Name:

Ira

Rating:

SS-

Growth Capacity:

Unknown

Bloodline:

Unknown

Blessings:

Unknown, Keeper of the Third Moon (Ulta Majoris), Wisdom of the First-Flame*

Mana Capacity:

Low

Passive Skills:

Draconic: Strength, Vitality*

Supernatural: Agility, Reflexes, Senses, Regeneration, Endurance

Predatory Instincts

Kinetic Vision

Night Vision

Thermal Vision*

Ultraviolet Vision*

Greater Metabolism

Greater Beast Manipulation

Greater Physique

Self-Adaptation

Temperature Regulation

Aging Immunity

Poison Immunity

Greater Fire Resistance*

Greater Cold Resistance*

Bloodline Resonance

Genetic Mutation (Chimera, Ancient Dragon*)

Lunar Force Empowerment

Partial Lunar Force Control

Advanced Swordsmanship

Expert Martial Arts

Primal Awareness

Claw Growth*

Genetic Memory*

Concept of Space*

Active Skills:

Short-Range Teleport, Call of the Third Moon (Inactive), Nothing(???), Matter Alteration, Gravitational Alteration, Quickdraw, Nullification*, Dermal Armor*, Pheromone Generation*, Fur Generation*, Fear Inducement*, Camouflage*, Primary Transformation*, Secondary Transformation*

Ira was currently laying on a bed reading his status card while Avery glanced at it while resting her head on his shoulder.

“I suspect that those indexes that were recovered should reveal more to you,” Avery said.

Although she was completely surprised, she felt that the Valkyries status card could no longer give an accurate summary of Ira’s strength. It was like the status card he received when they first met for the simple fact that it wasn’t advanced enough to list all of his abilities.

“This is a lot to get a handle on…” Ira stored his status card away and sat up. “You want to go test it out?” He asked.

“There is a wooded area just outside of the city we can go to,” Avery said as she began to get dressed.

Ira smiled excitedly before he grabbed his clothes and put them on while making his way to the door.

Within a few minutes, Ira and Avery were on their way out of the building when someone approached Ira.

“Sir Ira, His Highness the Fourth Prince has asked for your presence at your earliest convenience.” A middle-aged man said.

“Yeah, tell him I’ll be by later,” Ira said without much consideration.

The man looked somewhat troubled by Ira’s disrespect toward royalty but didn’t think about correcting him for a second.

“I’ll deliver your message to his Highness.” The man bowed before leaving.

“What do you think he wants?” Avery asked.

“Who knows?” Ira shrugged before he continued walking. He wanted to use some of his new abilities as soon as possible and therefore wasn’t worried about Leonard.

The two made their way out of the Free City in somewhat of a hurry due to Ira’s excitement, but Avery wasn’t complaining since she to wanted to see how Ira had grown.

After a short walk, they arrived at a burnt out forest clearing. It was the same area where Avery and Rhys fought and Ira seemed to pick up on that fact as his nose twitched.

“...Were you here before? You and…” Ira furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, “Rhys?”

“We were. It was something of a sparring session between the two of us. As for the reason? It’d be better off asking her,” Avery said without much emotion. With Ira’s senses, it would be strange if he didn’t discover traces of their fight.

“If you say so,” Ira waved his hand and tossed his status card over to Avery who caught it. “So what first?”

Avery looked at the card and picked the most interesting one, “Camouflage.”

“Alright.” Ira clapped his hands together before he concentrated. Since it came from the genetic memory of Thessia’s bloodline he assumed he would have an instinctive understanding of it. His assumption seemed to be correct because after a few moments the pigment of his skin and color of his hair was altered to match his surroundings. In fact, his camouflage was near-perfect so much so that he looked to be invisible, with the exception of the black clothing he was wearing.

Avery seemed to be speechless at his change, but collected herself, “Try moving.” She was aware of invisibility spells used by assassins but moving would usually deactivate it.

“Ok,” Ira said before taking a step forward. And as expected his skin took a second to adjust which caused him to be visible while moving.

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“It doesn’t affect your clothes, but it's better than any current invisibility spell...Although, you would need to completely expose your body for it to work,” Avery grinned.

