Nebbie sat in uncomfortable silence with his father, he knew for a fact that the man wasn't supposed to be in the carriage, and that him being here spelled trouble for him.
He was supposed to be going to a school in the far western region of Bellmuze, his Sister Molly was going to a magical academy in the capital, while both Eric and Hanna were going to a School in the far eastern Region of Bellmuze that specialized in training students both basic school work and survival tactics.
Nebbie was supposed to be going to a school that welcomed inhumans and humans alike, he assumed to keep his white hair and eyes from standing out, but here and now he already knew what his father was going to say before he said it.
"I'm sure you've realized by now that the school your mother has you going to isn't a real place," James noted casually.
"Obviously," Nebbie thought inwardly, despite being eleven years of age Nebbie prided himself on having avoid every saying so much as a syllable to his father, just so the day he finally did speak to the man there was a chance it might actually phase him for at least a moment.
"I'm sure you realize that I can't have a hand in letting a Demon anywhere near school children," James looked out the Window of the carriage, "I thought about sending you to a school in Tsundral and just forgetting to pick you up come the end of the 9 months, but turns out they only school their children five days out of the week, with no on campus housing, the mongrels," Nebbie chose not to think about his old world's school system that had all but failed him with a mixture of teachers who didn't care enough about their jobs or teachers that cared to much about themselves.
"But I think I've found a suitable place, and by all means if you can find your way home feel free to do so, but I'll be sending your mother your 'progress reports' and they won't be favorable, and I doubt she'll be happy with the notes about your immature behavior,"
Nebbie chose not the care, knowing his mother and father, he'd either slip up or she'd catch him, at bare minimum she'd realize he was forging the reports himself within two or three reports, not that it would help him since the school years where nine months long and progress reports were sent out every third month, with the third and final once being their grade for the year.
Nebbie half expected to find himself being sold off as a slave or being dropped off at an orphanage in a foreign country, as these had both been plans his father had tried in the past, although both of them had been foiled, the slavers had been hunted down and beaten within the day by Madeline, who hadn't even realize Nebbie was missing and had started the hunt because one of them had swiped her favorite prosthetic Knife hand as a new weapon while Nebbie was being handed off by James.
The orphanage had sent him directly to his Uncle, the ruling King of Bellmuze and the indirect reason for his birth, within a few days, due to Nebbie informing them of his last name and matching documents they got back.
It had been his first visit to capital city, to this day his Uncle still thought he had escaped slavery and slipped his way to the orphanage and back home, and gladly gave him the tile Nebbie: king of Eels, not a nice sounding title to Nebbie but the people of this world acted like it was one heck of compliment so he rolled with it as being his ownly noteworthy merrit.
The orphanage had failed hard but he'd gotten away with it scott free, the Slavery thing had almost worked, but he'd been thrown out a window by Zoey in a fit of rage as a result. Nebbie was just about to decide he was being sold off again when the carriage came to a halt, and the door opened. Without a word his father grabbed him by the back of his stupid red dress and threw him out the door without a care in the world, Nebbie hit dirt and a few rocks for a really bad landing and, since the carriage was the kind controlled by magic, and his father was the one setting it's destination it was already rolling away as his father called out.
"Have fun you Demonic little shit," Nebbie heard the door slam shut and watched as the Carriage rolled down a dirt road, knowing his father it probably lead deeper into the forest and eventual looped out to a road unconnected to the path home and would take multiple detours to get back to his home, the same was probably true for their pathing to the forest.
"Well shit," Nebbie sighed, "He got me," Nebbie looked around at the unfamiliar forest, and pondered the same question he almost always pondered after any interaction with his father: "Is this the good path?" he asked allowed, "Because if it is that poor Gas station girl must be in an unimaginably horrible place," Nebbie decided that his best bet was the one that sounded the worst on paper, seeing how his father had selected this specific spot he figured every direction was bad but the ones that seemed good at this moment where probably the worst ones.
