devolved to grumbling about how soggy his clothes were. Since Ambrose had no such issues, she walked the stone streets of the city at a comfortable, brisk pace.
Finding a guard was easy. All of the city guard wore a heater shaped badge on their left breast, whether they wore armor or not. And it seemed they were posted rather frequently along the river as well as the main road. The first guard Ambrose saw was a tall, lanky blond woman armed with an arming sword and a buckler. Ambrose waved at her, trying to get her attention before the pair of them got close to her. “Guard? Excuse me, guard?” she called.
“Greetings adventurers,” the guard replied, obviously putting a little extra bass behind her voice in order to sound stern. Ambrose ignored the act, launching into an explanation. “We just arrived from out of town using the river. We were on a cart to the city and were attacked. We were saved by Professor Lyssandrea Gulfrig, but she couldn’t escape with us,” she explained, trying to summarize things as best she could.
The guard frowned, seeming unclear on some details, but she nodded and signaled to yet another guard across the street. “Norlan! Cover me. We have something that the captain needs to hear!
The man across the road who had seemed like he was about to head into one of the shops stopped, sighed and rolled his eyes before nodding. “Hurry up. I’ll be breaking soon.”
“Lazy lout,” the guardwoman grumbled, turning and leading Ambrose along. As she moved after the guard, Henric tried to take her hand, but she turned and scowled at him. He likely couldn’t see her eyes past her bangs, but he sensed her glare and let go. Shaking her hand free of the water droplets his clammy fingers had left on her, she jogged to keep up with the guard.
—
“... And all of this occurred mere hours ago along the forest edge leading back from Grimwater Keep?” asked the scarred, fair skinned woman across the heavy wood desk from Ambrose, her wild, curly, chestnut brown hair drifting back into her face to cover her scarred eye. The woman across from her was the active guard captain for the day in the eastern section of the city. She was in charge of all of the guards at that gate and seemed to take her duties very seriously. Her office was a large room in one of the walls surrounding the eastern gate, lined with stacked and sealed stones and insulated with thick carpet and draperies that kept in the lantern and torch heat. Medals and trophy heads lined the walls and made the space seem exceptionally personal to the woman across from Ambrose.
When Ambrose nodded, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes as if begging the gods for patience. “You understand that the location you describe is more than twenty miles out of the city? Especially if no one else has reported seeing an explosion like you described yet. How do you propose that you, a pair of supposedly newly awakened people, not only made it such a distance in so short a time, and got into the city under a locked water gate that goes at least 30 feet down into that river, but also made it here without one of you drowning?”
Ambrose sighed, looking at the woman who gave her a stern glare in response to that sigh. “Lying about such important things to inflate your ego is still punishable with imprisonment, girl. I suggest you explain before I decide you're faking,” the woman growled.
“I'm not trying to be difficult,” Ambrose said, putting up her hands. She truly wasn't, she'd just had to retell the same story four different times before meeting this woman and felt reluctant to show off her body around Henric, who seemed to be revolting her stomach more by the minute. “I can show you how we got here, but l would appreciate it if my traveling companion would wait outside," she suggested. That would at least resolve some of the discomfort.
“I'll have to reject that request, kid. If I'm arresting you two, I'll do it here in this room. Saves me time,” the captain replied, shaking her head and eying both Ambrose and Henric over her desk.
Rather than push her luck with the woman, Ambrose stood, placing her hands on the desk so that she could maintain her balance. The guard captain tensed, looking ready to strike, but Ambrose was already shifting. Her clothes and gear disappeared completely. Her figure slimmed down, her ribs and waist both narrowing as her powerful hips flared into a beautiful lower body meant for swimming. Light, silvery-white fins extended from her wrists as well as the sides of her hips and lower along her aquatic form. Those same scales flowed down her lower body over powerfully muscular hips and a beautiful, long finned tail that slapped lightly against the floor as she tried to balance her body on a length of it. The captain's eyes widened as she watched droplets of river water drip off of Ambrose's hair and face, running down to her breasts which were mostly exposed, save for a pair of shells that clung to her chest and didn't seem to move at all regardless of how gravity wanted to affect Ambrose’s chest.
The woman across from Ambrose stared, her jaw slack and eyes wide for a long moment. It was obviously the captain's shock driving the action, and a lot less annoying to the young woman than the looks she knew Henric would be giving her. “This is a form given to me by my class. It allows for breathing under water and nimble swimming. This is how we made it into the city in such a short time,” she explained, noticing as she did, that her voice had a light, resonant quality that carried it farther than she'd expected it to reach. It wasn't as though she was shouting, but she knew she was clearly audible.
“Your class turns you into Merfolk?” The guard asked shakily, obviously having a hard time gripping her situation.
