Feliz Halloween!!🎃

LAst of the posts for today, amethystdust's gift art

Simone wanting to teach someone a lesson, but needs to borrow luc for a bit

Also aaaa, i still love this one so much Luc and Simone by yours truly Art and Lerna by Amethystdust

Thank you   catprog for commissioning me! Really enjoyed doing this one!
Go check out his website @ https://www.catprog.org/ for other TF stories!

Comms are open! Dm me on discord or on FA note if you're interested!
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You stare blankly at the ceiling. Your tired body weighed heavy on your bed. How many nights has it been since you considered jumping from this reality? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? To break out of the monotony of this tiring life.

Work was the only constant as friends drifted apart. Colleagues moved on from the role while family members became more estranged. And here you are. Not changing. Not moving. Just going along with the flow of life, waiting for a miracle to happen.

You stretched out your hand, raising it high up. It would be so easy. So easy to leave this reality behind and go into a more fun one. But somewhere something was stopping you. The fear of leaving the comfortable mundane life for some unknown scary one was gigantic. And so you set yourself a limit.

On your calendar you wrote: ‘After two hundred consecutive nights, I will hop into a better reality.’ It was meant to act as a threat, to confirm and scare off that pesky possibility of running away to a new world.

Yet as you marked another cross on the date, you realized it had been two hundred long weary days. Nothing new happened. Nothing much has changed. And your motivation to improve in this reality has dwindled down to a stop.

You sighed as you lied in your bed. Your hands were feeling a little tingling from the excitement of change. Some revolutionary change to flip your whole world upside down. Sure, it won’t be as convenient or safe as this one. But it was worth a shot to cure your everlasting despair.

As you lay flat on your bed, you chanted out the spell to separate your body and your soul. You set your destination to a fantastical world, filled with magic and wonder. With each breath, you slowed your heart beat, relaxing your body. As your body relaxed, bit by bit, your soul lifted above it. Your soul’s appearance was exactly like your physical body.

Medium height, average guy with brown hair and panda eyes. A fair bit of muscles after going to the gym for a couple of months, while your face looked completely average. Or mid like the kids would say. Your soul felt so much lighter out of the body, like a feather compared to the heavy physical body.

You looked down at your peaceful body, wondering what would happen to it. The last time you hopped into another reality and came back, your body was in the middle of clubbing, trying to hook up with some girls. Guess other reality hoppers would use your body as a result. With one final look, you wished that the next reality hopper could enjoy his life better than he could.

A bright green color beckoned you, asking you to dive deep into its world. You could hear the spells being fired from it, with mystical creatures and adventurers walking around. But something wasn’t quite right. You could feel your fingers tingling, before getting pulled towards it.
Your nails grow longer out, becoming both sharper and longer. This was a first, you tried to calm yourself down. Maybe, this was just some weird side effect going into a fantasy world. Maybe, you were getting the mana system into your body, allowing you to cast spells. With that reassuring thought, you calmed yourself down.

Your hands started feeling prickly, like needles being poked down on your hands. You wondered how long it was going to take, usually hoping into another reality would take an instant. Then you looked back at your previous attempts, realizing that your soul was changed to fit the body.

Wait, but inside a fantastical world like here, that would mean.. You gasped in shock, were you changing into another race. As your mind tried to list down the various races that you saw in media, your body quietly softened. The muscles that were once there slowly smoothened while your broad shoulders narrowed down.

A prick from behind your neck caused you to wince in pain. What was that about? As you touched the wounded area, your hands came into contact with soft fur. Your own fur. Were you becoming some sort of beastkin? Alright, that was exciting! You glanced back at your hands, now your nails were becoming your claws.

But surprisingly your hands were becoming smaller and softer? You petted yourself to feel the silky touch of your orange fur. Oh, a fox. That was a classic, maybe that explained why you were shrinking down so much.

