Tess took one last look at the cores laid out neatly in front of her, then absorbed them all. There was the briefest moment of vertigo before a rush of power, a window appearing to let her know that she had leveled up eight times and Monster Breeder had leveled up five times from absorbing all the cores.

Then, there was the massive window that detailed all of the new stuff she had gotten. It was slightly different from the old ones, it didn't bother with the pretense of degrading Skills, and just outright listed all the new Skills and Attributes with all of the actual stats of the cores helpfully minimized. And, more notably, she had received the last Skill her mother had mentioned Monster Breeder had in store.

You have gained the Skill Hearts as One! Hearts as One: Rarity: Phantasmal Type: Active Description: Your attendant slots are expanded, and can now hold cores without having the attendant physically present in the world. While attendants are held in a slot this way, you may swap your body with them, granting you their body, stats, and Attributes (not including memory Attributes, but including any Skills allocated to your Attribute slots or built into the core) while your own are stored in that slot. This swap is instant, free, and when swapping HP, Mana, and Stamina, the percentage of each will carry over rather than the number.

You may also fuse with any of your attendants that are physically present in the world for 20 Mana and Stamina per second, granting you all Attributes and Skills of the associated attendant, as well as adding 75% of their stats to yours. You may fuse with any number of attendants in this manner, but each fusion increases the Mana and Stamina per second cost by 20 and only adds 25% of that attendant's stats to your own. You may choose to either have your body become a hybrid of yourself and all fused attendants (in whichever way you imagine), or to use any one of your or the attendants' bodies.

This Skill cannot be negated by effects below Phantasmal rarity. The resulting body is considered to be your base form. Synchronization level…exceeding 100%?!?!

Tess put the rest of her windows to the side as she digested that Skill, then opened up the chat and began to ask her questions, pre-emptively adding a screenshot of the Skill so no one had to ask what it did.

Tess: I just got that last Skill from Monster Breeder, I have questions. Also, here's a screenshot for people who don't know what it is

Fortune: Shoot

Tess: Are there any monsters out there that mimic a human form near-perfectly?

Fortune: Yes, but it's not going to be something you can just use all the time. Chances are now that your Attribute slots have expanded so much you can fit more on yourself than you can on the vast majority of cores. Plus, in…a hundred years, give or take a few decades, your stats will probably be better than anything a core has to offer. What it will allow you to do is save sets of Attributes that you can swap out at a moment's notice to better fit the situation. And, for the next few decades, it'll also be a stat boost

Tess: I assume User Fundamental Attributes are included in the swap?

Fortune: Yes, that…wait, no. They were supposed to be, but looking over the description, it seems you modified it so they're not. Neat.

Tess: Oh, I did? I figured there were some modifications since it said "attendant slots" and not "pet slots", but thought that was it.

Fortune: No, that attendant vs pet thing was a modification you made earlier that affected the entirety of the Class

Ellie: Wait, how'd she modify something she didn't even know existed?

Life: The data is all there within her soul, and, more importantly, within her Domain. Consciously or not, she has been sculpting the Class in ways that would be convenient for her, and that includes bits she didn't consciously know existed. Technically speaking, most alterations to the Class have been on things she did not know existed, as none of you know how to read systems or Mana at this moment. Worship allows some "cheating" in this regard.

Ellie: Cool

Fortune: I think we're gonna have to redo the alternative Attribute sets we were thinking about, now that User Fundamental slots are excluded…and we'll probably need to rethink the focus of them, too. Since you're going to, by and large, have better Attributes without them instead of roughly equal, we'll probably want to focus them on stacking bonuses for big hits or the like…I'll talk to War and Heroes about it tomorrow, they're gonna love it

Dungeons: Just in case, you don't need to feel obligated to help them. Like with me, this is their hobby, and they are thrilled to be able to see their theorizing come to life.

Tess: I should probably go say thanks anyway, and get to know them better while I'm at it. I think we've only really talked at the wedding

Death: They're pretty chill. We can set up a meeting whenever you have time

Tess: I'll let you know when. Gonna get back to putting this stuff together now, thanks!

