Theo let out a sigh of relief as the light level of the cave began to rise. She was nearing the entrance and despite knowing that it was a straight shot, she had been worried about getting lost in the darkness.

  When she reached the entrance to the cave Theo examined her body. She was smaller than before. Only by an inch or two, but her clothes fit poorly now. Her shoes loose on her feet.

  Besides the sudden shift in her sex, her body had been completely healed by the crystal’s effect. Her broken leg and punctured shoulder were gone like a bad dream.

  Her mana was flowing easier as well. The essence from the spider or maybe the crystal had refined it and when she took control of the mana it came more naturally to her than ever before.

  She pulled up her skill sheet seeing if there were any changes.

  [Theo Caulder]

  [Tier 1]

  [Affinity: Myriad Wind]

  [Skills]

  [Body Enhancement]

  [Internal Mana Manipulation]

  [Strike]

  Theo stood there for a solid minute. Unsure what she should feel. She had read gender swap stories before. But mostly as an after thought, finding humor in the situation the characters had gone through. Experiencing it herself just left her confused.

  She honestly just felt glad she hadn’t died back there. The rush of endorphins from her survival still going strong and her transformation had left her completely refreshed from her time in this world.

  She wasn’t tired, her breathing came easier than before. Her vision sharp, the feeling of wind on her face gentle and cooling.

  The mana blowing from the cave had dimmed with the loss of its crystal and had started to take on the stale quality of the air of the outside world. But the mana inside of her practically danced under her control.

  She felt stronger. Another qualitative improvement to her being and after a lifetime of unhealthy habits she felt like all of it had been undone.

  She truly had been reborn, and eventually decided to just roll with it. She truly felt unbothered by her change and gave up trying to make sense of it.

  Magic had changed her when it had arrived on Earth. It had changed her again when she tiered up. A change in her gender was far from the most bizarre and awful thing that could happen and Theo didn’t see any point in worrying or overthinking it.

  Instead, she hopped down from the lip of the cave and went to her bag. She was hungry and felt like she deserved a treat after her fight.

  It was only as she was settling down that she saw her spear and let out a groan.

  She had collected the haft of the spear. The ball of tape gone and the blade with it. Still lodged in the spider’s body back in the cave. She should probably return to retrieve it, but without a working flashlight the idea of walking back through the darkness to blindly grope around in the body of a giant arachnid for a sharp hunk of metal just didn’t appeal to her in any way.

  Putting off the decision for the moment she ate some dried fish while wishing for salt.

  She examined the core she had collected from the spider.

  [Mirror aspected core]

  It matched the mirror polish of the crystal and she realized that the spider had probably been using the crystal as a source of mana to absorb. That or the crystal had influenced its growth to a massive size.

  Packing the orb away, she finished her meal before finally deciding to abandon the blade to the cave. She had another kitchen knife, and using enhanced strength she smashed the Delrin plastic from the blade before once again taping it to the end of her broomstick.

  She really wanted a proper spear or something but this was all she had.

  After that she collected dried wood and set up a small campfire. She relaxed and forced herself to take a moment to calm down after everything that had happened.

  She wanted to go out hunting flower monsters and get a feel for her new body, but she forced herself to rest.

  After a time she grew too bored to continue to sit around, going through her stretching routine she was definitely more flexible than before. Back on Earth, Theo had barely been able to touch his toes. A soft belly and lack of exercise had left his body stiff.

  Her skills came easier too, more efficiently too. Like some sort of block had been cleared and using [strike] or [body enhancement] required less of her mana for the same effect.

  The skills hadn’t gotten stronger, but her improved body made better use of them and she found herself smiling as she did flips and ran around like a child with too much sugar.

  Once Theo had gotten a better feel for her new body. She collected her spear and shield. Setting out to hunt for flowers.

  Theo grinned as she finished off the latest group of zombified animals. She had to admit that this was fantastic. It was weird running around at first. Unused to the weight on her chest or her slightly shorter reach. But with each successful hunt she grew more confident with her body.

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  After returning to collect her stuff, too energetic to even bother trying to sleep, she continued towards the tree. The river had ended with the gulch, but for the first time since she had entered this place she started to see more life as small weeds and plants grew from the ground the closer she got to the tree.

  The amount of flower infested creatures had stabilized. Small groups of four or five hardly posed any threat to her with how fast she was able to move and how much more she could do before tiring herself out.

  She even heard the calls of birds and the occasional insect buzzing by. Going from a world of grey and brown to green and life was a huge moral boost. She had grown very, very tired of grey and more grey. Even if the light overhead was still overcast, the feeling of life was invigorating.

  The mana in the wind had grown stronger too. The wind blowing more strongly, still stale, but thicker with a stronger sensation of mana.

  The tree was ahead of her, massive beyond imagination. It steadily increased in size as she got closer, a wall of brown dominating the horizon.

  Her rests were brief, climbing to hide in the safety of a ruined stump or sleeping on lower branches. With the increase in living plant life, she found herself more comfortable starting fires and there was now enough small game that she could keep the last couple of canned foods as emergency backup.