As you explored your body, your face smoothened while your teeth bore fangs. Your orange fur turned darker, spreading throughout your body like hives. Now as you flipped your hands, paw pads popped up. You squished them, feeling the softness.

Your waist widened, feeling a pokey feeling at the back of your back like something was trying to grow out. That must be your tail! But why did your waist widen? And where did all your muscles go? Strangely, your little sword was nowhere to be found either.

Then it clicked with your tail springing out of your back. Two of them in fact as you hugged them in their glory coziness. But you looked over at your chest, waiting for them to appear. Sizable breasts ballooned from your chest, giving a firm structure to them. They bounced a little as your last set of changes arrived.

Your lips stretched out painfully, so much so you shed a tear, as you watched your mouth become a muzzle. Your new canines could be seen while your whiskers appeared right on them. Your eyes turned hazel brown and your hair turned crimson red.

Once all the changes were done, you heaved a sigh of relief. Blinking your eyes, you admired your new soul. Your tails curled around your new peach-size bosoms, making you blush a little. Sure, these were your breasts and tails but you haven’t exactly thought of yourself as a woman yet. It’s like a man intruding into the woman’s bathroom, very much an embarrassing situation.

Still you have to wonder. For someone with such a beautiful body, why did she reality hopped away? Was it because of similar reasons to yourself? Or maybe something more serious.

The green light shone on your body once more, sucking you into a new world of fantasy. Your world seemed to spring to life, where its monochrome grays suddenly were replaced with color. Just for a split moment, you could see the whole world, from its denizens in their medieval castles to the majestic legendary creatures that lived in the deep jungle. Before you had a chance to even begin processing, your soul grew weary, falling into a deep slumber.

As you woke up, you found yourself in a comfortable dorm room, with warm dirt brown wooden walls surrounding you. You pinched your orange fur, trying to ensure that this wasn’t just some hallucination of yours. Yep, it hurts.

Glancing around, you could see that this was a private minimalistic room. Various thick textbooks stacked on top of one another on the desk while a small calendar hung on the side. It reads 2nd Freka with its date highlighted in red. In that same column, all the dates were red before moving onto the next row. You figured it must be a weekend of sorts, heaving a sigh of relief. It would be awkward for you to enter into class, completely clueless about this world. What even is a Freka? December?

A gust of cold wind brushed against your fur as you huddled almost on instinct in your warm blanket. Guess it was winter now. You then noticed how soft it was, was this silk? Wait, it's actually silk. God damn she was also rich. But that added to the mystery, why would someone leave their comfortable life?

As you got out of bed, clumsily still trying to balance yourself with your new hindpaws, you turned back to see a bloody incomplete magic circle. Arcanic symbols written on its circumference, leaving a message in dark red behind in its dead center: “I’m sorry.”

Your body trembled upon the sight of it. Goosebumps appeared on your arms. Your tails quickly froze as you tried to understand what had just happened. Was this their way of reality hopping? It has to be right?

Once you regained your balance on your two hindpaws, your tails swished back to normal, knocking over a red book beside your pillow. You grabbed the book with your paws, still feeling like an alien. Everything was all so sensitive from your squishy paw pads and your twin tails that brushed against the surfaces of your bed.

You squinted at the book, making out the faint faded text as “My Diary”. Fortunately, you could still understand the words as proper English. You flipped through the yellow faded pages, noticing how violent and dark the words were. Once you came to the end, the pages were torn out with the final message of how sorry she was to her mother.

With your sharp claws, you carefully flipped back to the start. You returned back to your bed, your fur fluffing up in response to the cold. There, you start to uncover her story.

From the start, she was talking about how excited she was to attend Eratix school of magic. She wrote her dreams of becoming a witch and how she was going to protect her land with all sorts of spells. Her words had a certain lightness to it that you felt. Like her joy and hopes were being etched onto the pages. You smiled a little, she reminded you of youth. One that you wished you had, the childlike naivety to embark on your dreams.