“Among other things,” Ambrose nodded, taking a moment to resume her human form and coming back fully geared and completely dry, save for where her palms had left wet spots on the desk. “Like I said, he and I were being brought here to enroll into the royal academy under the guidance of Professor Gulfrig.”
Luckily for Ambrose, the guard captain seemed much more willing to believe her now that she'd seen the transformation with her own eyes. “I'll have carts and a number of the guard sent out that way immediately to see if we can retrieve or aid the Scion,” she assured. “The area you described was about two hours from here by cart. If she lives, they should have her back here before nightfall.”
Ambrose sighed in relief, seating herself in one of the simple wooden seats on her side of the Captain's desk as the older woman called in a guard and started barking orders. She didn't pay much attention to that, though, as it was now out of her hands.
Deciding to do something productive to pass the time, Ambrose checked her stat sheet, only to be floored by the onslaught of changes. “Three levels?” She mumbled aloud, unable to contain her surprise. Ambrose immediately cursed her loose lips a second later when Henric spoke up.
“Three?” Henric asked before frowning and cluing Ambrose in to the fact that he was far closer to her than she was comfortable with. She scooted her chair away, only to see him looking off into the nothing, probably checking his own stats as well. “Oh wow! Three whole levels!” he shouted, announcing his growth to the entire room, which inevitably got the attention of the guard captain and the people she'd been allowing into the office to give orders.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Three? What levels are you?!” the guard captain asked, dropping her conversation to focus on them both.
“Four,” Henric said with a proud smile on his face. Ambrose couldn’t believe how open he was being with that information. Keeping your skills and talents secret was the best way to maintain an edge. Especially if they were attacked again by that pyromaniac outside the city. If knowledge got around that the two of them were quickly gaining power, people who were far out of their league could go out of their way to quash the upstarts.
The guard captain looked at Ambrose expectantly, and Ambrose caved, not wanting to seem like she was trying to be confrontational with the woman. She just hoped the captain and her guard would keep the information to themselves. “Five,” she said, still maintaining the image that she was one level below where she actually was.
“That’s impressive. That means you were one and two on the way here. With what you two accomplished I had guessed you were both in the teens,” she admitted. “I know you two said you were going to the academy, but I thought you were going as transfers or high potential adventurers she was taking as apprentices. Not actually newly awakened. Be careful what choices you make at these levels. The levels around 5, 10, 15, and 20, are normally class defining, and have some unique significance. After 10, your leveling will slow down a lot, and after 20 even more. Some of the best adventurers in the kingdom are only in their mid-forties and low fifties.”
Ambrose thanked the woman for her advice but had already intended to be careful with how she was leveling. She knew the road to success was paved with careful planning and good decisions. Even her success up to this point had been because she had carefully thought out her stats and forms to yield the most advantages she properly could.
Without the Catfolk form, she would not have a stealth option or potential for quick disengagements. If she had not taken the Lambda form she would not have been nearly so sturdy and indomitable during that group fight, and might have lost Henric. (Not that losing him sounded like such a bad thing at the moment.) And if she hadn’t been so eager for water mobility, both of them might have died alongside the riverbank as that crazed pyromancer tried to hunt them down. She didn’t want to mess up and pick her next form or abilities wrong. Doing so could mean life or death.
“Yeah. I think I want to focus on my damage and speed and then my health,” Henric said, smirking at his genius plan to nurture his physical statistics… as a warrior. Truly unheard of.
“A wise decision,” the guard captain supplied, smiling at him before going back to her conversation. Henric tried to look back over at Ambrose for approval, but the girl was already ignoring him. Sighing and sitting back, a bit dejected, he started working on his sheet like he knew she was.
Ambrose wasted no time trying to allocate her points, raising her comprehension by one, and her nimbleness by two. Though she paused and looked at her might, which was the only statistic of hers under 20 at that point. If she were to keep things balanced, she had the points to bring it up to 20, or she could put those points elsewhere. Rather than spend her remaining six points she looked at her new class ability and was immediately glad that she had waited.
Investment of Essence: 0/6 spent.
Investment of Essence allows for a portion of the Beastiary’s spiritual potency to enhance the natural prowess of her forms. Each investment of essence allows the invested form to gain a +10% power bonus to their unique statistics and skills, further enhancing the benefits of each form. Each form can be enhanced 5 times. After five enhancements, the Beastiary may choose an evolution for the form, raising the form in tier.
The captain of the Guard had not been lying. Level five or six had given her a crucial way to amplify her own power, and it was through the use of her Potency stat. If she had focused solely on keeping things fairly balanced, she would be missing out on adding advantages to her main weapons. If she added points enough to steadily advance her potency, she could potentially gain major bonuses to her forms through these investment points. This one class ability had given her a key stat that she should prioritize.
