Xavier stared at his fingernails. Once they’d gone back to normal, they didn’t change back again.

The fight… it had brought something out in him. It had altered his thoughts, his emotions, even his body… because of how he had been changing it.

Xavier couldn’t help but remember the description of the werewolf he’d used Identify on back on a previous floor.

Some believe that a Denizen studying transmogrification, the art of changing one's form, accidentally created the first werewolf by making an irreversible change to themselves.

He’d wondered if that meant his Assimilate Properties skill could do something similar to him… would that be considered transmogrification? It certainly seemed to be changing his form right now.

His breathing was no longer heavy, his heart no longer thudding in his chest. He had chosen this path knowing there might be consequences, unlike the first time he’d walked it.

And this time, he wasn’t going to shy away from it. If this was something that was going to change him, then he would let it change him, as long as it brought him power—and as long as he was able to keep those changes in check and remain, essentially, himself.

Right now, without his weapon, without his spells being able to cooldown inside the time bubble, he needed to use his physical strength to the best of his ability. He didn’t intend to drop the Time Alteration spell any time soon—what he did intend to do was carve a path with his time bubble all around the battlefield until he’d taken out every single one of the Rhinoceros Monkeys and only the alpha remained.

He didn’t know if he was powerful enough to make the spell do such a thing. Didn’t know if he could push it that far, or if it would last that long.

But he had to try.

Xavier pushed the time bubble forward. This time, he didn’t just open it up to two beasts—he opened it up to ten.

Xavier tore through them, a roar escaping his lips as he fought. He embraced it. He didn’t fight like an animal, but nor did he fight like himself.

He fought like some combination of man and beast. And as he moved through the enemies, expanding the bubble more and more, he felt changes in his body manifest.

His fingernails grew once more into claws. His teeth sharpened. His skin toughened. At one point, he dropped one of the horns from out of his right hand. Instead of using the horn to attack his enemy, he slashed his claws across one of the Rhinoceros Monkeys necks. Blood pumped out of the wound.

Xavier was conscious of what he was doing. He had split his mind and was observing himself fight using his Farscope ability. With his mind split, he could keep part of himself in check, ready to rein himself in if he ever needed to.

Xavier dropped the other horn.

When hundreds of beasts lay dead around him he enforced a pause. He had gained several ranks in Time Alteration as he’d pushed the time dilation field to its limits, moving it around the area—something he was glad for. He needed that spell to become more powerful. It was fast becoming one of his most valuable assets.

During the fight, Xavier had become a whirlwind of death and destruction. Since coming to this floor, more and more Xavier had been embracing his melee fighting abilities, strengthening his physical attacks—that was how he’d earned the spell Telekinetic Enhanced Strike in the first place.

Without that ability to fight with his scythe, he would not have been able to inflict near as much damage on the Stone Bear as he had.

But despite how well this fight right now was going, he was a little wary about walking farther down this path. He had dropped the horns sometime during the fight, killing his enemies with… nothing but his bare hands.

Or rather, his bare claws.

He’d tore throats, ripped out eyes, snapped necks.

At one point, he had even driven his teeth into one of the Rhinoceros Monkey’s arms.

With his mind split, he’d been able to observe himself in a detached way. But he had also experienced every second of it.

He hadn’t felt like himself—he had felt like something else. Something more primal.

And… something powerful.

How will my journey toward power change me?

He had always chosen whatever would bring him more power, whatever would make him more deadly. At least, he had for the most part—there were certain classes early on that he had avoided.

I said I would embrace this.

He looked down at his hands. At the claws. They were retracting, like they had the first time. But it was happening slower.

How would he fight once he regained his scythe-staff? He would never let go of that if he could help it.

He tilted his head left, then right, making it crack. He dropped his hands and clenched them into fists.

He was aware of how… confused he was in taking this path, how he kept teetering one way and then the other, saying he would embrace it, then questioning his actions moments later. He didn’t like the indecision that was taking hold of him.

A notification had popped up as he’d fought. He had read it, then promptly tried to ignore its implications, but now he was staring at it once more.

You have activated a Racial Shift.

You have embraced properties of other races into that of your own as a human. There are shifts happening under the surface of your being. If you continue walking down this path, there will be permanent consequences.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

He tapped his foot on the ground, felt the claws from his toes brush up against the front of his boots.

Xavier stared down at his boots. He bit his lip, felt blood drip into his mouth. His teeth were still sharp—elongated, almost like vampire fangs.

The last time he had experienced this, fighting the first two Rhinoceros Monkeys after heavily using the Assimilate Properties skill, his claws had retracted significantly faster.

Now, he was sure they were taking much longer. And he was beginning to wonder if they would retract at all.

