Chapter 301

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"Hmm, I see. So the changes in the body provoke a greater production of magic for its own needs?"

"Yes. Exactly, but such conclusions need to be made only in conjunction with the following data. These troughs..." Delphine pointed to some of the lowered sections of the three-dimensional graph, located at the other end of them and symmetrically to the energy production indicators. "These troughs tell us about the expenditure of magic and other energies and resources by the body. If we bring the indicators of energy production and absorption to one number, we will get a small remainder, which is the magical and energy background of the being. Now, look at the second one. What can you say?"

"From the looks of it..." I thought for a moment, looking at all that red data. "There's a clear increase in all the parameters and a shift in the balance. I don't know in which direction. I need to know the transcript for this. But where the energy, production, and consumption indicators you mentioned earlier were, the changes are the biggest. The output jumped up about the same level as the other indicators, but slightly higher. But consumption... Where is it, anyway?"

"Good thinking," smiled Delphine. "But you really need to know more to interpret it. Such a chart displays the numerical interpretation and the balance of the system because, for example, an increase in consumption makes the corresponding areas go down, not up. The boundary values that this scheme can display, however, depend on the wizard processing the information. If, in his perception, the data go beyond what he can imagine, then it falls down or, conversely, grows beyond the boundaries displayed. Look, the indicators of the body are so high that they hardly fit in my head, and these dips ... Do you see how sharp they are?"

"Yes, I see."

"The steepness of the formed slope shows how far out of bounds these parameters are at all for the wizard who processed the data."

"It turns out that the moment the ritual forced the body to reach the final phase of turning into 'something,' the energy expenditure metrics rose to sky-high heights?"

"Exactly. To the sky-high in my understanding."

"But it turns out that such schemes aren't particularly revealing since every wizard has his own limits on what's acceptable in his imagination."

"Yes, but that's for personal works. That kind of data isn't usually shared, and it's rarely used for lack of need."

"Okay. But what does this scheme give us? Well, besides the knowledge of the monstrous energy consumption."

Delphine smiled.

"Except for that factor, we can say that your 'final' form is virtually no different in appearance or power balance from your normal state. The level of strength is another matter. As with the first two spectrograms, these graphs differ greatly, even among twins. Only a blind person will not see the difference between a werewolf in the normal and "lunar" phases."

"Hmm, then, to complete the picture, I also have a story to tell."

In half an hour, I told Lady Greengrass about how I perceived everything around me during the ritual and about some of my peculiarities. I didn't mention the Spirit Sword and hemomancy, turning them into "the strange ability to absorb some energy and magic, and, if strongly desired, to destroy constructs." The latter was verified. Delphine thought for ten minutes after this story and gave a verdict - weird shit. Yesterday, lying under a tree, she thought that my transformation had something to do with vampires because I have fangs and was obviously going to drink her blood or something like that. However, after interpreting the data, this option was discarded - vampires, like werewolves in the lunar phase, are radically different in indicators. In my case, there is not even a partial change in the image of vampires.

I also told her about how my consciousness split into three slightly dumber but more capable parts in terms of manipulating energies. This story interested her the most because it was directly related to the changes made to her body, and judging by the interest in her eyes, the essence of them remained unclear. Naturally, I told her that these individuals saw the Delphine as an energy food, but due to her constant presence in my life recently, they decided to cultivate more "delicious" food from her, so that for "longer" and "more often."

Delphine's face remained impassive, but I could see in her eyes a serious struggle of various and contradictory emotions, which were occasionally replaced by thoughtfulness. It lasted at least a minute, and after a particularly prolonged reflection, Lady Greengrass smiled and then laughed, leaning against the table and propping her head with a hand.

"Ha-ha-ha... And I wondered what the point of these changes was! Why make changes to the body of a defeated opponent? And it turns out that everything is simple — why run for food if it can be grown?"

"Something like that," I twirled my hand in a gesture of uncertainty. "I haven't quite figured out the logic of what happened myself. Do you know what exactly...has changed?"

"Not really," Delphine returned a calm expression to her face. "If you look at the same spectrograms, you can see how some unbalanced indicators have leveled out, energy production has increased significantly across all spectra, but the consumption has also come close. The process is still clearly underway."