Yet life was cruel. In one of the paragraphs she wrote out:

“Dear Diary,

Today was rough. Very rough. Today, we had an aptitude test to test our affinity for magic with two parts: Mana Pool and Manipulation.

It is exactly what it sounded like. Mana Pool being the amount of mana your body can carry for a day. Mana Manipulation being the usable mana to cast spells.

And I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Being the bastardized daughter of Count Lewis was bad enough for my reputation. Being a kitsune on top of that was the deal breaker for most. It’s fine. I could live with all of their disdain glares and insults. But this. I needed this.

As I went forward to the crystal, it lit up a bright blue. I calmed myself and tried to control the mana inside the crystal, only for it to be unresponsive. And their eyes. Their damn eyes. All of them lit up as if food had just been served.

They were right. At the end of the class, they showed our results, revealing that I was the last on the list. My mana pool was more like an ocean apparently, which caused my mana manipulation to be absolutely non-existent.

The worst part? Mrs Delli talked to me after class. With pity in her eyes, she told me that it would be very difficult for me to become a spell caster and that I should change into something easier.

But it’s fine. These were tiny setbacks. I can still live with them.

Yours Truly,
Alice”

Your eyes began to be teary. You couldn’t tell if it was your sympathy or her frustration that led to it. Your tails settled down to a pause, twitching a little upon touching them. At least you learnt something about this world.

As you flipped to the next page, tears dripped from your eyes, landing onto the pages. There, she wrote:

“Why? Why must God curse me with this body? I could have been a normal girl with an affinity for casting spells and manipulating the world around me. No. Of course, you had to make me into a kitsune.

For some reason, you chose to put all of my mana inside my tail. Tails, I mean since you made me grow more than one, basically doubling my mana pool. And you know what’s the worst part? You are going to make me have seven more. Do you want me to drown in mana, unable to cast a single spell?

I hate this. I hate all of their looks at me where I know for a fact they are gossiping about me.

Where they are looking for my downfall.

They have already started. Excluding me from activities. Withholding notes and information. Destroying several of my notes.

All because of my cursed existence. I’m so sick of it.”

The following pages were hard to read. Seeing how Alice’s dreams were shredded to bits and pieces and how she vented out her frustration onto her book made you cry. These were your tears out of your own will. In vivid detail, she wrote her various attempts at solving it before failing once again.

Towards the end, she found a grimoire talking about ways to escape from this reality. After all of the humiliation and failures, she gave into the idea. With her final entry detailing the spell, she cast it behind her bed, bidding this reality farewell.

You put down the book, looking at your body once more. Now knowing how hard she tried, you felt a sense of responsibility. Felt a sense of duty to make her dreams become a reality. But you would do it your way, a way not bound by this world.

Your two tails sprung to life, curling to give you a warm embrace. You soon stood up, now more interested about the world around you and the magic system in place. It couldn’t be that hard compared to college right?

You spent the next hours reading through the different subjects. Suddenly, your stomach growled, craving for some food. Ah right, you didn’t eat at all. With your heightened sense of smell, you could navigate to the cafeteria without a map. Must be a perk of being a fox.

Changing into a blue blouse, you blushed as you looked at yourself in the mirror. You looked so cute in that blue blouse, something you would have taken a photo of in your old reality. Back there, you could never even fathom the thought of cross dressing, always thinking you were too cringe. Maybe this was always where you meant to be…

Your stomach complained once again, begging you to find some food. Grabbing your wallet, you walked towards the cafeteria. Your footsteps were lighter now almost as if a load had been lifted from you. Meanwhile your ear twitched around, eavesdropping conversations on others. Most of them were pointless gossip but once in a while, you hear your name.

‘Isn’t that Alice? I thought she dropped out?’

‘Apparently not, but they should expel her soon enough.’

You pushed their insults aside, briefly recalling what you had learnt. So far, there were three main subjects that Alice was taking: History, studying about the culture and various historical moments. Theoretical and Practical Magic where students learn the principles behind them and apply them in real life. Lastly, Alchemy where students produce potions and other useful solutions.

