Tess surveyed the window she had received from absorbing the cores, thoughtfully considering what things would go best where.

  Well, that hadn’t been what she was planning on getting, but she was absolutely going to use quite a few of those for herself. First off, she had an extra slot available for an Attribute now, so she moved Blighted Body from a User Fundamental slot to it. She really wasn’t gaining that much more benefit from it than if she kept it in a regular slot, so she was going to put something else in the newly-freed slot.

  And her gut said that something else would have to be Tremorsense (Perfect). Being able to basically see through the floor, around corners, through walls…it was too good to pass up, and even if putting it in a User Fundamental slot only increased the range, it would be well worth it.

  So, she did…and then immediately let out a yelp as she was bombarded with all sorts of unfamiliar new sensations. She didn’t even really register the window that popped up informing her of what it did in a User Fundamental slot until a moment later, as she just…processed all the new information.

  She could feel as Ellie ran from her room, practically sprinting as she sprang up from her bed and burst into the hallway before throwing the door to Tess’s room open. “Tess, are you okay?!” She asked, looking around wildly. “Did something go wrong?!”

  “It’s…it’s fine.” Tess said, waving a hand. “I’m just…still getting used to this new Attribute. I just got an entirely new sense from it, so I was shocked at first.”

  “Oh, I…um…I’ll leave you alone to get used to it, then, this probably isn’t helping. Let me know when you’re ready to talk, I want to hear about it.” Ellie said awkwardly, shutting the door as softly as she could and walking back to her room.

  Tess could feel Silky skittering about worriedly on the bed behind her, as well as the mice in the walls and the insects and…she took a deep breath, calming herself. It honestly wasn’t as bad as she might have thought. It wasn’t actually giving her a headache or anything, it worked perfectly fine, it was just a little overwhelming to basically be able to ‘see’ the entire house and some of the outside all at the same time.

  She’d have to force herself to get used to it later, and she was guessing she’d keep it off when it wasn’t necessary, since she didn’t really want to be privy to everything like this, but it was definitely an addition that would help her out greatly.

  She turned it off, and got to deciding where to put everything else. The magic Skills would be going on Isabella, since she had a much higher Magic stat than either Tess or Silky. Regenerative Retreat would go on…either Silky or Isabella, since Tess didn’t even have enough Mana or Stamina to use it, but those two did.

  She’d be taking Phoenix Fire, Purifying Flames, and Reborn from the Ashes, while Earth’s Embrace would be for Silky, and Mountain out of a Molehill would go to Isabella, which took care of all of the Skills.

  Which just left the Attributes. The Affinity Attributes would go to Isabella, and that took care of pretty much everything she wanted for her, making Isabella much more of an offensive presence than she was before.

  She’d take Fire Immunity for herself, and that was everything she wanted. To make room for that, she removed Part of the Pack (inferior), since that was really just a placeholder, got rid of Keen Nose (Greater) since she barely ever used it and she was planning on giving Stereo Smell (Greater) to Silky anyway, and finally, Rallying Cry she’d give to Silky, leaving her with room for everything.

  And that just left what she wanted for Silky. Earth Swimmer was probably not very useful without Tremorsense (Perfect), but if she could fit it in, that would be something to give to her, just in case. Next would be Stereo Smell (Greater), to give Silky yet another tool for scouting and make it so Tess didn’t need to worry about smell-enhancing Attributes.

  And, finally Wings, and Exceptional Flier. She had originally decided that wings weren’t worth it on Silky since the jump in ‘current power’ was quite large and Silky would be able to scale walls and other things anyway, but it turned out that there were still situations in which flying would be beneficial for her, so she had decided it was worth it.

  She really wished she was able to sort of…migrate her attendant’s form to other cores, giving them the stats of the new core with the body type of the old, or just otherwise increase their stats of their original core, but that was apparently something that came later on in the Class, so for right now she had to work around their current limitations.

  Fortunately, she had left a fair bit of room in their ‘current power’ as opposed to their maximum, so she probably had enough breathing room to put in everything she wanted, as well whatever else she had lying around, so she could maximize that ‘power’ and make them as strong as possible.

  “Alright you guys.” She told them. “Do you know of a way to just return to your cores or do I have to…” She trailed off, not wanting to say what she was thinking. She really didn’t want to kill these two if she could avoid it, it would just…leave a bad taste in her mouth.

  Don’t worry! Silky said, scuttling around so she was in Tess’s line of sight. We can do it, so long as we have permission! Do you want us to do it now?

  “Yes, please.” Tess replied, relieved. “Though Isabella may want to come out of me first.”

  “Understood.” Isabella droned, floating out of Tess. She gave a small curtsey, then just sort of…faded out of existence, a core falling to the floor when she was done.

  For her part, Silky gave a salute, and then began fading much as Isabella had, until there were only two cores on the floor.

  Tess picked them up and absorbed them, prompting a window to show up, informing her that she had absorbed her attendant’s cores and that the slots had been freed up. She was somewhat surprised to note that their cores had leveled up somewhat in the time they were out, allowing her a little more breathing room with their modifications.

  Furthermore, there was a special Attribute for their memories, meaning that, in a pinch, she could just transplant them to a different core entirely if she didn’t mind making them look completely different. She was satisfied with how they were now, though, and she didn’t want to move them to a much stronger core for fear of instilling bad habits in them and in her from them being so overleveled.

  Now that she had Precision Surgery, she could adjust their stats too, so she did that as well. Silky wasn’t really built for damage, so she took as much as she could out of Power and Magic and placed it into Agility and called it good. Isabella, on the other hand, had a lot of stats she wasn’t using, since she spent most of her time undetected inside of Tess. HP, Power, Defense, Magic Defense, and Agility were all put as low as they could go, and the extra points put into Magic and Mana.

  With that, all that was left to do was transfer Skills and Attributes she wanted over to them and a couple extras to fill get their power as close to maximum as possible. After she was finished, she took one last look at them before preparing to bring them back into existence.

  She nodded her head in satisfaction, took a deep breath, then sent a message to Ellie.

  Tess sighed, made her preparations, and got to work.

  A few minutes later she had both Silky and Isabella back, had finished using the towel she had laid out to clean up any remaining mess, and had dressed herself again.

  Tess smiled slightly, sitting on her bed. “How are you two feeling?” She asked.

  Better than ever! Silky said happily. I’m feeling…stronger, smarter, everything is better!

  “I agree.” Isabella said. “It feels…good. Thank you, mistress.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Tess replied. “Let me know if anything starts feeling off, we’ll get it fixed.”

  “Understood.” Isabella replied, taking her usual position inside of Tess.

  Got it! I’m gonna go eat, let me know if you need me! Silky said, scuttling out under the door and into the rest of the house.

  Tess took out her phone, made note of the time, and began to mess around. Now that the thing she was most worried about was out of the way, it was looking like the night was going to be a good one, and she couldn’t wait.