"Tell me, young master. Are you a human? Or are you a dragon?" Garren's voice echoed through the silent training field.
Nevaris stood frozen, his mind reeling. He had forgotten, no, he hadn't even considered this.
Was he a human? Was he a dragon?
Just yesterday, he was still Caleum. An extraordinary ordinary human, leading an ordinary life. Going to college, reading his novels, watching anime, and lamenting his virginity like any other boy his age while jerking his useless large appendage to third-rate amateur porn.
And within the course of a day, he was sucked into a black hole, transmigrated into the body of a pathetic coward, engaged to two bombshells, and was now fighting a dragon centuries older than himself.
Not even mentioning coming to terms with no longer being human, he barely had any time to accept his new reality. But Garren's words were like a light in the narrow darkness of his overwhelmed mind.
What was he?
Human? Dragon?
'No.' he mumbled inwardly, his silver eyes shining with a new light. 'I'm neither of those things, not anymore.'
He stood up, the previous weakness nothing more than an illusion as he locked eyes with Garren's deep eyes.
"I am Nevaris. A beast of calamity, and I have been caged for far too long," his voice weaved through the surroundings like a whisper.
But the air compressed with the weight of his declaration. Garren's eyes flashed with pride as a small smile threatened to break his stern mask. To him, Nevaris' words weren't just a declaration, they were an announcement.
A heralding of what was to come.
To those watching, they felt as if they shouldn't even breathe. Every hair on their bodies stood on end as they watched the silhouette of the scrawny weakling dissipate from their minds, leaving only the towering figure of the beast standing before them.
Ana and Lilith's eyes seemed to be alight with stars. The pride and desire toward the man who had accepted them seemed to brand itself into their very beings.
At that moment, they all knew.
Nevaris the weakling. The coward.
Was gone.
Nevaris felt light, lighter than he ever had before. He wasn't thinking of his transmigration or his dubious future. At this moment, he had let go.
Let go of his past.
Of Caleum, the boy who walked alone among a sea of drones and masks. The boy who yearned for family. For purpose.
For more.
He was Nevaris. Truly and wholly.
What he wanted, he would take. What he needed, he would claim. And what was his…
No one would ever touch.
He looked down at his arms, and wherever he looked, silver scales appeared. Sparkling like starlight under the sun's glare. Before he had to will them–force them to appear. The feeling was unnatural which at the time he had attributed to his lack of control of his new biology.
But now, the motion felt instinctive. As if his body was responding to his desires without him even needing to be conscious of it.
Seeing the seemingly insignificant action, no one watching thought much of it. But Garren's trained eyes saw something completely different, something as terrifying as it was thrilling.
"HAHAHAHA!" Garren roared with invigorated laughter, his gaze so scorching it seemed as if they were flaming, "Young master you never fail to disappoint! To live long enough to see this day, I am truly thankful!"
Nevaris could feel the pride and joy in the old man's laugh, the clamorous sound filling him with an unfamiliar warmth. A warmth that he was slowly getting used to.
'Family, huh?' Nevaris mused.
Nevaris chuckled as he shook his head of stray thoughts, his silver eyes gleaming with a cold, cunning gleam.
"Enough rest old man, time for you to get your ass kicked by a kid a thousandth your age." he said with a smirk.
Garren's laugh cut off abruptly as he choked in rage. His face turned red as he pointed toward Nevaris and started to retort, "You little shit, who are you calling-"
But when he followed the path of his finger, the area was empty. Garren's brain stalled for a full second, a second that Nevaris used to slip into his blind spot and close the gap in one seemingly instantaneous moment.
But Garren wasn't a demigod for nothing. He earned that title through blood and fire. He may have held back his level advantage, but his senses were still those of a seasoned warrior. He put his guard up in a split second, his body as stable as a mountain as brown scales covered his arms, tearing through his pressed white shirt. He waited confidently for the strike to come.
But when he saw the strike that was coming, he knew he was very, very wrong
Nevaris' arm came up before dropping down like a guillotine. There was no wasted motion. No flourish. No roar of effort. Just inevitability.
He saw it then. Not the arm itself, but the path of it. The angle. The terrifying precision. It wasn't a swing.
It was a conclusion.
The air split with a small whisper as the strike descended. In that suspended heartbeat before impact, understanding dawned in Garren's eyes.
'If I don't use my skills I'll die…' the thought seemed foreign to him, leaving him with a sense of bewilderment.
This wasn't strength.
It was perfection.
The kind forged through endless refinement and countless battles. The kind that left no margin for error.
He tried to brace, tried to redirect—but there was nothing to redirect. The blow had already decided where it would land long before he'd thought to defend.