He sighed.

I have activated a Racial Shift?

He had known, for a while now, that the skill had been changing him. There had been that symbol beside his race in his status for a long time.

But he had no idea what he might change into.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

One cannot walk backward on the path.

He’d always known that was true, but now it felt truer than ever.

Well, there’s nothing I can do about it right now.

He needed to keep fighting. Needed to keep killing these Rhinoceros Monkeys until only the alpha was left, and while he was standing inside a time dilation field, he did not in fact have all the time in the world. The more he pushed the spell, altering the parameters of the time bubble, carving his way through the battlefield, the less time the spell would last. He wouldn’t be able to keep it going forever.

Every second counted.

Xavier pushed forward. He couldn’t help but notice that this time, his claws didn’t retract at all. If anything, they appeared as though they were getting longer. Sharper.

They were certainly becoming easier to use.

At some point during the fight—he lost count of how many of the enemy he had slaughtered—yet another notification appeared in his vision. This one was for a skill. It wasn’t a skill quest, either, like he’d received in the past.

He had simply been bequeathed the skill instantly.

You have learnt the skill Red In Tooth And Claw!

Red In Tooth And Claw – Rank 1

You fight like the beast that you are. You have resorted to fighting like a primal animal, attuning with a power deep inside you that is lost to many naturally sapient races.

+20% damage while unarmed.

+5% Strength while unarmed

+5% Speed while unarmed

+5% Toughness while unarmed

Xavier blinked as he swiftly read through the description of the skill. This… this was interesting. Again, he didn’t want to abandon the idea of using his scythe-staff—and his Scythe-Staff Mastery skill was stronger than what this offered, but he could see how this would come in handy…

He felt the difference instantly. Xavier’s attacks packed far more of a punch. His enemies went down more easily.

It wasn’t long before the path he carved through the battlefield reached its end, and the only beast left upon it was the Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey, still gripping Xavier’s Midnight Scythe in its grubby little hands.

Xavier gritted his teeth at the sight of the alpha. An anger boiled up in him, one that took him by surprise. He didn’t think he would feel anger against this beast. Anger wasn’t rational in this situation—Xavier had come to fight the pack-herd. He had disturbed it.

The Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey had every right to be angry with Xavier, and the opposite wasn’t true.

And yet the anger within him burned.

He was itching for a fight with this thing. Itching to dominate it on the battlefield.

Itching to kill it.

That battle lust had been in him from the moment he’d began fighting after using Assimilate Properties, and it didn’t seem like it was going anywhere.

The Time Alteration spell was still active, but he could feel it crumbling around him. Could feel that soon, it would be coming to an end. There was nothing he could do about that.

He had mere seconds before he would be fighting this beast.

Fortunately, all of the killing had given him something—not just boosts to his spells or his skills, though he had received a fair number of ranks.

Especially in his newest skill, Red In Tooth And Claw.

Fighting so many of these beasts had also given him another level—just the one, to his surprise and dismay.

But one more level? That was enough to restore all his spells.

Soul Strike was no longer on cooldown, as it had been after he’d killed the initial three hundred Rhinoceros monkeys.

Time Prison was also no longer on cooldown, which meant he would be able to use it again in his fight with the Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey, even if the spell didn’t last all that long on the powerful beast.

Xavier still had no weapon, but he didn’t need one.

He was going to tear the alpha to shreds.

The Time Alteration spell ended. The bubble burst. Time outside the field moved forward at a normal pace once more.

The Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey, which was currently forty feet away from Xavier, grinned maliciously as it saw him.

Then the reality of its situation dawned on it. It noticed what had happened around it. Noticed all the dead Rhinoceros Monkeys—its brethren, its kin, those it had been sworn to protect.

Every single one of them was dead.

If the rage this beast had felt before had been intense, that intensity had been amplified a thousand-fold by the realisation that every single one of its pack-herd was now nothing more than a corpse lying on the ground waiting to rot—that was, of course, assuming Xavier hadn’t dismantled the corpses and gathered up anything useful into his Storage Ring.

Something told him the alpha wouldn’t appreciate Xavier’s desecration of their bodies.

The beast surged forward on powerful legs. There was something about the way it moved that Xavier couldn’t help but admire. There was something familiar in it—something he hadn’t noticed before.

His perception of the world was changing. It was subtle, at first. When he had been fighting the Rhinoceros Monkeys, he’d slowly began to realise what it was he’d been seeing.

He could anticipate how the beasts were going to move. It wasn’t just his Evasion skill at work that had meant he had left each encounter not only unscathed, but growing more and more efficient at slaughtering the beasts in battle.

