Kaian could barely stand after his battle, he was severely wounded and mentally exhausted. Despite that, he couldn’t rest yet. He had to take some sort of a trophy and some blood. Kaian ignored Vexastone shining temporarily - he would take a look at it later.
He approached the corpse and shakily filled all of his empty vials. Tears were coming out of his eyes from the sheer pain of moving his arms. Stopping this torture, he bent over and licked some of the remaining blood off the animal. It immediately made him feel stronger, like everything about him became better. Though he mainly felt his body strength increase.
He felt slightly rejuvenated and wanted to dig out the eye to take as a trophy. Kaian looked at the eye, it was bloodied and the light in the pupil had been lost. It looked strangely appealing, he even wanted to take a bite out of it.
Ahh, but what if it was poisonous?
Kaian went into hesitation mode, he had a good experience with eating random stuff, why not try again?
[Dammit, let’s think about it. For the positives, it looks good. For the negatives, Non-small chance of death, dangerous, might do something to my mind. I think that it’s obvious.]
Kaian took a bite because he was pretty dumb. Ah, whatever, he could afford to be so. Vexastone would save his ass with stuff like this anyway.
Nom, nom, nom.
Okay, it turns out that an eye isn’t exactly delicious. It tasted kind of like a beefy grape with a metallic thick sauce. Kaian considered it a necessary sacrifice, if he didn’t eat it, who would?
Once finished, he felt way stronger, but that was just the usual effect of the blood. He didn’t start bloating or turning blue, he felt normal, average. And Kaian didn’t like that at all.
He forced himself to think about other things, looking all over the monster.
“Ah, this would be a good trophy.” he whispered and stomped on the beast’s head.
CRACK
Its skull cracked, covering Kaian with purple blood. He continued stomping, as if relieving his anger.
CRACK CRACK CRACK
The skull fell apart into pieces, brain matter and organs splattering everywhere, yet Kaian continued stomping. His teeth were clenched and all he saw was purple.
Huff huff huff
After a while, he finally stopped. The animal’s entire head obliterated, becoming a wet stain on the dirt. He was breathing in and out erratically.
“Oh. I just destroyed my trophy.” he thought out loud. However, one thing remained. Its crown.
Kaian took the antlers, painted purple by the blood, and put them on his head with a pure smile on his face.
It disappeared from his face once Kaian noticed it, returning to his resting expression. A rational part of him was sending off warning signs about his behavior. But what could he do? You can’t just say I want to get better and heal, even if you know that there’s a problem.
He ran his fingers through his non-existent beard and sighed, changing into a lizard and going on a tree to take a nap. That would help.
…
When he woke up, he noticed that his lizard body was pretty close to dying from bleeding out, transforming to escape his grim fate. His human form felt way more powerful than ever, it was like the temporary boost from the blood wasn’t temporary at all.
Kaian devilishly smiled, he had expected it. Vexastone returned him to his best state, always. This meant that way back when he ate that tentacle, he had already started his hunter path already.
And while Kaian certainly was happy that his power grew, he wasn’t too interested in this power system. It had too many limits and even if he could remove a big part of them with his cheat, it still didn’t seem good enough for him. Kaian had to be the best, he did so much, how could he remain as slightly above a villager for the rest of his life?
This won’t do, this won’t do at all. He decided to leave the village as soon as he could. They weren’t good enough for him anyway.
And in spite of all his tough, arrogant act, he still went back to the village to show off his trophy. Quite sad, really.
Kaian’s proud and tall figure with a crown made from a killed beast seemed way shorter and pathetic from the back.
…
He entered the village and all the eyes looked at him, he enjoyed it very much, walking slower to revel in it. The short walk to Wynfir’s house lengthened by a lot, Kaian getting bored from the attention halfway and speeding up.
Knock, knock, knock.
Wynfir opened the door quickly, he was most likely waiting for Kaian. They met gazes and the hunter’s eyes immediately went to the purplish crown. Wynfir’s pupils shrank and Kaian could literally smell the astonishment coming off of him.
“Hah, What do you think of it? Personally, I think it’s pretty cool.”
Wynfir didn't respond, remaining dumbfounded.
"Here's some of the blood from the beast, as a gift for teaching me. Also, I'm leaving now."
Wynfir still didn't say anything, his expression turning complicated as the only response.
Kaian didn't pay attention anymore, visiting the inn to take some of his stashed blood and leaving the village.
The next stop - Teim.
