Chapter 179 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Rafe

There was a young child, not more than ten, who currently had a crossbow in his hand and was quite decently sneaking closer to a deer. Just behind him, I assumed, was his father.

I spotted him about half an hour ago when I was observing the wildlife of a hub station. This was my first outing into the civilized section of the dungeon. On and off for the past few months, I have been able to go out and fight in the dungeon.

In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed. The monsters felt less real to me, and so did the surroundings. What was even worse was that I couldn’t get anything from them if I ate them. Well, I could get sustenance, but that wasn’t really what I was after.

Father then explained to me the difference between monsters and creatures. Monsters he made himself, creatures were born and so would be completely real, unlike monsters.

Whatever my talent was that allowed me to take parts of other creatures, it didn't have something to latch onto with monsters. That made me want to go even more to the outside world, and that’s why I was here.

I needed to start blending into the adventurer society. My training went faster than my teachers expected, but I had already been trying to fit into society for most of my life, so I wasn’t starting from nothing. I was made aware of the mistakes I had made. It might take me a while to get rid of those tendencies.

Of course, the biggest one was not being able to keep myself from changing, and that is still hard even now. What has helped the most are the numerous skills I now have access to. With them, I am a lot stronger than I ever was when I changed into my battle form, but it’s now clear that not every skill works properly if you aren’t fully human.

I continued to observe and saw that the young child missed his shot and was really disappointed, but his father was doing an excellent job of encouraging him to try again.

This, however, had taken longer than I expected, and there was one more task that I needed to do, and that was to enter the central city of this hub station, walk around, and even enter some establishments while communicating with others I did not know.

It didn’t take me long to get to the city, and I started to see a lot of people here. Every time someone looked at me, it made me feel like they would know my secret. But, like I was taught, every time I felt that way, I should remind myself of the ring I was wearing, which would hide me perfectly.

It was an excellent way to hold myself back because I needed to overcome the ring's power if I wanted to change, and that kinda hurt, so it was a good way to clear my mind and remember that I needed to keep myself hidden.

That didn’t mean that I wasn’t as ready as possible, and I had made a lot of changes under the skin. Father even offered me as many different creatures as I wanted so I could take their best features.

What was nice was that he wasn't offering me creatures that I would just have to kill; no, they would have a chance to fight back, or I could just take only a part of them as I actually didn’t need to fully consume anyone.

My plan was to keep myself inside my mind so I would slowly get used to the surroundings, as there weren't any cities that big in my home playroom. The biggest settlement I was in had about 2000 people, and I didn’t stay there long. Here, it seemed that there were 2000 people just walking beside me on the streets. Yet, I was brought out of my musings when I smelled something interesting.

Picking up my pace, it didn't take me long to round the corner and see a huge tavern. Taking a deep breath in through my nose, I could smell something strange but kind of familiar. Entering this establishment, I figured out that it was not one smell but a lot of different ones.

Most of them were so weak. It was coming from a lot of different people but not everyone. A worker of this establishment walked past me, but that smell was so weak that I was only able to catch it when he was right beside me.

There were a lot of people here, but there were still empty seats, so I took one. I purposely took one closest to the strongest smell I could sense. It was a mountain of a man, and while I had seen larger, this particular one had a weird aura around him. Was that why he smelled so familiar? I continued to look at him to try to understand what was going on.

When he looked at me and started to frown, I realized that I messed up. My lessons came back to me, and what I had done was practically screaming trouble, especially with volatile adventurers, which I was pretty sure this particular one was. When I was about to turn my head away, I froze once again because I finally figured out why he smelled familiar. He had a similar scent to me. There was some animal in him.

"What are you looking at? You want to fight?" the big man asked me so loudly that it quieted the entire tavern. I took a moment to think about his question. "You are too weak at the moment, perhaps?" Yet I couldn’t continue as he quickly stood up, going red in the face, and threw a chair at me, which I needed to duck as it was flying at a decent speed.

He turned, walked right up to me, and grabbed my shirt so he could lift me up with one of his hands. This was bad, and it was so hard to control myself. I felt myself laughing, but it was also hazy. It was so hard to keep myself from changing and lashing out. Then he started to squeeze my neck, but I had long ago fixed that problem, so he wasn't doing much.

This helped me calm down a bit, and I tried to reason with him, but he just started squeezing more, and my defenses were starting to give. Well, I messed this one up, and I was going to fail my training exercise for sure.

I wrenched his hand away from my neck and used motion to also hit him in the face. He was a lot stronger than I expected, so when he got up, I used one of my newer skills to teleport myself to one of the stairs leading upwards.

I was about to say something, but I noticed the blood on my fist. It wasn't mine; it was his. It was calling to me, and I couldn’t resist. I licked it and absorbed its power. It was so much. I looked up and said the only thing I could. "Thanks," and then used the skill again to get out of the building.

"Father, could you take me back to the Academy? I kind of failed." And the next moment, I was gone from the street. While I was certain that I could escape from them, my mind was mostly occupied with understanding the new power I was absorbing from the blood.

Father seemed kind of busy, only saying, "You should be more careful, but I can understand what drew you to that place. You should ask about that from your teachers." And then I felt his presence receding.

He had taken me to one of my favorite locations in the Academy. It was a garden, but it was designed to be as wild as possible. At the very center, there was a serene pond of water, and I really liked sitting next to it, which I quickly chose to do.

It took me three hours to fully understand and absorb the power from that small amount of blood, but I didn’t even need more. If it were from some of the others who smelled weaker, I might not have been able to get what I did, but this particular person was quite potent. He was able to turn into a bear. I think that talent would help him a lot, but even without it, like me, he was different from other adventurers.

While I’m saying that we are somewhat similar, it’s only in the function and not how our foundations are built. Whatever those adventurers were, they definitely didn't start out as human, but over time, the human pattern has taken over most of what they previously were.

I think their talent is what makes it possible for them to become animals once again. Otherwise, I don’t think that they could fully transform or perhaps even partially.

Whatever the case is, it doesn't matter because now I have the power to change my body completely. I took a deep breath. The next moment I felt the world fall away as I got smaller. My clothing and armor fell on top of me, but I still had power even in this tiny air form.

After I struggled free, I stretched my wings. For the first time, I had proper wings, and then I took off. I let out screeches of happiness. I could now become fully an animal I had consumed before. Flying felt so amazing. Thank you once again, big angry adventurer.