So Nebbie did what all common sense told him not to do, and walked away from the path into the woods, "With my luck the way to the road is actually through the woods and this path is just something he had made over the course of a few months and it's just a absurdly massive circle or something," Ignoring basic survival tactics Nebbie went and got himself lost in the woods, not wanting to waste hours or maybe even days following an untrustworthy path and dying from dehydration.
The woods weren't exactly thick, but hot dam if they didn't feel endless, as far as his eyes could see there was nothing but tree, tree and more tree, He had been given a lot of bags by his mother, clothes, money, and some food stuff from home, his father had in turn tossed them all to the road a few hours into their long carriage drive. Meaning that all he had was the clothes on his back, and thanks to Molly's Mage Seed, this dress had a lot of things hidden in pockets only accessible to the one wearing it.
While not entirely sure why, Molly and indeed all his siblings had noticed their fathers outwards hostility towards Nebbie, Eric's theory was that Nebbie was adopted, Hanna thought he might have been cursed, Molly's thoughts where Nebbies favorite, She thought her father was just a jerk and jealous of, as she liked to phrase it, Nebbie's pretty hair.
The fact that his sister had managed to keep this obsession with long hair for this long was still the thing Nebbie found most amusing about his new world above any other thing he had seen or heard. Alrought the fact that Chickens were considered Dangerous and Cassowary nuggets were considered cheap peasant food was still a close second, mostly due to the two birds looking exactly the same as in his old world, with the only difference being their sizes.
As Nebbie pondered the finer things in life he almost didn't notice a small movement in the corner of his eyes, he looked over just in time to see something fuzzy shooting off in the direction he had come from, Almost to late Nebbie raised his hands and called out "Demonic Dome," A Red Sphere materialized around him just as a massive wolf like creature pounced at him, it hit the Sphere and bounded off it, running around him in a fast circle, even though it wasn't standing still Nebbie recognized the beast as being classified as a member of the lesser demon race, specifically a Direwolf.
It was for lack of better words just a really big wolf with an extra set of legs, not too terribly big but big enough to be a concern to his health. Nebbie looked around and took a sigh of relief upon realizing the wolf was alone and injured, from the looks of it, it had either lost its entire pack recently, or been ejected from it. Nebbie knew Direwolves worked on the basic social order that a pack was run by a mother and father, and when the pups got too old they were sent off, by force if necessary, so the parents could make more babies without being burdened by their last generation.
From the look of it this Direwolf was young enough for that to be the case, and that option was more appealing than the idea of there being monsters that could easily kill off an entire Direwolf pack, usually numbering in the upper twenties or thirties, save one strangler.
"What luck," Nebbie smiled, having long since been ready for the day when his father would force him into a situation like he was now, "I'm sorry young pup, but it seems I won't go hungry tonight," With the Direwolf being a promise of both meat and drinkable liquids, Nebbie waited until it made another pass at the barrier and spoke one more spell.
"Inverted axis," As soon as the spell was cast the Wolf slammed into the Barrier and dropped like a sack of rocks, it's legs flailing uselessly as it tried to get back up, "A spell that cause the brian to send out the opposite signal that the target intends, it only worked on creatures with limited brain power," Nebbie smiled, "I'd give it a minute before it wears off you, but I don't feel like waiting to see,"
Nebbie walked to the side of the wolf and, with it being weakened from the current spell, pulled out a small knife from his dress, one of the many things his sister had hidden in all her old dresses for him, and ended the Direwolf. Once its life had faded Nebbie made the simple decision that he had no time to properly prepare it before its blood drew in more predators and used the most powerful skills his Demon Lord seed had given him, granted he only had a basic idea as to what it did.
"Devour," Nebbie said as he activated the skill. Instantly he felt his fingers grow sharp like claws, and his teeth sharpen to a dangerous point, his tongue grew long and eel like, without wasting any time he used his clawed hands to rip through the fur and ate at the meat inside, he was prepared to be disgusted at the taste of raw meat, but as soon as he took a bite he blinked and realized he had eaten the entire Direwolf, no bones remained, just a few tuffs of bloody fur.
