The entombed heart drew upon the surrounding mana, generating energy in preparation to do...whatever it was about to. Instead of glowing, it then started to absorb the light in the room, but Beth supposed that was to be expected, considering it was void-based. The heartbeat sound continued, growing slightly louder, but mainly growing slowly quicker, until it was beating at a steady rate. It didn't take Beth much effort to figure out that the entombed heart was matching Sera's heartbeat, beating exactly in time with the dragon girl's own heart.

  That continued for an entire minute, Sera having closed her eyes and seeming to concentrate deeply on what was happening. Beth was simply watching, not really understanding much if any of what was happening while Blood was paying rapt attention, focusing intently on the entombed heart itself. The beating sped up a little bit, also matching an increase in Sera's heartrate, before a dull thrumming sound started to echo from the heart, almost like an engine running outside that could be heard through the walls, though it was clearly coming from the heart. A band of inky darkness dripped from the heart onto and then into Sera's chest on the right side of her left breast, directly over her heart. The darkness pooled on her breast slightly for a few seconds, but seemed to invade her flesh and the pool shrunk, leaving a line of darkness sliding down from the heart and into Sera's chest.

  Nothing happened for a few moments, a handful of seconds or so, at least nothing that Beth could see, but then it started. Sera's body started changing, rather slowly and subtly at first, but then in a more pronounced way. The most obvious was her horns for Beth, as she was currently stroking one of them, and they both practically disappeared. There were only small, two-inch little horns that were basically stubs left jutting from just behind her temples where her horns originated. Beth was distracted from that change by seeing the scales starting to disappear from her body, not all at once, but a slow progression as they were absorbed back into her body with clean, beautiful skin left behind.

  One not-so-obvious change was a drastic reduction in Sera's tail, shrinking underneath her to be much, much shorter in length and losing some of its width right at the base. Beth watched as Sera's nails, both on her hands and feet, transformed from long, sharp talons to small claws that could be mistaken for just slightly long human nails at a quick glance, other than them still being black. The only thing that didn't display some kind of great change of her 'draconic' features were her ears, which had a distinctive pointed quality, though they weren't exactly the same as elven ears. Those remained entirely the same, not shifting or changing in the least as the heart continued beating and pouring out the void energy.

  After five minutes, the heartbeats slowed, returning to what Beth assumed was Sera's resting rhythm. She watched in fascination as the entombed heart started to flake apart, not breaking so much as dissolving into nothing, tiny motes of mana just barely detectable as the heart broke down. Beth focused on those motes for the minute it took the last of the process to complete, concentrating on them to gain some insight into how they worked. All too soon, it was all over and the light level of the room returned to normal, with Sera slowly opening her eyes before sitting up, glancing at Beth before focusing on Blood.

  The wolf had some kind of energy swirling around her, a distant look in her eyes as red, gold, and black energies danced around her body. Beth watched as the energy coalesced into fine lines, continuing to spin around Blood, but at a rather slow rate. The wolf's ears had disappeared, her human ears appearing on the side of her head, and more changes started to propagate from there. Fur disappeared in place of skin, claws shortened to become more human nails, and her tail started disappearing from the base of her spine.

  "I don't have enough energy," Blood said in a deep, calm voice.

  "She needs blood," Beth added, looking through her necklace to see if she had anything she could use.

  "No problem," said Sera. "Use this."

  The dragon pulled out a dark red crystal the size of her palm, pulsing with a wild and vital energy, little swirls of mana gathering along the sharp edges. Blood took the crystal in an almost mechanical manner, lifting it to her mouth and biting into it. There was a loud shattering sound, but Blood was very careful to consume every piece of crystal shard as she sucked down every iota of energy it contained. It was more than a bit strange to watch Blood eat a crystal knowing it wasn't just some prop made of sugar or something, but she wasn't having any trouble with chewing through it, so Beth didn't make a comment.

