A strange feeling floods through all four of Juniper's arms as they start to change.
Muscles, bones, nerves, blood vessels and whatever else made up her arms shifted around to adjust to the changes added to her body through the system.
Juniper sat still with her jaw clenched and her arms hanging limp from her shoulders and back. 'It isn't exactly painful, just very uncomfortable and weird.' She thinks.
From time to time her fingers and even entire arm twitched before falling limp again.
It took some effort to not let herself fall over and roll around the ground to counteract the strange feeling permeating all of her arms.
When the feeling finally subsided and Juniper regained motor control over her limbs, she jumps up in excitement as she could feel the new additions and knew how to control them freely.
Not wasting any time, Juniper flexes her new muscles and fired up the fresh nerves. "Let's gooo!" The moth cheers as the blades silently snap forth with great speed and dexterity.
Most of their surface is covered in black chitin, only the tip's and edges of the blades, who looked like they could cut and pierce through flesh and bones easily, are in an eerie green colour.
Turning her gaze to one of the stone walls, she slashes at it with one of the new blades, creating a sharp sound and some sparks as it pulled across the hard rock, leaving a clear trail behind.
Next, she thrusts forward with her other arm and the blade sprouting from it shoots at the wall where it impacts, spraying dust and debris into the air as the tip gets buried multiple centimetres into the wall.
"Sweet~, they work even better than expected. They not only are deadly, fast and flexible but also easily double my reach." Very happy with the results of her first modification, she retracts and extends them multiple times as well as testing the range of movement that they are capable of.
Juniper spends almost an hour playing around with her new mantis blades, that includes of course the two added into her additional two arms which are a bit smaller and weaker but not by much.
Having played around enough with the new additions to her body, she retracts the blades with a big smile on her lips, they neatly snap back into her forearms where they are only recognizable through the pattern lines of her chitin.
'Okay, next one!' Giddy with excitement because of the resounding success of her first modification, Juniper pulls up the second modification, the subdermal armour, into her image and saves.
This time the effect of the change spans across her entire body as she had made sure that the subdermal armour covered everything, adding an additional layer of defence on top her chitin in some places.
"Fuck! This is torture!" Juniper grunts through her teeth as the very uncomfortable sensation floods her whole body, making her suddenly regret her choice as she desperately keeps herself from attempting to scratch herself all over.
The few minutes that it took for the system to finish the modification felt like hours to Juniper, and when it was over, she immediately collapsed in relief and a shiver ran across her body from the strange feeling of her skin being pulled taut because of the new defensive layer underneath it.
Breathing heavily and twitching at the memory of the sensation, she quickly tries to distract herself from it by attempting to pierce one of her claw-tipped fingers into her exposed thigh.
"I really hope that this was worth it." She muttered as her claw effortlessly dug through her skin only to then encounter a somewhat elastic layer that stopped the sharp claw from going any further and became harder the stronger she pushed.
Intrigued, the moth begins to try and figure out how exactly this new layer underneath her skin worked as she specified very little in the modification's description.
Probing for a while and even taking out one of her mantis blades to cut off her skin and have a look at the subdermal armour directly, her understanding of it increased by a lot.
It is made out of strange substance that is pretty much translucent until exposed to light or air which causes it to turn black and shiny like her chitin. The consistency in its base state is soft and almost spongy, making it so that her movement is not restricted at all. Only when force is applied to it will the protective properties appear as the subdermal armour instantaneously hardens to resist the damage.
Most cut and slash wounds would do little to no harm, only strong piercing and blunt damage could bypass it, but that is something that can be taken care of later on when she has enough souls to add more effects to it, like shock absorption or anti piercing.
After probing her new armour, Juniper stands up and performs different stretches that confirm her guess, she hadn't lost any dexterity.
Doing a few more to get familiar with the new sensation of her body, the moth hums in satisfaction.
'Not completely sure how much damage it can soak up, but it should make me a pain in the ass for most things on the same level as me, especially as it will become stronger down the line together with my body as whole.' With everything looking good, she sits back down and takes a moment to recover mentally from the strange sensations she experienced in quick succession.
Her body felt completely fine, hell, it felt more than fine, but the rapid changes had quite the strain on Juniper's mind, so she just sat there for a while and twitched from time to time when she moved her new blades or the skin over the subdermal felt irritated.
"*Sigh* I didn't expect to feel so drained from this. Roy, the original MC, rarely made many modifications in a short span of time, at least in the early times." Muttering this, she rolled her neck, cracking it a few times before turning back to the system.
'One more to go, but this time it's not really a physical alteration, just a modifier. I shouldn't actually feel anything from it.' Saving the last modification, Juniper blinks as a weak electric current ran through her wings.
It didn't hurt, it only seemed to unlock a new part of her brain that allowed her to control this new function of her wings.
"Huh, that was anticlimactic… not that I complain. This is much better than the other two." Feeling exhausted and hungry from the ordeal, she pulls out another corpse, this one more humanoid, and butchers it with the newly acquired help of her mantis blades before devouring it after some seasoning.
Then she simply laid down and took a nap for a few hours.