We Lease The Kraken! - A LitRPG Pet Shop System Story.

Jeremiah closed his status window and waited.

And waited.

Then waited some more.

Eventually, he frowned and glanced at Mero. "So… that's it?"

Mero quirked a brow. "Were ya expectin' fireworks or somethin'?"

Jeremiah narrowed his eyes. "I mean, maybe? You buy the skills and that's it? Feels kind of... anticlimactic." Especially after the whole contract ordeal.

Mero shrugged. "What can I say, kid? That's how it goes. Instead of complainin', why not take yer new skill for a spin?"

Jeremiah sighed. "Yeah, guess I should." He paused, tilting his head. "How do I even use it though?"

His System copy chimed in. "Most active skills can be triggered by thought. Will it into being, and the System will handle the rest. Certain fluid skills may also respond to intent — or require a clear mental image. Morph skills, in particular, adjust based on how much you wish to transform."

"So if I don't focus, the skill will activate fully, but if I say, only want one finger to morph, the skill will adjust?" Jeremiah asked.

The copy nodded. "Correct."

That was… surprisingly convenient.

Jeremiah held out his left hand, palm out. He focused on the skill [Kraken's Grasp] and narrowed his intent to a single point: his index finger.

It twitched.

Then, like a drop of ink blooming in water, darkness began to spread from the middle knuckle. The finger elongated, its tip narrowing, his skin turning sleek and faintly glossy. Tiny white spots bloomed across the back of the digit like dew catching moonlight. He flipped his hand over and immediately felt rows of twitching suckers unfurling along the underside.

Calm down, Jeremiah. Mero said it's not permanent, he reminded himself, trying to slow his racing pulse.

A few steadying breaths later, his finger had become a six-inch, writhing tentacle. As the final shift settled into place, something clicked in his mind — knowledge suddenly flooded his mind, like a file downloading straight into his brain.

Jeremiah blinked hard, shaking off the static buzz behind his eyes. And then he realized — the tentacle didn't feel alien. In fact, it felt… natural. Familiar. Like it had always been there.

His body had accepted it without hesitation, even if his mind knew otherwise.

He flexed his hand. The new digit moved with the same ease and responsiveness as before — perhaps more so. Despite its added length, the tentacle curled itself out of the way instinctively, never obstructing his grip. What's more, he found it unnervingly intuitive to manipulate. He bent it backward, touching the back of his hand — a motion no human finger could ever replicate. Then he stretched it sideways, looping it around his thumb. Finally, he coiled it neatly, like Billy did when squeezing into narrow gaps.

The whole experience was… bizarre.

But not unpleasant.

After a few more tests, Jeremiah gave the mental order to revert the morph.

Like clay reshaping itself, the tentacle flowed back into the shape of a finger, the black sheen draining away as though being absorbed beneath the skin.

He flexed his hand, slowly turning it over, inspecting it from every angle, searching for some lingering sign of change. But to his relief, everything looked just as it had before. And yet… after feeling what it could be, his normal finger now felt strangely restrictive. Cramped, even.

Curiosity — and caution — led him to continue. One by one, Jeremiah morphed each finger, examining how they moved, and how they felt under the effect of the skill.

Even after the last test, he lingered, eyes fixed on his hand, hesitating.

"Oh, just get on with it already," Mero groaned, flitting around in a lazy spiral. "Sarah said ya could be a worrywart, but c'mon. Yer not gonna break."

Jeremiah shot the fairy a glare from the corner of his eye — but said nothing. He couldn't argue. The skill had worked exactly as described, and Mero's assurances seemed sincere. No errors. No glitches. Not even any sudden bursts of pain or stiffness in the morphs that were common in lower-quality gene mods. Still, the childhood stories — of gene-mod horror shows and body-hacking gone wrong — echoed in the back of his mind like a ghost chorus.

He took one final breath. "Alright… let's just get this over with," he muttered.

Then Jeremiah activated [Kraken's Grasp] in full.

Just as before, a jet-black hue rippled across his skin like ink dropped into water. But this time, the transformation didn't stop at the finger. The dark spread down the back of his hand, creeping past his knuckles like a living shadow.

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All five fingers twitched… then twisted. They elongated, the flesh smoothing and gleaming under the strange morph. But it was his palm that changed the most. As the darkness crawled downward, five thick suction cups pushed their way outward. Three lined the base of his fingers, one near the root of his thumb — and one, twice the size of the rest, bloomed in the center of his palm.

The finger suckers were flexible, rubbery — strangely natural. But the palm's new features… were monstrous.

Each central cup was rimmed with jagged, tooth-like barbs that flexed open and shut like hungry mouths. Jeremiah stared in stunned fascination, watching them pulse and twitch as if tasting the air. No… he slowly realized. He could taste the air.

A wave of dizziness slammed into him, and for a heartbeat, the forest clearing tilted sideways. Nausea rose in his gut like a tide.

But he caught himself.

Focusing hard, he pushed the nightmarish cups away with a sharp burst of will. They melted back into his palm, giving way to a more familiar arrangement — smaller, smoother cups that trailed seamlessly down from each finger, converging at the center in a single unified pad.

He exhaled shakily, clutching his wrist. His heart thumped in his chest, loud and fast, but gradually slowed as the worst of the vertigo passed.

Once his breathing steadied, Jeremiah turned his hand over, studying the drastic changes with growing fascination. The full morph felt... different. Not just more intense than morphing a single finger — fundamentally different.

