The hobgoblin went down with a disconcertingly wet thunk, as Lorraine felt the crunch of bones breaking as it’s chest met her fist. As it collapsed, unconscious or dead she wasn’t sure and didn’t frankly care, she looked around the room. The rest of the party had done some work, too - the room had had few enemies in it, and they were caught by surprise as the group barged in. Between Lorraine the Monk, the paladin, and the wizard, they’d cleared it before any of them had been able to get more than glancing blows.

“Excellent work as always, everyone,” the Paladin - Ethan - was saying, “That’s the last of them! And what’s more…” He waved in one direction, drawing the party’s attention to a golden chest, “I believe we’ve found a treasure room.”

The party of four - consisting of a Monk, a Paladin, a Wizard, and a Priestess - hadn’t actually known each other before this morning. They were all independent adventurers, but well, it usually wasn’t very smart to enter any dungeon alone no matter how strong you are. That being said, they’d yet to run into any issues that Lorraine wasn’t sure she’d have been able to take care of, and it admittedly was a lot easier - on her own she’d have had to take some rests between fights, and used up some potions to heal.

Lorraine darted over to the chest, and opened it up. Within, as would be expected, was a bunch of gold. “Haha! Only half way and we’ve already got this much!” she exclaimed.

The Wizard, Horace, walked over and whistled as he looked into the chest. “I wonder if there’s even any more with this much…” He took out a pouch, and started to suck up the gold into the magical bag.

“Now, you know Guild rules…” Ethan said like a parent scolding a child.

“I know, I know!” Horace grumbled, turning the bag over as each of the party members opened their own pouches.

The downside of running in a party, of course, was splitting the loot. The setup was Guild standard for one off parties - everything split equally amongst the members of the party. She could abide it for the ones that put in work. Lorraine was a bit crass and rude, but if someone contributed it made sense they got an appropriate share.

The Priestess, unlike the other three, didn’t get a pile of gold. She got a single item, clinking down into her pouch. Which, given the magical bag automatically split the loot four ways, meant that whatever it was was worth just as much as what the others had gotten - which could only mean it was a magical item.

“How come she gets the magical item!?” Lorraine demanded.

“I-I don’t know… it c-chose it for me…” the Priestess stammered.  A quiet soul by nature, Patricia the Priestess didn’t much like confrontation.

Lorraine groaned to herself. “As if you need it. All you’ve been doing this time is staying in the back and waving around a wand. We do all the heavy lifting.”

Patricia shrank back. “I-I can t-trade you if you want-”

“You can give it to me is what you can do-” Lorraine said, advancing on the priestess. She wasn’t doing this to be mean. She just thought it was important for people to get a reward commiserate to the work. She’d give the girl half the portion that the sack had given her, and split out the remaining into thirds between herself and the other two. They were beating up the monsters with her, so they deserved some more too…

The Paladin interposed himself between Patricia and Lorraine, pushing the latter out of the former’s face. “That’s enough of that. The healer’s essential to any party! Even if she’s not been doing too much yet, that just shows she’s smart enough to reserve it for when it’s needed! When we reach the boss we’ll be glad to have her.”

“And she can have her share of the boss’ loot.” Lorraine said, but she backed off, shooting a glare at the Priestess, who shrunk back. The Paladin returned the glare with his own, before joining the Wizard in searching the room.

He could act as moral as he wanted, but that didn’t help when he wasn’t perceptive enough to see she’d palmed the magical item in the time before he’d intervened.

“I’ll head to the hall and check for any traps or ambushes.” she said, to grunts of affirmation from most of the party. Patricia seemed a bit worried, despite the altercation, which honestly just irritated the monk more.

Stepping into the hallway beyond  the door, Lorraine actually did first check for traps. Finding none, she proceeded for a decent way, until she’d turned more than one corner and couldn’t see the room she’d left her party in anymore. That done, she slipped her prize out of her pocket. She’d give the Priestess her fair share later, the important part was making sure she got what she’d earned.

The magical item didn’t at first look like it was worth that much. It was a chain necklace with a holy symbol charm on it, made of gold. Pretty nice looking, but not worth a bag of gold on it’s own. But Lorraine could feel the magic on it.

She fished around in her bag, and withdrew an Identification Scroll. Holding it up against the item, it glowed white for a few moments, before the blank paper filled in with ink.

Necklace of the Gullible Cleric - A-Class Magical Item

Class Restriction: Cleric

Effect: Dramatically boosts magical skills when supporting allies.

Effect: Changes user class to Cleric. 

Effect: Changes user personality. 

Curse: Auto Equip upon Identification. 

This Magical Necklace belonged to an incredibly gullible Cleric who could easily be convinced to work for the monsters by a kind word and a plea for help. It helps the user reach this Cleric’s skill level, as well as their ease of manipulation. 

