Part 3

Jerking away from the officer, Drake silently stared for a moment before cursing to himself. Dammit! Something like this never even crossed my mind. Shaking his head angrily, he let out a horrible scream, and after a moment of concentration, bolted away from the city.

What do I do.. What do I do.. What do I do… I’m stuck like this, and I can’t even talk to anyone! Taking a moment to calm himself, Drake realized that he couldn’t return home. He would be attacked on sight, and there was no way to explain anything to anyone.

I need somewhere safe. Thinking back to where he transformed, he made his decision. He would hide away in the forest until he could think of a solid solution. It should still be relatively desolate, and normal humans certainly aren’t going to wander out with all the monsters roaming around.

Sprinting back to the forest, he came back to that same small opening left open by the upturned tree.

Taking a moment to calm down, he pondered to himself, “Well, it seems like I’m on my own now. I can’t rely on anyone. As the week goes on, more people will probably take their chances with the beast race transformations. Considering how that Minotaur went rogue, I don’t see anyone letting a monster that can’t even speak close enough to them to explain what happened even if they end up like me.”

Sighing to himself, Drake began to plan. If it’s going to be like this, I need to prepare myself. Clearing away stray pieces of brush from the underside of the tree, Drake began to dig. Expanding the small opening that he hid in after the griffin attack, he spent roughly 2 hours expanding the interior and deepening the hole itself. Just as he was finishing, he looked at the tree he had fired his mana shards at. Much to his surprise, he could see that the tree seemed to have decayed severely, leaving what looked like burn marks checkering the entire tree.

No way, did my attack really do something like this? As Drake touched the tree, the burn marks seemed to wither away at his touch. The marks slowly faded away into dust and floated away from the tree, leaving twenty holes roughly an inch wide.

Troubled by what happened, Drake focused on himself, and in a moment, a large red shard of crystallized mana appeared in front of him.

Bracing himself, he said, “I need to see just what this can do.” Pressing the shard of mana against the tree, the tree itself almost seemed to shake. The shard slowly began to enter the tree, corroding the portions of the tree it touched, growing ever so slightly larger as it did so.

Slightly unsettled, Drake’s eyes glowed with understanding. So my absorption isn’t just limited to eating enemies. My mana grows stronger as it absorbs living material. Thinking back to when he first finished his transformation, he remembered seeing small strands of mana flowing into the surroundings.

Smiling because of those implications, he said, “It seems those Caracatia are planning to introduce mana to the entire planet. Although I’m not sure what for, I can use that to my advantage now.” Pulling the shard out of the tree with a soft crack, he noticed something strange. Looking closely at his mana shard, he could see the slightest amounts of the natural ribbon-like mana surrounding the crystal was beginning to slowly change. As it touched the shard, it slowly warped into his menacing shade of red mana, and began to slowly circle the crystal.

“With an ability like this, maybe it’s better I’m by myself for a while.”, he half mumbled to himself, before turning away from the tree.

*Growwwlllll* Drake clutched his stomach. He realized he hadn’t eaten anything substantial ever since he first transformed. Thinking back to the griffin, he walked over to the small clearing he made when they crash landed and began dragging to griffin back to his new home.

Grinning hungrily, he said, “You can’t hold this against me, you know? The winner has to eat sometime.”

After indulging himself, Drake noticed something peculiar that was left glistening in the griffin’s body. He could see a small marble-like structure was embedded in its chest. Looking closer, he could see that it was likely some kind a crystallized mana, likely formed sometime after transforming.

Curious, he said, “I wonder what it tastes like.” Popping the core into his mouth, Drake suddenly felt the core begin to burn intensely inside of his mouth. As a horrible burning pain began to spread throughout his body, the red mana inside him seemed to recoil in protest, and quickly surrounded the core. After a flurry of stinging pains that seemed to be coming from the core itself, Drake’s mana suddenly stabbed into to core, and after a short moment, easily melted the core into liquid. Left with a distinct lack of pain all of a sudden, Drake instinctually began to drink the liquid, leaving him with a strange feeling. “I feel… stronger somehow, even though there doesn’t seem to have been any physical changes.” Curious, Drake looked into the source of his mana, and noticed that his mana pool had changed. When Drake initially formed his new mana, he had drawn in as much as possible, but strangely, he felt that that his old limit had disappeared, leaving him with a strange hollow feeling.

