Roar!
The sound of the many battles erupting through the forest consumed all other noise. Beasts everywhere of all different types joined the conflict. Then, there was Eodum and Kali who were just doing their best to avoid being killed. With the sheer number and sizes of some of the monsters, maneuvering around was its own struggle.
Kali was running around, jumping past monsters, rolling under them, and just doing what she could to avoid an awful death. Whenever a small enough monster came by, she struck out, hand and spike blazing. Of course, normally using her mutilated limb would be far too painful to even consider, but with the amount of adrenaline pumping through her veins, she could barely feel anything.
Eodum, instead of avoiding conflict like its more civilized teammate, was starting to get into the fight. Some deep part of it found itself at home in this brawl. Its instincts told it to fight, and it did. Transforming its tail into something akin to a stinger, Eodum lashed out and stabbed through enemy after enemy.
Tentacles, stinger, claws, and any other way Eodum could think of to attack erupted from it. With the occasional use of [Gravity Magic] and [Light Magic], Eodum was able to blind and disable many of its foes. A weight like no other would push a monster down, and while it struggled to keep itself upright, a blinding light would break the focus of the monster. Then, they would be pinned against the ground, no longer able to struggle against their own increased weight.
War raged on, but suddenly, a presence emerged from the battling. Appearing out of nowhere, it was icy, and terrifying. Unnatural and dangerous. Eodum turned on its [Presence Detection Alteration] and hid in the shadows of its foes. Creeping slowly and carefully, it scaled a tree to get a better look at what was the cause of the feeling of danger. Peering past the countless monsters, there stood two figures in conflict.
One was a see-through, blue goop, wrapped around a strange ape-like creature. It was a fur-covered humanoid with arms long enough to reach the ground. Its fur was brown, matted with its and other's blood. In place of a head, however, there was a mass of vines. Now that Eodum was looking closer, it could see the beast had a reptilian tail and hands. Its feet ended in a bird's claws. With all of these different and conflicting parts, it was easy to tell that it was one of those necromancer's works.
The strange thing is that the monster, despite being consumed by the acidic slime, was exuding that awful presence. Eodum turned on its [Arcana Perception], but soon, it came to regret it.
[You have suffered mental damage -5 Hp]
[You have suffered mental damage -5 Hp]
[You have suffered mental damage -5 Hp]
[You have suffered mental damage -5 Hp]
Turning the skill off, Eodum tried to process all the data it just saw. It was a huge whirlpool of magic. Not just huge, but colossal-sized. It was truly ridiculous just how large the whirlpool was. While Eodum thought about its grand scale, it remembered where it had seen something like this before. Evolution. During Henry and Sheila's very first evolutions, they absorb huge amounts of magic and energy.
Eodum thought that it had just been because Henry and Sheila had been magical in nature, so they fed off of the man's in the air. Instead, it seems all evolution created whirlpools of magic that fed into one's body. Eodum could only give this train of thought a moment's notice because as it watched the monster, it began to visibly change.
The seams in between the different parts just faded, a more natural look taking them over. The vines for its head started to multiply, more vines reaching down and wrapping around its entire body. Sharp thorns jutted out from them, both into and away from the monster. The other vines for its head kept multiplying and wrapping around each other.
A head formed for the beast, sculpted from vines and plants. The head was like that of a troll, ugly and ape-like. It was even more so because more vines formed tentacle-like structures around the mouth.
Its tail had fur start growing in between the scales, and as another scaled part, so did the hands. The bird-like talons grew thicker and more sturdy. Better suited to support the new muscle that the beast was forming. Then, something new happened.
The slime that had been attacking it started to panic. It tried to run away, but found itself unable to. Its body mass started to decrease significantly, shrinking away onto the skin of the monster. Matting its fur, the acidic monster lingered in the fur, but now, it no longer harmed it. The vines shriveled before plumping back up, the thorns suddenly starting to moistened and leak a strange substance.
A cold wave of dread and horror washed over each beast there, a realization coming to each one despite most of them lacking the intelligence to normally come to the conclusion. The slime was absorbed and incorporated into the ape-thing. A fusion of abilities to create a stronger, better monster.
Along with the cold terror it struck in each monster's heart, a warmth—no, burning heat blazed to life in each of their hearts.
A rule of life: monsters like to fight. They want to kill and gain Xp. They want to grow stronger and more powerful. When a tougher, more dangerous, and more threatening monster appears, other monsters will want to fight them. A monster that had just recently evolved and now absorbed the power of another monster? The encounter made each monster salivate, the possibility of having their bloodlust satisfied was just making them want to fight.
Eodum was no exception. Activating its [True Fear], Eodum made its presence known to the monsters. Then, one by one, skills were activated, and each monster made their stand in the soon-to-erupt battle. Kali could only freeze as terror like none other overtook her with each monsters presence suddenly becoming more dangerous.