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Chapter 15: There is trouble in paradise! part 2

The transformation for Shami had been something sudden, it was as if she could feel some power alter her physiology, breaking down her cells and reshaping them into something else. She had grown feathers and even her fingers had slightly altered to look more like talons. Her instincts drove her to change rapidly and she got a hold of Tanatswa and quickly blasted off into the sky. She then realised that her mana bar was active and slowly dissipating. Tanatswa who was at first alarmed by the sudden transition from running to flight, glanced back at her and saw her in bird form, but she still retained a human frame and her upper body was mostly intact. The fur she had as her coat probably got ripped off during her transformation, but her unitard seemed to be still intact. When Shami confirmed that this was her power he then said, "Okay, well, so you're a shapeshifter now, alright then, that's pretty amazing, but how did you know that' that guy would attack us?"

"Well, this might seem crazy but I think I can now tell killing intent. I felt like he wanted to kill you specifically for some odd reason, so my question is, did any of your enemies follow you to the grave?" she asked, flapping her wings and gliding a bit in effort to experience the joy of flight.

"I don't think my enemies would follow me into death nor would they choose suicide. I think, it's either this guy is just hostile or," he said, thinking back to the information about the assimilation method that he had encountered. Had they finally encountered a player that wanted to just waste them for the sake of gaining xp and leveling up? Why did it have to be now of all times for them to face such a player considering that Tanatswa was still dealing with some early relationship baggage. Shami noticed him pause and asked him, "Or what? What other reason could he be doing this?"

"He probably wants to kill us and take our xp for the sake of leveling up faster."

"Wait, you can do that?" she asked, seriously surprised. She hadn't done any of the how to max out stats searches at all and she probably missed out on the assimilation method description.

"Yeah, if a person kills you, they can gain your xp for them to level up. I didn't think that we would ever meet someone who is actually willing to take a life even in the afterlife but it seems like there people here who treating this place like a player versus player scenario."

"Well, everyone is capable of anything, we pretty much killed ourselves to get here so we can't assume people wouldn't kill others in this place even if it seems counter intuitive. Like there are a lot of dangerous things in this place already so wouldn't it be better for us to just work together and face those things?" she said, gliding downwards and seemingly flustered by the lapse in logic in others.

"How are you finding flying? Like is it weird or it just feels natural to you?" he asked, slightly curious about her experience.

"Well it's unbelievably second nature. I feel like I have 4 pairs of legs, the other two being my wings, but I think I won't be able to keep this up for much longer."

"Why, wait, are you running out of mana?" he asked, petrified that she would suddenly lose consciousness and drop.

"Yeah my bar is almost reaching the critical levels so I am guessing that if it gets empty I will probably go back to normal. I will get us to somewhere safe before that happens."

Flying was different from running for Shami and the fact that her stamina bar didn't even get that much affected by her constant flapping made her feel fantastic, when they were now just 20 feet above ground, she reverted back to her human form and they then landed badly, on top of each other. Open realising that the two of them were close to each upon impact, certain emotions and hormonal reactions of physical attraction occured since Shami was on top of him, but she quickly got up to avoid them having a moment. Tanatswa noticed this but decided to push it aside to focus on their current problem. Tanatswa began to explain to her, "I don't know if we really got away or if he decided to not tail us, but I am guessing since it seemed like he was level 2, that light thingy explosion was probably his special ability. So in the event that he is gonna follow us or maybe decide to wander off, at least we can track him."