Supreme Magus

Manohar prodded it with a mix of air and light magic to alter its metabolism. The hair turned from red into blonde and then dark.

Small sparks of electricity induced spasms into the "hair" instead of burning it, allowing the god of healing to employ Body Sculpting on the otherwise impervious life force.

"How do you change the color at will?" Quylla asked.

"I don't. I just trigger the memory centers while it's still stunned and the little guy does the rest." Manohar replied.

"Memory centers? Guy?" Quylla could see what the Mad Professor meant with her own tier five Body Sculpting spell, Silver Hand, but she had a hard time believing her own magic.

Hair wasn't supposed to have a life force once removed from the head, nor to have memory, yet the thing in front of her was alive. Quylla had examined the life force of plants, beasts, undead, humans, monsters, and even Lith's but all that knowledge only confused her even more.

The hair was composed of a homogeneous substance capable of rearranging its disposition freely as long as it was provided with a proper template.

What creeped her out the most was the fact that even once removed from the main body, the small hair still retained some sort of consciousness and the urge to reconnect with the rest.

Quylla could see the strands of hair slithering on the table in the direction of the Marquis' home.

"Any idea what it is?" She asked.

"None." Manohar sighed. "If only it had more mass I could put a few theories to the test, but as it is, the only possible result is death. Unless…"

He threw the hair that Jirni had taken from the butlers on top of that from Phisa, hoping they would merge since their life force was almost identical, yet nothing happened.

"Dammit!" He roared in frustration. "So close and yet so far. We can only hope that Beanpole and Hot Stuff have more luck, Quylla."

"Wait, I understand you remember my mother's name, but why do you remember mine as well?" She asked.

"Because Beanpole isn't a student of mine, Hot Stuff squandered her talent as a healer, and if not for Jirni, I would have already forgotten that Jirni's plus one exists. You instead are a good student, a good healer, and a wonderful assistant." Manohar said.

Quylla had no idea what he was talking about. Sure, back when she was assistant Professor at the White Griffon she had worked for him for a while. Yet after doing Manohar's paperwork, teaching his classes, and taking the blame for his escapes for months without learning anything from him, Quylla had requested to be transferred under Vastor.

There was no comparison in the talent between the two Professors, but at least Vastor would do his own job and teach her as much as he could instead of leaving unreadable notes on her desk, claiming they were priceless magical secrets.

'I bet that he has yet to notice both my transfer and the fact that I don't work at the White Griffon anymore.' Quylla thought.

"More mass, you say? Then I have a theory that could easily fix this problem." She cut a lock of her hair and threw it on the table.

The test subjects ignored it and so they did with a drop of her blood and a slab of raw meat.

"Please, do you really think I haven't thought of feeding them?" Manohar said with a sneer. "I even put them on your jugular earlier to see if they would attack a vital spot when given the chance."

"You what?" Quylla instinctively touched her neck with one hand while the other formed a fist that a mysterious force pulled towards his gonads.

"Well, they didn't attack your mother's hand so I already knew that direct contact is safe. I needed to check if the hair-looking things posed a threat to us. Don't worry, I was ready to take them off you as soon as they had eaten enough to be properly analyzed." He said.

"How kind of you." Quylla's voice was stone cold and the pull on her fist suddenly grew stronger.

She could picture the scene of the worm-like creatures digging through her flesh while Manohar ignored her pain and fear, cheering for them to grow strong.

"Thanks. I wish more people were as open minded as you." Manohar sighed deeply.

Quylla opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, but then she swallowed her indignation without saying anything. Scolding Manohar would have been akin to talking to a wall and time was running out.

Rather than wasting her energy, she preferred to focus on the task at hand.

"Maybe they are not interested in my hair or the meat because they are dead while we are just too big to qualify as prey." She pondered out loud.

"It would imply some kind of intelligence and the need for babies. Both are unlikely." Manohar replied. "There's no space for a brain in there and the Kingdom will never give me newborns as test-"

Quylla took out her Forgemastering wand, using Spirit Magic to capture a fly that had entered the room following the smell of fresh meat. Air magic's currents would have torn apart such a fragile creature while Light Mastery lacked the fine control she needed.

"What is that?" Manohar looked at the blue tendril of pure mana wrapped around the insect, keeping even its wings still without doing them any harm.

"It's just a trick that I learned while practicing my Forgemastery." Quylla lied while bringing the fly near the long red hair belonging to Phisa.

It immediately stopped slithering and wrapped itself around the insect like a small boa constrictor. The fly tried to escape, but the hair dug through its body, paralyzing it with pain.

The insect fell down on the table, writhing its small legs in the air in a desperate attempt to save its life. The hair kept eating until it gained enough mass to wrap the whole fly into a thin translucent scarlet layer that digested the insect at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The liquid dissected the fly, detaching the limbs and wings from the body before attacking the exoskeleton one layer at a time.

"Interesting." Manohar said. "It swallows the prey and digests it whole. This explains why it doesn't attack humans. A single hair is simply not up to the task."

"It means that the hair retains some kind of intelligence and that we need no babies." Quylla said with a sneer. "It also means that someone was wrong."

"I'm never-" Manohar set his gigantic ego aside the moment he saw the now thicker hair curl up and quickly turn into an exact copy of the fly that it had just consumed.

The thing resembling the fly ended up with its legs in the air, incapable of standing up. The wings lacked any coordination, giving the impression that the creature was having a seizure.

"Very interesting. Despite its ability to mimic its prey, this creature has no familiarity with this form.. Do you know what that means?" Manohar said with a huge smile on his face.