Essentially, it’s going to college all over again, majoring in Physics and Chemistry while having a minor in History. Judging by her test papers that hid inside the textbooks, she was scoring decently for History while Magic and Alchemy were all single digit grades.

Looking around the cafeteria, you quickly see a good majority of students were regular humans while a small handful of them were beastkin like you. According to your textbook, the denizens were divided into four types based on mana pool and manipulation.

For those that have no mana pool and manipulation, they were considered ‘Unblessed’, forgotten away by the creators of the world. Most of these would include examples of plants or small animals.

Then came those that had a little mana and can use it were considered ‘Graced’. This meant they could see the flow of magic and use magic themselves to a very finite extent. Most regular humans fall under this category.

As you queued to order the food, your ears twitched to hear nasty remarks about you. Your appearance, your personality and most importantly your inaptitude for magic. It only made sense from their perspective; this was a magic school where almost all the students were considered ‘Blessed’. They had a substantial mana pool, capable of casting higher tiered spells like a true wizard.

While most beastkins that entered were considered ‘Beloved’. Having too much mana to actually use it properly was akin to drowning in an ocean with little to no method to use it. Most of their mana are hidden within their various body parts from their tails to their fur.

If this was the price to pay for having warm fur and fluffy tails, you would take that trade in an instant. You blushed a little, reflecting on how quickly you were to be attached to your fur. Of course, the general consensus from nobles about beastkins was not the nicest. A freakshow between beasts and humans that got the worst of both worlds.

There was one last type that was considered ‘Treasured’ and that is having both a high mana pool with high mana manipulation capabilities. People have speculated dragons or other mythical creatures like phoenixes to possess such abilities. But due to how rare it was, it is simply a title with no real usage.

Once your food was served, you quickly went back to your seat. The loneliness stinging you a little with how everyone had a group that they belong to. Even the other Beastkins shunned you for trying to act like one of the humans.

It’s fine, it’s fine. This wasn’t the first time you've been through this situation. Back when you moved to other schools, you also were alone during lunch. Of course, you eventually made friends after the first week with you reaching out to them. But it still hurts.

As you munched on your chicken chop, your taste buds danced with flavor. God, was food always this good? Maybe the lack of all those processing that you were so used to enhanced the flavors.

Suddenly, your ears twitched, hearing more gossip from the other girls. You heard from the others about how toxic girls were to each other. Gossiping, spreading rumors and the number of dramas that you had witnessed in your multiple female friends scared you a little.

The gossip turned into giggling as you turned back to see a mixed group of beastkins and humans having lunch. The two girls pushed one of the quieter guys, an anthropomorphic gray wolf, daring him to ask her out. He knew that you could hear him and vice versa, creating an awkward scenario.

As he walked up to you, he strung the words together, “Hi…hi Alice, I am Lucas, a student like you. I would like to as..ask you out to a date…” His face was completely red, looking more like a fox than a wolf.

You chuckled. When was the last time you received such a prank? Middle school? Looking behind Lucas’ back, you could see them preparing to burst out laughing. Now what should you do here? Sure, you could accept this ‘date’ and slowly merge into their friend group. But why would you want to be with such garbage people?

An idea came up as you stood up on your hind paws. Lowering your voice to a whisper, you said, “Meet me behind the cafeteria building later. I want to talk to you. One on one.” Your tail wagged with how much more feminine your voice was compared to the past.

The others began to laugh with Lucas giving a confused look. He definitely had heard what you said. You began to leave, giving him a wink on the way out. He quickly shook his head before rejoining his group.

A gust of cold wind ruffled against your fur, you started to think about your next plan. As you stare down at the snowy field, you figured it was perfect for some experimentation. You could still hear the group laughing at Lucas for getting rejected, their obnoxious voice stinging your ears.

