<~> Chapter 231Feyria's aide pulled a crate onto the stoable and pulled out seven carefully ed potion bottles. "These shimmerscale potions will alter your appearao look like e beastfolk for aire day. The ges to your body will be real but temporary, it might be odd to have differently shaped ears and such but your identities will be safe for the duration. The potions won't affect things like your height and proportions though. Any questions?"

  "Is there a way to reverse it early?" I asked.

  The elf shook his head. "No, once you drink it, you'll stay like that for a full day."

  "We'll stay the same genders right?" Bel asked with the smallest hint of worry in her voice.

  "Yes, nothing to worry about there. All it will do is give you fur if you don't already have any, ge your fur color, and ge the shape of your faces and tails."

  After a short sile was clear no one else had any more questions so he pulled a smaller box onto the table. He clicked opeches and ope up to reveal three silver bracelets. "These are what you'll o remove colrs. They work by inhibiting the specifid of magic the colrs use to operate, these were created after signifit study into the way that the colrs fun. It's possible you may run into colrs these do not work on, but most of the colrs worn by sves in the sver's guild are produced in rge quantities using the same teique, so this should work on all of them. They have a limited mana capacity but ohey are exhausted you refill them with mana again ter. You may keep these after this mission but tell no one where you got them."

  I picked up the bracelet and exami more closely. It retty pin with only enough engraving and orion to make it not look odd as a regur jewelry piece. It looked like real silver to me but I didn't know enough about metals to be sure about that. After a moment I slipped it onto my wrist.

  "How do we use them?" I asked while looking at it on my wrist

  "While wearing ooueone's colr with the same hand and push your mana through the bracelet. It will cause the colr to bee temporarily disented and untch itself. If it doesn't untch, you may need additional tools to remove the colr. The entments on the colr will reassert themselves after a bell or two if you haven't mao remove it by then, but it shouldn't be an issue."

  I passed an additional bracelet to Silva and I was about to hand oan before she shook her head. "I don't have any personal mana, I 't power this. You should give it to Bel." Frowning, I ha to Bel instead. She took it without any argument and slipped it onto her wrist.

  "Do you have any more preparations to make before my colleague transports you into the sver's guild?" the elf asked.

  I looked over the elven man. "Feyria told me that you wouldn't be able to get me back out of the city after..."

  "Yes, we're leaving right after we send you on your way. You're not the only one who needs access tate magic today."

  I nodded before turning back to Cecilia. "Cecilia, while we're gone, you're in charge of the carriage and the others. Make sure you protect Tenna and Kino. If we're not back by tomorrow at this time head to Goldeh without us and have Raya and Sibyl lead you to the Brothel. There's someohere who will be able to tell you about our status and if we need some kind of resg. Obviously, I hope it doesn't e to that." I turo the rest of the group, "Is there anything else before we o go?"

  "Good luck, Lilith! Take care of everyone in there! We'll help protect Tenna and Kino, don't worry about us!" Raya's enthusiastic reply was a bit amusing because of everyone, including Tenna herself, Raya was actually the least experienced of the bunch, but it made me happy that she was trying to take the weight off of my shoulders.

  "You better make it back here," Cecilia added. "There's still a lot to do. Stay safe."

  "Thanks, guys. We'll be back here before tomorrow. You t on that," I said with a grin.

  I started handing out the potions but stopped when I got to Mimi. I looked her up and down before saying something to her through the bond. -- "Mimi, you try to mimic our shape without drinking the potion? I'm not sure if it will work on you properly." --

  -- "Sure, I'll try. It will be a little more costly to maintain a different humanoid form but I have plenty of reserve magic right now." --

  -- "Good, stand in the bad just store the potion instead of drinking it." --

  I finished handing out the potions and examihe st o for me. It was a goopy dark purple that looked thid viscous. It did not look like it would be pleasant to get down. I pulled out the cork and looked at my friends, everyone was waiting for me to take the lead with amusement on their faces. Ugh, this robably going to taste horrible.

  After psyg myself up for it, I started swallowing the potion down and it tasted like... water with herbs in it. It had an unpleasaure to swallow, a bit like thiot or something, but it didn't taste nearly as horrible as I thought it would. "By your reas, I thought this was going to taste awful," I told them acgly.

  Torien ughed. "You were so obviously worried about it that none of us wao tip you off that it wasn't going to be a big deal. Some potions taste bad sure, but most tasted like... herbal water." She then put the bottle up to her lips and started to drink from her own.

  I didn't know if I was imagining it or not at first, but I started to feel tingly all over my body. A shiver went down my spine and then I felt a prickle across every hair on my furry body. Then there was a slight ping behind my eyes before everything blurred for a moment before ing bato focus. As soon as my vision came back I looked at my friends who seemed to have gohrough the same thing, each of them started taking og shape of dogs with pointy ears and a color pattern that looked remi of a dobermann to me. I pulled off one of my gloves and saw that my fur had also turo the familiar glossy bd brown. Out of curiosity, I tested to see if [Succubus Shifting] would work, and it did, though right now my unaltered shape looked like this at the moment. Any shape I didn't hold would return to this shape and color pattern now. If I had to say there was any fw iion, it was that all of us looked nearly identiow and the only way I would be able to tell any of them apart would be through their clothes and the bond.

  Man giggled as she touched her new dobermann snout. "This feels really weird. At least I'm not going to have to re-learn how to speak like this, I was a little worried about that." She opened and closed her mouth a few times trying to get used to the ges.

