Chapter 255: Molt (Patreon)

Loth collapsed suddenly, but Will could see that it was her Class doing something to her body, so he wasn’t terribly alarmed.

It was, however, terribly inconvenient.

The thirteenth Floor was where they were all going to start leveling again, up to Level 59, with a plan to dip their toes on the 14th Floor and snag another Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Upgrade before they went back down, but if Loth’s status was uncertain it might be too risky to attempt it.

I’ll give it some time.

They were all wearing Abby, so they could get back to the 10th Floor pretty quick by skipping the 12th Floor with a Door and catching a ride from Zodiac to the Burned Stronghold.

Will glanced again at the miasmatic structures pulsing through Loth’s body, snipping parts here, lengthening parts there.

Will made a quick sketch and stored it in his legend.

Not sure what’s going on exactly, but couldn’t hurt.

“Is Loth okay?” Brianna asked, having noticed Loth’s sudden collapse.

“I think so. Her Class is undergoing some kind of change, so I think she’ll wake up when it’s finished.”

“Did she start her Class Advancement or something?” Travis asked, leaning over Will’s shoulder.

“Travis can you make some lures and draw monsters away from us? Let’s try and stay safe until Loth wakes up.”

“Sure.”

Without a word, five extremely punchable looking copies of Travis sprung into existence around them and started sprinting in opposite directions.

Will secured the air around them with Aspect, creating a small shelter that was enough to prevent the proto-curses from touching their bare skin.

Travis furnished the hut with illusory furniture and a lamp, and Brianna prepared lunch while Will experimented with his Map.

By enlarging the tabs of his legend, and with a little creativity with how it was folded, he was able to manifest the physical copy of his map as a book. The map portion was shrunk down into the binding and the legend tabs became individual pages.

Like that, Will was able to physically rifle through his sketches of different miasmatic structures, comparing each of them to what was happening to Loth. Flipping through physical pages with his hand as he read somehow allowed him to remember things better.

It kind of resembles the regeneration of an Immortal Serpent, Will thought. Except some key portions are different, and there’s none of the changes being displayed here.

Will kept making sketches until Loth’s Class settled down, not wanting to miss anything.

After about an hour, Loth’s skin turned slightly grey around the thinner parts, alarming the shit out everyone, but when they checked her pulse, they saw that it was merely dead skin.

She’s…molting?

Loth began wiggling like someone wrapped in a too-tight blanket, sloughing off black scales on the surrounding campsite, her scales greying as they detached from her body.

A moment later, Loth’s hand clawed its way out of her former skin as the kobold climbed to her feet, leaving behind an alarmingly Loth-shaped shell.

“How embarrassing,” Loth said, climbing out of the husk of her former skin.

“…You got taller.” Will said, measuring her against himself. She had gone from waist-height to belly height. About six inches of growth.

“Indeed,” Loth rasped. “Water?”

Brianna offered her their waterskin, and Loth drank it like someone who had just finished a marathon, gasping for breath at the end.

“And about fifty pounds of meat?” Loth asked, handing the waterskin back to Brianna. Her stomach was sucked in and her arms barely skin and bone. She looked like she’d been starving for months.

“We’ve only got thirty pounds of jerky.” Will said.

“I’ll make due.” Loth said, staggering over to her barrel, her wing-stubs wiggling against her back.

“Uh, Loth,” Travis said, raising a finger.

“Eh?” Loth grunted uncharacteristically, snagging a steak bug from her barrel and devouring it before grabbing another.

“You’ve got wings.”

Loth craned her neck to glance over her shoulder, the tiny wings about the size of a man’s hand twitching weakly under her gaze.

“So I do.” She said before continuing to massacre her emergency rations.

After about fifteen steak-bugs, Loth collapsed against the side of the barrel, falling asleep.

“I guess it’s good she’s okay?” Brianna said, her tone making it a question.

“No, we’ve got a problem.” Will said, watching the changes start again in her Class. “I suspect this is gonna keep happening until she reaches whatever her full size is supposed to be.”

“We don’t have that much food.” Travis pointed out. “Do we head back to the Burned Stronghold, then?”