Fortune: Anytime, sweetie <3

With that, Tess dismissed most of the windows. She had seen everything that was on them in the process of research, and little of it was directly relevant to her. Most of the Skills she received from the process were simple numerical buffs, and any important Attributes would be put on the cores, so she didn't see a need to look over it all. The one exception to this was a "surprise" Skill that Dungeons had put on the core that would be the base for Isabella, and Tess was curious to see what it was, so she scrolled down the list of gained Skills until she found one she hadn't seen before.

You have gained the Skill Cycle Shortener! Cycle Shortener: Rarity: Mythical Type: Passive Description: All effects that have a cooldown have their cooldown divided by 5 and then shortened by 5 seconds, to a minimum of 1 second. Effects that already have a cooldown below 1 second are unaffected by this Skill. More spinning = more winning

Interesting. Useful, and clearly extremely powerful, but Tess wasn't sure what exactly it was used for in the context of the monster Dungeons had made. Fortunately, Dungeons had left Tess a message with an explanation, with instructions to be opened only after Tess had absorbed the core. So, Tess dutifully opened it, curious as to what this was for.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Private Message (Tess, Dungeons)

Dungeons: Okay, so, about Cycle Shortener – it's all to do with the Attribute "Burst of Sturdiness". If you haven't read it yet, it basically grants five seconds of 90% damage reduction to both physical and magical attacks every thirty seconds. For whatever reason, straight up invulnerability doesn't really…work unless there are built-in counters to it (and no, that's not a system thing we added in, it seems that's just how the world is), but there are a lot of ways around it.

This is a watered-down version of one that's gained popularity among Administrators in recent centuries, and that we've yet to implement here at home. Essentially, you give the invulnerability a cooldown, then use a cooldown reducer to shorten that cooldown as much as you can. It's a lot more Mana-efficient than just having a short cooldown, making it much more practical for wide-scale application.

The core you got is slightly different than what the boss is actually going to be – I've used a small trick to put the Attribute on it twice so you can snag a copy for yourself. At some point in the future I'm also going to give you a core with an Attribute that's tuned to make a monster emit a faint light when Burst of Sturdiness would be on cooldown, but that'll wait until we're doing some dedicated testing. The plan is to not have the boss use it anyway, and to have the dungeon enemies use it to get people used to the gimmick, so…yeah, we'll be saving that for when we want to do some dedicated testing. Monsters can't really pick up on it anyway.

That's all, though, enjoy!

Tess mulled that over for a bit. She was being offered near immunity to damage, which was obviously an incredibly powerful, no, absurdly powerful ability, but was she willing to use that yet? On the one hand, it would definitely warp how she fought, but on the other, getting used to the timing was also something that would take a while and was vitally important. And, as an Attribute, it would have a powered-up effect when it inevitably took a slot in her User Fundamental slots. Which reminded her; she needed to see what it actually did in one of those slots.

Burst of Sturdiness (User Fundamental): Every 15 seconds, gain 95% resistance to all damage for 10 seconds.

As expected, very strong; though the cooldown decrease meant nothing, the extra five percent damage reduction would end up halving any damage she would take compared to the original, and the extra duration was welcome. Still, it didn't really change her dilemma at all. Eventually, she decided that the best course of action would be to consult Gramps and Ava, and put that to the side for now; she still had business to take care of.

Namely, getting Isabella and Silky all settled into their new cores and back into physicality. It was a process that took about fifteen minutes, and when she had finished, she sat back and messaged Amy.

Private Message (Tess, Amy)

Tess: Hey, Amy, I just finished putting the cores together. Where do you want to do this?

Amy: Nice. Better come up to one of our testing rooms, just to isolate the process from background processes as much as possible. Your mom can show you where to find one.

Tess: Alright, be up in a minute. We'll let you know when we're there.

Amy: Perfect, see you soon.

Private Message (Tess, Fortune)

Tess: Hey Mom, Amy wants me to do the whole materializing process in one of the "testing rooms" and she said you could show me where to find one. Do you have a sec?

Fortune: Of course I do! I'm in the usual spot with Death.

Tess: Okay, I'm coming up, be right there.

Tess stood up and began the process of teleporting up to the realm of the gods, and a couple of minutes later she was standing in the rec room, her mother already rushing over to catch her in a hug.

