Chrysalis

I don't have that much time to recover before Granin returns to my cell. I suppose I should count myself lucky that he didn't walk in whilst I was mutating, that would have been embarrassing. I'm tempted to ask him about it actually, something I really should have asked the Sophos when I had the chance. My pets don't seem to have any issues when they mutate, and my siblings in the colony don't seem to either. Is this something that only reincarnated Earthlings suffer from? Next time I speak to Jim and Sarah I should ask. I'd rather not ask Granin and have him make fun of me or something.

When he arrives, I can tell something isn't right. His craggy face is even more miserable than usual and he wastes no time in climbing down to meet me.

[Hey Granin, you look like you were carved out of granite. Something go wrong?]

[You're not funny.]

[You have no sense of humour, how would you know?]

Granin sighs and throws himself down onto the only suitable chair in my cell. His stone body thuds down with significant weight and he raises a hand scrape across his brow. This doesn't look good.

[That bad?] I ask, feeling trepidatious.

[It's not great,] he admits, [They're still looking to set you up with unfavourable matchups. After stuffing up the first round, it appears they've become determined to correct the mistake.]

[What have we got? Some brutal physical specimen? Ready to crush me beneath its iron heels?]

[Worse. This time they've gone after your strength. They tried dumb force last time, this round they've gone with a highly intelligent magic using monster. Difference being that its raw stats and Skills are far above yours. You'll have no magical advantage in this one, in fact, you'll be at a massive deficit.]

in it, then that's going to neutralise my greatest strength. Does this mean that I need to rely on

to tell you is that

…

from hell? What does that mean? Pitchforks? Will

sprung forth beasts from the very depths of the

for a minute. Demons are what we call the monsters native to the Third Strata. It's a place of nightmares, ash and fire, in that order. The creatures there attack the mental and emotional weakness that all mortals possess to try and demoralise us and

I've heard him use that

you mean by

the monsters of the first strata don't have access to such a thing when they're made. In our trade we would consider shadow monsters to have a strata advantage over

stuff that requires an even higher mana

A nod.

says heavily. [It's going to be hard to overcome the gap. I firmly believe that you have a shot, but I'm not going to say it'll be easy. We only have a few hours before the fight starts. We need to do all the work we can on your magical defences between now and then. If we can squeeze out even one Skill level up,

mana manipulation. Desperate to make gains I use all of my brains for the task, reaching out and

now familiar march down the long tunnel, around the bends and past those many other locked cells that house my competition. It doesn't take long to reach the gate before the combat area, the three shapers behind me watching my every move. With a slow rattle the gate opens and I force myself to walk through into the relatively open air and wide space on the other side. Interesting, it appears as if they've repaired all the damage to the outer wall between the rounds. The work was way too complete to have been done by hand. Earth magic? Stone magic?

can see my adversary, already present at the other side

small. The body of the thing is probably only as large as a watermelon, the two wings stretching out to either

since the eye itself is far more striking. It's luridly, sickeningly, mind-bendingly green. To complete the picture, the last thing that comes to my attention are the two thin, dangling arms that drop down from just beneath where the wings connect to the …

opposite. I don't even have time to