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Late Afternoon - Late Fall : The Golden Lotus, Northern Market District (Valtivar)

*GASP* Jolting awake with a gasp, I threw myself over and threw up blood. "Blurgh..." I didn't have time to question what happened at all, I just felt awful. "BLURGH!" Each time I threw up, the liquid continued to darken, until it was simply black sludge. "What the hell happened to m-BLEEGH..."

I ended up throwing up over a dozen times before it was all out of my body, leaving a fairly large puddle of black liquid on the floor of the room.

*thump* "Haah.. haah.. haah..." As I rolled onto my back, I couldn't do anything other than bathe in the feeling of relief. "What the hell.. happened to me..."

In an attempt to see what I even threw up, I ran some aura through the puddle, but it just made me more confused. -What even is that sh*t...-

The only way to describe it was to say it was a puddle of random organic waste with poorly placed mana strengthening it. -I thought my body didn't produce waste.. where the hell did all that even come from...-

Finally looking inside my body, I noticed that my reserve was only a little over half full. -What did I even.. Oh right...- Remembering my stupid experiment, I couldn't help but want to kick myself. -What did it do though... The mana had to go somewhere...-

Turning my attention away from my reserve, I looked through my body but only found a few changes.

The two most noticeable of those I came across were the increase in the amount of muscle all around my body, and the increased rigidity of my bones, but neither of those could account for the amount of mana I was missing.

-But after being strengthened by so much mana, I wonder if my bones are even white still. ..-

But as that casual thought passed through my head, I accidentally stumbled upon something. -What the?- Although I wasn't sure what exactly I was looking at for a moment, it only took another second for me to recognize it.

-Wait, it's those things?!- Spread all throughout my body like a spider web were millions of astronomically tiny black tubes [1], just barely too small for even singular protons to fit into. -I thought this was something that could only exist in that other dimension...-

Thinking back to my dragon sleep in Kaelallan, I vividly remembered the nearly infinite number of tubes that composed my body in the dream but couldn't help to have mixed feelings about seeing them now.

-What even are they? They're clearly not organic, but if that's the case, why did they suddenly appear all around my body?

- There was no semblance to the direction the tubes flowed either.

It just felt as if they were laid down at random and were too few and far between to seemingly make any physical difference.

-I mean, I really have to focus to find any of them. ..-

I ended up laying there for several more minutes after that to try and figure out what they were, but with no luck. -I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually though, right?-

*knock-knock* "Sir. um.. Vasilias?" The voice of the inn receptionist came from behind the door. "Are you alright sir?"

-What is she doing here?- As I sat up, I took a second to clean up my appearance and cloak my, now slightly longer, horns.

"Sir? If you don't respond, I will come in to make sure everything is alright!" Her voice was drowned in concern.

*Click* Opening the door, I looked down and noticed the receptionist was wearing a worried expression. "Is there a problem ma'am?"

"Ah, uh. I was just coming up to make sure everything was alright.

The people next door said they heard a loud thud earlier in the day, and then not long ago, the people staying below reported a blood-like liquid dripping from the ceiling.

" Quickly looking me up and down as if to see if I was injured, her worried look slowly dissipated.

"It seems I made some kind of mistake, I apologize.

" She fell into a bow before giving me a chance to say anything. "Sorry to bother-"

"It's fine, it is my fault anyways. I'll clean it up, so I apologize for causing you to worry.

" Not wanting to let it sit and make my job more difficult, I moved my aura over to the puddle on the ground and under the floorboards, and nearly instantly turned it all to hydrogen.

*sssss-spf* Like compressed air being let out of a can, air rushed through the floorboards.

Not sure what even happened, the receptionist just looked at me with a mix of awe and confusion. "Uh... I-"

"If that is all, I will return to what I was doing." Seeing her nod as if to say ‘okay’, I wasted no time in closing the door and walking back towards the table. "Haah..." -And I really thought I wouldn't do something as stupid as eating that mana core in Kaelallan again...-

Quickly sitting down and getting comfortable at the table, I went back to scouring through my body to look for other changes, but to no avail. Seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours, eventually, before I knew it, around 4 hours passed by.

*knock-knock*

Casually looking at my aura through the door to see who it was, I was immediately met with a familiar face. -Oh, they finally made it.- Quickly cloaking my eyes and horns as the door swung open, I shot a glance towards Bjorn and Yolanda. "How was the trip?"

"Aaah!" Bjorn jumped back like a ghost leapt out at him.

"Pfft... It's good to see not much has changed." I couldn't help but let a smile onto my face.

"How can you nearly scare me to death and be so nonchalant?!" He gave me a playfully agitated look.

"Haha, just get better at sensing auras. Wasn't Yolanda teaching you?"

Bjorn just looked at me like I was crazy as he brought his bag inside. "Just because my teacher is enough of a monster to be able to sense your horrifically thin presence doesn't mean I can."

-Is it really that thin?-

*Click* As he closed the door behind Yolanda, he took a quick look around the room. "So whose room is whose?"

"It's up to you guys, I think Amara wants the first room though." Seeing Yolanda and Bjorn give each other a weird look, I decided to add one other thing. "I won't be sleeping in a bedroom so you two don't need to share a room if you don't want to."

The instant I said it, Yolanda's face lit up. "I-it's nothing like that!" As she turned away from Bjorn, she ran to the middle room. "I'll take this room!" Before anyone could even think of saying anything, the door slammed behind her.

"Haah..." -She really is hopeless...-

Bjorn looked at the door like he didn't even know what to think before eventually letting out a sigh. "Haah, sometimes I wonder if she's really the age she says she is..."

Time started to tick by again after that. Bjorn went and unpacked, and we spent a little while catching up before he inevitably went to bed.

It wasn’t long after that, that the recluse finally came back out of her cove as well. *Click* Coming back out of her bedroom with a pillow in hand, was Yolanda.

She honestly looked like a kid coming to ask her parents if she could sleep with them.

"I thought you went to sleep." Pausing my experiment for a moment, I turned my attention to her.

"I tried..." She looked incredibly lethargic, but something about her eyes looked fearful.

-Did she have a nightmare or something?- “Do you have something on your mind?”

“Ah.. well…” As she sat down, she gave me a look of curiosity mixed with anxiety. “Are you.. really a dragon?”