Alanna stared in horror at her new appendage. There wasn't even any illusion that it might not be hers, that it might be an illusion or a toy someone attached to her for a laugh, because she could feel her hot blood rushing through it, feel it throb in tune with her heartbeat, feel it resisting the pull of gravity with its turgidity.
"How did this happen?" she muttered to herself as she ran her fingers over her member. She could feel the veins bulging beneath the surface, and as her fingers neared the flared head the sensation became increasingly electric. She realized she was horny, and it was quite unlike her experience with Liriel. With Liriel, it was the slow burn of embers in a fireplace, the increasing intimacy between her and her previous mistress increasingly stoking those embers into a flame.
This... This was hunger. A primal need that demanded to be sated immediately, overwhelming in its potency. She grabbed her member firmly, the sensation sending shivers up her spine, and the stroking motions that followed came natural to her, as though someone else put the thought in her head and she was just going along for the ride.
She had to bite her lip to stifle her voice. Some part of her was saying this was unnatural and telling her to question where this would lead, but the hunger pushed it aside. She wanted this and she increased her grip and speed. The effect was immediate, the pleasure increasing in intensity. It encouraged her to go faster, harder, her now-enhanced physiology allowing her to do all of this without tiring.
It was but a few minutes when she suddenly reached the tipping point. She stifled a yelp as, like a boiling kettle, her stimulation reached a fever-pitch and she felt her male organs working independently of her control in their first orgasm. She fell to her knees with the sensation as cum jettisoned from her dick, landing on the wooden floor in long ropes. Her hips bucked back at her hand as she jerked herself as fast as she could, desperate to keep the feeling going for as long as possible while instinct drove her to fuck her imaginary lover. After soiling the floor a few more drops leaked onto her hand from her tip, a wave of relief passing through her body as she slowed her masturbation.
She was left breathing hard, her room now stinking of male musk. The overwhelming horiness now gone, she tried to process what she just did, and how she might best hide anyone from ever finding out about it.
She took a towel that had been set aside next to a wooden tub meant to wash herself and was scrubbing the floor as she thought about what could have possibly caused this transformation. It definitely wasn't some kind of magic. If magic isn't stabilized through the use of some kind of enchantment it fades away after some time, she knew that to be true from pretty much all the stories she heard about adventuring, but her new appendage had shown no signs of disappearing other than having shrunk back into its sheath.
She palmed her own face when she remembered what Solizzar told her, that the extracts could have unpredictable effects on her physiology. She went over each extract she had taken so far. The goblin extract had planted some extra sixth sense in her head for traps; The centipede's extract had made her able to sense vibrations through solid surfaces to help her detect enemies around her; The alraune's extract had changed her sweat and laced it with pheromones, if the description of her new ability was to be believed. None of her unicorn abilities would explain why she now had a penis.
Then it struck her: Goblins are technically ungendered, the alraune was female and the centipede... Well, either it was female or it was so far removed from anything resembling 'male' that it didn't affect her. The unicorn whose essence she drank must have been male. That meant that her new addition was almost certainly permanent, and more importantly, it meant that what she was doing to her body went beyond just getting new feats and traits, and she couldn't rely on her status screen to tell her how it was changing her.
A pit formed in the bottom of her stomach. She wondered how much of her was already changed, how much of her was still 'Alanna.' She felt stronger, faster, even her senses felt sharper than they had before she had begun changing herself, but... As far as she could tell, she was still herself.
She decided it didn't matter. This was her route to power. Without power, she would be all the way back where she started: Nowhere. No money, no home, no family. No say in how the world around her operated.
She would not stop.
Alanna was at the front desk after a good night's sleep and was eager to get her reward, or what's left of it after the costs of her healing had to be taken out. She was waiting for Renestrae, but admittedly, she had gotten there way too early. She simply couldn't wait to get her gold for completing her first quest.
The door behind the desk opened up and Renestrae stepped out. She did a double take when she noticed Alanna standing there, so Alanna decided to wave gently in greeting. "Alanna... Is that you?" Renestrae asked with some degree of shock in her voice. "What on earth happened? Your face. Did you... Did you get yourself enchanted last night or something? I thought you barely had gold to spare."
"My face?" Alanna asked, realizing with some degree of trepidation. "Why? Is something wrong?"
