Chapter 1656 (2/2)

Despite her wandering thoughts, Helen opened the door to her room with high expectations. When she saw the truth of Randidly, however, she was immediately frozen into blank shock.

The first thing she noticed about him was his hair; he wasn’t kidding about it having grown during his previous struggles. Randidly’s hair hung thick and heavy, rolling over his shoulders and cascading down to around his waist. At the moment it was still wet, so it clung tightly to his body. The color remained black, but when it caught the light in the right way, there were threads of emerald running through it.

In addition, Helen’s suspicion that Randidly’s face had become ghastly was completely false. If anything- ahem, Randidly had become slightly more appealing, in an aesthetic sense. The emerald color of his eyes looked especially bright at the moment and his cheekbones and jaw seemed more well defined than they had been previously. Framed by his dark hair-

Helen blinked and looked at Randidly’s body more closely. His skin… it hasn’t really darkened, but where he used to be somewhat tan, now he looks more metallic, closer to a bronze. It isn’t as easy to see his veins through the skin any longer, but-

Randidly reached up and pushed back his gushing hair, which had been falling down his chest, so she could see his bone structure a little bit better. What Helen saw in the lines of Randidly’s ribs was more in line with him becoming a monster. She studied Randidly more closely and then had to suck in a breath. He still looked to be the same size as he had been previously, but whereas before he was covered in lean muscle, he was now emaciated.

Rather than him atrophying or being forced to consume his muscles for energy, it seemed that his bones had grown and now dwarfed his muscles. His frame had grown larger.

But then again, it was more than that. The shape of his skeleton had changed in subtle ways. The bones of his shoulders and forearms had thickened and stretched, hemming in his flesh from expanding. It was like a few pieces of natural armor had been inserted into his body.

“Definitely some changes,” Helen finally said. But she could only shrug at the expression on Randidly’s face. “But do you think these small things really matter…?”

Randidly’s expression was dark. He sighed. “You haven’t seen the worst part…”

From around Randidly’s side became a tentative flicker. An enormous, thick as Helen’s fist at the base, two meter long, forest green, covered in fur tail flitted from side to side in front of Helen’s eyes. As her jaw dropped, Randidly’s expression crumpled.

“Ahem.” Helen patted her chest and stared at the naturally graceful movements of Randidly’s new tail as it undulated behind him. “Can I… touch it?”

*****

Eventually, Randidly shooed the suddenly enthusiastic Helen away and returned to his room to gloomily envision a future where all of his pants had to be adjusted to allow for a tail. Randidly sat down on the ground and his extremely long hair pooled around him. The only disturbance was the near-constant, subconscious movements of his tail that shifted the curtain of hair back and forth.

Randidly grimaced and considered whipping out Acri immediately to chop most of his hair off, but decided that this experience with the Grim Chimera probably was enough when it came to self-adjustments to his looks. He could enlist someone else’s help to have another person to blame if something went wrong.

Randidly adjusted his position with a frown on his face; having a tail made sitting cross-legged more difficult than he had expected.

On the one hand, he cursed the Grim Chimera for playing fast and loose with his body. This irritation was made worse by his mental state. His mind was still somewhat tired from serving as the buffer in the Nether Ritual, but when he came to, he forced himself to awaken fully and make sure there weren’t any latent dangers to the on-going situation. Luckily, Helen had allowed the Frost Matriarch to carry the two of them away.

The Pinnacle Seekers were just as self-interested as other factions, but at least they were relatively straightforward in their demands and they paid their debts. If saving Claudette on a whim earned Randidly a few days of protection, it was definitely worth it.

Randidly also knew that he couldn’t be too mad at the Grim Chimera for growing him an actual tail to match his image. Part of the adjustments made by the Grim Chimera was changing a bunch of the major joints in his body to add more flexibility. In addition, Randidly’s bones had been grown and strengthened, resulting in a heavy forward lean in a skeleton that was almost double its prior weight. Randidly could tell from his few fumbling attempts at movement that the tail was a necessary evil to balance that weight out.

He could just count himself lucky that there wasn’t currently a tiny tail growing at the base of his neck. Just to make sure, he reached up to rub the back of his neck and then sighed.

Then Randidly’s eyes flashed as he focused his mind on business. He had gained a lot from surviving this time. He had earned almost a hundred PP while he had been unconscious, all in Skills relating to his physical abilities. Plus, there definitely had been a breakthrough in his Nether Core; the energy he could now produce was dense and silky to his senses.

So his mind moved to the future and he began to arrange his priorities.

Soon, he would talk to Helen and arrange a meeting with Seeker Thunder Wing to discuss his newly acquired Fatepiece. He would also need to find a large area nearby where he could familiarize himself with how this body moved.

But for now…

Randidly closed his eyes and simply breathed, savoring the sensation of wholeness he felt. That, at least, was a side-effect of the new body for which he was utterly thankful