Her first feeling was mild regret that she had completely neglected power during her first few levels, but she immediately quashed that response. This was her second time actively leveling up, and she hadn’t wasted any stats, as keeping her stats balanced would help her maintain the advantage of being well rounded for the forms she didn’t choose to invest in right away. While her potency stat was sure to become a focus for her, she couldn’t allow it to become her one stat. She had needed all of her forms at different times since she had left home. Neglecting all of them just to overly invest in one would only do her harm in the long run.
Still, she was left with a decision. Put at least two extra points into potency to potentially get more out of the investment bonus, or throw five into might to push it over the 20 point threshold. The woman considered her options for a long moment, unsure of the best course of action. Eventually, though, she chose to invest some points in empowering her investment points. She invested three points in both potency and might.
Doing so, left her free to deal with other things, such as the new form she needed to pick, and investing those new points into said forms.
When she opened her list of possible form options, she had expected to see an abbreviated list of the options she’d seen before, only including the Goblin and Holstaurus forms. Yet even that menu had shifted.
Now, sitting before her were four options, two of them new, and two old.
Holstaurus
Goblin
Dormous
Redcappi
Of the four, she was familiar with three. She’d been raised by a minotaur and holstaurus couple, she’d met a dormous a few times, though the people were very small and tended to try to avoid being seen out and about. And she had heard of a wise goblin who was no longer feral and traveled doing business in foreign lands. She knew of the advantages of each, yet she’d never heard of or seen a redcappi before. Focussing on the option, she tried to see if there were descriptions. She didn’t want to go into the situation not knowing.
Redcappi: A minor form of the blood nymph species, redcappi are capable, voracious hunters and warriors with intensely violent instincts. Redcappi have short bodies due to the condensed nature of their essence and are quick, nimble fighters who seem far stronger than their size would denote. They commonly stalk and hunt prey much larger than they are. They excel at offense and can regenerate their bodies after consuming meat.
Ambrose thought about what she’d just read. Comparative to what she knew of each race. She knew that it sounded like the most offensive of the four. While Holstaurus were strong and amazing nurturers, they weren’t built for combat, and she had chosen not to focus her strength, so unless she wanted to enhance that form quite a bit, she wouldn’t get the same benefits from it as a combat form. She would only choose the Dormous form if she somehow planned to try to escape through some crack in the castle walls, and would likely never use it for combat, as fighting anything larger than a housecat with a sewing needle was terminally unwise.
The goblin form would be suited for stealth, and if she trained, she could possibly learn to use it with a short bow to become some kind of stealthy menace in combat, but the size issue would certainly still come into play, and goblins were no stronger than their size would denote. This redcappi form seemed to offer her the offensive abilities her other forms lacked while not doubling up on the stealth, tankiness, or mobility of her three other forms.
Without further consideration, she selected the form, leaving her with four possible forms to use, and six points of investment to enhance their abilities. Once the choice was made for her new form, the stat sheet allowed her to level up, apparently not forcing her to use the Investment points immediately in order to gain the levels she’d earned. Rather than spending the points she didn’t have to, she chose to save them, and enhance things as she needed.
The feeling of having gotten a full body massage hit her again and she stifled a groan of appreciative enjoyment as her body adjusted to the growth in her stats. The change was significant this time, even more so than the first. She felt powerful and limber, quick and capable. Looking at her new sheet, she felt rather satisfied.
Ambrose Di
Class : Mystic Bestiary
Rank : M
Race (current) : Human
Level : 6
Adaptive Might : 18
Adaptive Virility : 23
Adaptive Agility: 21
Adaptive Comprehension : 17
Adaptive Awareness: 21
Adaptive Potency : 26
Class Abilities: Bestiary of Forms, Investment of Essence
Bestiary of Forms:
Bestiary may freely shift between a number of forms dictated by their level.
Forms Chosen [4/4]
Catfolk - Unevolved - Investment 0/5 - No items
Lambda - Unevolved - Investment 0/5 - Shield
Merfolk - Unevolved - Investment 0/5 - No items
Redcappi - Unevolved - Investment 0/5 - No items
Investment of Essence:
Invest points into a form to enhance that form’s unique statistic by 10% Potency per point spent.
5 investments of one form will result in an evolution of that form.
0/6 spent.
Racial Abilities:
None
Skills: None
“I got a minor regeneration!” Henric said with a smile. “It's based on my vitality, so I guess focusing on my body’s the way to go.”
“Good for you,” the Guard captain said, sounding distracted. Ambrose didn’t bother to let her know any of her own class benefits, preferring to keep them to herself. She had gained a great many advantages from her last levels, but they were for her private benefit. No one else’s
