445 Unknown meets Abomination
“Oh? Are they now?” the man asked him, turning to the wolf that was now convulsing on the ground, “Are they really red? They should be blue. Tell me.”
Victor’s wounded form remained unresponsive on the ground blinded by thoughts of the pain. He was losing blood and getting more lightheaded as the seconds ticked by.
The ‘Rogue King’ sighed, “You’re even more useless now than you were earlier. No matter… Hey, you there. Man whose name I don’t know. What colour are my eyes?”
The wolf on the other side of Victor had given the two of them space, hoping he wouldn’t get gutted as well. The wolf stared at his changed comrade for a bit. He couldn’t speak as a wolf but the rogue king hadn’t exactly asked a yes-no question, so nodding seemed out of the question.
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Yet standing with his tail tucked between his legs also felt like a sure way to get himself gutted as well. There was only one option left… embarrassing as it was. The rogue shifted into his naked form and answered his partner’s question, keeping his gaze on the ground.
“Red… sire?” the rogue responded shakily, unsure what to call his possessed partner.
He wasn’t sure what was going on either. The rogue king had just manifested out of nowhere. This should have been impossible… and yet the rogue couldn’t deny what was happening before him. His comrade sounded like the Rogue King and even carried himself in a similar way.
There wasn’t a hint of recognition in his eyes. And his aura had changed to that of a much more dangerous kind of werewolf. While it was debatable whether his friend was suddenly as powerful as the Rogue King himself, he wasn’t the same either.
Drake’s mind darted about in search of an answer to this but he couldn’t find one. Before him, was something that had never been seen before.
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“So you take control of others now, do you?” Drake asked.
“Oh! You know how to put on an act. I’ll give you that. Hmm, this was an experiment though. I must say though… this body is poorly maintained. Not nearly as powerful as what I’m used to… Honestly, can anyone be this weak and still live comfortably?” the man started checking himself out.
While he did, the muscles of the body he’d inhabited began to expand, muscle fibre bulging beneath the man’s thin frame to force the frame of a werewolf of a much higher rank.
This unnatural transformation had the prince staring in horror.
The rogue king was smiling darkly when he witnessed the transformation happening to his new host body. “Oh? The host body shifts and changes to sustain the power it’s been blessed with. This starting to feel a little better, I guess.”
“Are you going to remain in that body permanently?” the prince asked calmly.
While this situation didn’t look good, he had his share of curiosity. At first, he’d wanted to attack but something kept him from doing so. He didn’t know anything… If killing this rogue would kill the Rogue King.
He didn’t know if there was a chance that the Rogue King could escape this body or what happened after he left the body.
What if he killed this body and the Rogue King only jumped into another? It didn’t make sense at all. There was too much Drake didn’t know.
One more thing worried him. Drake was not sure this transformation was one the rogue king was controlling on his own.
It looked familiar to the body transformation that an alpha went through when they were promoted to the rank of Beta alpha. Only this transformation was rushed and repulsive.
“You almost sound like you care. No matter, I’m merely here to make sure the Sirius Royal family doesn’t see your face ever again… or the whole world for that matter,” the Rogue King’s rumbled.
‘I find that confidence of his annoying,’ the prince thought to himself.
By the time the rogue was done with his horrific transformation, the man before the prince was packed with muscle rivalling that of a beta alpha.
Had there been time for bone development? Had there been any proper bone development at all? Cole hadn’t heard the crunch of bones. He only knew what he saw before him.
The man had been really small in comparison to the abomination in front of him, ‘This is all wrong.’
Neither the rogue’s body nor his wolf had the ability to withstand this kind of power and yet the king continued pushing them. How did the prince know this? His wolf seemed to be one step ahead of him.
The wolf belonging to the rogue cried out in pain at the oppressive nature of the Rogue King’s invasion.
Before the prince could speak, the hulking form dashed forward, an expression of pure murderous intent written in the rogue’s bloodshot eyes.
The prince barely had the time to react as he leapt back. If he’d been a second too late, the creature that was attacking him would have had his way.
While the prince had been expecting a punch or something more orthodox when it came to man-to-man combat… or at least a swipe from a clawed hand, this hulking form bit down on the prince’s former position.
His white teeth flashed in the bright early morning, revealing two sets of canines… Four pairs… The fangs were not those of an average wolf.
Drake thought all this through whilst he was still in the air from his backward leap. He’d almost forgotten he was airborne and when he braced himself to land on his feet, something unexpected happened… and it left him cursing.
The prince violently crashed his back into a thick tree shaking it to the core as if it had been hit with a battering ram. A spiderweb of cracks appeared in the soil that held it firmly in the ground.
Nothing about the crash was normal in the slightest but Drake didn’t have time to think about that, the Rana-infested rogue was coming at him with astonishing speed.
Drake pulled himself from the royal prince-shaped depression he’d made in the tree and crouched down just in time to dodge the hulking abomination’s fist, once again avoiding the attack by a hair. The balled fist went straight through the chest of the Drake-shaped depression, precisely where his heart should have been, sending splinters in all directions. ‘He’s really trying to kill me…’
Drake had no time to think about what the attack could have done to him. Instead, he gathered his strength into his legs. The man above him was now trying to pull his hand that was lodged deep into the bark of the tree.
‘How does he have so much power already? He was only an ordinary wolf moments ago,’ Jason’s mind raced.
The prince crouched even lower now, putting some sort of distance between himself and the rogue and gathering all his strength, delivered a well-practised spear to the man’s gut.
His ‘strength’, however, was heavily miscalculated. Drake was still oblivious to how significantly different his body was behaving.
Without meaning to, he ripped the man from the tree and viciously launched into the air with him.
A spear that was hopefully meant to through the man a mere three metres or less had evolved into a ten-metre distance.
The breath was completely knocked out of the rogue and his hand was ripped back so hard that it broke and ripped off at the wrist, leaving the hand in the chest of the Drake-shaped depression in the bark.
Drake rolled off the man, stunned by these results. Blood spurted out of the rogue’s hand and he coughed violently. Drake could tell from the numerous cracking sounds he’d heard during their short flight that many of his ribs were broken.
The prince reached for the man, but something told him the damage had already been done. He couldn’t fix what he’d done to the man.
What was worse though, was that even in the rogue’s state, he had a murderous look in his eye and kept trying to bite the prince standing above him. He looked like he’d lost his mind… or like the king really didn’t care what happened to his vessel.
There was no howl of pain or scream that suggested he was in pain. ‘Revolting…’
Finally giving up on trying to bite the prince, the man’s head dropped to the ground, losing all signs of the apparent madness that had kept him gnashing his teeth at the prince.
His eyes stayed trained on the prince’s face as the life drained out of him.
“W-where… have you got t-this power from?” he coughed up a worrying amount of blood.
The rogue king waited for an answer that never came. The prince couldn’t answer him either. Not because he didn’t want to reveal this to the king but simply because he was stunned as well.
He didn’t know for certain where this power had come from either. The king, however, didn’t know this… and was livid with how strong one of his opponents had gotten. It was only safe to assume the rest of them had grown stronger as well…
While the prince stared down at the convulsing man, he saw the red glow leaving his eyes and returning to their normal amber glow.
The rogue’s relief was short-lived as a sharp pain tore through the man’s body. The deformed muscles were forcing themselves to shrink back to the size they were supposed to be with no control.
It was only after the life left the man’s body that the scream came to a choking stop. He died with a half scream that nearly shattered the prince’s eardrums. Regarding the man’s body, the prince was utterly horrified…
‘That’s going to give me nightmares.’