"Hu," Nebbie wasn't sure how he felt about the skill, he was about to turn it off, only to realize that he seemed to have gained a new skill just by eating the Direwolf. Since it wasn't directly a part of his Demon Lord Seed he didn't know what it was, just that he had it, without an inquiry skill the only way to find out what it was, was to use it.
"Why not," he decided "Maybe I'll be able to use the Senses of a Direwolf or something dope like that," Nebbie took a deep breath and called out to use the skill, it's name materialized to him as he said it, and he became concerned and confused as it's name came out.
"Mimicry?" he asked, upon casting the spell his skin began bubbling, and he felt an uncomfortable weightlessness as his body bust into a bright red mist that began swirling around him, after a moment he felt something on his face that covered his vision and tried to get it off, his arms didn't quite move right and as he tried to look around the thick mist blocking his vision fell and he looked to it, and found his stupid red dress on the floor along with the boxer shorts he usually wore beneath.
He panicked for half a second before noticing what was next to them, a set of massive Direwolf paws. His panic amped up for another few seconds before turning into pure excitement.
"OH hell yeah," He barked out as he locked himself up and down, the dire wolf he had devoured had been gray and black, but he was pure White, and easily the size of a horse. "This is dope as shit," Nebbie picked up his clothes with his teeth and, with some effort, managed to use the storage box skill his sister had taught him. He wasn't too terribly good with it but he had an emergency blanket and now his little red dress and his boxer shorts, although that alone was already almost filling it to max, he could probably hold one other small item.
Excited to enjoy this form He tried running and was pleased with his speed, but wasn't able to properly capitalize on it due to his inability to properly utilize a bipedal body with six legs. He tried checking the skill and noticed that it felt weak, upon feeling that he remembered something Eric had once told him when they had been playing in the yard once upon a time when his brother hadn't been quite so much of a pain to be around.
"Skills are like your body, you can train em, but unlike our bodies we have to use magic to train them, My sword teacher said I'm gonna get a lot of skills as I get older, but that I have to remember to connect them to the my inner manna so that I can use them to their full potential, I'm not saying you'll get many skills, but if you do just don't forget to connect them, can't have you making a fool of yourself, and by extension me,"
Nebbie thought that perhaps that was why he was having problems moving, it was a cool transformation, but he felt that the smaller Dierwolf was judging his slowness from the afterlife ,as thought calling out and telling him that if he was gonna use it's powers the least he could do was use them right.
Nebbie kept running until he found a solid destination, a stream. Upon reaching it he looked at his reflection, a purely white wolf with a venomous shade of purple eyes. Nebbie watched for any physical changes and reached out to the skill he was using, every second he used it it grew slightly in power, but it would takes weeks of use for it to power up even a little on it's own, he silently thanked his brother for having a teacher, listening to them, and passing down what he had heard, Eric was stuck up but he cared about his family name enough to pass things along, if only for his own sake.
Once he reached the skill and pumped it with mana, the change was instant as his fur began falling out in places and growing thicker in others. He feared for a second he was about to become the world's largest poodle, then he noticed that his bare skin was bubbling and shifting.
By all accounts it looked painful as all hell, and yet the worst he could say was that it tickled, and not even in the bad way, just light tickles as his bones cracked and shifted, his wolf face looked to be tearing itself apart before collapsing in on itself, at this point the only pain he was feeling was towards looking at it. He closed his eyes before they shot open as his back popped and he shot up, realizing as he did so that he was no longer bipedal.
He looked down and felt as though the Goddess who had sent him to this world was personally laughing at him when he realized what had happened.
