With a wolf in my maw I found myself back in the territory. Behind me was my own pack. A sight most likely hilarious to any other species.
Each and every one of them held a wolf that was at least twice or even thrice their size in their mouths.
To us though, it was just a sign of a successful hunt. One that gave us plentiful food.
It was why I had them like the wolf corpses around the fire. A quick demonstration later and I had them draining the blood and plucking the fur of the wolves.
It was difficult with only laws but I was able to do so they should be able to do as I did.
I took the corpse that I had sued for demonstration and sliced out a good cut of meat.
It was tough because of the stress that seeped into their muscles from our fight but that was nothing that a little force couldn't handle.
…
I found myself over the fire, a slab of meat on a plate I found.
With the cooking done I made my way towards Darwin.
It wasn't that hard to find him, a sniff of the air and I could smell where he had gone by the traces in the air.
Even if it had been hours since he had come her his traces still lingered.
'Something to teach him later' I thought to myself as I tracked him further.
The way that he moved, the trails he left. They were all things and habits that I would need to remove from him.
I found him soon after, faced towards that new summon, Melia, if I heard her name right.
They were talking about something along the lines of population.
Nothing that I needed to concern myself with. Not at the moment at least.
I waited for a lull in the conversation, my back laid out against a nearby tree.
It didn't take too long, only a half hour of specifics and gestures. Things that I ignored, it was boring and not something I wanted to listen to right now.
Though now that they had faded a bit to silence I found myself walking towards them. Words on my mouth.
"My lord."
His head snapped up towards me, my sudden words startling him from the comfortable silence that had occurred between him and Melia.
"Yes, have you decided?"
I nod my head, an illusion of multiple tails appearing behind me to signal my choice.
"Illusions…" Darwin mumbled the words looking at the appearance I had taken on.
"It suits you"
I nodded at that, a small smile on my face.
At my own smile his own appeared. A hand raised and flicked and suddenly I no longer was with my lord.
…
A great darkness, one that oppressively took my vision.
I could not feel anything, not even my own body. It was something so foreign that I couldn't help but shiver at the sensation of nothingness.
'Shiver' I thought to myself, thinking of the wording that I had put to mind. I can't even feel myself why should I be able to shiver.
To my relief though the darkness did not last long. To my own sense of time it could have ended years yet it felt as if only moments had passed. It gave me a headache trying to figure it out.
Was it years or was it moments. Was this the real evolution or was that just a prelude.
Eventually I just took a steadying breath and opened my eyes. Light filled my eyes, all around me was a yellow sand filled nightmare.
Nothing but sand in all directions. The sun beat on my body, causing sweat to fall down my forehead.
That was weird, with how high a tier I am there should be no problem with temperatures.
BANG
BANG
I could feel and hear something large lurking through the ground.
It was getting closer and closer to me. Enough that I was on edge, my claws poked out of my paws and I jumped into the air.
Just as I did so, the creature that had lurked under the ground jumped from its hiding place.
Or more like slithered out of, the thing was a worm. It was huge, not just as in it being taller than me. It was as tall as two redwoods stacked on top of each other.
Just as I was thinking, a worm like thing popped out of the ground.
And that huge worm was barreling at me, its maw open as it showed its teeth.
While I was in the air I twisted my body so that it would miss me which it did.
I leaped into its back and then back to the ground. I started to run away. Trying to find somewhere to hide while I analyze there situation I was in.
A faint feeling at my back warned me of the attack. I transformed back into my humanoid form and flipped myself with my hands out of the way of the attack.
I looked back and saw how close it was to me.
Gritting my teeth I transformed back into my fox form and started to run away again.
It wasn't like I didn't want to fight it, to kill it but with my firepower right now so limited I couldn't do anything.
I couldn't use my flames nor could my claws or teeth kill something that big. It was why I continued to run away.
…
Hours passed as I ran away from the worm. No others had joined it despite the rumbling of the earth below me.
I knew there was more but this one seemed to have claimed me as its prey.
It happened while I was avoiding the worm. Almost immediately after I had tried running away, I had made an illusion to conceal myself so that I could get away from it but the worm just shook the illusions off.
It was frustrating, the only power that I had was continuously ignored, the only thing that I could rely on being my natural speed and agility.
I could feel as the illusions seeped into the worm but it just kept on locating me. As if… as if it was being given my location.
Now that I think of it, the worm had reacted to my illusions, even if it hadn't I knew it would work. Even creatures without sensory organs could be affected but for this one not to be.
It just didn't add up. While I was thinking I dodged another sweep at me. I created an illusion to test out my theory and watched as the worm reacted, a slight slip of his head as it turned towards the illusion before it went right back to targeting me.
If the worm wasn't immune then what was guiding it, was it another creature, the same one keeping the others at bay or maybe that was just another quirk of their species.
"Gah!" I yelled out, not caring about the noise. This was all so confusing. It was supposed to help me with my illusions but I can't even use them on the first enemy that I had to fight.
It was like the very world was against me.
'Wait… the world' I thought to myself, pausing in my steps for a second before I continued my run.
If the worm was immune what if I trick the very world into hurting the worm. Or even creating a weapon.
I smirked tk myself as I looked up into the sky. A well if aether flowing from my core and into the air.
I manipulated it as I would with an illusion but instead of targeting the worm or even myself I targeted the very ground beneath me.
A faint consciousness could be felt. It was intoxicating, not the presence but tk know that my theory was right. That I could actually target the world.
My smirk turned into a feral grin as I created the illusion, the resistance against it was more than I was used tk but thag was to be expected.
For a second I wondered if I had enough aether to actually perform this but then I felt at my reserves.
Connecting to the realm had only taken a fourth of my reserves and there was only one last step. Even if it did take another fourth of my reserves I would still have half left. Minus what I had already used but that was more a rounding error than anything else.
As I was doing this I dodged to the right, a glob of acid falling into the place I was a second ago.
It burned a hole through the ground and into the limestone that sat below it.
As if it sensed what I was doing it hurried in its attacks. Hundreds of globs of acid fell towards me in a spider web like pattern.
Though it was much smaller and the holes in it were almost impassable.
I smirked though, even through that I knew I had won, a single command, one heard only by the realm around me.
DIE
The worm fell to the ground, the acid that it had sent at me losing its speed as the source of its power fell to the ground.
Without the nuisance of the worm I was able to dodge around the acid.
However before I could celebrate I had to dodge, transforming back into my human like form I backflipped out of the way but my leg was still pierced by acid.
It hurt, it hurt so much… supernaturally so.