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She then moved onto her face itself. She mentally modeled what she would look like if Matt’s parents were her parents. They were the closest thing she had to parents, after all.
Her first idea was cuter than she wanted, so she sharpened the angles a little bit to give her a fiercer appearance. She was a fox, after all. Sharp angles were her thing.
When she was happy with that, she moved on to the chest. She went with something a little smaller than Liz. While she was a mage, she didn’t want to have them in the way and didn’t see much point in them.
They looked nice, sure, but she didn’t need much for herself.
She wanted a thin waist and slightly larger hips. Matt had called it ‘willowy’ before.
Long legs. Those were a must.
Aster spent more time tweaking her appearance until her AI beeped that it would be dinner soon. Good thing too; she was hungry. She only got to eat three rabbits today.
She saved the form she had been working on to her AI. Human form possibility #315.
Shaking the snow off her fur, she dispelled the rift reward and scooped up the mana stones.
Aster really couldn’t wait to get hands. Everything would be so much easier.
Maybe she could get Matt to buy her a spatial ring for her collar.
It was worth a shot.
11
When they left the rift, Matt threw himself into training to work off his frustration. His flying sword’s destruction didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but he was still upset about the loss.
The sword had served him well over the last few years and had saved their lives on more than one occasion during the golem disaster and vassal war. To see it reduced to slag hurt far more than he would have expected.
Still, he wouldn’t let his frustration hinder his progress. The next morning, he channeled his simmering anger into planning for the rift.
Matt sat down and started contemplating their next delve. It was a habit he had fallen out of after his time in the PlayPen, and he felt that he needed to return to it.
He went back to basics.
Analyzing the rift’s strengths and weaknesses.
The assassins were deadly. If they moved too fast to focus on their surroundings and failed to stay vigilant for the signs of an impending attack, they could easily die. The more they killed the orcs, the more shadowy killers appeared in the city.
The orcs were incredibly strong and well-coordinated, but that was secondary to their ability to destroy any active spells used against them for too long. That ability didn’t have many workable counters, but they could be defeated with some effort. The squads with the red armored orcs were a little harder, but if they could kill the leader first, the fight was no harder than the fights without them.
The chicken was another type of problem.
Its little tower provided a clear view of most of the island, and the glass walls allowed it to shoot out massive bursts of energy and take down anything flying in its airspace.
Matt paused there. That was a pattern that was exploitable. If the chicken always attacked anything in the air, they could drain its mana with a series of flying devices.
As he ran through the possibilities, Matt liked the idea more and more. He could make some simple flying constructs that were large and would attract the attention of the chicken, thus wasting its mana.
The water snake was the real issue. It countered Liz perfectly, and he and Aster didn’t quite have enough oomph to take out a creature that strong on their own. They needed a plan to coordinate their attacks if they wanted any chance of defeating it.
Eventually, his train of thought led him to the forest, and the small mountain that ringed the edge. His gut told him that things wouldn’t be quite so simple there, but it was their best option for their next delve.
The rift was large, but if they destroyed the chicken, they could fly with impunity, and bypass most of the rift’s challenges.
Matt paused at that thought. Would Luna even count that as a win? Regardless, he refrained from scrapping the idea because of his first, knee jerk reaction. She very well might see it as them simply using the tools they had available. After all, she was all about efficiency, and getting the job done. Shortcuts and cheats were fine, as long as they didn’t harm their foundation, or directly interfere with her orders and limitations to assist in their training.
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