Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Chapter 371: Operation: The Improved Elaine VIII

I froze at Marcelle’s question, like a deer in the headlights.

Honestly a pretty stupid reflex, and not one I could exactly biomancy out.

“No – noooooo?” Even as I said it, I knew my protest sounded weak. “I’m only 25 years old!”

Marcelle snorted.

“Age has nothing to do with mortality, although congratulations on seizing it so young. And you’ve been at the School for a few years to boot! That is one heck of an accomplishment, you should feel proud.”

Welp, the cat was out of the bag, and I doubt continuously denying it would endear me to Marcelle.

Marcelle sat back down at her desk, and pulled out two bottles and two glasses.

“Ah, before we continue.” She fiddled with something under her desk. “There! Privacy wards are in place. No eavesdropping student will be able to hear your secrets. I apologize for saying it out loud before turning them on.” She poured me a glass from one bottle, and herself three fingers from the other.

“Bloodwine.” She explained without me asking. “Vampire delicacy, I imagine the taste wouldn’t be to your liking.”

I nodded and took a sip, as Marcelle toasted me and had a drink herself.

“Ahhh… ok. Immortality. Congratulations again. Makes sense now why you were asking about what advice I’d give a vampire back when you first showed up.” She gave me a toothy grin, and I responded with a weak chuckle.

“Thank you. You know, I thought I’d been good at hiding it.”

Marcelle nodded.

“You’re not bad. I’m fairly close to you, and you did give me a detailed, in-depth blueprint of how your ideal biology would work. Putting all the pieces together wasn’t hard. Keep in mind, the biomancy department has the highest rate of mortals seizing Immortality of any place on campus.”

I nodded, not daring to believe things were this easy. This smooth. This… lack of blackmail and extortion.

I suppose I hadn’t mentioned I could grant it to others. That probably helped.

“That makes sense.” I didn’t know what to say, and I was just going to let Marcelle talk.

“Now, full transparency here. I’m half taking off my advisor hat, and putting on my recruiter hat. With that said, I do genuinely believe the advice I’m about to give you is what’s best for you, otherwise I wouldn’t give it to you.”

This sounded fascinating.

“Go on.” I took another sip of the wine, partly to let Marcelle know she could keep talking, and partly so I wouldn’t have to say anything.

“Vampires tend to all work together. There are some exceptions, like the Immortal Company, but even then those are all vampires, working together.” Marcelle explained. “With that said, I also work together with other vampires, and the Exterreri Empire is where we call home. Now, I’m a [Biomancer]. Getting to work at the School as well is my life’s dream, everything I could ask for. With that said, part of my job is trying to recruit talented individuals. You would thrive in the Exterreri Empire.”

I gave a slow nod. Marcelle had done a lot for me, and she seemed to truly believe what she was selling. Didn’t mean I’d bite, but with everything she’d done for me? I was willing to hear her out.

I had to imagine the School knew she was recruiting for Exterreri… and probably other people were recruiting for their various groups as well.

“As you should know by now, every vampire has the ability to grant Immortality. Yet, people don’t chase after us the same way they chase after healers who can grant Immortality. It’s because we all work together, in a cohesive whole. That same protection is extended to our citizens. You go to a mortal country? You’ll start all manner of bickering, and they’ll never leave you in peace. You go to an Immortal country? Unless you’re in the Penujuman Necrocracy, someone will snap you up and make you perform. The nicest will be Jurcor, where you’ll end up signing a contract that you’ll regret. The harshest would be Urwa, where they’ll throw you in chains and silks and sell you around. Unless, of course, you’re a citizen of the Exterreri Empire, famous for protecting their citizens.”

I was thinking about what Marcelle was saying.

“And if I say no?” I asked her, figuring I’d get all the details.

She sighed and eyed her glass, like it’d personally committed a terrible crime by being empty. She poured herself another small splash.

“Then I’ll be sad that a talented and brilliant woman such as yourself is going to encounter unnecessary hardships, and I’ll hope you survive long enough to make your way to Exterreri. If you have a sponsor or a job offer, I’ll wish you the best, and pray to all the gods that it works out well for you.”