Lorraine barely had the time to read it and think oh no before the chain leapt from her hands onto her neck, propelled by magic and forcing her to wear it.

For a few moments, she struggled with it, but it wasn’t coming off. It began to glow, and the rest of her body soon did as well, a soft blue light pouring from the necklace into her. She could feel the magic of the artifact working its way through her… until suddenly, it stopped.

Lorraine patted her body down, seeing if anything had changed. Had it failed because of her class…?

The hope was unfortunately proven false. As Lorraine relaxed she blew some hair out of her face. And froze, as she realized her short, brown hair wasn’t long enough to get in her face. And yet there it was - and it was significantly lighter in tone than it usually was. “What the hell?” she shouted, as the hair grew before her eyes, getting longer and lighter with each passing second. That was a bit of a weird effect in it’s own right, but it wasn’t the only one.

While she was brushing the hair from her face for the sixth time she noticed something else. She was well tanned from long hours of training in the sun, but her hand was pale as the Wizard’s was from staying inside with books all day. The paleness was rapidly climbing up her arms and into her clothes, where the tingling feeling told her it was continuing to work over her chest. She moaned softly at the feeling - it felt strange as heck, but also super good. Gods give her strength, but it felt good…

Wait, what was that? Had she offered a prayer while wracked with pleasure? Sure, she was a Monk, but the training kind not the religious kind. While she hadn’t gotten the whole description before the item had leapt on her, the identification spell had mentioned a class change effect, and she was beginning to suspect that wasn’t just going to be a matter of her skillset.

As her hair brushed against her hips, she noticed that it had gone from dark brown to a platinum blonde. She was too focused on organizing her thoughts and watching out for mental changes to notice the continued physical change - when she looked up again, the room seemed significantly bigger than it had been, as her former amazonian height dropped by a bit over a foot.

“T-To much…” she stammered, falling back against the wall. It was all too much - she should never have taken that item! The healer may or may not have deserved her share but Lorainne didn’t need a cursed item! Even if it was probably good that it was her that got it and not one of the others- gah! What was it doing to her mind?

The strange feeling wrapped around almost her whole, now rather pale, body. It was almost like a full body massage, one that pushed and rubbed the muscules right off her body, leaving smooth skin behind. Her hands lost their heavy scarring, and biceps declined, leaving dainty delicate feminine arms where once she could suplex a horse. Her six pack smoothed out and her waist actually thickened just a little, as her muscles fled from a life of leisure in a temple.

Lorraine bent over and slid to the ground, breathing hard as the change wracked her body. It didn’t hurt. Far from it. Far, far from it, it felt far too good. But she couldn’t let herself give in to it, what would the head priestess say if she gave in to lust - wait, was that right? It sounded right but something in her said it was wrong.

As Lorraine grappled with her own head, her clothing started to change to fit her new class. The tight tank top and men’s shorts, meant to give her freedom of movement and flexibility in close combat, started to grow out and expand. The legs of the shorts merged together into a flowing skirt as they dropped lower and lower, while her top grew out at both the lower end, expanding to cover her midriff which had formerly been so scandalously bare, as well as sleeves forming and flowing out around her arms. The brown, tough leather material brightened and softened as it became smooth silk, better for magical resistance than fending off physical blows.

Lorraine gasped softly, stumbling to her feet. What was she doing!? She was no back street harlot, she was a priestess of the temple! She wasn’t about to go masturbating in the middle of gods only knew where! She dusted herself off, looking around. Where… where was she, actually?

She heard footsteps nearby, and turned to face them…

--------------------

Patricia was very very worried. Sure, it was an easy dungeon. She’d been doing well, and so had the party… except that after she’d stormed off, Lorraine was nowhere to be found. They’d looked but couldn’t find any evidence of where she’d gone.

She’d suggested to continue searching, but the Wizard had ignored her. The Paladin had agreed, but said there were two options - she’d taken her loot and ran, in which case she was fine, or she was deeper in the dungeon, in which case they had to hurry.

Now, they were fighting a veritable swarm of goblins - not very strong, but in great numbers even the Paladina and Wizard had trouble. But as with most monsters, the adventurers had an advantage - a healer.

But as Patricia healed Ethan and Horace up, she noticed something strange - some of the KO’d goblins were getting up too, and the ones that were hurt were healing!

“Don’t worry, friends! We can beat them!” an airy, feminine voice said.

At the other end of the room, was another priestess… and this one was healing the goblins! And she was even better at it than Patricia was!

“These friendly goblins didn’t do anything to you, meanie adventurers!” the woman called out, “So Lorrie the Priestess is gonna keep on healing them until you leave!”