He gave a slight nod, more to himself than her. Perhaps her words did make some sense.
Then, glancing at his clawed fingers, tipped in faintly hissing violet light, he spoke again—calm and resolute.
"Leave. I need time alone to adjust to my new state."
The Guardian Spirit offered no resistance. She bowed once more and vanished into thin air like a breath exhaled into a cold wind—fading until nothing remained.
Now alone, Ricky stood in the dim silence of the chamber.
At last, he could examine himself.
His old monstrous frame—the insectoid limbs, the bloated thorax, the gleaming carapace—was gone. What now stood in its place was something wholly new.
A bipedal being. A dark, humanoid figure wrapped in armor that looked as though it had been forged at the boundary between dreams and nightmares. He resembled something pulled from a high-tier villain's concept sketch in a dark sci-fi fantasy—a vision of sleek power and elegant brutality.