I nodded. She’d given me a lot to think about.

“Do you know a vampire called Night? A progenitor, one of the first?”

Marcelle shook her head.

“I wish. Someone you knew back then?”

I nodded.

She gave me a sad look.

“The odds are good that he’s dead. Nobody – nobody – survives that long. Not even the best of us.”

Her words washed over me like water on a duck’s back. I completely disregarded them.

He was alive. I had nothing supporting that but faith, but I was going to find him.

I didn’t know what I was doing after the School. My Deception Ring would help me travel mortal lands, and I was getting a good lay of what the world looked like, while in a safe place. Finding Auri’s family was still on the list, but I had only the faintest of leads to go off of.

I’d like to stay with Iona… but all that was a problem for another day. I’d have to consider Marcelle’s offer carefully.

Heck, it was barely an offer. More like ‘this country would be perfect for you’.

“Thank you. Before I go, I have one last question for you. Please don’t judge me too hard for it, my girlfriend wanted me to ask.”

“What’s up?” Marcelle asked.

“Well, she’s got this question about pigs…”

“Two weeks off? Why?” Shirayuki’s tails lashed behind her, flickering back and forth like a displeased cat.

“I’m going to be performing biomancy on myself, and doing a full-body change. Recovery and physical therapy to relearn my body is going to take time just to learn how to walk again.”

She gave me a curt nod.

“Acceptable. Do you have your baseline numbers?”

“Baseline numbers?” I mentally reviewed everything I knew of biomancy, coming up blank. Marcelle hadn’t even mentioned it.

Shirayuki sighed.

“I swear. Nobody does this properly. Nobody measures the impact of a new skill they get. Nobody tests exactly how much they improve. We will do this properly for you, so both you and I know what you’ve done. You will run. You will jump. You will throw things. You will fly. You will swim. We will carefully measure and record each of these items, then once you are done, we will do them again.”

I grinned. This was a great idea! I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of it in any of my classes. I suppose the dwarf that offered me the apprenticeship vaguely had something of a point. My classes taught me the academic methods, but there were practical, real-world aspects of my skills and the implications that I’d need to learn on my own.

“We begin with running.”

I was starting to run into serious traction issues when I pushed myself as hard as I could on the ground. Especially when there was some morning dew, pure physics were conspiring to slow me down, to try to get me to slip and slide instead of run. Flying eliminated most of those issues, but then I wasn’t testing my physical body anymore.

Most physical classers had a skill or two to help themselves, and I eyed [Anatomical Drawing] as a potential skill slot to gain [Traction] or some related skill to help me out.

It took a full day of testing, but at the end of it, I had some numbers. I mentally translated them around to more familiar numbers, the Pallos standard distances being completely different from Earth’s.

I skipped the short dashes. There were too many confounding factors that made it difficult to perform, and the data was entirely useless as a result.

3200 meter dash: 38 seconds. I felt like I spent far too much of the distance accelerating.

3200 meter dash flying: 51 seconds. It was tied to my jogging speed, not my all-out sprinting speed.

Obstacle course: 28 seconds. All the extra grips made navigating through it easy.

I was moving at speeds that would normally require skills like [Traction], specially enchanted boots, or biomancy-modified feet to get a proper grip on the ground. With the weight and the forces I was applying on the ground, I should be ripping through dirt like I was running along a sandy beach. It should be slipping and sliding under my feet, making my footing as treacherous as wet ice.

Dexterity was here to save the day. I didn’t know how it worked, just that it did, the stat allowing supernatural movement over the ground. It let me run on the dirt like it was, well, dirt, but at normal speeds.

Some classes went deep into the dexterity stat. With enough points in the stat they could run on falling leaves, treat a piece of string like a metal pole, and balance on a spiderweb. It was neat, but not a direction I was particularly interested in exploring.

At the same time, I was getting unbalanced again. My speed was outstripping my dexterity, and I was just a hair over the proper 8:1 ratio required to properly control myself. I was starting to feel the tiniest loss of control, little almost-slips, my feet only staying stable because the ground was flat and maintained. Forget about anything like running perfectly on sand, and I was eons away from running on raindrops or other utterly absurd feats like that.