Renestrae handed her a small pocket mirror and Alanna used it to examine herself. Her lips had thickened, her eye-lashes had grown, there was a bit of a rosy glow to her cheeks, amidst a few other changes. She had gone through a similar transformation before when she first drank a regeneration elixir, as it had undone a great deal of the damage malnutrition had done to her development, but the extracts she had most recently imbibed seemed to have greatly improved on what was already there. She looked great, she had to admit, better than she ever thought she could look, though she could see a glimpse of the alraune in her new appearance, which disturbed her.
She realized she had been admiring herself in the mirror a bit too much and handed it back to Renestrae. "Oh, that, uh, I just had a really rough time yesterday. All week actually! Was a long journey getting here and I didn't really give myself any time to recover. I just took some time to groom myself yesterday, you know? A nice hot bath and a soft bed can work wonders."
Renestrae rose an eyebrow. Alanna had no idea if the lie was effective, but she hoped that having been a weirdo up until now would put Renestrae off from asking further questions. Sure enough, she sighed and took out a form from underneath her desk.
"Alright, well... We got word from our local Wizard and we sent out some scouts to verify your kill. You indeed killed the right alraune, and she was a greater one as Khilseith claimed, so the Guild added in some gold from our own coffers to cover the extra danger. Just sign here, if you can write, and I'll pay you immediately."
Alanna looked at the document. It seemed like a release form for a contract the guild had with a local group of woodcutters to pay for the Alraune to be slain. The amount they offered was not insignificant, a few hundred gold pieces, but apparently there was a significant subsidy from Fort Wildbrooke. Alanna's eyes bulged out reading the final tally of her reward.
"6400 gold pieces?!" she asked, looking up in shock at Renestrae, who just shrugged, like the astronomical amount of gold she was paying out was no big deal.
"Adventuring is dangerous work, hence why it pays so well. Plus, that was supposed to pay for a party of three or four people working together to bring down the monster. Adventuring by yourself means you don't have to share the spoils." She followed up by giving Alanna a very stern look. "Don't get any ideas, okay? I've seen plenty of newbies who got exactly the look in their eye that you have right now and never came home because they thought going at it alone was a great idea."
Renestrae took out a small pouch labeled with a note that read the quest's identifier and the gold value of the reward and pushed it across the desk. Alanna picked up the pouch and looked it over in confusion. A gold coin wasn't that big, about the width of two fingers and quite thin, but the pouch she received fit in the palm of her hand. The idea of thousands of gold coins fitting in there seemed absurd.
She was about to ask when Renestrae piped up. "The Guild always pays out their rewards with those. If you've ever heard of a Bag of Holding, these are kind of like those, but they only work for gold coins. I can't really tell you how they're made, you'd have to ask someone from the Mage's Guild, but the idea is that these are easier to mass-produce than Bags of Holding, so both we and the Mage's Guild, as well as other organizations, use these for large transactions. Open it up and look inside."
Alanna clicked open the bag and saw a small ocean of gold coins rolling around on the other side, in a space far larger than the bag itself.
"Woah, freaky," she said, then closed the bag and pocketed the gold.
"Don't spend it all in one place," Renestrae stated. "A lot of newbies who get their first big haul make the mistake of spending all their money on a shiny new enchanted sword. There's lots of stuff you should think about getting if you're gonna keep adventuring: Some sturdier armor, gear to help you cross rough terrain, supplies, potions. You even have enough to buy a wondrous item or two. Think carefully on what you think you'll need to excel at your next mission and try to keep some gold leftover to support yourself afterwards. You'll run out faster than you think, trust me."
"Thanks Renestrae," Alanna said. "I really appreciate you giving me all this advice."
"Don't mention it. Classes give people a ton of information just by having them, but that means they often don't realize how much they don't already know." Renestrae grinned. "I suppose that you of all people would value learning something the natural way."
"So, uh," Alanna began as she looked at the quest board. "Where do I go from here?"
"Oh, right, I guess your first quest was kind of unconventional. Basically, the Guild accepts contracts from the locals, which we then post as quests. Just find one you think you can handle on the quest board, then start asking around until you form a team that you believe can succeed."
Alanna suddenly felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to face what was clearly a half-catfolk woman, indicated by her cat ears, long tail and the tiger-stripes across her skin, and she was certainly not a native. Her dark skin and black hair spoke of southern lands, though Alanna had no idea where exactly. Meanwhile, the light leather armor she wore and the two daggers sheathed on her hips spoke of a Rogue or Ranger by trade. For her part, the half-breed had a peculiar glint in her eye as she flashed an award winning smile.
"Hello!" she said enthusiastically, though with a slight accent. "Are you the new adventurer that they said slayed that Alraune? I've been looking for someone to team up with. Are you still looking for a party?"