…
Kaian went on his way, walking straight in the direction he got shown. And since he had nothing to do but walk, he checked Vexastone.
“Amount.”
“21”
“So I can buy a form for 10 VP and still have 9 remaining. Ugh, I mean 11. I need to have forms for more situations instead of just power now. Should I leave some for a dangerous situation? Though, not knowing what the form is would be worse. Hmm.”
Kaian considered it for a while and decided to get three forms! He’d spend 10VP on two forms and then get one for one VP. Maybe it would be better to leave a few for storage purposes... Bah, he could get it back fast and he stole the bits he paid the space for, there was no need.
He opened his “form tree” and got two forms around his lizard form and another close to his snail. Kaian decided to explore them from the bottom up.
[Oh…. Vexi, frog.]
He shrunk down, used to it at this point. The first obvious change aside from that was vision. He could see pretty well for a short distance, but it got way worse after a certain point. He could rotate his eyes way more and that was about it. He tried if he wasn’t poisonous - nope. Kaian noticed that he could jump pretty far and had the iconic tongue “attack”.
After exploring it a bit more, Kaian couldn’t say it was disappointing. He didn’t get it for the abilities after all.
“Hm, wait.”
He realized that he messed up. When he fought the one-eyed beast, he was able to access all the forms when they got damaged even though the cooldown was still there. But the more forms he acquired, the harder it would be to bypass this. Maybe he could still do it some other way? Vexastone clearly didn’t want him to die so there had to be a way.
He would test it later on, for now though, back to his forms. He noticed a pond nearby. That could be used to check how he looks while transformed. Kaian walked to the water and said the magical words.
[Vexi, Octopus.]
His body shrank down and he felt like jelly. Kaian’s vision worsened immediately and he couldn’t see far distance-wise again. He also saw in black and white only, but he could see colors in some weird way? It was like focusing your eyes on something and seeing it differently out of nowhere.
However, the weirdest thing by far was his appearance. He looked like a skull with tentacles coming out of the bottom and he had a long protrusion under his eyes. The moment he saw it, it reminded him of the masks plague doctors used to wear.
Kaian also noticed a feature of this 'nose', when he focused on it strongly, it started spilling black ink-like liquids from its pores. Since he wasn’t in water, they just fell on the dirt, making it deeply black. The ink leaked out of the rest of his body, though in lesser amounts, coloring him black.
“Tsk, useless.” Kaian said, changing back. He almost went to check the other form before noticing the place where the dirt got a paint job. Actually, not noticing fits better. Despite knowing that there was dirt there and literally looking at it, it was like someone tried to erase it badly. He could kind of see through it and his pupils expanded.
“Huh, interesting. Maybe it’ll come in useful when I feel like a fucking coward.”
He sneered and transformed into the remaining form.
Once again, he shrank down, the world changing the most. Kaian couldn’t see much at all. He could kind of feel his surroundings but it was blurry and his eyes felt useless.
[Dammit.]
He looked into the pond and could make out his rough shape. He was completely white and looked like he was carved out of bone. Kaian’s body was like a rib cage without a sternum, the spine being on the bottom. His pincers were huge and looked deadly, the tail only adding to his strange look. The tail was from vertebrae and a bony spike sat on the end.
Kaian focused on it and a purplish gas left the spike. It was extremely weird, his scorpion form was purely bone, where the hell was the gas stored or made. Kaian chalked it up to magic for now, he would definitely learn how all this worked eventually.
But for now, he itched to test his new forms out. And as if listening to him, a monster appeared on his right. Even the world was on his side now. He changed into a human and proudly walked straight to it.
The tall monkey-like beast became enraged from the disrespect and rushed at him. Kaian nearly yawned and changed into a lizard, shooting at the monkey. It hit its body and the beast slowed down slightly. It was much weaker than the one-eyed one.
Kaian spit out more water bullets and the monster continued running, yet slower. When it finally reached Kaian, it tried to grab him and he changed to a human, surprising the beast who was in the middle of bending down. He stabbed his knife out and felt it pierce flesh.
The animal roared, swiping his hands at Kaian who had already changed into a scorpion and inserted his tail into the beast’s leg. He focused on it and felt the gas discharge.
GRAAAAAAAAH
A loud scream resounded across the forest. The animal grabbed its leg and Kaian transformed into a human behind it, kicking it down. He noticed that some fur started falling off the place where he stabbed it and smirked.
“Too weak,” he said, adding insult to injury.