It usually wasn’t an issue. When I needed to move, I generally took to the skies. What I lost in ‘peak running speed’ I made up for by being able to take the direct route. I wasn’t going to mess with my free stats with my impending biomancy changes either. I wanted to see what was going to happen, but right now my dexterity was up for further consideration.

Deadlift: 600 lbs. My strength stat wasn’t nearly as well developed as my speed. No issues with my dexterity here!

Bench Press: 440 lbs. Fortunately, there weren’t nearly the same issues as my speed was running into.

Ok, technically, I wasn’t benching 440 lbs. I was benching 110 lbs in the 4x gravity section of the gym. Same thing.

I’d proposed throwing a ball, but other factors made that impractical. Something about wind and air pulling on balls harder the faster they were thrown, making the length nonlinear when measuring. Also, technique mattered a ton.

I could see the words a kid without a System unlocked could see at 15 meters away from 180 meters away. I couldn’t wait to see what would happen with my new eyes!

I was back at the grind. Marcelle had answered dozens of my questions, giving me pointers and telling me which books I needed to reference. Of course, I then needed to track the book down in the library, find the reference, and crucially, understand the reference.

Being a good biomancer was a skill.

Being a good researcher was a skill.

Being a good author was a skill.

It was rare to find all three skills in a single person, and most of the people writing these small niche books had the first two skills, and utterly lacked the third one.

I needed to get dozens of professors’ schedules from the administration building, and of course that wasn’t easy either. I’d gone to the big admin building first, who’d told me it was in the small admin building. The small admin building had insisted it wasn’t there, and to go back to the big admin building, who’d given me precise instructions where in the small admin building I needed to go. I did get to see a copy of all the schedules, but they wouldn’t give them to me, so I had to blow a ton of paper redrawing all the schedules, before I could even start to try and find five professors who had the same four hours in a row free.

My request for using a large amount of mana for a single project was equally tedious. I needed to get forms filled out in triplicate, then get each one of them signed by a dozen people, most of whom didn’t respect their posted office hours.

That, or the office hours were from a few decades ago. I caught one peeling off a wall, and the paperwork called for a particular signature of a fellow who’d retired a few years ago. The [Clerks] either hadn’t updated the paperwork I needed to fill out, or were still using old written forms.

Untangling that kafka-esque mess hadn’t been fun.

“You need Professor X’s signature.”

“He retired.”

“Well, the form says you need it. Get Radras to write you an exemption.”

“But… he’s the founder of the School’s current iteration. He’s been missing for centuries, presumed dead.”

“Yeah, it sounds like it’ll be tricky.”

Also, who the fuck was named X? Did his parents hate him or something? Was he their 24th kid, or whatever number X was in their native alphabet?

I forged onwards.

Technically, this was extraneous, and I didn’t need to have anyone do a full systematic review of everything I was trying to do, nor did I need to get the Biomancy Track certification.

But I was playing it safe.

Time passed, notes were prepared, and I’d gone over them a dozen times with Iona.

“Alright, one more time.” I told my girlfriend.

“Nooooo, please spare me.” Iona begged.

“I’ll do the thing with the ropes you like so much.” I shamelessly tried to bribe her.

Iona shook her head.

“Nope. Not worth it.”

I gave her my best pouty eyes.

“But-”

“Nooooooooope. I’ve done this eleven times with you.” Iona put her hands on my shoulders, and earnestly looked me in the eyes. “Believe me, you’ve got this. Nobody knows this stuff better than you do. Seriously. Have faith in yourself. You’ll knock them out of the park.”

“Brrpt!” Auri landed on my head, drumming her little flaming hummingbird feet on my hair. “BrrrPT!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. I guess I’ll try to get some sleep.”

Iona gave me a sudden grin.

“Wait! We all know that tomorrow’s a super big deal for you, yeah?”

“Yeah?” I agreed. Iona knew all this, but was going somewhere with it.

“Well! I know you, you’re going to be up all night with butterflies. You’re going to get a terrible night’s sleep right before you get grilled for hours. That’s no good.”