  The energy swirled around Blood much more rapidly as she ate the crystal, peaking with a furious swirl of light as she swallowed the last of it. The energy almost immediately slammed into Blood's body, penetrating it deeply and causing changes to propagate very quickly. Unlike what had just happened with Sera, Blood's body rapidly changed and morphed, everything happening in the course of just a handful of seconds. Her ears morphed, her fur disappeared entirely, her claws fully transformed, her body slightly shifted, and Beth looked behind her to see her tail entirely gone.

  "Un-fucking-believable," Sera whispered. "Blood's actually a genius."

  "Really? Her? She sleeps all day and doesn't do anything," Beth said, looking at Sera rather dubiously.

  "That's what it's like with geniuses," Sera sighed. "Besides, you know she does a lot more than that."

  "Yeah, but...her? A genius? Let's not get carried away," Beth said with a shake of her head.

  "You know I can hear you," Blood grumbled at them.

  "Oh, I know," Beth replied with a smirk.

  "Let me see," Sera said, grabbing Blood and standing up from the bed. She moved over to the window and set the wolf down, taking advantage of the added light to inspect her closely. Blood growled a bit, but the tone changed immensely when Sera started scratching her ears while still examining her.

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  "What are you looking for?" Beth asked, standing next to them and giving both a critical eye.

  "Well, look at me," Sera said, standing next to Blood and facing Beth. The sheer amount of boob on display between the two of them was pretty distracting, but Beth focused on looking over all of Sera's body. "Yeah, I mean, you're insanely beautiful, Ser. Not sure what the big deal is."

  "Well, I have less draconic features, yes?" Sera led with.

  "Well, sure, but that's the whole point, right?" Beth asked.

  "Yeah, exactly. So, look at me, who used an entombed heart to progress by this much; I have tiny horns, a small tail, and just a few scales left. Now, look at Blood; she needed energy from an external source, but it wasn't one that was meant to enhance humanization. She's progressed even further than me, and she did it on her own, without outside help, other than whatever she's been reading about the subject," Sera explained.

  "OK, right, so that makes some sense," Beth said. "But, is it really that big of a deal?"

  "Oh yeah, it is," Sera said, nodding vigorously. "You're still kinda new to all this; I mean, you've done a lot of fighting and such, but a lot of the other intricacies still escape you."

  "I think you just called me stupid, in a roundabout way," Beth interjected.

  "Not stupid, Beth, just lacking information. I've certainly found you tend to tunnel-vision on things, and that leaves a lot of stuff outside your realm of knowledge," Sera said with a quick shake of her head.

  "So, okay, Blood's really impressive. What else?" Beth asked, a little nonplussed.

  "Okay, just take my word for it that it's really, really impressive," Sera explained. "Beyond just how impressive what she's done is in terms of advancing so far so fast and so early, she's gone way ahead of where even many experienced sapient beasts get. Check it out."

  Sera gestured Beth to step over and pointed at Blood's collarbones. Beth leaned in closely to look, having seen something a bit strange there from a slight distance, but now that she was getting an up-close look, she saw that there was writing around her collarbones. Some of it was obscured by her necklace, the only thing the wolf was wearing, but Beth could clearly see that she had a nearly complete circle of runes around her neck. These runes weren't like anything Beth had had the chance to study so far, nor like anything she had seen when they were out and about exploring. Instead, they were written with far more precision and had far more curves and long, looping sections. Beth reached out and ran her thumbs over them, getting a happy growl from Blood, and she noticed that the runes were slightly hot.

  "They don't hurt, do they?" Beth asked, glancing up at Blood's face.

  "No? Should they?" the wolf asked, confusion evident in her eyes as she glanced between Beth and Sera.

  "Nope, they should feel good," Sera said.

  "It's just that they're noticeably hot," Beth said, running her thumbs over them again.

  "I don't feel it," Blood said with a big shrug, causing her breasts to bounce against Beth's forearms.

  "Well, it's a noticeable difference with the rest of your skin," Beth said with a slight frown, running her hands over Blood's shoulders before stroking the runes again.

  "That stuff happens," Sera explained. "The runes will cause very slight physical changes, including expressing a bit of energy themselves. That can mean they'll be hot, or bright, or even express it through a tiny bit of mana emanating, which could make them cold or shocking, but just to a very small degree."