Ira undid his camouflage and laughed, “I don’t know if its worth it. What’s next?”

“Pheromone generation,” Avery said as she summoned a small barrier of flames around herself.

“Cautious?” Ira raised an eyebrow.

“I’d rather not be affected by it,” She explained.

Ira nodded and then began to activate it. He could catch a small change in his scent, but nothing was too different about it. He even began to feel a little doubtful so he sniffed the air to make sure. All of a sudden, dozens of animals began crawling out of the forest and arrived near Ira in no time at all. From bears to mice and everything in between. After the first wave of animals arrived, a few small green humanoid creatures hobbled out of the forest as well. Followed by increasingly bigger monsters. They all looked at Ira warily as they seemed to instinctively feel that he was strong, but were thoroughly entranced by his scent and couldn’t do anything.

“You should be able to alter it slightly, right? Maybe next time don’t pick something so enticing. Next, you should try fear inducement,” Avery said.

Ira gave one last look to all the creatures before his scent had another minute change. There seemed to be a delay in the for animals around him before they all began to scramble away from him. Several of the closest creatures went into shock and died while others were trampled by those making their desperate escape. They all fled in one direction while biting, clawing, and scratching one another. The forest cleared and all that was left were the bloodied bodies of those who were too slow to get away. Avery sent a wave of flame to burn away the bodies to ash so the smell of blood would dissipate before removing her own barrier.

“Wait,” Ira briefly panicked, but Avery didn’t seem to be affected at all.

“Even if I wasn’t a Valkyrie, we were trained to have an immovable mental state at all times,” Avery said before raising her goosebump covered arm, “Though, I instinctively feel a strong sense of danger from you.”

“Sorry,” Ira said as he stopped his fear inducement.

“It’s fine. It seems that your ability to induce fear is chemical based rather than magic based which mean that as long as your opponent isn’t immune or behind a barrier they shouldn’t be able to escape its effect. I’m guessing its effects weaken if the target is at a certain level of strength.” Avery recalled the smaller animals outright dying while the larger ones were able to escape, albeit in a crazed state.

“You should use dermal armor next and fur generation next.” Avery suggested.

Ira’s hand became covered in small obsidian-like scales with sharp claws at the tips of his fingers.

He evaluated them with some slight disappointment, “I can kinda already do this.”

Avery also looked unphased before an idea appeared in her head. “Use your matter alteration on them, Ira.”

Ira did as instructed and the scales hardened while turning completely black. In the end, he was left with a scaled hand topped with a metallic luster.

“Now use your fur generation,” Avery spoke once again, but her eyes seemed to grow more interested.

Strands of black hair grew between the scales in a lively manner and obscured the scales from vision. Ira’s hand became covered with a layer of short fur. Avery drew her saber and moved forward and then attempted to cut some of the hairs from Ira’s hand but found that it was quite difficult. After fully exerting herself she managed to remove a small patch and could see the scales beneath it, but fur slowly grew back to cover the opening. She then attempted to burn it away from with her phoenix flames but it proved to be equally as difficult due to Ira’s greater fire resistance. Avery’s flames weren’t at the level of a dragon’s and she still needed to train them more so it understandable.

“Amazing.” Avery stepped back and admired the sight. Ira’s abilities basically gave him two layers of armor that were resistant to conventional attacks and fire.

Ira couldn’t help but laugh as realization struck him. Converting his skin to metal seemed to be a crude form of protection when compared to his ability to create dermal armor.

“Well, the last thing to demonstrate is your two transformations. I’ll leave the decision of which one you use first up to you,” Avery said as she handed Ira’s status card back.

Ira stored it away before speaking, “I’ll start with the Secondary Transformation.”

Ira found a familiar set of black scales covering his body, followed by a layer of black fur his long hair seemed to shrink inward and was replaced by short fur. It seemed that his body would instinctively use his defensive abilities if he accessed his secondary form. After being covered in black fur, the bone structure of Ira’s face was the next to change as it was covered in a mask-like layer of fur and scales.