I wrapped my hands around my lover’s neck, looking up at her with mischief in my eyes. I knew Iona too well, I knew where this was going.

“Oh? Would you happen to have some guaranteed sleep remedies?”

She waggled her eyebrows at me.

“You bet!” She swept me up in her arms, skirt and hat going flying all over.

She leaned in a bit, and I pulled myself up to kiss her as she started to walk over to our bedroom.

“BrrRRRRRrrrRRRRrrrPPPT.” Auri made retching noises in the background.

I slowly woke up, the ephemeral joy of a long, deep night of sleep radiating from my bones, the soft light slowly brightening up the room.

Wait.

The soft light brightening up the room!? The island was in the wrong spot for that!

“I’m late!” I cried out to nobody in particular, throwing off the sheets and scrambling over the end of the bed to get out the door.

I stopped at the door, dashed back, grabbed a purple robe – mine or Iona’s, couldn’t tell, oh well being the short one had benefits – and dashed back through the door.

“Whoa, Elaine, where’s the fire?” Iona asked me.

“Deftheisthing!” I stumbled out a half dozen words. “LATE!” I shrieked as I tried to…

Hang on.

Iona was way too chill about this.

I paused a moment, and looked, really looked, at Iona. And Auri. And Fenrir. And the groaning coffee table filled with food.

I finished waking up.

“I’m… not late am I?” I asked.

Iona shook her head.

“Island picked up some speed last night. Block and a half until you need to present. Auri enlisted us to make you a good breakfast.”

“Brrrpt!” Auri puffed out her chest, pleased as punch with herself.

I looked down at how disheveled I was, and awkwardly laughed.

“Heh. Hah. Alright. Auri, why don’t we do a little flame bath?”

“Brrrrrpt!!!”

Two minutes later, I was sitting down at the table, Iona having already helped herself.

Auri had helped get all my favorites. A half-dozen mangos. A few pitchers, orange juice, water, milk, mango juice. Some sunny side up eggs and toast. A suspiciously clean plate near the end of the table with some grease stains on it, and a content looking Fenrir.

My own little found family, right here.

“Smartosaurus, mind if I come and watch?” Iona naturally asked right as I took a big bite.

“Hmmm?” I asked around my mouthful of food.

“Your presentation! I think it’s super neat.”

I could use the support.

“Sure!”

Everyone had come. Auri, Iona, even Fenrir had squeezed himself into the halls of the Wood Tower to the room in question.

We filed in at exactly the minute in question, finding a set up just like the entrance exams. Five professors on a high desk, in a half-ring around us. Marcelle was in the middle, and she gave me a cheerful wink as I entered. There was an elf, a devil, a human – I knew for sure, because I’d been talking with all of the professors to get this arranged in the first place – and a minotaur.

I knew their names, but I was mentally referring to them by their species, except for Marcelle. It was easier, fewer things to mentally juggle as I tried to perform.

“Elaine… Elaine?” The elf’s eyebrows drew together.

I chuckled at that, getting the stacks of copied notes passed out to each of the examiners.

“It’s a long story, but yes.” I confirmed. Four of the professors picked up my notes and started reading through them, while the minotaur left his untouched. He was one of my lowest picks of professors, being focused on emergency field medicine, triage, and the logistics of getting injured soldiers to healers. But, his schedule fit with the other four.

“Elaine. Which organ drives the cardiovascular system, and what can you tell me about it?”

I raised a single eye at that. I guess we were starting easy, and going to get harder as we went along. The open-ended nature of the questions was interesting as well, and I was guessing a partially complete answer would see me dinged.

But if I took too long to describe everything about the heart, we’d run out of time.

An interesting method.

I glanced at Iona, barely in the edge of my vision. She gave me a small, tight smile and a tiny nod. Auri flared a little brighter, and Fenrir?

Well, he seemed to be dozing.

“The heart. It’s a unique muscle, and a unique muscle type. In most elvenoids it has four chambers…”

“Phoenixes are famously creatures of magic and flame. What changes would you perform to a specimen, such that their great great grandchildren are creatures of magic and water – or ice – instead?”