There were plenty of steak-bugs there, but…

“We can’t,” Will realized, pointing at Loth’s castoff skin. It still had Abby wrapped around it, meaning she was currently Acclimating to the 13th Floor. “She’s stuck here for the time being.”

They didn’t have enough food, and Will was concerned that if they forced her bear the hunger, her growth might become stunted, which would be the same as tripping at the finish line. Loth had dedicated most of her life to achieve this, and Will wanted to make sure it was the best possible result.

“…let’s go to the Rotwitch’s Stronghold and call in some favors.” Will said, rubbing his chin.

Loth, meanwhile, dreamed about pain, itching, and hunger, in a seemingly endless nightmare that felt like it would never end.

When Loth finally came to, she spotted Anna sitting beside her, shelling a roasted steak bug.

“Steak bug?” Anna asked, holding out a platter of them.

“Not hungry,” Loth said, sitting up in bed and scanning the room. It was a simple room made from partially decayed wood and eroded stone. Rotwitch’s Stronghold. Loth confirmed it by the oddly desaturated light leaking in from the partially shuttered window.

“Where’s Will?” Loth asked.

“You kept passing out and waking up only to eat a huge amount of meat. You couldn’ leave, so Will made a deal with Zodiac to ship some more food up. He’s on the 12th Floor acting as a relay for freight.” Brianna said. “Should be back as soon as we clear a Key Site.”

Loth’s heart hurt, prompting her to throw her arm over her eyes.

“Why does he have to be so…” A lot of words came to mind, getting jumbled up together and creating a dam before they could leave her mouth. “You know?”

“I know. I think he took your words on leadership to heart. Turns out good leadership is attractive. Who knew?”

Loth sighed and turned her attention to herself. Her entire body felt weak and soft. Her scales and claws felt the tiniest bit pliable, which indicated a molt sometime in the last eight hours. She hadn’t molted since she was two.

How embarrassing. Her friends had seen her molt like a child.

Loth turned and hung her legs off the side of the bed, surprised when her feet touched the ground.

“This bed’s kind of shor-whoa!” Loth wobbled a bit before Anna stabilized her. The human girl’s hand was…smaller than hers?

“No, wait…you’re short?” Loth mused, rising to her full height. Anna was more than a head shorter than her, now.

“I’m about average.” Anna said with a wry smile. “How’s it feel to finally be the bigger person?”

“Feels good,” Loth said, ruffling Anna’s hair.

Loth let go of Anna’s hand and stood on her own, standing on her toes and stretching her entire body while letting out a magnificent yawn.

What was that?

There was a foreign stretching sensation and the faint sound of leather catching wind behind her, like an unfurled sail.

Hmm? Loth glanced over her shoulder and spotted a pair of enormous black limbs stretched out behind her, pressing themselves against the far wall.

“…I have wings?” Loth asked.

“Sure do.” Anna said.

“Well, that’s…interesting.” In Loth’s personal opinion, two extra limbs were entirely unnecessary, and only added confusion to her body, which would slow her personal reaction time until she adapted to them. She didn’t even need wings to fly. They were entirely superfluous.

Maybe I can cut them off?

Experimentally, Loth spread the wings out to the side, stretching them out to either side of the room as she carefully judged where she might amputate them to create the least problems.

Anna gasped, her face registering surprise and awe as she took in the massive wingspan, taking a step back to see all of it.

Oh, I see.

I suppose they’re of more use as a threat display and status symbol to impress others than a practical enhancement to my abilities. Loth thought, deciding to spare them for now and allowing them to relax. The wings folded surprisingly small against her back.

“Oh my gods!” the Rotwitch said from the doorway. “You’re up, and look at you!” She stepped up to Loth and turned her this way and that. “You look totally badass! We need to find you some clothes. Your Relics should adjust their size but you need an undershirt, new socks…and a mirror! I’ll get the one from my wardrobe!”

Rotwitch turned and sprinted out of the room.

“She seems excited.” Loth said.

“She doesn’t get much entertainment out here,” Anna said, watching the hall where Rotwitch had disappeared.