One might’ve thought that with a lycanthropic bloodline that Ira’s nose would become more snout-like, but it would be the weakest point on his body as the snout was the most sensitive area. Instead, two small openings formed on the roof of his mouth which were most likely going to be for smelling instead. Dark metallic teeth grew on the outside of his widened jaw while two more rows of smaller teeth formed on the inside. His eyes maintained their bright but his pupils and sclera vanished and the shape became slightly more spherical. His ears disappeared before a new set emerged from the top of his head. The fine hairs within in them reacted to every single sound with a few hundred feet. After it all finished the only left was a humanoid figure covered from head to toe in short black fur.

Ira’s appearance after his secondary transformation could only be described as terrifying and monster-like, but Avery was captivated by how his features seemed to be perfectly designed for combat.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Ira said in a garbled voice as he tried to adjust to the many features of his new form. He seemed to feel the absence of one important part of his body.

“What is it?” Avery asked as she gathered herself.

Ira pulled open his waistband and looked down only to see nothing there, “It’s...inside of me.”

Avery stared blankly at Ira before her soft laughter echoed throughout the forest. When she finally stopped laughing she spoke up, “It’s good isn’t? You won’t suffer an attack on your groin and it also minimizes the need for you to wear clothes which means you can use your cloaking ability.” Avery said with a warm smile.

The fur and scales covering Ira’s face disappeared and his features returned to normal from the neck up, “Good to see you’re having fun,” Ira mumbled.

“In all seriousness, that form seems to be perfect for killing. Especially if you pair it with your ability to induce fear and camouflage. I recommend finding a poisonous creature with hallucinogenic properties and consuming it.”

Ira’s face scrunched before he spoke, “No poison.”

“I’m sorry I nearly forgot,” Avery remembered Ira’s experience with poison and took a few steps toward him before touching the fur.

“It’s surprisingly soft,” She sunk her fingers into the fur before she felt the steel-like layer of scales.

“Great, the only thing people fear more than monsters is fluffy monsters,” Ira said self-mockingly. “Anyway, time for the Primary Transformation.” Ira said before continuing, “If it’s anything like what happened at the fortress you may want to step back,”

“Alright.” Avery took distance as she recalled what Ira said about his transformation during the fortress battle, so she waited while expecting a 50-foot wolf.

Ira undid his secondary form and returned to normal before activating his primary form. A black mist began pouring out of Ira's body before forming a bubble around him. The bubble then began to morph into the shape of a heart, but instead of it pumping out massive amounts of mist, black branch-like tendrils emerged from it until they all overlapped in the shape of a wolf’s skeleton. In less than a minute, Ira’s transformation became complete and he stood as a wolf with black fur and yellow eyes without pupils.

“It seems you aren’t able to reach that same level yet,” Avery said as she looked up at the Black Wolf in front of her. Unexpectedly, Ira only stood at 10-feet in height.

Ira opened his mouth to talk but nothing came out. It appeared that his wolf form didn’t possess normal vocal cords so he used his self-adaptation to alter them ever so slightly.

“This is a bit...weird,” Ira was confused as to why he couldn’t reach that towering form from before, but then he understood it was most likely due to him overexerting himself and summoning the Red Moon.

“Well it’s fine either way, If you were too large you’d obviously be suspected as the City-Eater,” Avery saw that Ira’s wolf form didn’t seem to have anything new but it was probably physically stronger than when he was in his normal body.

Ira used his camouflage and blended into the background before reappearing, “Now let’s see…”

Ira attempted to teleport forward but maybe because he was unaccustomed to his large size he crashed into some trees and rolled on his back before recovering himself. When he first transformed into a Wolf he moved on pure instinct, but at the moment he needed to adjust.

“Take your time,” Avery softly chuckled.

“I got it!” Ira barked in a grumpy manner as he teleported again, only to repeat the same actions.

“You clearly have it under control,” Avery said with a sarcastic grin.

“No, this time I really have it.” Ira teleported once again and hit a tree, but managed to stay on his feet.

“See I told you,” Ira said gloatingly as he took a step forward and stumbled.

Anyone who passed by would be shocked by the scene of a large wolf constantly falling while a girl with indescribable beauty continued to laugh at it. Of course, the scene was decorated with fallen trees, piles of ashes, and scorched plantlife which added to the strangeness of the entire thing.