  "That's crazy," Beth said, straightening up before starting to examine Sera. She was much, much more hands-on with this exam, rubbing and caressing every square inch of the dragon girl. "Where're your runes?"

  "I'm not there yet," Sera said with a small laugh, not taking any offense. "But now I'm way closer. If we want to categorize it, I'm probably a bit more advanced than Blood was before she got inspired by my advancement."

  "Interesting. So, where does that leave us?" Beth asked as she caressed Sera's now scale-free back.

  "Well, Blood will be stronger, and I mean way stronger," Sera answered. "It also influences how many stats she'll get when leveling up, and now we'll both be stronger in that aspect as well."

  "Don't like the change," Blood muttered, in the course of a second transforming back into her typical look.

  "She doesn't get any weaker doing that?" Beth asked, absentmindedly caressing Sera while looking at Blood.

  "Nope, which is one of the reason a lot of people get it pounded into their heads not to offend other people randomly, even if some dumbasses don't listen," Sera answered. "Blood could look far more lupine than she does now, and she wouldn't be any weaker just because she isn't actively displaying her full level of humanization. You could be talking to someone who looks more beast-like than Blood currently does, but if they showed their full level of humanization, they would be almost entirely covered in runes. Somebody like that doesn't really even need great stats or high skill-levels; that level of humanization would let them crack apart mountains with one or two punches, and that's just the tip of the iceberg."

  "Well, that seems a little skewed in beast's favor," Beth said with a slight frown.

  "Well, yes and no," Sera said, wiggling one of her massive hands. "Unlike you, Blood and I can't get classes. At first, your class isn't really that impressive, and even your first evolution probably doesn't seem entirely amazing, but that'll change. Your next evolution, though it'll probably take some time yet, will give even more stats, which is great, but that's also likely where you'll get a couple class-orientated skills and upgrades. In the long run, without classes, most beasts have it worse than non-beast sapient beings."

  "That doesn't seem like it follows," Beth said. "If you get these evolutions that increase your base power, give you more stats per level, and do other things besides, that seems super strong. And right now, you both are probably more advanced than I am and I have a while until my next class evolution, so that seems like it's weighted towards beasts."

  "Eh, that might be valid, but you're forgetting a couple things," Sera explained, watching as Blood wandered off into the living room. She picked Beth up and followed, continuing the conversation, "Blood is, apparently, a stunning genius seen once in a generation when it comes to humanization. On top of that, you just gave me an insanely valuable resource that is specifically dedicated to raising a person's humanization, so think about it that way. I had to basically cheat to get to just past where Blood, a genius, already was, and that 'cheating' was me using an insanely rare, powerful item to advance. I won't be able to advance much at all for likely years, not unless we get another one of those insanely rare items."

  "So, what you're saying is, Blood's a genius and you're super rich, so plebs can't compete?" Beth asked in a bit of a teasing tone.

  "That's basically right, yes," Sera nodded, faux-serious. "How many geniuses are there like Blood out of trillions and trillions of people in the galaxy. A million? Hardly. Maybe a few hundred right now."

  "And how many rich princesses like you are there?" Beth cut in, sitting in Sera's lap and rubbing Blood's back, the wolf laying on the couch next to them.

  "More than you might think," Sera said. "But a decent few of them are spoiled brats who don't really want to try too hard. So out of trillions of sapient beings in just this galaxy, there are probably a few hundred who can advance like we do. In the end, beasts have it a decent bit harder than non-beast sapients, though our strength at the high-end would give some of the strongest sapient beings a run for their money."

  "Alright, good information. I guess I have to work even harder, but I've got errands to run," Beth said with a chuckle, standing up from Sera's lap.

  "You want me to come with?" Sera asked, her hand still on Beth's hip.

  "No, that's fine, I'm a big girl, I can handle a couple errands myself," Beth said, grinning and leaning down to give Sera a very warm kiss. She broke it off after a minute, straightening before leaning down and giving Blood a kiss on the cheek. The wolf barely reacted, other than a small and happy growl that Beth easily caught with her quite good hearing. She straightened again and headed for the door with underwear, a dress, and knee-boots appearing on her as she walked.