While we walked, I stripped off my shirt to continue to practice with my Shape-Shifting and build up more idle control. While the girls experimented with the basic level in order to get used to the changes and coming up with covers, I worked on expanding my ability to control the additional limbs without constant focus. Apparently, the girls really enjoyed the view, because I caught them stealing glances at me shirtless.
It’s adorable that they are so shy despite the fact three of the four have done far more than see me like this, I thought with a smirk while setting a granted shift up for Kassandra.
The dwarf lamia was the hardest of the group to make something that would disguise her, as there weren’t very many of her subspecies. Thankfully, her hair was so distinctive that it only took shifting the color to help disguise her. I had to focus a lot harder to alter the colors of her scales and the minor rank of Shape-Shifting was not enough to do more than change part of it. Her tail was just too long to shift all of her scales, so I had the red in her scales fade to match the black hair that she would have when the shift was taken.
The girls had all agreed that it would be better to use the minor level for disguises for now, and we could set up something different in the future when the rank expanded.
Reminded of the ranking, I quickly closed my eyes to skim over the mastery level.
It was growing with each shift that we tried, and apparently it helped that I was bouncing between each of the girls and changing what we shifted each time to make sure they were content with the alternate persona they were assuming. The mastery ranking was sitting at around seventy-percent, so hopefully this would rank up soon so I could see what the limits on the next level were.
We’ll need to change their facial features too when this ranks up, really hoping that it’ll let them have the lesser rank of Shape-Shifting so that I can actually make some major changes for them. That five pound limit really hamstrings stuff, and I have a feeling that is why so many people ditch it like Cari was saying.
Blinking my eyes open, I looked out at the grassy plain that rolled away from us in the distance. The river that the girls had been looking for lay to our right, a sparkling chain of blue that rumbled along in a deep draw which had been easy enough to ford with my Manipulate Element to form a bridge. The plains raced into the distance, with heat waves dancing off to the west. A thought allowed my eyes to adjust and shift into those of a golden eagle.
The horizon was speckled with more of the same. There were several large hills in the distance that reminded me of the hill on which the town we’d left had been built on.
I know that the girls said that the border tension is why people haven’t developed this land more, but it’s still surprising to me that people wouldn’t take the chance. Then again there are more threats here than just the rival nations, I thought, making note of two separate groups of what looked like wolves trotting over one of the hills in the distance. I only noticed them because of their movement as their coats were nearly perfect in coloration to match the waving grass, but if the scale of the boulders near them was something to go off of, these wolves were almost the size of horses.
“Liam,” Shayla said, pulling me out of my studying the distance. Turning towards the moth-winged woman, I blinked furiously to get my eyes to adjust and focus at the far closer range now.
Shayla had previously overcome her hesitation regarding enhancing her senses, and the last several shifts had been focused on attuning her eyes to see better. She was sporting a set of owl eyes, which was strange for me given that I’d gotten used to her normal eyes. As strange as they were—like a pair of glossy obsidian spheres—I’d grown to love them. But Shayla wasn’t looking in my direction, instead she was focused towards the south-west.
“What’s up, Shayla?” I asked, stepping over Kassandra’s tail nimbly to walk beside the winged woman.
Without speaking, Shayla held up one arm and pointed into the distance. Though her antennae were more honest, as they reached out to me almost instinctively. I made sure to step in close enough that the rightmost of the two could stroke over my face lightly.
Shayla shivered as the fuzzy appendage made contact with my face, but leaned into me as she continued to talk, causing her soft hip to bounce into mine.
Following the direction that Shayla was pointed, I squinted towards one of the nearby hills. It was a good mile or two away, but with the enhanced vision from the shift, I was able to get my eyes to dial in on it fairly well.
The hill was like many of the others, with large boulders scattered around it and a relatively flat top. The long grass that decorated its sides waved in the steady wind that raced over the hills. The hill looked normal to me, roughly bean-shaped with a small draw in one side that likely acted to drain water when it rained into the river that passed nearby.
“I see a hill, there are tons of them all around us though. Did something go behind it?” I asked after a long moment.
Shayla shook her head in the negative, slowing to a stop as she studied the hill further for several more seconds, so I did the same. The other girls mirrored us, coming to a stop after several seconds and looking back. A quick glance told me that Jane and Rieka looked anxious while Kassandra was just smirking while eyeing the way that Shayla leaned into my side.
Not looking away from her target, Shayla began to speak while her wings flexed slowly behind her.
“There are no stones on top of that hill. The plains are littered with rocks and boulders of equal size, but the top of that hill in particular is without them. Also, the shape feels odd. It reminds me of several of the manors that I have seen in town.”
Now that Shayla had said it, I was beginning to see what she was meaning. The crown of the hill was just as she said, entirely without the decoration of the ubiquitous rocks and boulders like the rest of the plains had been, though there were some piled up at the base of the hill. And the rounded shape did give it the appearance of a large building with two wings, one to either side of the main structure.