“I don’t know. The best I can give – I believe the definition of a phoenix is intrinsically linked to their fire nature. Making one of water instead isn’t a phoenix. There is a potential violation of the Divine Decrees if one succeeded.” I promptly replied. The questions had indeed steadily escalated in difficulties, until I was taking a few minutes to think about it before answering. I realized I was burning the valuable ‘analysis’ time, and nobody wanted to hear me stumbling through questions I didn’t know. Instead, I was giving a concise “I don’t know”, along with a few minor facts on the situation.

The minotaur just looked at me and grunted, then peeked down at his list of questions.

“I am satisfied that Elaine Elaine knows her biomancy to the point of being awarded a bronze grade in her Track from the examination portion.” He formally stated to the rest of the examiners.

“Agreed.” Marcelle quickly said. The rest of the professors only took a moment further to agree.

“I will pass this over to you.” The minotaur formally said, leaning back in his chair.

“Elaine Elaine. I am quite concerned about a number of aspects on this proposed diagram.” The elf said. I started to sweat, glancing at Iona then to Marcelle.

Iona gave me a little, silent round of applause – Auri mimicking her with mage hands – while Marcelle smiled and nodded encouragingly at me.

“Please let me know.” I straightened myself and looked the elf in the eye.

“Your immune system and dialysis simply have the note ‘covered by a skill.’ Do you intend to cast a skill on yourself, every single day? A fast acting infection, a bad piece of meat, and you could end up delirious while you sleep, making casting a skill difficult if you are not in the proper frame of mind.”

I took a deep breath. There was no way I wasn’t letting some of my skills out of the bag here.

“I have a meta skill called [Persistent Casting], which I keep running with my healing at all times.”

“That seems a hair excessive.” The devil said.

The minotaur snorted.

“Good sense on a battlefield. I’ve seen you on the School’s combat team, correct?”

I gave him a grin.

“You have! And yes, much of my experience before attending the School was attached to a military organization. I’ve been attacked in my sleep before. It might be a hair paranoid, but it’s saved my life a few times, and I just don’t see myself ever dropping the skill. On a related note, it’s great for surviving decapitation.”

That casual little factoid caused a predictable stir, and I felt myself grinning with energy. Iona had been right. This was my jam! I totally had it!

“Since it’s integral to my life already, I saw an opportunity to use it in my personal biomancy build, dramatically improving my performance over what is normally possible.”

The elf looked vaguely impressed, which was practically impossible. Nobody impressed the arrogant elves.

“I’m looking at your proposed kidney design, and your choice of using a modified sea otter base is confusing me.” The devil said. “Your notes state the why of the chosen organ, but to my understanding, flamingos are superior in every respect I know of. Can you explain your choice? Additionally, can you explain your reasoning for a single kidney, instead of eight kidneys working in tandem?”

I bit my lip, hating to admit it, but knowing I had to.

“I was unaware that flamingos had comparable, if not superior, properties than sea otters for the aspects I wanted them for.” I admitted. “I will examine my design after, and make adjustments as needed.” With two biomancy professors thinking I’d made a stupid mistake not using multiple kidneys in tandem – and more possibly silently agreeing – I needed to revisit the entire section and idea.

With how linked together everything was… it meant an entire rework of all the systems. Hopefully I’d be able to free up some compromises I’d made in other places, and task the kidneys to them.

Just needed to find room in the body for it.

The devil waved his hand at me. “No matter, no matter. The interest was largely academic, as your proposed kidney design works. How much utility do you believe a second heart will give you? I see the logic written out, but no numbers on how many seconds or minutes extra you will gain in a fairly niche situation. Is your heart regularly ripped from your chest?”

The questions started to come fast and thick.

“Why a tiger eye design basis over an elven one? Or, more importantly, why call it a tiger eye? It’s so modified as to be unrecognizable.”

“Well, I started from a tiger, and figured I’d keep the original inspiration and reasoning for anyone consulting my notes in the future.”

[*ding!* Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the Class Skill [Analyze Diagram]. Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

Analyze Diagram: Ability to examine a biomancy blueprint, and spot errors and flaws in the design. Improved sensitivity per level. -50 mana regeneration.