You climbed down the stairs with ease, remembering the fundamentals of magic. Essentially, you could view magic like a type of circuit. Using your fingers to trace out your mana, you will become the power source, before its effect would come through. The problem was how precise you had to be for certain effects. If you gave too much mana, the circuit would combust, dealing recoil damage to you.

Once you landed on the snow, you started to draw a circle against the wall. Another tricky problem was you need to have a sensing of how much mana to give out. According to the books, one would naturally ‘feel’ it in place. Obviously a small fire blast would need less mana than a hurricane spell. But the specifics would need to be tested from the user. Which wasn’t useful for you.

You started to trace out the magic circle on the ground with a stick. Your paws somehow adjusted to the cold. Quicker than any regular humans. From the diary, you knew how Alice was incapable of casting any spells at all. She could detect the mana from her large mana ocean but she couldn’t use it at all.

Yet that wasn’t true. She did cast a spell, her final one before you arrived. So what made that spell different from any regular spells? Maybe the usage of blood? But with more of her cells on the circle, she would be using even more mana.

“Hey, I arrived,” Lucas tapped on your shoulders, “Why did you want to meet me? Don’t tell me you’re interested in me…”

You turned around, inspecting from head to tail. Maybe it was your female body acting up, but he didn’t look that bad at all. Of course, you knew better than to fall for sheer looks. With your tail swaying aside, you replied, “Oh nothing, I just want to be friends.”

He took a step back, shocked, “Damn, I thought you hated us?”

“That depends,” You shrugged forward, “Why would I hate on someone who has done nothing wrong? Besides, shouldn’t us beastkin stick together?”

“You have a point. So what are you doing here? Out in the cold?”

“Just want to cast some spells. I’m sure everyone knows how ‘amazing’ I am at casting spells.”

He cleared his throat, “Don’t worry, I’m also awful at it. Too much mana coming out of our tails after all.”

“Why don’t you show me an example?”

Grabbing your stick, he started to trace it within the snow. He drew a simple circle with a dot, resembling the sun from your world’s alchemy. There, he closed his eyes, focussing on the circle. A white light shot out of the paws before circling around the magic circle. There in the middle, an orb of light floated up.

You clapped for him. This was your first time seeing magic in action, “Nice one. Was it hard?”

“Took me three months to master the light spell. Thanks for the compliment,” He said plainly while his tail wagged excitedly. Must have been a while since someone treated him decently.

The orb soon disappeared while he sighed out, “Man, if only this spell could last longer. Then at least I could pass the practical exam.”

“There’s a practical exam?” You asked, raising one of your eyebrows.

He nodded, “Coming next week. Apparently, if you fail three times in a row, you are automatically expelled from the university.”

Your mind went blank as you remembered the two mentionings of failing the practical examination in her diary. Ah, why did Alice have to fail them? And it’s next week?

“Could you guide me on the process?” You blushed a little.

Lucas chuckled, “Sure thing, Alice.”

He passed you the stick, while holding onto your hand. You gulped as you came into contact with his warm silver fur. You pushed away your lewd thoughts, following his instructions. In your mind, you felt like there was a missing puzzle piece to this problem.

As you followed his instructions to a tee, you tried to push out a small amount of mana but instead it overflowed, stinging you in the process. But it wasn’t all in vain as you connected the dots.

“Yeah, that happened a lot to me in the pa- Wait, what are you doing?” You quickly drew out the circle multiple times, one inside the other. With the dot dead in the middle, you casted the spell again. This time, your mana flowed like water with their energy sprinting through the circles. As you panted with excitement, a basketball-sized orb shined brightly to the two of you, hovering before the ground.

Lucas quickly grabbed against your hand, “Wait, that’s amazing Alice! How did you do that?” Your heart pounded as you looked at his earnest expression. Even as he was much taller and stronger than you, at that moment, he looked so cute.