He’d had almost a sixth sense for where the enemy would be, and it had taken him far too long to realise why—

He was becoming like these beasts. He had assimilated much of them into his own body.

There wasn’t time to contemplate the consequences of that. All he could do was brace himself for the fight that was about to happen.

He let the Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey come to him. He could almost feel the beast’s rage. There was something to that, as well—the mental strength of the beast was high, and now that Xavier had assimilated much of its qualities—or, at least, the qualities of its lesser kin—he felt as though he could almost feel the beast’s mind.

A moment before the beast reached him, Xavier leapt into the air on powerful legs. The Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey leapt up after him, but this time Xavier was ready.

He cast Heavy Telekinesis on the beast, pushing it back down to the ground. It slammed into the dirt, the force of the spell and the dense weight of the beast forming a crater in the dirt.

Spirit Break! Soul Shatter!

The two spells hit his enemy in quick succession. Like the first time he’d used the spells on the beast, they barely seemed to do much at all.

A Level 290 D Grade… Gods, this thing is tough.

Fighting the Rhinoceros Monkeys the way that he had, Xavier had been able to replenish his soulkeeping reserve entirely. He was tempted to use his entire reserve on this beast, just to teach the damned animal a lesson—that no one messed with Xavier Collins and came out alive.

But that would be a waste of his resources.

Besides, at this point, he didn’t think he needed it.

The alpha Rhinoceros Monkey didn’t take long to regain its feet. It was soon staring up at Xavier with unabashed hatred. Xavier knew what it was going to do next.

The horn on the beast’s head glowed red a fraction of a second before a beam of energy burst forth, striking up for Xavier.

Xavier used Hover Dodge to easily slip out of the way of the trajectory of the beam.

The beam, however, was lasting a lot longer than the inferior Rhinoceros Monkeys’ beams had lasted—he supposed that shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering all of those beasts had been a whole one hundred levels weaker than this one.

The alpha turned its head, and the beam followed. Xavier, despite his ability to manoeuvre in the air, was unable to move fast enough to dodge the hit.

Pain seared through him. The sheer power of the strike threw Xavier backward.

Xavier felt panic thrum through him. He had been hit by attacks from D Grades of a lower level than this one and had half of his health instantly taken away from him.

With trepidation—even as he tumbled through the air, trying to regain control of himself—he looked at his health status.

Your health is at 71%.

Xavier blinked. The attack had taken 29% percent of his health? While it was still a lot, Xavier had been expecting the damage to be significantly more severe than that.

If he were able to see hit points—if such a thing like that even existed within the Greater Universe—he was sure that that attack was the most powerful attack to have ever struck him in the entire time since he had been integrated.

Xavier grinned. He regained his control—his composure. He flipped in the air and landed on the ground in a crouch, surrounded by the corpses of the dead Rhinoceros Monkeys that he had slain. The Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey made its way toward him at an impossibly fast sprint. The anger in its eyes had not diminished.

Xavier stood his ground. He slammed the same two spells into his enemy that he had used before as he’d leapt—Spirit Break and Soul Shatter. He knew they didn’t do enough to this beast, but all he was trying to do was soften it up.

Now that Xavier knew he could take a hit from this thing, he was more willing to let it engage him in a physical confrontation.

He wasn’t going to leap away this time.

The Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey closed the gap between them incredibly fast.

When it was a mere six feet away, Xavier burst forward in a flash of speed. The beast’s tails whipped out, as though they were going to grab him. This time, Xavier was prepared. He dodged one tail and grabbed the other tight in his hand. His Grip Strength trait made it so that the beast couldn’t take back its tail, but it didn’t look as though it was worried.

It had gotten as close as it needed to.

It swung Xavier’s scythe-staff directly at him. Xavier didn’t move to dodge—he could see the surprise written on the beast’s face at that. Instead, Xavier used an ability he rarely used, but one that he valued.

Xavier activated the imbued ability of his Midnight Robes—Otherworld Phase.

His Midnight Scythe sailed straight through him as though he wasn’t there at all. Xavier couldn’t help but grin at the sight of the utter bewilderment written on his enemy’s face.

The Otherworld Phase didn’t last long. Xavier took the beast’s shock as an opportunity. He gripped onto his scythe-staff as the beast pulled it back toward himself.

His fingers wrapped around the shaft of his scythe-staff and held fast.

A tug of war began.

Xavier’s grip was strong—stronger than it had ever been—but it wasn’t as strong as the beast he faced.

Neither Xavier nor the Alpha Rhinoceros Monkey were willing to let go of the scythe-staff.

There was a loud creaking sound. Xavier’s eyes widened. He knew what that was—but before he could do anything about it, his Midnight Scythe snapped in half.