“Rieka, can I see the map?” I asked, and my clever wolf princess immediately caught on to what I was thinking, digging the map out and unfolding it while I tugged Shayla along with me.
We’d camped once since leaving town already, at the edge of the forest before breaking east, and the day had mostly worn away at this point. So I knew that we had to be getting close to our target area for the search.
The map that Rieka had was fairly detailed, with the curves of the river even included in the design. Rieka was quick to shift to the section of the map that we were in and traced along the river’s curves until she got to roughly the right area.
“It might be it? Would be worth checking out, unless it’s out of the way?” Rieka looked up, squinting to look in the direction that Shayla had pointed out.
“What? Just like that?” Jane asked, the surprise in her voice enough that I blinked away my Shape-Shifting and turned to look at the smaller woman, who was clearly surprised and tapping one foot restlessly against the ground.
“Jane?” I prompted, hoping she’d elaborate. My little book-mouse didn’t hesitate, thankfully.
“This is supposed to be an ancient ruin, potentially thousands of years old. And we wandered about for less than two days near a major trading hub and just stumbled across it? The idea itself is ridiculous…” Jane’s irritated thumping of her foot turned into outright hopping up and down, an action that made her slim curves bounce in her dress along with the large dishes of her ears.
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“I don’t know what to say, Jane. That’s just our luck. We found the first one simply because a crag hunter attacked us near it, which got us looking for its den,” Kassandra said while turning from eyeing me and Shayla to smile over at Jane. “I’m convinced that there is something about having Liam with us that attracts both trouble and fortune in equal measures.”
“Hey!” I protested, getting a blown kiss from Kassandra rather than an apology.
“I didn’t say that it was unappreciated, lover. You definitely bring more than enough good luck with you to balance it out. Speaking of, if we get a chance after this trip I’d like to take you back to show you all the good that your hard work in protecting me is doing.”
“That sounds like a brilliant idea,” Rieka piped up, carefully refolding and returning the map to its hiding spot. “I’d like to do the same as well. It would give me the opportunity to see how my own investments have been doing.”
“I thought that you two just got the big infusion from the special coins, how can they be already helping on your lands?” I asked, wrapping an arm around Shayla’s hips and tugging the moth woman into motion once more. “Guide us there, Shayla. We can have a quick look around to see if that hill is where we are heading or not. Might make a decent camp if not still.”
Shayla blushed fiercely at my affection, the thick moth-woman was still awkward about it after all, but nodded as she matched her stride to mine. Or maybe her shyness was because I was still shirtless, I’m not sure.
While we walked, the tendrils that I had sprouted from my back to practice with—which I had been shifting the tips to grippers, claws, clubs, and other assorted weapons idly and now that I think of it might be the reason the girls were staring—shifted and molded until I had a matching set of moth wings to Shayla. Something she did not miss and made the shy woman blush even heavier.
The party shuffled a bit, with Kassandra taking my right side while Jane and Rieka fell in behind me and Shayla while the moth woman guided us away from the river finally.
“To address your question earlier, Liam,” Rieka began. “While we did not get the massive influx of money until recently, both Kassandra and I have been investing a good bit of our spare cash into our lands even before then. Every time we’ve summoned you for a trip or a mission, we’ve always made out well ahead of what we needed to summon you again.”
“Basically, you are a great investment,” Kassandra chirped. I knew what was coming next, so I didn't fight it. The pinch to my right buttock still made me jump and Kassandra giggle despite that.
“I’m glad that you think that,” I returned with a mock glare down at my dwarf lamia. I couldn’t remain upset with her for long though, as she gave me a cute and sunny smile in return, a smile that had her luscious and freckled cleavage as a backdrop after all.
“Even though we couldn’t liquidate the palladium, we were able to plan around it though,” Rieka continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “So as soon as my mother paid out for the coins from the royal treasury, we were able to immediately put those funds to work.”
“Good to hear. I know that you two are responsible with your cash, but I don’t know if I would have been that forward thinking. It’s hard to plan for stuff like that, at least for me. I’ve not ever really had that kind of available cash.”
“But you do now,” Kassandra teased in a singsong voice. “You’ve told us how well your sales are going back home. Soon, you’ll have the funds needed to buy a home that you can be proud of and all the things that you’ve been missing out on.”
The girls all chorused similar wishes of prosperity around me, making my heart swell. Shayla even gave me a squeeze around the middle with the arm hugging my waist while her antennae continued to bop the side of my head gently like a pair of newborn kittens looking for a warm spot.
“We can only hope. I know that I have to be careful to not get the attention of the government back home for now. Honestly, if I could come to this world full time then I would. Might make things cheaper for you girls and stymie my growth some, but I’d prefer it.”