By the time he registered the danger he was in, the strike was already upon him, leaving him no chance to use any skill or magic. Even with such a gruesome fate hanging in front of him, Garren was smiling with manic glee.
'This…this is my young master! This is the man I wished all my life to pledge my very soul to!'
Just as the strike was about to land, Nevaris froze mid-motion. His body stuck in place as if petrified.
The servants watching were confused and lost. From the moment of Nevaris' taunt, to his sudden attack, less than three seconds had passed. Everything had happened so fast their minds couldn't keep up with the changes.
But Lilith and Ana were now standing, their faces twin masks of terror and worry as they looked at Nevaris. Their eyes having never once left his profile.
Garren's eyes were wide as he stared at the woman in front of him. She had appeared out of thin air just when he thought he was dead, and with one finger, blocked Nevaris' impossible strike.
Nevaris' face was a mask of shock and disbelief as he stared into the glowing red eyes of the woman before him. She was one of if not the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, even competing with his mother's visage from his memories.
He would be enjoying the view more, if not for the fact he couldn't move his arm at all.
"Someone's been naughty~" she spoke in a sultry voice, her words brushing against him as softly as a caress. But Nevaris couldn't taste the honey in her tone. All he felt was an endless chill as she swept her eyes over him in curious amusement.
"For an imposter, your disguise is pretty useless don't you think? You look, feel, and smell nothing like that pathetic weakling. Who were you hoping to fool with this?"
With every ounce of strength he could muster, Nevaris leaped back out of her range as he tried to steady his breathing. But something felt off, his body felt light. Too light, and not in the euphoric power-up way.
When he looked down, his face blanked as his thoughts halted. He could only utter a single sound.
"Ah?"
His arm was gone in its entirety, severed at the base on his shoulder. The cut was so clean he wasn't even bleeding yet.
The woman giggled as she waved his severed arm at him, "Missing something~?"
The pain registered.
"Guhhhh!"
Nevaris' mind felt as if it was tearing itself apart from the pain it was registering. His other hand covered the new orifice as blood gushed out like a broken faucet.
His face was pale as a sheet, green veins snaking across his forehead as he struggled to stay conscious through pure willpower alone.
""NEVARIS!""
"YOUNG MASTER!"
Ana and Lilith rushed forward with reckless abandon, neither caring about the dangerous, homicidal woman standing in front of him. But after just taking a few steps, black tendons manifested from their shadows and tied up their limbs, causing them to crash to the ground in sobbing heaps.
"MY LADIES! ELIZABETH, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?" Garren screamed in rage, as his magic power roiled like a volcano about to burst.
Elizabeth, a friend and bodyguard of Selunara, had appeared. Her bloody eyes locked on Garren with sadistic amusement. But there was no mirth in her gaze.
"Garren, have you finally gone senile? That "thing" was about to kill you and now you are defending him?" she said.
Garren's face when rigid for a moment before he hurried tried to explain, "You're wrong, it was a spar! That really is young master-"
Unfortunately, his following words were never heard. A wrathful bellow, inhuman and savage, crashed over him and swallowed the rest of his sentence.
"YOU DARE TOUCH THEM!"
Nevaris' silver eyes turned into whirlpools of inky blackness. Cracks erupted like fissures around them that snaked their way across his face. With a roar, he lunged at Elizabeth like a wild beast.
Elizabeth watched with interest as his mouth grew impossibly large, as if trying to swallow her whole. She even felt a nasty sense of danger when she stared at his open throat. It wasn't threatening per se, but she knew it wouldn't be good if he sank his teeth in her.
"Let's have you take a nap. The adults are talking~" she said as she waved her hand dismissively.
At her mere wave, rings of sanguine energy materialized before her and sliced toward Nevaris with lethal force. But to her astonishment, he neither dodged nor stopped.
He weaved through them with a predator's grace, his movements fluid and deliberate, both attacks missing by a hair's breath as he sped toward her. Before anyone could react, he reached her and under everyone's horrified gazes, bit down with a sickening crunch.
The blooming taste of iron spread through his mouth as he bit down, his panicked, berserk mind not even registering the taste. All his thoughts were consumed by the frenzied desire to eviscerate the threat before him.
Elizabeth didn't even flinch at the pain, she merely raised her brow in quiet shock before they furrowed in disgust as she felt something entering her body.
"Enough."
Her voice was a whisper, but the results were like a bomb that shattered the atmosphere around them. One moment, Nevaris was biting down on her, the next he was being held up by his throat, his limbs gone as he hung in the air like a broken doll.
The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was a shriek that seemed to tear the sky apart.
"NEVIII!!"