“Oh sorry there,” He let go of your hands, blushing a little. You flashed a smirk before grabbing onto his hands.

“Why don’t I show you now?” You traced out the same small circle, pointing at it with the stick, “As you mentioned it is hard for us to cast this spell since it uses up so little mana. So instead of constricting ourselves with such a circle-”

“We can instead layer it multiple times to produce a bigger effect!”

You nodded your head. Honestly, this reminded you of coding in your past life. You were working in IT after all so all these concepts came to live once arriving here. Essentially, you’re viewing every circuit like a function with your mana as the input and the expected results as the output.

He got out your grip and started drawing out another magic circle. His eyes were in a trance, completely immersed in drawing it out. This time he drew an incomplete circle with a horizontal line in the middle.

“What’s that going to do?” You asked. You briefly recalled the many different symbols and shapes going into different magical circles with different effects but you didn’t seem to recognize this one.

“Mana detection. Allows the caster to detect any spells in the area. By right, it's a virtually useless spell with how small the range is. Five meters in radius from the circle. Even a person could detect ten meters if they tried,” A bright light was shot from the stick, spinning around the circle. Even as it encountered the gap, it still continued circling around. Faster than before.

“But with this,” Just by standing next to it, you could tell it's stronger. You touched the circle, detecting spells cast from a kilometer away. He broke the circle, wiping it from the snow. Lucas huffed with glee, “Due to its incomplete structure, it forces the user to expend all of its mana to completely cast it.”

Ah, that explained how Alice casted her final spell. But you wondered what if you put another spell in between the gap? Or what if you put the same spell? Would it become recursive? If only you knew how to do conditional branching.

“Thank you so much Lucas, I wouldn’t have found this out without you!” You thanked him before giving him a little peck on the cheek. It was on instinct and you had no regrets doing it.

His eyes widened, pressing against the kiss. Fully red now, he muttered out, “Same time tomorrow?”

You nodded as you waved him goodbye.

For the coming days, the two of you started experimenting with the various circles. You found out how to create the standard electrical operators: AND, OR and NOT with conditional branching. This is through layering the mana detection circle, allowing you to implement complex logic.

That wasn’t the only thing that you learnt. You found out more about Lewis and how he was just like you, an illegitimate child of a count. He was about to give up on magic, switching to the alchemy track before meeting you. It touched your heart how much of an impact you made.

And you didn’t try to hide it.

On the day of the exam, each student was given five minutes to perform three spells in a row that will last a minute.

“Alice Sans!” The examiner called out your name. Others began snickering behind your backs while Lucas gave a reassuring smile. You calmed yourself down, this will be a piece of cake.

You quickly drew out a simple menu system where you would activate the three spells vocally. Then, you drew out the various circles from light to crystallization.

Finally, you finished the structure in a minute. You casted the spell and with great vigor, you called out, “Light!”

Your spell shone brightly. Examiners were impressed with them raising their eyebrows. The other students were mixed in their reactions; some were furious at your new circles while others were shocked at its complexity.

As you finished your spells, the other students' spellcasting looked mediocre at best. They glared at you for outperforming them.

“Lucas Lake!” Lucas yawned before waving at you. You soon realize, he was a little cocky after mastering the various aspects.

Like a peacock, he boasted his talent through a mixture of recursive and layered spells. As he casted it, the orb of light turned into a burning ember before he summoned a mini golem. His friends looked astonished from his performance as he smirked at you.

The examination came to an end with both of you scoring first. Professors started to bombard you with questions, trying to find out these new types of circles. You pushed back, explaining that you have a date to catch.

As you met up with Lucas, he said, “I don’t think I repaid you for that kiss.”

“Oh you surely didn’t,” He pulled you close to him, giving a passionate kiss on your lips. Within the pleasure, a third tail grew out of your body, covering the passionate scene.

Once the kiss ended, he tilted his head, “Want to continue our celebration at my place?”

“I would love that,” You answered, leaning against his sturdy body.