(Level 2) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

  It was kind of weird killing the gecko for the second time, given that I had already done that in the previous loop, and I was currently wearing its body. Nonetheless, it was a target I could kill, so I did, alongside the other similar sized creatures nearby before moving back to the birds.

  

   (Level 1) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 1) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 1) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 1) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 1) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 1) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 2) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 2) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t getting a ton of experience from these small and weak creatures. I decided to deal with the crow again, but despite my small size, I had even out-leveled that.

  

   (Level 3) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

  Still not enough. I looked at the other caged creatures, thinking.

  I didn’t have [Venomous Sting], but even if I bought it, I didn’t think the stasis would allow the venom to work to kill my prey. I was relying on the mechanical action of slamming my stinger into the creatures to kill them, and was sort of hitting the limit of that. There were only a few larger creatures I could probably manage to kill that way, so I got to work.

  

   (Level 2) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 3) defeated. Reduced experience gained.

   (Level 4) defeated. Experience gained.

  Those three took a lot more work than even the crow. My stinger ached, but I had managed to pull these creatures heads towards the cage bars and then slam my stinger through their eye socket into their brains to get the kill.

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  Fortunately, the last one was just enough to get me to my target.

  

  Level up! You have reached Level 5.

  You have earned an attribute upgrade and a skill point.

  Finally. I opened up the attribute upgrade immediately.

  

  Choose an attribute to upgrade:

  [Amalgamation]

  [Bound Soul]

  [Chimaeric Core]

  [Time Loop]

  This time, I selected [Amalgamation]. Unlike [Chimaeric Core], I was given options right from the first upgrade.

  

  [Additional Loadout field: Wings]

  [Subdivide Loadout field: Limbs]

  [Enable scaling Loadout, factor: 2]

  The first two options seemed straightforward to me. The first was how I could gain wings. The second would let me have different forelimbs and hindlimbs.

  The third option gave me a moment of pause. At present, my Loadout let me change my Head, Body, Limbs, and Tail to whatever profiles I had unlocked, but they were true to size. This was likely the source of my feeling of wrongness, that feeling of tearing myself apart when I moved with the wrong legs for my body, or hauling the wrong tail around. Perhaps this third option would let me normalize my [Amalgamation] and reduce that feeling.

  This first level of it would only let me scale a part to double—or half—the size, though, if I was interpreting “factor: 2” correctly. Still, I was leaning pretty heavily on my profile for my tail as a weapon, so being able to grow that with my body to twice the size could be very useful. Before I could really make use of that, I would need more mass storage.

  Right now, I needed wings.

  I made my choice, and was brought immediately to my Loadout to choose the profile.

  

  Wings:

  I stretched my new wings out, feeling both the wrongness of my body but also the relief at flexing a muscle I hadn’t even known I was missing. The starling’s wings grew out of my gecko shoulders, but they had independent mobility. I presumed that if I switched to the profile for my wings, they would grow more out of my back, though I would need a scaling factor if I wanted to try that.

  Turning back to the cages, I surveyed the carnage. I had less than a day before the wizard returned, and only so much time to eat. With a plan in mind, I got to eating.

  When the door to the ritual room opened and the wizard stepped through, I dropped from the ceiling above it silently, diving through the gap just before the door shut behind me.

  I snapped my bat wings open, stopping my descent and swooping away from the room that was my prison.

  [Flight (Minor)].

  I flapped my wings and gained lift, celebrating internally, but that was only half of the escape plan. I had no idea what the layout of the tower was, and likely only had seconds to spare before the wizard would catch on.

  [Bio Sonar].

  The bat I had eaten, whose form I now wore while dragging a scorpion tail behind me, had two skills, both of which I had purchased. The first was the same [Flight] skill as the starling, but the second was the key to this plan, [Bio Sonar]. It allowed me to use echolocation to hunt prey but also let me map my immediate surroundings, which was a necessity for flying in the dark.

  Even if the tower was lit, [Bio Sonar] simply processed information differently than vision. While sound was technically slower than light, the information I received from it was more comprehensive, letting me react in a way that was separate from processing all the information I would get visually and seek the nearest window.

  There.

  Without hesitation, I pivot in mid-air and swooped out of the tower to freedom. I didn’t stop flapping until I was completely spent, putting as much distance between myself and the tower as I could.

  The door closed behind the wizard as he stepped into the room, eager to begin his next chimaera experiment, building of the first success merging a rat and scorpion. The previous day had shown that his hard work had not been for naught; his chimaeric creation had come to life for the first time.

  There had been some failures before his success, though he wasn’t entirely sure what had changed and why this one had worked. He had been starting to worry he had wasted his time studying soul magic and that he should not have shifted his focus from time magic, but with one creation under his belt, he was sure more would follow. Sometimes, that was just how wizardry went. Practice made perfect.

  Eager to begin the new day’s experimentation, he walked over to the stasis cages to withdraw some animals to attempt another creation. He was aiming bigger than a rat for his next one. He would work his way up to something truly impressive.

  The wizard’s good mood soured slightly when he discovered both the rabbit and the crab he had planned to combine were dead. Not just dead; killed by something. Turning, he noticed the that a dozen of his caged creatures had fallen to a similar fate, and some of the cages were empty, their contents vanished.

  Glancing over at the cage of his previous success, he found it, too, sat empty.

  “Interesting,” the wizard muttered, raising his hands to summon a scry glass and locate his first chimaera pet. When the spell activated, he saw its life signature outside the tower, the distance rapidly growing between them.

  Frowning, the wizard walked over to the chimaera’s cage. It was unmolested, as though the creature had simply phased through the bars. That was more curious than the fact that it killed animals, whether it had been due to hunger or the madness of coming to life. After giving it a moment of pondering, the wizard shrugged.

  “No matter,” he said to himself with a sigh. It was only a practice creation, after all. Walking over to the surviving creatures, the wizard selected a duck and a turtle to begin the next experiment. “But I’ll need to acquire more raw parts.”