The first thing that Belladonna did once she woke up was send messages to her friends. She had sure to do it completely through the scrying skull, sending it to their Dawd character’s inbox rather than routing it through to their irl phones or communicators.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the mega corporations in charge of their communication network. It was that she absolutely did not trust the mega-corps not to spy on every word that she sent and relay it back to Papa Monarch and his cult of weirdly powerful weaklings.

The Scrying Skull, even if it somehow connected to their phones in some way that she could not yet understand, it still operated on a different network. One that still might be being used for spying, but at least it wouldn’t get back to the third monarch man, which was the important part.

Her message was concise,

"Gained source in real world. Met some people who already know about magic too. Keep yourselves safe, strong chance of surveillance. Working on helping with monster mania, might be out of contact for a while."

It was as vague as she could make it, whilst still getting the important details across. She was sure that it would inspire questions, but those would have to wait until she was sure that they were safe.

After all, when she was being interogated by the Monarch cult, they made it very clear that they were not the only ones who know about magic, and they also mentioned something about survelliance. However it didn’t sound like their survelliance, which could only mean that it belonged to this ’Klein McLean’. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Who that was, she would need to find out in the future. But for now, she had to focus on herself and her own power. More specifically, gaining more abilities from Sources that she could transfer to her real body as well as rising to level 50.

The reason for that was that level 50 allowed players to gain a sort of transformation. It was how Saige was able to turn into a small white fox.

Each transformation was dependent on their race. Wild-bloods, such as Saige, were able to take on the animal form of whatever they shared a resemblance with. Dark Elves, who had skin that looked like it was covered in stone, actually became hard as stone, and Hellion’s were able to take on more feral and demonic forms.

Rare sub-races naturally had the opportunity for better transformations, and some even had an influence from their class.

For instance, Children of Light gained angelic forms that radiated light, befitting their names. A tank based player could have light that offered protection to those around them, while a healer had light that healed anyone it touched.

This wasn’t an iron-clad rule, and the players were still trying to figure out what the differences were or the reason why some got it and others didn’t. But for now it was a mystery.

Of course for Belladonna this presented a conundrum. She already had a transformation. Two of them, actually. She had her Blood Frenzy, and she had the one that came out when she performed that ritual with the Duke.

The second one did not have a name, nor had she heard a peep from it since. The whispers of the Blood Frenzy were constant, always nagging her in the back of her mind as it begged for carnage, destruction and rambled on about ’divine right’ and ’destined to rule over the cattle’. Belladonna quickly got used to toning that out and reducing it to background noise.

But the second form, while it had a voice that she absolutely heard when it came out, stayed silent. Not a single peep or the smallest whisper, urging her to do anything to let it out. It was hard to know if that was a good thing or not.

Regardless, since she had these two transformations, what would happen to her at level 50 was an incredibly valid question. Would she gain control over one or both of these transformations? Or would she gain yet another, hopefully without a personality of its own, so that she could transform without losing control?

It was impossible to say, but either option definitely had its benefits, so she was eager to find out.

Tossing Beans his meat, after giving it a quick infusion, Belladonna smirked at the cat as he devoured his meal and turned back to her Scrying Skull once again.

She composed another message, sending this one directly to Revenant.

{Future boy. Do you know of any shadow element aligned monsters or creatures nearby? One that will drop a source remnant when they die?}

He might have been useless at predictions, like pretty much any psychic, but his knowledge of this world was hard to deny.

{What am I? Your walking Encyclopedia?} He replied, causing Belladonna to roll her eyes.

(Yes. Now spill.}

{Ugh... Fine. That is not an easy thing to find, and unless you plan to kill your little shadow demon pet, it will be much harder.

The closest is a two day journey by carriage, near a city called Grizal. So you will need to join a convoy to get there in any good amount of time. Offer yourself as a bodyguard and they will take you on. It gets you some good experience too.

When you get to the city. Head to the tower and take a mission to exterminate something called a Grimshawl. That is your monster.}

Belladonna read over the instructions a few times, committing them to memory, before closing the message. She just hoped that he would actually come through on this one, and not be useless like all of his other predictions.

The mention of joining a convoy did inspire one idea, however, and she opened her messages one last time.

{Hey Midas, are you still in the city and need some bodyguards to head out?}

(Why yes I am. I posted a notice yesterday about it. Things are getting way too rough here and it’s time to move on. Why? Do you know someone? It would really save me having to deal with interviewing anymore idiots.}

{As a matter of fact, I do. And she comes highly recommended.} Belladonna messaged back with a devilish smirk on her face.