I wasn’t in a great spot to carefully examine my choices, but [Analyze Organ] had gotten its time to shine in the Museum of All Things. I’d taken a detailed look at each body part I wanted to use with the skill… and that was it. I couldn’t imagine any other use to the skill, especially not when I was at the end of the road here. I dropped the skill for [Analyze Diagram], resolving to test the skill out later.

“What is the purpose of these… pseudo-brains? They don’t appear to be powerful enough to process on their own, they won’t generate a new system, and they’re too far separated to be added brainpower.” The human asked.

“[Persistent Casting] along with my healing and magic power currently allows me to survive decapitation. However, I am unsure if I can survive my brain getting crushed. The distributed brains should allow my body to be considered ‘alive’ even after my head is incinerated, allowing my skills to kick in and keep me alive.”

That got a round of impressed muttering.

“No shielding on your second heart?”

“I considered flexibility to be more important.”

“Then why not do away with ribs entirely, and optimize along that angle?”

“They do continue to provide support.”

“You’ve given yourself new senses, but you haven’t made any corresponding changes in your brain to be able to use them. Instead, it looks like you’ve hooked the new sense up to… I’m unsure what I’m looking at here.”

I grimaced at that.

“I traced the comparative anatomy section in the human brain to the respective species’s brain. Granted, the part of the brain is quite a bit different, but the brain is also famously adaptable. I should be able to, after time and practice, be able to use the new senses.”

I got some frowns at that.

“You’re signing up for weeks, if not months, of blinding, debilitating headaches.” Marcelle said.

I nodded.

“Yes.”

“Why not simply modify your brain to accommodate the new senses?”

“I believe down that path lies madness. My brain is me, and I’d very much like to not start being arrogant enough to modify my brain.”

That line wasn’t well-received. Two of the professors snorted dismissively, while Marcelle and a fourth rolled their eyes. Only the minotaur didn’t give an major outward sign of disapproval, simply raising one eyebrow.

“Speaking of senses, how do you plan on handling the overload?”

“Time and practice.”

“Why a small percentage based rune buffs, instead of a larger flat increase?”

“As time goes on, I believe the percentage increase will outperform the flat boost.” I was skirting dangerously close to the Immortality reveal with that question.

On and on the questions went. A few minor flaws or mistakes were pointed out, but I started to smile.

The bulk of my design was getting no questions or comments. Either every single one of them had skipped my circulatory system, my muscles, my nerves, and more, or I’d done them right.

The aging questions came, of course, and I simply sweated through them. Marcelle kept shooting me amused looks at my discomfort, but I wasn’t going to admit to a bunch of random people that I was Immortal.

Our time came to an end mid-question.

“Elaine, what do you say about -” The human asked, as Marcelle interrupted.

“That’s time. I know we all have things to do after. I propose with the inventiveness and thoroughness of the design, along with how Elaine has pushed new boundaries and cleverly integrated her skills to push performance, that she be awarded gold for this portion.” Marcelle said.

“Nonsense.” The elf said. “The number of minor flaws can’t be ignored. I agree that her design is inspired, and worthy of praise, but the errors clearly indicate a silver grade.”

The professors clearly had places to be and things to do. There was no long discussion, Marcelle immediately moving it to voting.

“All those in favor of gold?” Marcelle raised her hand.

Nobody else did.

She put her hand down after a moment.

“All those in favor of silver?” She asked again.

Four hands went up.

“Bronze on the knowledge examination, silver on the practical. Final grade of bronze Biomancy Track to be awarded to Healer Elaine, after three and a half years of study at the School. All those in favor?” Marcelle asked, and five hands went up.

Marcelle produced a scroll and a large, ceremonial quill. She signed it with a flourish, and passed it around. All the professors added their signature to the scroll, returning it to Marcelle.

“Congratulations Elaine, on your first graduation from the School of Sorcery and Spellcraft.” She leaned forward, handing me the scroll.

I could only grin at the applause I got. Iona was particularly enthusiastic, pounding her hands together like she was trying to make enough noise to burst my eardrums. Auri didn’t want to be outperformed, and had a round dozen pairs of hands clapping furiously.

I was more than happy to shake everyone’s hands.