"It's good to see you." Fortune said happily. "Are you nervous?"

"I feel like I say this every time, but we just saw each other yesterday." Tess giggled. "And no, I'm not nervous, not really. This is just a formality, right?"

"Pretty much." Fortune replied, letting go of the hug and gently pulling Tess down towards the hall. "I've already let Amy know which one we're going to be in, so don't be surprised if she's there when we get there."

"Oh, thanks." Tess said. "So, are these like the kitchens and rec rooms where there's one in each section of this place?"

"Pretty much." Fortune said, turning down the hallway. "We used to have them all down in the work floors, which is where the core library is, but we've moved one into each of the wings for people to use in hobby projects. It can help to have an isolated space for a bunch of magic, so they get used more often than you'd think. Mostly for stuff that needs a lot of precision or looking for very faint differences in Mana signatures. I imagine the latter is what Amy wants us to use one for."

Fortune stopped in front of a door helpfully labeled "Testing Room", gave a couple of quick raps on the door, then opened it and walked in. Sure enough, Amy was inside, sitting on a chair while looking at what Tess could only assume was some sort of window.

"Ah, perfect. Hopefully, this shouldn't take too long." Amy said, making a motion and turning to face them. "We'll just have you incarnate them and then send you on your way."

Tess nodded. "Is there any specific way you want me to do it?" She asked.

"Just stand in the middle of the room and do it how you normally would, or…the new normal." Amy said. "My glances at the class before indicated that it now works similarly to how expelling cores works now, so it shouldn't be a big deal."

Tess moved into the center of the room and gave Amy another nod. "Ready?"

"Fire away."

Tess focused on incarnating Silky and breathed out a rainbow haze, which quickly coalesced into the shape of an arachne before suddenly becoming solid. And, just like Amy had anticipated when the talk of giving Silky an arachne form had first come up, she looked nearly identical to Tess when Tess was an arachne; the only exceptions were that Silky had black hair, and that she was roughly the same height as Tess, whereas Tess in her arachne form was at least a foot taller than she usually was.

"Mistress!" Silky squealed happily, leaning in and pulling Tess into a hug almost quicker than Tess could react. "Thank you thank you thank you!"

Tess struggled in Silky's grip, but the arachne had an iron grip, likely the result of the large stat difference between the two of them. "Silky, I'm happy to see you too," Tess gasped, "but you don't have any clothes, we need to get you a shirt or something!"

Silky paused. "Clothes?" She asked confusedly. "Why? I didn't wear clothes before."

Suddenly, Tess's vision was cloaked in white as a shirt was tossed onto her head. "Wear that." Fortune said, a hint of mirth in her voice. "It should be oversized on her, it'll do until we can get her proper clothes."

Tess was freed from Silky's grip and the shirt was removed from her head, Silky holding it in her hands curiously. "I wear it like this…right?" She said, sticking her head in through the bottom and poking it out through the top. "And the arms go…here? But…again…why?"

"You've got a person's body now, so you need a person's clothes." Tess said. "Isabella wears clothes too, remember?"

"Oh, right. Um…thanks…Miss Fortune?"

"Just Fortune is fine." Fortune laughed. "And you're welcome."

"Well, as expected, no problems here." Amy said, standing up. "Everything seems to be on the up and up, so I'll leave you to it."

"Thanks, Amy." Tess said. "We appreciate it."

"No problem at all." Amy said, giving her a smile as she walked to the door. "I'm happy to help. Contact me the moment anything else unexpected happens with Monster Breeder, okay?"

"Will do." Tess replied.

"And…thanks again for everything, Amy." Fortune said softly. "Everything you've given me lately really means the world."

"Well, I'd be a lousy Administrator if I didn't take good care of you all." Amy said. "In fact, I'd rather you ask me about stuff more often. It would do you all some good to consider your own needs sometimes."

"I've got everything I've ever wanted and more, so I think I'll be fine for a while." Fortune said. "Just…thanks."

Amy tousled her hair affectionately, then left the room. With her gone, Fortune turned back to Tess. "Alright, I'm gonna make a proper bra and shirt for Silky, why don't you get Isabella settled while I do?"

"On it." Tess said, beginning the process.

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