  "Ow!" I turo look at Torien whose eyes were watering. She looked back at me with an... odd-looking frown. "I bith my tongue..." Torien whined. Man ughed at her, much to her irritation.

  Lorriene shifted awkwardly after drinking her potion. "I'm going to have to re my tail. It ged shape and now it feels weird." She was wearing that outfit she had worn when we moved to the embassy again. It obscured all of her features but I guess that was detrimental where her tail was involved. Silva was reizable despite the ge in apparent species. There was something intriguing and attractive about seeing a rge dobermann girl with her proportions and muscles though. Mimi had mao copy the transformation and fur pattern without actually drinking the potion successfully. The only thing she hadn't ged was her red eyes, but that was minor enough that it wasn't worth mentioning.

  While Lorriene was still reiail, a quick dart of mana came flying into the yon before perg on the elven man's arm. It was a bird struct made of mana that unfolded into a letter. "The riot has started," he said after quickly skimming it. "We transport you in as soon as everyone is ready to go."

  Once Lorriene finished up, roup of dobermann girls gathered in front of him. When the elven man noticed that we were ready and prepared to leave, he had the other elf who hadn't spoken this eime e stao him. "If everyone is ready, we begin. This is a one-way trip, as you know, so you'll have to find your way back here on your own."

  I nodded. "We're ready."

  The other elf started gathering mana and with an audible crack, a rippling doorlit open in front of us. Through the portal ate' we could see a ste room with walls made from pin magically created stohe room was unassuming and dimly lit but it was devoid of people and big enough for all of us to enter fortably. roup of seven walked through the portal without hesitation and once we were through, the gate vanished behind us. The oddest part to me was hot the split in the bo as it snapped away after the sudden leap in range.

  I immediately cracked open my book of recolles and began to cast [Light Scribing] to test out my improved detect hostiles ritual circle. I closed my eyes and steadied my breath as a familiar headache started to form behind my eyes while the information bombarded me. The ritual was still a work in progress, but the best solution so far had been to mix the ritual with a modified detect life ritual. This version was stable but not very ideal. It was very unfortable to cast and I wouldn't be able to use it if I was in a threatening situation. I couldn't even keep my eyes open while using it. But it gave me valuable information that might mean the differeween life ah etting caught.

  "We're he e of the plex," I whispered to everyohe hostile dete works, I sense a patrol going by, we should wait until they pass. I see the first group of sves we should talk to ohey move on." Everyone was tense and silent as I struggled to maintaiual spell until the patrol passed. The area of this spell was wide enough to be useful but it didn't cover as much of the plex as I would like. To make it more effit I restricted the dete to a horizontal slice at my waist. I wouldn't be able to see up and down floors or detect if someone was crawling or shorter than my waist, but it still worked pretty well for what it was.

  "Okay, they're clear. We should get moving," I said after releasing the spell. I sighed in relief as the headache faded away. I khat if I used it too frequently the headache it gave me would only get worse, creating a kind of time limit when I used it.

  "We're underground, probably on a basement level," Silva whispered to me.

  Lorriene cracked open the door silently and peeked around the er. "Clear," she whispered and waved. She had insisted on going first since she could get out of most enters with her shado if she o. I went through sed since I would be leading them to avoid running into people we didn't choose to. The twins, Bel, and Mimi were after me and Silva was watg our backs from behind.

  The walls of this pce were brightly lit with shining white magical sces every six or so feet apart. This meant that our crowd wouldly be able to hide if we did e across any guards, so all of us were ready to fight at a moment's notice. The hallways were rge, I had been worried that it would be difficult for the rge groups of people we were freeing to maneuver once we let them out but now I didn't think that would be an issue.

  "Do you know what kind of sves are going to be in the room you're leading us to?" Lorriene whispered so quietly that I could barely hear her.

  "No. The ritual only gives me basiformation, I just know there are a lot of people packed tightly together in this area," I whispered back.

  She nodded and led us to the door I indicated. Lorrieried it and it was locked as expected. Without a word, Torien slipped her lockpicks from a belt poud began to pick the lock. I closed my eyes and quickly cast the dete ritual again. The magic rhythmically pulsed but I couldn't feel any hostile signatures among the sea of people nearby.

  The lock clicked. "Finished," Torien whispered before sliding back behind us. Lorriene opehe door slowly before waving us in and shutting it behind us. Rather than the open room I had been expeg, we were in a room with dozens of closed cells, undoubtedly also locked. We wouldn't even be able to tell who was in each cell until we opehem. I frowned, when I desighe ritual I took out the pohat would help me map out the walls in my mind because it was already too muformation smming into me all at onow that I was here, it would have been o know about these walls sooner.

  "I'm not going to be able to hold the dete spell long enough for us to open all these doors," I whispered to the group.

  "Don't. I'll hold the door shut and warn you if someories to open it," Silva said before brag herself against the door.

  With a sigh, Torien slipped her lockpig tools back out. "It's going to be a long day," she half-heartedly grumbled.

  Saine

  Hello! Infiltration pn is a go! All the girls are disguised as dobermafolk and now they're making their way through the sver's guild! Lilith's putting her new ritual magic, but it's not the most elegant spell yet. The idea of someorying to create and use 'prototype' magic has always been a fun cept to me that I don't think is explored enough. I'm gd we've finally gotten to this part, I hope everyone enjoys it! Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

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