“Ah.” Loth wasn’t particularly familiar with boredom leading to an urge to dress people, but she supposed she could understand it. She’d done strange things to alleviate her boredom in her childhood, after all. She’d taught herself to read.

“Try these on!” Rotwitch said, returning with pants, shirt, socks, and a rolling full-length mirror trailing behind her.

She tossed the clothes on the bed before she swung the mirror around and faced it towards Loth.

“What…who is that?” Loth asked, taking a step forward. She already knew, but…

“That’s you!” Anna said.

Loth took a deep breath, looked away, then looked back again.

The mammals in the room probably couldn’t tell, but her features had completely changed for the worse. Her horns had changed from an erudite crown of magnificent black spikes to a shiny pair of ridged horns with a lowbrow, vulgar swoop.

Her face was totally different, too. Her muzzle was weak, the eyes were set oddly, her tongue was longer, lips were off…scales should’ve been thicker…

“You look just the same!” Anna said.

“I do not,” Loth said, tousling Anna’s hair again. It took Loth a long time to distinguish between human faces, so she didn’t fault Anna for her face-blindness.

As for her body…

“Gross.” Loth muttered, holding up her arms and doing a slow spin. Thinner torso, Longer limbs for endurance running…she was no longer quite as squat and barrel-shaped as a proper kobold woman should be.

In short, ugly as abyss. A hideous, stretched out monster. Loth had never considered her own radiant beauty to be something she paid any mind to, but now that she was abhorrent, the loss stung…quite a bit, if she was being honest with herself.

I’ll get used to it. Loth had come too far to be worried about-

“I think you look great!” Anna said.

…What? Loth peered down at Anna’s guileless expression.

“To a human, maybe.” Loth muttered.

“Will’s a human, though?” Rotwitch said, pursing her lips and giving Loth an upward glance.

Loth blinked, stroking her chin. A habit she’d picked up from Will.

I never considered that. I wonder, is this form more attractive to human males? Loth had no basis for comparison.

Her sense of beauty was that of a kobold, so Rotwitch and Anna looked equally gross, stretched out and lumpy to her. She couldn’t intuitively judge which one was more attractive, like a human might.

Now that Loth was gross, stretched out and lumpy, was it the good kind or the bad kind? She had no idea.

Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Loth admonished herself, shaking those thoughts out of her head.

She was Loth the Luminary, and she did not change herself to please others, no matter how much she might want to. That brought on another dreadful thought.

How much of this transformation was based on my subconscious desires? Loth thought, inspecting herself again.

If she were a true dragon-kobold hybrid, shouldn’t her form have changed to become more quadrupedal instead of less? And yet, her hands were just a dexterous as they had been before, her legs had become significantly longer, and the position of her knees and ankles had basically reversed.

Did I want to look more like Will?

As much as Loth wanted to deny it, she couldn’t dismiss the notion offhand before she’d eliminated every other possibility.

Like a scientist should. Like Loth the Luminary.

“Try this one on.” Rotwitch said, pulling a silk overshirt over Loth’s head. “Hands up.”

“We’re going to have to sew gaps in the back for your lovely wings.” Anna said, walking around behind Loth and fiddling with the shirt and her wings, trying to make them fit.

“…What is happening right now?” Loth asked as the two women fussed over her.

“A fitting.” Rotwitch said. “I’ve never picked clothes for…whatever you are right now. It’s fun.”

“Just get me a robe.” Loth protested. “I like robes. They’re easy and comfortable.”

“No can do, your body shape doesn’t lend itself well to robes anymore,” Rotwitch said, pinching together a bit of fabric with a contemplative frown.

“And what about your wings!?” Anna cried. “You can’t stuff those up in a robe! They need to breathe!”

“What do you know about wings?” Loth asked.

“They look cool and you should be able to show them off whenever you want!” Anna said with total conviction. At some point, the baker had acquired a pair of scissors and some safety pins, and split into three, cutting slits in the back of the shirt and guiding Loth’s wings through.

I guess this is happening. Loth thought, heaving a sigh. It was annoying, but a small part of her…felt nice to have people around.