Demons and Humans had a rocky relationship for a reason, all demons regardless of gender, had facial structures and builds reminiscent of women, with only their chests differentiating their genders to untrained eyes, that biological fact had resulted in a lot of problems between the two races due to Demons being both very flirty and raging Bisexuals, resulting in a lot of human men and women mistaking the advances of a male demon for that of a flatchested woman until the bedroom phase of the relationship.
In the early days of the two species intermingling a lot of demons were killed for misunderstanding human customs and a lot of humans swore to the heavens that Demons were perverse monsters, the hostilities between the two races still held firm even to this day even after the misunderstanding had been cleared up.
Nebbie, being in the inactive state of his Demon Lord Seed had received stunted growth, But now Nebbie was now dealing with the Physical effects of Demon Blood, being a man that looked like a dainty lady.
He looked into the Stream fuming with rage, even so, he still looked beautiful. In a wild sense of the word, he had the physique of a young woman without a chest to speak of, with long dog ears on top of his head, normal pointed ears on the side of his head, and a long fluffy dog tail. He reached into the storage box and pulled out his shorts and the Blanket, he forced the shorts on with a large amount of discomfort as they were now too small in a multitude of ways, and ripped a hole in the blanket to make himself a ratty poncho, he had gone from looking majestic to homeless in a matter of seconds.
"Thank you, Eric," Nebbie mumbled angrily, trying not to blame his brother for what had been good advice, regardless of how embarrassed it left him feeling, "At least I look like an adult," Nebbie figured since it was a magical body it's age was reflecting his mental state, not his actual age, but it still felt wildly inappropriate. He decided to avoid talk of age and any sort of adult situations that came his way to avoid messing up his young body should alcohol or other activities mess with it.
Despite hating how he looked at the moment he had to admit he felt stronger, faster, and his senses were improved tenfold. With nothing but time on his hand Nebbie began using the first magic skill he had learned at the age of five, The Magic Mary specialised in and had taught him for emergencies, using magic he began making silk like threads and went to work on trying to make a cloak out of the blanket.
After what felt like days but was in fact only hours Nebbie completed his ensemble, a less painful to wear pair of shorts, and a lot of straps around his chest that held his ratty poncho in place well enough.
Last but not least he'd cut down the Blanket so that he didn't trip over it, granted it was still ratty as all sin, but now at least he could walk around properly. He had even added a hole for his Long Tail and had it wrapped around his waist like a belt to keep the poncho cloak from swaying too much using some thread to keep his tail around his waist.
Hoping it would at least hold together enough for him to walk He stuck his head into the stream and enjoyed a long drink before putting the cloth scraps left from his renovations into his item box and got up, choosing to follow the river so that he could at least get a drink in the very likely event that he didn't make it home in the next few weeks.
And he did just that for days upon days, never breaking his mimicry skill, after checking he found it had evolved it into a Direwolf Class Beastfolk Mimicry, as Beastfolk where feared by all wild animals that where preyed upon by their beast class he was infinity less likely to be so much as approached, much less outwardly attacked. As he traveled he gained a new Mimicry form by using Devour on something that looked vaguely like an octopus, but chose not to use it as he didn't much feel like dealing with the outcome of becoming a Tentacled Mermaid.
The days were long and no matter how far he traveled the thickness of the forest never seemed to waver, still he took the time to practice, he used the thread skill to keep his clothes together, and even found he could sprout a second set of arms due to the animal he was based on having six limbs in total.
As he traveled the only thing that changed around him was a mountain. It wasn't the biggest mountain in the world, but to him personally it was the second biggest mountain he had ever seen, surpassed only by Bellmuzes capital. The Stream circumvented the mountain in its entirety, but curiosity bested him, having spent almost a week just walking and eating fish, the adventure of climbing a mountain was simply too alluring to ignore.