  Theo had gone from hating camping to seeing why people enjoyed it, at first she had been squeamish about hunting. The idea of hurting an animal turning her stomach. But she made sure to deliver quick and lethal blows to whatever she had decided to turn into her meal and it got easier the more she did it. Not that she really liked it, but still, she could tolerate it out of the necessity of the situation.

  There were other animals too, but they avoided her. Seeing familiar shapes such as the green apes from before swinging amongst the branches of the few “saplings” that had taken root. They looked young compared to the trees around her, but they still grew to the size of mundane trees.

  She even found a small sapling that was perfect for replacing her shortened broomstick, smoking it over a fire to harden it before she wedged the tang between two split ends of the sapling. She smashed whittled down wooden pegs into the holes of the tang before taping it all together with the last of her duct tape. It almost looked like a proper spear. The blade no longer jutted off one side of the haft.

  With her increased speed she abandoned her makeshift shield. It was falling apart from the repeated attacks she had blocked with it and she moved quickly enough now that dodging was much more preferable than carrying it around or trying to use it in a fight. Theo would rather have her hands free to manipulate her weapon.

  It was really starting to feel more like a real adventure to her than the boring hike it had been.

  During her latest rest she was playing with her mana when she discovered how to use it as a projectile. She had been trying to expand her previous trick of blasting air from her palm. Condensing it down further and further with her increased control before pushing it from her skin with as much of her focus as she could.

  It didn’t travel far. But the small marble of compressed wind mana dented the bark of her target trees and the System acknowledged her efforts.

  [Skill gained: Air Bullet]

  It didn’t look like much. The distortion in the air would have been hard to track if it hadn’t been for her enhanced senses and the fact that it was made from her own mana. But it would make for a good surprise attack or to tear through the soft flowers once she had gotten better with her aim.

  She had other ideas on how to improve her skill, but at the moment it still required too much effort on her part and a decent amount of mana to use and she relegated the skill to a few more practice sessions before it became any sort of useful.

  Her improved weapon worked wonders. The new knife blade was still sharp and she made it a point to not stab into anything too hard like she had done with her first one. [Strike] made her attacks hit hard, but did nothing to preserve the integrity of the edge of the weapon and her care with it showed its worth as she dispatched groups of flowers with ease.

  Following the increasing strength of the wind mana she was in the middle of clearing a group of flowers when she finally felt herself at the threshold for the next tier. Before Theo had been worried she wouldn’t have time to react and become disabled in the middle of a fight. But she could feel it required her to take an active part this time. The mana inside of her would have to be condensed and focused to go past the point of saturation she was at, and finishing of the group actually wasted their essence as there was no room left for her to contain anymore.

  Going back to her camp, she made sure the area was clear before collecting herself and then the mana inside of her to push across the threshold.

  Her breath was forced from her as once again she felt an unworldly presence focus on her. But unlike the last time this had happened there wasn’t anything really to purge from her body. Either a side effect of her rebirth or just the fact that she wasn’t pushing out decades of junk food. Only a few burning tears left her eyes and a gross sheen of sweat that she was able to clean quickly.

  She felt immense satisfaction looking at her status sheet.

  [Theo Caulder]

  [Tier 2]

  [Affinity: Myriad Wind]

  [Skills]

  [Air Bullet]

  [Body Enhancement]

  [Internal Mana Manipulation]

  [Strike]

  Slowly but surely. Day by day. She was growing in strength. It felt addicting. She had no idea how her progress compared to anyone else. But she felt like she was actually good at this. Unlike her life back on Earth where her talents were mediocre or limited. Here she was doing something fun and meaningful.

  Her strength also increased. Not the doubling that had happened from tier zero to tier one, but maybe a fifty percent increase. Though her methods were far from scientific. Her bag became an after thought as she carried it. The weight unnoticeable on her back.

  Her jumps carried her more than a dozen feet when she used her [body enhancement]. Climbing became something she frequently found herself doing simply for the fun of it. Though she still didn’t risk going too high up amongst the tree branches.

  Theo began to wish she could share her progress with her friends or even some of her family. Imagining their reactions to her feats of strength and magic amused her.

  When she finally reached the base of the great tree she wondered if she had missed her quest goal. But the flowers were a constant presence and after following the wind mana in the air she finally thought she had found what the system had her looking for.

  Embedded in the side of the great tree was a set of double doors large enough for an airplane hanger. Growing across them were twisting vines that writhed and bloomed with deadly looking barbs and the sickly yellow flowers that ignored the gathering of parasitized creatures at the base of the doors.

  The zombie animals pawing at the doors as if to open them.

  In the center of the doors was the bulb of a flower larger than any she had seen before. The size of a car, it moved slightly in a pattern that didn’t match the wind that seemed to pour from the double doors. There was some kind of engraving on them, but Theo was unable to make out its details under the mass of vines.

  Now she just had to figure out what to do about it.