For one, he could feel each of the five tentacles individually, far more vividly than he'd ever felt his own fingers. In a very real way, it felt more like he had grown five new limbs, rather than simply transformed his digits. There was a strange intimacy to it — a hyper-awareness of motion, texture, and pressure that normal fingers simply didn't have.

He flexed them one by one, watching them coil and uncurl in perfect sync with his thoughts. The level of precision he felt possible with each one was staggering.

A chuckle escaped him. "If all else fails, I'd make one hell of a pianist now."

Then it hit him — a sharp twinge, a sudden spike of panic jolted through his awareness, like the disorienting lurch of waking from a falling dream. Jeremiah's brow tightened. He could instantly tell the emotion wasn't his. Rather, it felt… foreign, like an echo bleeding in from somewhere outside himself. And oddly enough, he could sense exactly where it was coming from.

Jeremiah's frown deepened as he turned, his eyes landing on Billy's bowl.

Perched atop the plastic castle, Billy stirred, sluggish, his eyes still glazed over in sleep. His tentacles twitched, and a wave of hazy disorientation bled into Jeremiah's awareness.

Jeremiah's eyes widened. He rushed forward, carefully lifting the bowl. The sudden motion snapped Billy fully awake. His eyes brightened instantly, and his limbs began to wiggle with unmistakable enthusiasm.

Jeremiah could feel the tiny creature radiating joy and excitement.

Literally.

Jeremiah blinked as the wave of pure emotion washed off the creature and knocked on the door of his mind. Not enough to be intrusive or overwhelming, but 'real' enough that the young man knew he wasn't just imagining.

"…Huh."

Was this what the contract had meant by embryonic link? He'd assumed it was just a poetic phrase. Something more…symbolic. But this… This felt real enough to be undeniable. Could he actually feel Billy's emotions? That was… kind of neat. It wasn't quite mind reading, more like impressions, and of course, emotions.

Something clicked in his mind.

Jeremiah laughed softly. "Guess I've always been able to kind of tell what you wanted, huh?" he said with a smile. Maybe some form of this link had already existed between them, thanks to Billy's incomplete contract.

Billy responded with a puff of pride and affection, his joy swelling.

Then, without warning, their connection spiked — awe, surprise, and wonder pulsing from Billy like a heartbeat.

Jeremiah blinked, startled by the sudden intensity, just as Billy launched from his castle and smacked into the side of the bowl. Jeremiah flinched, almost dropping it — but quickly noticed Billy's gaze wasn't on him.

It was fixed on his hand.

His still-morphed hand.

Jeremiah couldn't help but laugh as he adjusted his grip and slowly lowered the transformed hand toward the bowl's rim.

Billy followed instantly, like a kitten chasing a laser pointer, and clambered up the side with uncharacteristic grace. He hovered at the edge, eyes wide.

Slowly, reverently, Billy reached out and tapped one of the black tentacle-fingers — then wrapped around it in a gentle spiral.

Jeremiah smiled wide and returned the embrace, curling his other digits around Billy in kind.

A pure, brilliant joy surged off the tiny kraken, so bright and radiant that Jeremiah couldn't help but laugh aloud. It filled the space between them, full and unfiltered.

In that moment, every doubt about [Kraken's Grasp] evaporated like mist in the sun.

Billy swayed side to side, his tentacle still wrapped around Jeremiah's, as if humming to a private tune only he could hear. Like a child swinging their parent's hand without a care in the world.

The moment passed quickly, but Jeremiah had a feeling it was one he wouldn't soon forget.

When Billy finally let go and sank back down to the bottom of the bowl, Jeremiah gave a small, fond wave.

The shift in Billy's mood was immediate and dramatic. He puffed up in visible umbrage and launched himself back to the rim of the bowl, glaring up at Jeremiah with narrowed eyes. Jeremiah blinked, caught off guard by the sudden turn.

"What's wrong, Billy?" he asked, confused.

Billy jabbed a tentacle toward Jeremiah's hand, then twisted his limbs together into a rough imitation of a human hand, and waved.

"I... huh?" Jeremiah tilted his head, eyebrows drawn low in confusion.

With exaggerated precision, Billy repeated the gesture, this time slower and more deliberate. His earlier indignation softened into visible frustration — and, oddly enough, a touch of pity.

Jeremiah's eyes widened as understanding dawned. He carefully observed the tiny kraken's movements, and, raising his morphed hand, tried to mimic the motion.

It took a few clumsy attempts, but eventually, he found the rhythm. Billy's frustration melted away, replaced by smug, unmistakable satisfaction.

Right on cue, Mero appeared with a cackle. "Kid, I think ya just got called out by a baby cephalopod."

Jeremiah looked down at his transformed hand, still practicing the motion. "You know what?" he said, quietly amused. "I think you're right."

He couldn't deny it. Billy's wave had flowed with a grace that his own lacked. It felt... instinctive. Natural.

Have I been thinking about this all wrong? Jeremiah wondered.

During his experimentation, Jeremiah had learned to better control the morphed digits. But deep down, he'd still been treating them like 'fingers.'

He slowly curled his hand into a fist and looked down at Billy, who floated lazily with an air of quiet triumph.

Maybe Billy couldn't teach him mana control… but just maybe, there was something else he could learn.

"Hey Billy," Jeremiah said, a smile tugging at his lips. "Mind showing me a few things?"