Laughing to himself, he thought, It seems like they liked the concept of monster cores so much that they had one formed in all of the beast races. It’s likely that I have one somewhere as well, although I’m not willing to dig around just to check. Looking around at the large, gnarled trees surrounding him, Drake decided on a course of action. I can’t go into civilization anymore, at least until I’m strong enough to beat down anyone who tries to kill me.

Taking another look at the large red mana crystal he made, he smiled as he thought of a plan.

“It seems like these things can convert mana for me, given there are enough in the area at least.” Drake sighed. Returning to his small cave, he began his arduous task. Concentrating, Drake felt a shiver go through his body as he forced a large portion of his mana into a large, red shard.

Collapsing to one knee, he grinned as he looked at the mana shard slowly rotating in his hand. “It’s going to take all my mana to solidify four large crystals. It may take a few days, but I should be able to finish soon enough.” Preparing himself, over the next few days, Drake began the task of crystallizing all of the mana in his body into four large crystals, which he placed on the walls of his small cave. Reluctantly, he then went out and re-converted the natural, ribbon-like mana in the environment back to his own mana. Continuing this process day after day, he soon had completely surrounded his new home with thirty mana crystals, each roughly a foot apart.

After four days of painful, nauseating work, Drake looked at his new creation with pride and smiled. “Now I don’t have to go through that annoying task of making new mana, and this will help me immensely with that other task I’ve been putting off.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Initially, when Drake first tried to expand his mana pool through the extra power the griffin core had given him, he felt that he hit a wall. While his original limit was easily surpassed, no matter what he tried, he felt that he just couldn’t absorb enough mana to break through to what Drake felt was a new level of power.

“If I don’t have to convert mana, I can absorb as much as I want,” Drake smiled with glee. Sitting down in the middle of the small cave, he exhaled slowly, calming himself as best he could to feel the flow of mana around him. Connecting himself to the flow of mana surrounding him, he began to absorb the mana the crystals gave off. It was certainly slower than conversion, but much less work. Given enough time, he would be able to slowly absorb the mana that was given off by the crystals and grow in strength. Within an hour, he felt like he hit his previous maximum.

Bracing himself, he stopped absorbing mana for a moment, and tried to relax before beginning. “Looks like it’s finally time.” Taking two of the mana crystals off of the wall, he liquefied them after a moment, watching the dark red ball of liquid slowly float in front of him. Taking a moment to breathe, Drake began to absorb the mana back into himself. The mana ball in his hands seemed to reject the process for a moment, with Drake forcing the mana ball into himself and the mana pushing itself back out. Screaming out in a loud burst of crazed laughter, Drake forced the ball of mana completely inside of himself, and the wall inside of himself finally broke.

As the mana in his body was absorbed, Drake felt a rush of power unlike what he had ever felt before. The mana inside of him, which initially seemed almost liquid-like, began to fully solidify for the first time, leaving a small, blood-red half-formed ball floating in his pool of mana.

Laying back on the ground of his cave, he felt the cold, soft dirt on his back as he breathed in heavily, feeling the power pour throughout his body. “Hehehe… I actually did it. And my body… it feels so good.” Bracing himself, he lifted himself up on arm, leaning against the dirt wall of the cave, and smiled ecstatically. “I haven’t felt this alive since I took a bite out of that griffin. Let’s see…” Looking towards two other mana crystals on the wall, he willed them towards himself. After a brief moment, the crystals popped off the wall, quickly liquefying and were absorbed into Drake easily.

Smiling, he said, “It seems that I’ve gotten a lot stronger. I haven’t been out in a few days, and that griffin is just about gone. I need to look for more food, so now is a better time than any.” Crawling out of his small hole, Drake took a moment to himself to stretch before looking to the city.  Drake chuckled to himself, excited to see just what he could do now. Leaving the forest, Drake quickly made his way towards the city.

At the very least, I should be able to see what’s been going on for the past few days. As he approached the city, he noticed that it had changed considerably since he last saw it. The entire portion of the city that had been attacked by the golem seemed to be missing entirely, with huge portions of buildings missing as the path of destruction led further into the city.

Wandering over to one of the buildings, Drake noticed that several of them had long, jagged scarring running across them, seemingly at random. The golem didn’t do this. This looks like it was made from.. an attack of some kind. Shaking off his curiosity, he continued into the city.

“The real question is where the hell all the people are, this part of the city seems to be completely abandoned now.” Looking around, Drake could see pieces of abandoned vehicles scattered all across the area. This part of the city was indeed abandoned, and there was no sign of where the inhabitants may have gone.

