Fifteen minutes passed.
I didn't move.
Not because I couldn't—my new body coiled easily, muscles dense and responsive—but because there was no reason to. Apex creatures didn't flee their own territory. And something about this body told me, instinctively and undeniably, that the hydra was territory.
This clearing wasn't just a battlefield. It was a center.
Which meant the adventurers hadn't come here by accident.
I considered the scene around me: broken trees, scorched earth, blood long since soaked into soil that had clearly seen it before. A well-worn trail not far from the clearing. Signs of patrols. Traps—clever ones, old ones, reset repeatedly.
Yeah, I thought. This thing was a problem.
A regional apex predator. The kind villages whispered about. The kind an Adventurer's Guild put bounties on.
Which meant those people hadn't just wandered in.
Someone had sent them.
I turned my attention to what remained.
Bones. Torn armor. Splintered weapons. And beneath it all, the faint biological residue of who they'd been before I turned them into resources.
I reached inward—not to consume, not to overwrite, but to analyze.
This was new.
Not the mechanics. The intent.
I reconstructed them.
Cell by cell, gene by gene, I rebuilt their original forms in my mind—not as living beings, but as blueprints. Height. Bone density. Muscle distribution.
One of them stopped me cold.
Long ears.
Fine skeletal structure.
Different chromosomal patterns.
Elf, I realized immediately.
That sparked an idea so obvious I almost laughed.
I shifted focus to myself—to the hydra's genetic framework. Regeneration. Cellular repair loops. Redundant organ structures. A body designed to refuse decay.
Then I found what I was looking for.
Lifespan.
Not a number. Not a timer. A system. Telomere management, cellular turnover, damage thresholds. The hydra's version was aggressive, brute-force, but inefficient long-term.
The elf's wasn't.
Elegant. Slow. Stable.
I didn't hesitate.
I replaced it.
Not wholesale—just the governing structure. I spliced the elf's lifespan mechanics into the hydra's regenerative engine.
The result was… beautiful.
Not immortality. That would be stupid.
But longevity?
With regeneration like this, I'd outlive elves.
By a lot.
Satisfied, I turned outward again.
Equipment lay scattered nearby. Magical stones humming faintly. A wand snapped clean in half. Armor etched with runes I didn't recognize but could feel working.
And then—
A book.
Leather-bound. Worn. Carefully protected.
I reshaped.
My bulk collapsed inward, mass redistributing as I divided and reassigned cells. Heads withdrew. Limbs formed. Eyes shifted lower, closer together. Fingers—long, dexterous, unmistakably elven—unfolded from scaled forearms.
I picked up the journal.
Opened it.
Stared.
I had absolutely no idea what it said.
"…Right," I thought flatly.
I considered my options.
Then shrugged internally and did what had worked every other time.
If biology didn't give me the answer—
I'd take it.
I returned to the elf's remains—not the flesh, but what lingered beneath. Genetic residue carried more than structure. It carried echoes.
Memory wasn't stored in DNA.
But access could be built.
I used magic.
Carefully. Precisely.
It took twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes of trial, error, feedback loops, and more than one moment where I nearly overloaded myself with noise. But eventually, something clicked.
A flood of impressions rushed in—disjointed, fragmented, emotional without context.
Names. Faces. Arguments. Regrets.
I muted most of it immediately.
Nope. Don't need that.
I filtered.
Language first.
Symbols aligned. Meaning snapped into place. Grammar settled like a puzzle finally solved.
Human language followed soon after—simpler, more direct.
When it was done, I opened the journal again.
This time, the words made sense.
I read about magic theory. Guild structures. Political tensions between regions. Border disputes. Monster classifications. Bounties.
Useful.
Very useful.
I skimmed quickly past pages filled with personal anecdotes. Childhood memories. Love interests. Longing.
Hard pass, I thought, flipping ahead without guilt.
When I finished, I closed the book and let my form relax, awareness expanding as I took stock.
I knew where I was now.
I knew what kind of world this was.
And more importantly—
I knew how far I could go.
The hydra stirred beneath me, perfectly obedient.
Alright, I thought.
Next move.