“Kassandra would never get anything done!” Rieka proclaimed with a wicked air. “She’s already impossible to get out of bed as it is, if she gets her favorite coil-warmer full time then that’s the end of that.”
“I’m not that bad,” Kassandra whined, getting another round of laughter from the girls.
<><><>
It took another hour to reach the hill that Shayla had pointed out. There were several other hills nearby, but that one actually protruded above them, making it easier to find.
As we got closer, I began to agree with Shayla even more. The edges of the hill looked too uniform on this side of it. We approached from the river direction, angling in to the closest of the ‘wings’ carefully. I continued to send the brief pulse of energy through my Manipulate Element ability to sense for any other threats that might be in the area. We hadn’t seen anything coming our way, and the grass was only about calf to knee deep, but I didn’t want to take a chance. I’d made sure to use Ward Companion on the girls as well to get any other source of warning I could have if something threatened them.
The hill loomed at roughly two stories in height with a fairly gentle slope to it. The more that I looked at it, the more I was reminded of the special I’d watched on Discovery years ago about the ancient hill-forts that had been discovered in Britain. The regular shape of the hills had been a clue that drew archaeologists to the site, and again I had to wonder why no one else had come out this way.
“Not to belabor the point,” I said as our group came to a stop at the base of the hill. “But I wanted to ask again, Rieka. Do you know why your mum decided to send us on this? I mean, doesn’t she have specialists that might be better set to handle initial delves into ancient ruins?”
Rieka paused in setting down her dimensional bag to root through and shot me an odd look. Her ears laid flat against her head and the tail that had been steadily bobbing behind her drooped into stillness.
“Liam… what do you think we are?” Kassandra said before my wolf princess could speak. I turned to glance towards her. My dwarf lamia was sitting on her coils, hands on her hips and shooting me a rather stern look.
“Students? Noblewomen? Beautiful young women with bright futures that I worry about constantly?” I answered.
Apparently my response calmed both of them because Kassandra’s air of insulted pride faded and Rieka huffed in annoyance, but her tail started wagging slowly again.
“Liam, my mother ‘sent us’ on this for two reasons. Firstly, we already found and safely explored one location with great success. The second—and most important reason really—is that she couldn’t just send someone else. It’s not like I told her about the map or the location we were heading beyond Stonebrook. She would have no idea where to send other teams,” Rieka explained, stuffing one arm into her dimensional pack. A moment later, she drew out a bundle of food and a large cloth that she tossed to Jane.
While the mouse kin woman worked to spread out a ground cloth for us to sit on and eat, Rieka continued her explanation.
“Not to mention that, given what we found, she needs someone she can trust to look over this place. Mother knows that we didn’t sell her all we found or even leave behind the choicest of treasures. She does know that whatever we find will stay within the country, though. That is more than can be said about whatever other group she might ask to inspect the area.”
“Plus, we have whatever odd luck Liam brings with him,” Shayla added shyly as she settled onto the cloth to rest after the longer hike.
“Luck is a dividend of sweat,” I replied with a smirk, remembering the quote from a book I’d been reading the previous week before I went out with Jameson. It had been a fascinating thing about a man who was recruited to a space empire and became a wizard. “Guess it’s time to get sweaty.”
“Ooh, take your pants off first!” Kassandra said with a happy little bounce on her tail while she passed out sandwiches to the girls. “Don’t want them to get dirty.”
I shot her a smirk but didn’t strip out of my pants, getting a chorus of ‘boo’s from the girls when I turned my attention back to the hill.
It made sense for them to rest while I did this, since they couldn’t really help me with it. That way, they could be ready for the next step or to keep moving if things didn’t work out. But with the sensations my gentle pinging of the hill was giving me, Shayla’s sharp eyes had saved us some serious searching.
I walked over until I could rest my hands on the soil at the base of the hill. Kassandra’s wolf-whistling might have put a bit of an extra bounce in my step, but I’ll never admit that publicly.
While no stones sat on top of the hill or were embedded in it, my pings with Manipulate Element had told me that there was quite a bit of stone under a few feet of the soil.
It took a moment to adjust the sense so that it spread downwards into the dirt rather than out, but I figured out how when I remembered diving deep into the silt of the river looking for gold flakes. Only I searched for stone rather than gold.
Within a minute I was sure that we’d found the right place, and debated how to get to what I needed to. Behind me, I heard the girls giggle but couldn’t make out what was being said beyond something teasing and comments about how the jeans I was wearing fit me.
They want to stare at something? That works just as well, my mana is low from using that detection spell. So Shape-Shifting to the rescue again. That and my ridiculous strength, I thought with a grin.
My arms thickened and my hands shifted, forming into massive digging paws like I’d seen on the Deep Hunter. Then my torso thickened and a second set of arms sprouted below the first bearing the same paws.
I paused for just a moment to let my balance settle, then bent forward, digging into the soft earth with the heavy claws and burrowing into the side of the hill with determination.
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