Looking at the abandoned ruins, Drake sighed and continued walking forward. Well.. there’s no harm in going further into the city. No normal human can fight me, and I’m curious just what happened here. Seeing the traces of the golem’s footsteps, Drake decided to follow them carefully. It was relatively simple, given the wide array of destroyed buildings it left in its wake.

As he began to enter the interior of the city, he spotted the first group of human looking figures since he entered. There were five different people altogether, standing on top of a large pile of rubble, with each one at varying heights. However, Drake could tell at a glance that something was different about them.

Narrowing his eyes, he muttered, “Whoever they are, they certainly aren’t human. I can see each of them drawing in large amounts of mana.” Curious, Drake made his way through several abandoned buildings to get within earshot, hiding behind a large amount of debris, presumably left by the golem as it ate its way through.

“It was a lot more difficult than I was expecting. It tore its way past all the actual law enforcement like it was nothing. We’re the only ones who could even damage it once it got started.” Drake could see a particularly large man speaking. Strangely, he was completely bald, with strange tattoo-like lines covering his pale, muscular body. Even more strange, he wore relatively little clothing, with only a pair of boots and leather greaves covering him.

“Yea, yea, come on already and help me look for it. They all have one, and it helps with my spells immensely.” One of the smaller ones started speaking, it was likely a woman, judging on the high, lilting voice. She was roughly 4 feet tall, and was surprisingly muscular. “Honestly, I’m glad it was a rock-type monster. Ever since I changed, I seem to have acquired a taste for different things.” Taking a large handful of rocks, she threw them into her mouth and ate them like it was nothing.

Awe struck, Drake watched the short woman. Hey, is that really sanitary?! How can you just eat rocks and not break your teeth right away?

“Jeez Rachel, I don’t understand how you can just eat that without any problems, it’s painful to even hear you eating that stuff.” A man with a medium build started talking. Tall, somewhat skinny, pointy ears… He’s definitely an elf of some kind.

“You wouldn’t understand, with this big guy at least, he tastes absolutely fantastic, imagine something like red velvet cake, it all tastes like dessert. It’s fantastic. Shame about being so short though. The benefits of a dwarf compared to my other choices were just too great though.” The short woman continued to plow her way through the rubble at a surprising speed.

Wait, is that huge pile of rubble is the golem? It’s twice as large as when I saw it! Well that answers some of my questions at least. The golem died, and there’s a dwarf, some kind of giant judging by his size and stature, and an elf so far. Looking at the other two digging through the rubble, Drake realized that they looked remarkably similar. They were both women, and even though he just caught flashes of their faces occasionally, he could tell they both had very striking features. They both wore a cloak, and didn’t seem to be very talkative, at least at first glance.

They might be some kind of race that focuses on agility by the way they’re having such a hard time moving the rubble around.

Struggling to move around the boulders, the two girls sat down together, clearly unhappy. “Rachel, do we really have to find that thing? Me and Alyssa are exhausted. We still aren’t used to using magic at all yet.”  The dwarf looked over towards them. “Of course we have to find it, it’s one of the only reasons we’ve all done so well. That thing helps amplifies my abilities so these two idiots can do their job.” The elf and the strangely tattoo’d man just looked at each other and sighed.

The dwarf looked over at the hooded figure assumed to be Alyssa. “You know, if you managed to get a few of your own, you and Kat wouldn’t have near as hard of a time.” The hooded figure seemed irritated, and the cloak seemed to move by itself. Strange, why would it…

Holy crap, they’re both fox girls. For a brief second, a silver tail briefly poked out from underneath the cloak, angrily waving back and forth as they talked.

“We would already have one for the both of us, but you keep on taking them all.” Alyssa definitely seemed to be angry. Her hood seemed to be moving as well. Why god, do you let such adorable ears be hidden from the world?

Shaking himself out of his stupor, he looked away hesitantly. Well, while I would love to watch some cute girls for a little while longer, I need to leave. The last thing I need is to be caught by these guys. Moving away from his hiding spot, Drake prepared to leave. As he did, a stray piece of rubble came loose when he moved, and a small shower of pebbles and other debris bounced down.

Looking around, the elf went on alert almost immediately, daggers drawn. “Rachel, did you hear that?” Cursing to himself, Drake attempted to hide behind the rubble again, if only for a moment. Damn elf, why did you have to say anything.

“No, but I felt it. It came from over there.” The dwarf was pointing directly at Drake’s hiding spot.