What's more, transformation-type Secret Arts were among the few types of Secret Arts with clear, well-defined paths for enhancement.
Having suffered from weakness, they envied animals with great strength and longed to become powerful animals themselves.
This desire was common among Arcanists whose lack of education left them with little capacity for abstract thought. As a result, Lord Weiwen had managed to compile a summary of this type of Secret Art.
In a nutshell, it was [Ancestral Bloodline Traction].
Using body parts from the supernatural creature associated with the caster's transformed form as materials, alchemy destroyed and rebuilt the caster's foundation, gradually granting them the creature's powers.
But what concerned Lude more at that moment wasn't how to help Silverback and Crow upgrade. It was...
"Sally." Lude furrowed his brow and spoke softly. Beside him, Crow saw Sally's condition and couldn't help frowning too.
Sally's eyes were shut tight, her brows knitted into a deep furrow. Her skin kept shifting between a translucent milky white and a human pallor. Transparent fuzz sprouted incessantly from her pores, only to fall away within seconds, littering the ground like shards of glass fiber.
"What's happening?" Crow asked curiously.
"Her talent is even greater than yours."
Lude's brow furrowed as he spoke softly. "It seems she's making choices about her Secret Art—giving up some of its abilities in exchange for making others more powerful."
Everyone had limited talent, which meant most people either tried to master too much without excelling at anything, or specialized at the expense of breadth. That was the greatest flaw of transformation-type Secret Arts.
But Sally was doing the opposite: abandoning every ability she didn't need so she could maximize the effects of the ones she did.
The principle of equivalent exchange applied to every aspect of the Hidden World.