"What's the worst that could happen," He decided as he used the strength of his Beastman body to easily hop over the fairly wide stream with ease. Nebbie grabbed himself one more quick drink, reminding himself to put a thermos or water bottle of some kind into his item box the next time he got the chance, before walking into the thicket of trees before him, hoping that if he reached the top of the mountain he might be able to see a direction that was clear of trees. Before he could even reach the base of the mountain he clumsily stumbled into a clearing, much to the shock of a group of monsters that were in the middle of fighting over the body of a massive elk. The Monsters in question were a group of seven, unless they had more in the group that were currently out hunting or gathering, or perhaps they were hunters and gatherers.
The Largest one stood his ground, and the others did as he did, only two of them were armed, The Big guy was about eight or nine feet in height, with all the others being most likely a fair seven or so.
Nebbie pondered if he had just become their new prey, before the big guy spoke and cleared things up for him.
"Get your own deer!" He called out angrily, brandishing one of the only two weapons, a Club that looked as though he had uprooted three small trees and tied them together with rope.
"Hey whoa now," Nebbie took a step back "I don't want your elk," Nebbie cursed himself at the look on the monsters face upon realizing what it was, it was an Ogre, and since he was a Demon Lord, Mary had deemed it necessary he learn about the many different types of monsters that could be classified as lesser demons, whitch turned out to be basically anything that wasn't human and possessed any sort of magic, though he wasn't sure if that mean all monsters where related to demons, or if humanity had just started calling all none humans demons, and the inhuman races had mistaken the attempts at racism as flattery and adopted the saying themselves.
Ogre's were known to respect two things, Food and strength, and as far as he could tell backing down from a fight could mark you as food.
He felt like the Ogre in charge was now pondering what Nebbie might taste like and he did the only thing he could think to do, make up a story to avoid getting chomped.
"I'm just here to…set up a tournament," Nebbie decided, seeing how Ogre's only respected fighting he hoped it might help him get the hell out of dodge.
"What's a Tourne-mint?" The Big guy asked, looking at his followers in confusion.
"It's a way to prove who's the strongest in the land," Nebbie replied in a calm tone, that the Ogres seemed to understand, if only a little.
"You came to fight?" The Big one decided.
"Kind of," Nebbie looked around and did his best to make his tournament sound entrancing to the mind of an Ogre. "In a tournament a lot of creatures from across the land gather together, they all pick one person to fight, once every one fights the winners pick from other winners and fight again, until in the end only one creature remains, and in doing so they become the Champion," Nebbie felt relief flow through him at the ogre's excited muttering and thought he might be able to sneak away, but learned that he had sold the tournament to them in its entirety, in fact he had sold to well.
"We participate in the Tourne-mint," The Big Ogre declared "Lead us to it," knowing full well he couldn't get away from seven Ogre's in their hunting ground Nebbie just kept diging deeper into the hole he had dug.
"Well I'm still trying to set it up," Nebbie noted in a calm tone that frankly impressed him seeing how one wrong turn of the conversation could end up with him becoming lunch.
"How so?" The Big Guy questioned.
"Well I still need a huge open area," Nebbie said calmly as he tried to think up on the spot what a fighting Tournament would need, having only read about them in mangas and seen them in animes, "And we need lots of monsters um…" Nebbie did some quick math and picked the biggest number he could think of that was divisible by two, "no more than sixty four, but no less than thirty two," The Ogre's muttered amongst themselves, Nebbie wasn't sure if they could count that high but if nothing else the number itself seemed daunting to them. The Big Guy once again hit Nebbie with something he didn't want to hear.
"You are in luck," He decided before finally introducing himself "I am the Ogre known as Jo-Ro , current leader of the Tribe, I can easily send out my comrades to invite over races in the area, none would say no to the chance to prove themselves as the mightiest beneath the mountain," Having just been informed that the mountain was basically the wild monster equivalent of a city Nebbie was forced to take on his own lie head first.
"Then it seems we have ourselves a Tournament," He declared with false glee, "We'll need some set up work before we call in the other monsters, don't suppose you can show me to a large open area, preferable one with a lot of stones, or if nothing else a fairly flat area?"
"Easily," Jo-Ro delcaried with pride.