As Alec waited for Millie to wake up, countless possible monsterification transformations flashed through his mind. He didn’t know why they happened, but he couldn’t even think of possible reasons due to all the visceral images crowding his thoughts.

Most—No, all except one transformation turned Millie into a horrible monster. The one where she didn’t become hideous was the one where she grew angel wings like Rita.

Alec wasn’t even worried about her appearance for his sake. He would still care for and help Millie regardless of what happened to her. And if the process failed, he would do his best to cure her.

Considering the progress he had seen with Not-Lizzy, odds were it would work. Milo’s progress was still slow, though, so it was likely that the advanced structures of the brains of humans took longer to recreate with the Poem.

Alec wasn’t sure, but he had it in the back of his mind that reptiles weren’t known for their intelligence and large brains, so that could be why progress was faster with it than with the cat and Milo.

But progress was progress.

Eventually, after time Alec hadn’t kept track of, Millie slowly started breaking down the monsters meat she had accidentally consumed.

Since Alec was watching her with all of his senses tuned to the max, he could tell when the Aether was released.

He could also tell that the barrier around her head was still active.

It was a simple concept that he had already used once before. It was the same idea as his Heartguard, just reimagined for the current problem.

The Heartguard was a sphere of mana around his heart, created the same way a magic circle was. In a way, it was a repurposed magic circle that provided defense instead of the offense that a magic circle provided.

The Aether Shield was similar in that it separated an organ, the brain in this case, from Aether, the raw form of mana.

In theory, Alec could make it so that it covered the entire body, which would prevent spontaneous monsterification. He might even be able to turn it into an item that one just needed to put on to be immune to external monsterification.

The problem here was that the Aether was already inside Millie. A barrier outside her body wouldn’t help.

One idea Alec thought of had been to extract the Aether before it could turn Millie. But that was risky since it seemed monsterification occured immediately after digestion.

Another option would have been to surgically remove the monster meat before Millie could digest it. But that would have been an impossibly risky surgery with Alec’s meager skills. He would have needed to rely on magic a lot, including magic that boosted Millie’s recovery.

He didn’t think her weak and scrawny body could handle such an operation.

That meant his only option was to limit the damage caused by monsterification.

His research into monsterification had revealed that it was only when it reached the brain that intelligence was lost and true monsterification was achieved.

As such, he only needed to prevent that.

Millie’s body would turn into that of a monster, and her fate would be forever different. But she would gain the strength of a monster as well as the ability to feed on them.

Alec needed a way to stop the Aether from corrupting Millie’s brain.

Fortuantely, his research over the last couple of days had provided him the tools to do just that. He needed to target Aether and only Aether. The Aether-attracting spell formation from the Bjerion ruin gave him that tool.

His practice with spell formations and creating areas and targets allowed him to turn that into the Aether Shield around Millie’s brain. It followed the internal outline of her cranium to make sure only her brain was protected while all else was left exposed to the transformation.

If not, she might end up with a weakness that could lead to her death. If the rest of her body was monstrously strong while her head was still as weak as a little girl’s, it wouldn’t matter how strong the rest of her was.

If she tried to brush her hair, she might end up ripping it all out instead. If she tried to smack a mosquito on her forehead, she might end up caving her skull in.

As Alec had expected, the transformation was almost instantaneous once the Aether was unleashed upon her body.

It fused into her muscles, blood, bones, organs, cells, becoming one with her very physique.

Her muscles, blood, bones, organs, cells, and physique started changing.

Alec almost couldn’t look. He forced himself. While he didn’t want to see Millie lose her future, he had to see what happened if he wanted to undo it.

It was also valuable insight into the nature of monsterification.

However, as he looked, the transformation slowly finished.

Alec frowned.

Millie had grown taller. She was a hand taller than before she fell asleep. Her shoulders were a little broader, and her muscles were perhaps slightly thicker.

She had grown.

‘Is that it?’ Alec didn’t want to jinx it, but he couldn’t believe it.

Why did Millie still look like a human when every other monster gained at least one identifying monstrous trait.

Alec tilted his head as he scoured through the Abyssal Guide to Monstrous Gourmet Eating.

‘The one exception…’

Alec’s expression darkened as he looked at Millie, still asleep but slowly coming to.

She hadn’t eaten a lot of meat, and it had been from a weak monster.

‘Did she feed them?’ Alec glanced at the monsters in their cells.

The Aether that was released when she digested the meat hinted at her not having eaten a lot.

That meant there wasn’t much Aether inside her when she transformed.

‘Based on what I’m feeling, she isn’t even at the first stage…’

Alec scratched his stump. For now, at least, she would be fine as long as she didn’t eat monster meat.

In a way, she was lucky.

But she was also unlucky.

Milo could hide his horns with a hat. Rita could pretend to be a hunchback. If he covered himself, George just looked like a man with a big face with odd proportions.

Millie would never be able to hide in the future.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep