Day 10
You woke up feeling a bit… chilly?
A novel experience considering that, for the entirety of your short life, you'd only ever felt warm. A couple moments of investigation revealed the reason for this new change.
You were noticeably bigger.
[Maturation causes certain abilities to level up]
[Claws] (Plus) 1 Level - [9/10]
[Crystal-lined scale armour] (Plus) 1 Level - [6/10]
[Flame armour] (Plus) 1 Level - [3/10]
[Hunger: 4/5 (eckish)]
[Due to the change in size, you now have a better references for size]
[Experience causes you to use your time better]
Day 10 (4/4)
And to take advantage of your sudden growth, you went ahead down to the grotto to train your regeneration again.
The idea being that your increased mass will cause you to need to recover more, and hence cause your recovery to get better. Which turned out to be correct, with you being able to feel your regeneration improving.
At least that's what made it feel worth the pain in your sides afterwards.
[Reptilian regeneration] (Plus) 1 level - [8/10]
[HP: 97% (slightly injured)]
[Hunger: 3/5: half empty]
You don't really know why but, after the bout of self harming, you really had the desire to explore your surroundings. Especially those crystal caves from before.
And so you set out for those very caves, arriving very quickly with your newly lengthened stride, before sliding into it.
From there it was just a matter of wandering around, going from openings to openings and jumping over various pitfalls until you found something interesting.
Which in this case happened when you squeezed through a narrow opening and were hit with a wave of heat as you stepped into a wide open space.
Looking around, you find that this place was absolutely chock full of those crystal bird you'd eaten before, sitting in hordes on the trees.
Some were even sitting in the pools that were all over the place and… seemed to be visibly healing?
[HP: 100% (healthy)]
[Hunger: 2/5 (empty)]
Just as you were about to turn to leave you realised something. Your stomach was completely empty.
Well, seeing as you're already here, you decide to find food here anyways. So, carefully avoiding the literal horde of crystalline birds, you prowled through the open cavern for food.
You find nothing, nothing but birds that you couldn't attack on fear of getting swarmed and pecked to death.
But you keep at it, your nostrils flared and eyes sharp for the littlest signs of non-avian food. Until eventually you see a lone bird split from the main group.
Finally seeing an acceptable prey, you prowled towards it, slowly getting closer and closer until finally yo-
*shriek*
Until it was suddenly hit with a beam of pure purple energy that seemed to bounce between it's crystal feathers, moments before it exploded apart. Moments after the probable culprit, and your new target rushes forward to pick at the pieces.
It had obviously not seen you, a mistake that you'll take advantage of wholeheartedly as you snuck up behind it and, with one moment of extreme exertion, blasted it with a globule of burning saliva.
And it hit the unaware lizard with such force and with such heat that, for just a moment, the entire creature was completely engulfed within a fireball.
Once it diminished, the thing was more burns than anything else and missing the giant crystal from it's back. Despite which it was still alive, though not for long if you had anything to do with it.
Which you did, as you were already rushing the thing with your claws out. Claws that you sunk into the gaping crater in it's back, tearing out as much as you could and spraying purple blood everywhere.
Which still didn't kill the thing, and it was also glowing ominously.
In reply, you blasted that same crater with even more burning saliva which… wasn't quite as effective, possibly due to the fact that you missed the actual crater itself.
And now the thing was pulsing ominously.
Of course, you immediately began to back off from the ominously pulsing lizard, now letting off smoke as well, preparing to fire another flaming spit while doing so.
Which turned out to be a good idea as, after your flaming spit hit the rapidly pulsing thing, it exploded with a huge shockwave. Fortunately, you were far enough away that the shockwave just washed over your scales without hurting you.
It did manage to push you back into a pool however which, thankfully, was shallow enough for your to climb out since you didn't actually know how to swim.
When you did eventually manage to crawl out though, you saw that the original lizard had become a lot more… spread out.
In pieces that is, more than you'd be able to carry away to your den.
… you were hungry enough to eat it all…
[47 XP gained]
[You've hit level 15 (evolution available)]
[ (Plus) 1 strength, (Plus) 1 magic]
[ (Plus) 1 to all stats]
[Crystal lizard corpse (restores 4 hunger) (can't take back to den) gained]
[Organic crystal gained]
[Spit fire] (Plus) 1 Level - [10/10]
[Stealth] (Plus) 1 Level - [3/10]
[Claw combat] (Plus) 1 Level - [4/10]
[Hunger: 0/5 (Starving)]
Day 10 (1/4)
Deciding that you weren't going to sleep today with an empty stomach you begin to pick, and gulp down, the many pieces of the lizard.
From the wall, the floors and you even manage to grab the chunk that had managed to stick to the roof of the cavern using a bit dangerous acrobatics. By the time you'd eaten all the ones you could find, you were only slightly peckish and had a buzzing sensation in your stomach.
[? 3/7]
… and then you saw the crystal from the lizards back laying in a nearby pool.
[? 5/7]
[HP: 97% (slightly hurt)]
It wasn't a pleasant experience, swallowing the crystal that is, and it even hurt to swallow as it caused a painful stinging sensation in your mouth. But what was done was done, and you made your way back to your den to sleep.
[Hunger: 4/5 (peckish)]
Day 11
You wake another day, this time to an oddly quite forest.
So quite in fact, that you can barely make out strange sounds, distinct from anything you've ever heard before, in the far distance.
[HP: 100%]
[Main story started]
[Quite forest event started]
[Added weird sound to map]
Deciding that you don't want anything to do with the strange noises, especially after what happened the last time you followed some noise's, you instead went over to the grotto with the special spikes.
A short session of cutting yourself later, a session that had become easy with how much experience you had, you once again say massive improvements to your recovery.
What's more is that you even got some improvements to your scales as a pleasant side-effect.
[Reptilian regeneration] (Plus) 2 Level - [10/10]
[Crystal-lined scale armour] (Plus) 1 Level - [7/10]
[Hunger: 3/5 (half empty)]
With the pain still echoing in your side and your stomach half empty you, once again, find yourself in the crystal caves in search for prey.
Prey that you find after a quick search, one that is as unaware of you as most of your other preys.
Taking a moment to examine it, you come to a startling discover a startling thing. Then, to confirm this discovery, you plod over to the weird looking creature.
Yep, it's asleep… which makes this a very unique opportunity.
So, slowly backing up, you prepare your claws. Carefully winding it back, putting as much of your bodies strength as you can into it.
Then you launch forward an release it.
The way your claw rips it into two is incredibly pleasing.
[Claws] (Plus) 1 Level - [10/10]
[Achievement: Death claw] gained
[Frog corpse (refill 2 hunger) gained]
[Hunger: 2/5 (empty)]
[You gained 30 xp]
With your test of strength done there was one last thing to do before you moved on. That being filling your stomach.
… and wow did the frog taste foul. Oh, and it also burned like nothing else when it went down, but that was secondary to the horrible taste.
Not enough to deter you obviously, but it was still a very off-putting thing. Yet you still managed to force it down and, despite the protests of your stomach.
[Hunger: 4/5 (peckish)]
[? 7/7 altered)
Day 11 (1/4)
With your hunger sated and the roiling of your stomach settled you returned to your tree den.
Then you climbed to the very highest branch.
And then you jumped off onto the hardest part of the ground you could see. Not because you were trying to kill yourself due to the lingering putrid taste of the frog, but because you were trying to strengthen your scales.
… though the lingering taste didn't help your choice, even if it did result in you significantly strengthening your scales.
But eventually that taste disappeared from your mouth and you were, finally, able to sleep.
[Crystal-lined scale armour] (Plus) 2 Level's - [10/10]
You have evoLeveled
[ (Plus) 2 to all stats]
New status
Wandering devil lizard
Unlike many lizard monsters, this one is almost completely unaffected by foreign enviroments that aren't close enough to it's native ones. To pair with this resilence to the enviroment is a speed, also unlike most lizard monsters, and plate armor to resist the more hostile enviromental effects and razor sharp claws to deal with the non-enviromental hostiles.
All combined with demonic cunning to pick and choose fights and, when picking them, finish them with efficent brutality.
From: [Foreign enviroment resistance], [Scales], [claws], [elemental blood]
Day 12
You awoke suddenly to the sound of branches cracking. A sound that was followed shortly by you being momentarily weightless before being hit by a light impact.
Immediately you, quite literally, jumped to your feet and began to look around for the culprit. Only to then be hit by how strange everything looks.
Firstly was the fact that everything was significantly smaller than you remember it being, to the point that your den, which used to tower over you, was now something that you could probably climb to the top of in a couple of jumps.
Secondly, and far more importantly, was that you could see to your sides. Something which was which because you weren't actually looking that way.
… it took you a while to discover that you'd changed completely, but you didn't really care after you did. It didn't feel that bad, the opposite in fact, so it probably wasn't that big a deal.
Day 12 (4/4)
With your new size, and the strength that came with it, you found that you now had the confidence and power to do things you had previously been too cautious to do.
The first of which, that you were going to do, was to go and investigate those weird sounds you'd heard yesterday.
Fortunately, you managed to reach the approximate location of the sounds relatively easily, discovering in the process that you were far, far faster now, and discovered the probably source of the sound.
Some sort of weird, hairless, semi-armoured creatures that were plodding around on their hind legs in a clearing that they seemed to have made by cutting the trees around them.
Three of them in fact, with two in the center of a clearing around some fire and the third standing further away from them and looking around.
You decide to observe the weird creatures before doing anything else and so, making sure that you're out of their line of sight and in cover, you slowly sneak up to them.
Only to immediately leap behind a nearby tree when the third one, the one away from the other two, decides to turn around and go towards the other two.
"Hey guys, can one of you swap with me now? I need to get some sleep," it made some noise towards the other two, tiredness obvious in it's tone despite you having no idea what it's trying to communicate.
"Well i don't know Kyle, did you learn not to fuck the commanders wife yet?" one of the others, the one in slightly different colors than the rest, returned.
"Okay, come on! How many times do I gotta say that she's the one who came onto me? I wouldn't have done it if she didn't seduce me first!" and suddenly the third one was being loud, something that managed to earn it a hit from the second one, who'd been silent till now, directly to the head.
"Shut the fuck up you dumbass! Do you want to attract whatever monstrosities from the forest?" the one who hit the third one hissed, the sound higher pitched and softer than it's companions, before grabbing their shell, "and it doesn't matter if she seduced you, it still meant that we got sent on a suicide mission to go look for some stupid fucking butterfly! Now, just go keep the lookout while we finish the bait and maybe, just maybe, we might not get brutally murdered by whatever monster crawls out of this Culkuh dammed hellscape. Do you fucking understand me?!"
Upon finishing the long series of noises it stopped, panting audibly even to you. Then it pushed the other one, who stumbled back to it's original position while making some barely heard sounds, before turning back around and messing with something hanging over the fire in the center.
From what you could judge from the tones during that, the two in the center of the clearing seem to be hostile towards the one on the edge.
Sitting back down at on the seat, Olga went back to stirring the mixture over the fire. She absolutely loathed her team.
It wasn't even because one of them decided that fucking our noble commanders wife was a good idea.
She could, barely, accept that.
It wasn't because she was currently in the hell's gate forest, searching for one of the most illusive monsters, because her "captain", in a bout of misplaced camaraderie, decided to defend that dumb fuck.
She could even accept that bout of insanity.
It wasn't even because of how much they kept hitting on her, the only girl in the team, despite being turned down repeatedly.
She could live with even that. No, it was none of those things.
It was because these vile, disgusting, Culkuh forsaken cretins had made it their life mission to do the dumbest, most mentally handicapped, shit to try and get her killed, despite her having come up with, and fully funded, a fool proof way to survive this suicide mission.
Like seriously, was she just not speaking the same language?
Stay quite, don't wander about and keep a lookout while I make the lure and we'll be able to survive all this. Was all that so difficult to understand?
Apparently so since two of them was already managed to get killed yesterday!
"Uhh, hey Olga," and now her dumbass Captain, the reason they're here, was distracting her.
"What is it Karl?" she made sure the promise of pain was obvious in her voice.
"Uhhh," which he recognized, judging from how hesitant he suddenly was, "I think Kyle wandered off."
She paused her stirring, then took a deep breath, "I swear to-"
*Scraaaape*
There was a moment of silence as she stared at her captain's face, waiting for the inevitable stupidity to come out of his mouth.
"Hey, it must've been the wi-" he started, before she immediately cut him off.
"No. Grab your stuff and prepare for combat," she commanded, grabbing her own spear and potions pouch, "we're going to kill the thing that made that sound before it picks us off one by one. Now, since you're higher level than me, take point."
It looks like he's going to argue, but she just gave him the look which shut him up and had him pick up his spear and lead.
And so, with her watching the back and him the front, the two of them slowly approached the edge of the clearing where Kyle had been and began looking for the dumbass.
Then Karl did a stupid thing, as expected.
"Oh hey look!" he loudly proclaimed as he broke formation and rushed towards the single helmet in the middle of a small, dark clearing, "that must be Kyle's helmet."
"Come back here you fucki-" was as far as she got in her attempt to save the idiots life before, almost in slow-motion, a mass slammed into the side of his head and made it do an impression of a watermelon getting hit by mace.
Except with far more viscera, brain bits and eyeballs.
Then she looked up, following the blood covered mass into the trees, and saw the monster that just killed her captain, one she recognized.
A wandering devil. A C rank monster known to be smart and incredibly dangerous for it's rank.
Nope. Nope nopeope nope nopeNope nope
Fuck this.
Immediately, she turned and fucking bolted as hard as she could, pushing aside branches and hopping over roots sticking up from the ground. She ran, and ran until her lungs burned, right until she failed to see the thin root sticking up from the ground.
And as she felt the sharp jaws close around her neck she prayed that she didn't have to deal with her team in the afterlife.
Then it all went dark as she fainted, for the last time, from the shock of having her spine severed.
X Lizard POV X
Licking the last of the blood off your tail, you looked around at the clearing.
The three preys in front of you.
[Hunger: 4/6 (peckish)
[You gained 59 XP]
[You leveled up to level 17]
[ (Plus) 2 strength, (Plus) 2 agility]
[Club tail] (Plus) 1 Level
[Fanged maw] (Plus) 1 Level
[Adrenal burst] (Plus) 1 Level
[Stealth] (Plus) 1 Level
[You gained 3 human corpses (refil 3 hunger each) can only carry one back to the dens]
[Added two-leg den to map]
With the two-legs dead you now had free reign over their den, and so you began to search it for anything good they might have kept.
Specifically, anything you could eat.
Yet all you really managed to find were a couple of strange things, similar to shells, with red fluid in them and thats it. At least until you started rummaging through the things near the fire in the center.
That's where you hit the mother load as, out of one of the weird skin pouches, a bunch of delicious smelling meat tumbled out. Along with a couple of weird plants, weird since they smelled edible and looked weird, but you ignored those.
Not to mention the actual fluid on top of the fire.
[You gained "weird fluid filed shells"]
[You gained Delicious meats (restore 1 hunger)]
[Weird looking plants]
[Delicious fluids in centre of two-leg den available]
[Hunger: 3/6 (half empty)]
Day 12 (2/4)
Just as you finished going through the two legs you were hit with a familiar, but new in this new form yours, feeling.
Hunger.
Which you decided to slake with your newly acquired meals, the first of which was a bit of the fluid on the fire.
It was one of the most delicious things you'd ever tasted
[Regeneration is double for the next week]
But it didn't actually fill your stomach and so you moved onto eating the two legs. Whose flesh turned out to also taste quite great. Yet it was nothing in comparison to the heavenly taste of their crunchy, crunchy shell.
The sharp, almost painfully so, flavour was unlike anything you'd ever had before, but as you shoved more and more of it into your stomach you just couldn't get enough.
Eventually though, you had to stop. Not because you wanted to, but because there was no more of the shell left.
[Hunger: 7/6 (Over-stuffed)]
[Ferrovore [least] [passive] (1/5)] gained
[? 7/7 Crit overload]
[You ate all the fluid, 1 two leg and all their shells]
Day 12 (1/4)
You'll admit, you were a bit sad that there were no more two-leg shells.
Sad enough that you decided to go around and explore, an act made incredibly easy with your new speed, and try to find something new.
Which you found in the form of a pulsating hole in the ground which many creatures seemed to be going into, and so you did too.
And you were met with literal mountains of flesh, with countless creatures crawling over them.
When you climbed back out of the hole to return to your den to sleep, you make note that it closed behind you.
Day 13
You once again wake to the sound of cracking branches, but this time you're prepared enough to land on your feet.
Annoyed, you look at your tree only to be surprised as you see the giant swarm of black creatures flying above in the sky.
[Carrion swarm event started]
[Hunger: 6/6 (full)]
[You are starting to get too big and heavy for your tree den]
Looking closer at the swarm, you notice that they seem to be more numerous right above you. They also seem to be more numerous over other parts of the forest.
It takes you a bit, but eventually the dots connect in your head and you realise that those spots probably have stronger preys under them.
Then you bolt towards one of them, slowing as you arrive.
But you fail to take into account your freshly increased weight and suddenly you're tumbling through the forest without control of where you're going. By thee time you'e under the mass of birds you'd been aiming for, and right in front of the prey you were going for.
It looked you in the eyes, the challenge clear, and you growl back to assert your own dominance.
Which it doesn't seem to accept, instead opening its maw to show the vivid blue flames pooling there. You didn't know what it was going to do, but you knew that it wasn't good and so you bolted towards it.
Something it apparently wasn't prepared for as it jerked back in shock.
But not fast enough to avoid the club of your tail, that you sent hurtling at it from below with a sudden twist and turn of your whole body, which impacted it with such force that it went flying into the air before falling back into a heap on the floor.
Somehow, it still managed to still hiss at you, once it finished scrambling up and facing you, which only managed to reveal the fact that it was now missing a fang. It having seemingly shattered off from the impact, something that didn't make it any more intimidating as it rushed at you to bite you with it's single remaining fang.
But you couldn't exactly allow that, even with how unthreatening it looks, and so you did something about it. That is, you, for the first time in this new form, spat burning saliva into it's open maw.
Which didn't seem to actually hurt it, but it did cause it to pause and gag to spit out the foreign object from it's throat.
When it did stop gagging though, it gave you an enraged look as it lit up in fire.
Before taking a club to the head again as it had decided to catch fire mere steps from you. From there it took a couple more hits to the head, which let the flames on it's body singe your tail, but killed it with little difficulty.
[You gained 256 xp]
[You levelled up to level 19]
[ (Plus) 2 to all stats]
[Club tail] (Plus) 1 Level
[Tail combat] skill gained
[You gained giant devil snake body (replenishes 5 hunger)]
[Achievement: Casual destroyer]
When you come back to your tree den, snake in mouth, it is to the enraging sight of birds picking away a the food you'd left there.
Something you immediately put a stop to by running up and spitting at them, but it was too late. There was nothing but bones left and to make it worse, when you turned around, the birds had started picking at the snake!
And by the time you'd knocked those off, more had come and taken away even the bones that had been left.
Which is what led you to trying to stuff as much of what you already had into your stomach, in an attempt to avoid having it stolen.
And surprisingly enough you managed to pack in way more than you expected, even if you threw some up, something you'd attribute to the pleasantly tingly sensation the snake meat left on your tongue.
That and the way it numbed you on the way down.
[? 7/7]
[Travellers stomach] (Plus) 2 Levels
[Hunger: 9/8 (over-stuffed)]
[Snake fully consumed]
[Achievement: Nom] gained
Day 12 (2/4)
With your stomach fuller than ever before you decide to do something you knew would be more effective the fuller you were.
Hurting yourself so your ability to recover from damage.
And it worked like a charm, to the point that you could not only visibly see your wounds heal over shortly after you made them. That was even without you using that special grove, your scales and flesh too tough for it now, you were recovering visibly.
What's even better is that you actually felt more robust after cutting yourself open repeatedly.
[Unnatural vigour] (Plus) 2 Level's
It was like you were suddenly filled with energy.
Energy that you needed to burn.
And so you ran straight in one direction, your heart pumping hard as you pushed the ground below you. Then you abruptly stopped, turned around and began running again.
By the time you got tired enough to stop running you found yourself in a new part of the forest, a part which seemed oddly… nice smelling.
The second you saw the first golden butterfly flap nearby, you ran as fast as you could.
You'll deal with it when you weren't exhausted.
[Boosted mobility] (Plus) 2 Level's
Day 14
You wake with a strange sort of pressure just under your stomach, one that you don't seem to able to relieve no matter how you stretch. It's only when you instinctively open your mouth and try spit fire like before that you get relief.
In the form of a blast of roiling black mist.
… you don't even question it before moving on.
However, your new breath does give you some ideas on how to deal with the… issue you saw yesterday.
So you climb out of the burrow, closing the entrance as you leave, and then head out to where you'd seen the nest of those pests, reaching the spot in record time.
And when you see the first hints of gold?
You just start blasting the black mist from your mouth. Then you don't stop until your surrounded by black mist.
Once that's done you stop, move to another part of the nesting area, and then start blasting again.
Again, and again you repeat this process, piles of shrivelled golden bodies covering the floors as you move around, until you no longer see even a single hint of gold that isn't twitching on the ground or shrivelled up in death.
It was only when you were sure that was the case that you then began to gather all the dead parasites, and killing the one's that weren't dead, into a large pile in the centre.
Though you do notice that there appear to be less in the pile than there should be, at least compared to what you'd seen yesterday.
Once you were sure that you were sure that all of them were dead, not wanting to test if they can mess with you while you're eating them, you begin the process of gorging yourself on them again.
A process that comes with your body heating up suddenly and you feeling 'momentarily' like you could do anything.
Then it fades and you finish off the rest of the pile, distantly noting that you're new breath adds a nice flavour to it.
Once again over-stuffed with food, you did the thing you commonly do.
You find something sharp enough to pierce your scales, in this case a particularly hard and sharp bone you found, and then you proceed to stab yourself with it. Repeatedly.
The pain, at this point, is barely an afterthought.
While doing so you do however notice that your injuries are healing ludicrously fast. Far faster than any improvements would allow.
But, seeing as it's just means faster recovery, you proceed to stab yourself. This time with more effort, to account for the sudden increase in recovery.
The downside to hurting yourself to improve your recovery is that, afterwards, you feel the phantom pains in your sides for quite a while.
So, to distract yourself, you sped out into the forest, with the first place you visited being where you'd gassed the parasites earlier in the day, checking for any stragglers, before just wandering in one direction from there. Which turned out to be rather boring, as you didn't really find much.
Then to, alleviate that boredom, you began to walk in different, random, ways.
Which, oddly enough, made you even faster.
Then, to add to the good news, you stumbled into a large flaming, like everything else, hole in the ground. One filled with the similar materials as those two-leg's shells.
[Burning quarry discovered]
But you didn't really eat it, feeling like you were dead on your feet, and so you noted where it was and then trotted back to your den.
You were woken to the sensation of the burrow vibrating, something you weren't really worried about since it was so weak.
What you were worried about was the pillar of grey light that rose to the sky from the direction of the butterfly nest.
[Quake event started]
Deciding that you weren't going to just not investigate it you casually over to it. Well, relatively casually anyways. You were still fast enough to generate enough wind to cause branches to break off the trees as you arrived near the locations of the nests.
Only to suddenly stop when you see a glowing piece of… something hanging off a branch above you, the thing causing you to want to leave.
But you also notice, upon looking around, that there are more than a few in the trees, seemingly forming a perimeter.
Yet you also knew that you could easily pass them.
[Boss fight ahead] (first time warning)
You stumble into the opening and see a large two-leg in the delicious shell. Unfortunately your distraction, via food, gets you a blast of light to the face.
Paladin Miles Ryker, second of his name, was currently extremely excited. For why wouldn't he be? He was after all doing the work of the almighty, and all-knowing, lord Culkuh.
"Soooo, are you going to come with me or…"
Yet he could not show that, for it was his duty to present the appropriately stoic and stalwart figure that would be expected of paladins of his lord. Which meant that, when he replied to the young potion-minded acolyte, he did so with a voice lowered to a deep bass and stoicism.
"No girl, I shall stay here and defend this site with my life," he said, conveying his unending convictions to her, "you shall go and collect the reagents so that we may fulfill our duty post-haste!"
"Uh, you do know that we don't need to actually use the lure here right? It'll probably get us a couple more of the butterflies, but we only need one," the young, and thus foolish lass, asked him before muttering under his breath, "and what's with the fancy talk? You're only a year older than me."
But he was a magnanimous soul, and thus ignored her blatantly disrespectful words, " indeed I know it to be so, yet we must do it here! For what are we if we are not devoting our lives to excelling the holy tasks given to us by her holy eminence? Nothing, that's what! Now prepare yourself, I shall activate the defences!"
"Wait a minute! I need t-" she attempted to halt your holy action, but it was too late as you slammed you blessed blade into the ground and activated the defences, engulfing the clearing in the holy light of Culkuh, "ah, fuck. My eyes!"
It was a short while later that the girl finally left to collect the reagents and Paladin Miles was left to brood ruminate upon the holy plans that he was facilitating.
Because, while he was not told the true real purpose of the foul creatures they were to collect, he could make an educated guess.
It excited him.
Why wouldn't it? After all, it seems that with the appearance of her holy eminence, blood of Culkuh, it was time to remove the heretics that had infected this world like rats and let her take her rightful place as the god empress of all humans.
And it shall be started through his, and the girl's, hands. Through whatever abominations shall be formed using the parasites they shall present to her emine-
*snap*
"Dark Bolt!", no sooner had the sharp snap of a branch reached his keen ears did he sent a bolt of holy might at it's source, hitting the foul creature that dared intrude on this sanctified lands.
"Foul creature, you dare!" he shouted in righteous indignation while facing the creature, an unholy abomination like all the blasted creatures of this land, while preparing his blessed blade, "Come then, I shall allow you law your wretched sight upon the lords greatness."
But come the beast didn't, instead releasing a great amount of roiling black mist from it's maw right at him. A pointless endeavour from the abomination, as his armour was enchanted to protects from magical attacks as we-
Stumbling, he managed to catch himself before falling, "poison! You cowardly wretch!"
Yet, seemingly proud of it's cowardly tactics, the beast continued to stare back at him, "very well, then. Let us see see what you shall do about this. Draining charge!"
Then, as the holy light of Culkuh surrounded him, he launched himself towards the beast, intent on stunning it with the Active skill granted to him from his Job as the one true lords paladins.
Yet, he had fallen victim to his pride and underestimated the abomination.
The impact from the creatures club, even with his skill dampening it, was great enough to rattle his whole body.
Yet, while it likely shattered a rib, it did not shatter his unyielding spirit, and it was that same heaven piercing spirit that he focused into his great sword, "retribution slash."
And the lord did bless him this day as. For when the godless beast attempted to lay its foul claws upon him it was, instead, met with the holy steel of his blade. The blade that proceeded to bite through scales and take away a chunk of its unholy flesh.
"See beast! See the might of the lord and all who follow him!" he gloated over the injured creature, mocking its futile struggles, "See ho- argh!"
Yet it seemed that the infernal creature was also empowered by heretical powers, as it would have to be to hurt him when he had the lord's favour, for its claws managed to find purchase in the unarmoured crook of his elbow.
And it seemed that the heretical powers that empowered this beast continued to support it, something they tended not to do, as it ripped through his gambeson and pulling out the inner tendon of his arm.
Now, common men in this situation would fall to their knees in agony. Some perhaps would even die immediately, unable to handle the pain.
But Paladin Miles Ryker, second of his name and a devout follower of the God of true skies Culkuh, was not of such common ken.
So, even as his blade dropped from one hand, which now was unable to close anymore, he scrambled through his potion pouch with the other, quickly finding a lesser healing potion.
With great speed he tore the cork from the bottles, and with just as much speed he brought the bottle up to h-
*Chomp*
He stared at the stump that now replaced what had once been a hand holding a potion. Then he turned to face the creature which had just swallowed both, the wound in its side healing visibly from the act.
"Very well," he solemnly began, squaring up to it, while ignoring the light-headedness he was feeling,"ti's but a flesh wound, one I can bear with till I slay you."
"Oi, lizard!"
Then just as he was about to charge the creature, and show it the might of his lord, the voice of the girl distracted him, leading to him tripping and falling onto the ground.
"What are you doing girl!" he shouted from his place on the floor, having turned his head to see that the girl offering the beast towering above him the intermediate power core with one hand, the escape crystal in another.
"Got [animal speech], saving your life, now shut up!" the foolish girl replied curtly.
"No you fool, run away!" he attempted to get her to listen, to not waste the precious ingredient, "we do not negotia-"
"ShutTheFuckUp!" but his attempts proved useless, before he began to feel darkness take him.
X Lizard POV X
You look at the two-leg standing before you, specifically the delicious bite-sized thing she was offering you in exchange for letting her and her companion live.
You don't know how you knew that, you didn't understand the sounds they were making after all, but you didn't really care.
You cared about the thing it was offering you.
For the first time since you broke out of your egg you were contemplating not killing something. It was a… new experience, one that was about to get stranger because you were genuinely considering not ending these two legs.
The temptation of the thing it was offering was so great.
Then eventually you decided to agree to this… bargain. Something the standing two leg seemed to understand the moment you did as it made some more noises, "alright. Alright… here yo- catch!"
Immediately, you turn bolt towards the thrown delicious smelling thing, leaping to catch it before it even hits the ground before turning back to face the two leg.
The last you see of them is the standing one leaping on the one on the floor before they're surrounded by purple light, disappearing without a trace.
Not that you cared, you still had the delicious thing in your mouth and they'd left behind the stick made from the same thing as their shell.
You return back to the burrow with the two things you gained in mouth, the shell-stick and the absolutely delicious smelling thing.
… you immediately scarf down the latter, before darkness immediately claims you.
[Primordial pool of parallels] piece consumed
