A Tyrant, Sort Of

“You did?” Aylin asked. “Huh. Can I ask how it works?”

Sable hummed as she considered whether she wanted to share the details. Honestly, she was still chewing over them herself.

***

[Halfdragon Form] - Transform into a humanoid form. Reduce HP by 90%. Reduce all stats by 50%. Reduce MP by 50%. Improve spell dexterity by 50%.

***

The skill came with a shocking amount of detriments. On reflection, it made some sort of sense that replacing her gigantic, impervious form came with major downsides. If she wanted to walk around as a humanoid, then she would lose a significant portion of the advantages her true race afforded her.

There were a lot of implications to that. First, it meant Sable wouldn’t be wearing the form except in situations she felt exceptionally safe in—or otherwise needed to be in a humanoid form for. To name the clear situations, either around allies like Aylin and Roman, clearing dungeons she couldn’t fit inside otherwise, and perhaps in situations where she needed the ‘improved spell dexterity’.

She wasn’t entirely sure what that last part meant. From the sounds of it, she could create complex spells easier? But her ability to power them was greatly dampened by half of her intellect and wisdom stats being erased. Still, she was pleased to see that there was some benefit to being in halfdragon form; it wasn’t purely a downside.

[It weakens me,] Sable settled on. [My defenses are greatly lowered when I take the form.] And all the other implications of reduced stats—she would recover slower too. [It seems I’ll still need to use you as a diplomat. I’ll only be using it in specific situations.]

Since having to relay her words through Aylin whenever she wanted to talk strategy with non-allies—and most “allies”, for that matter—was still an annoyance, Sable might have to look into solutions for speaking while in dragon form. Having unlocked a specialty in enchantment, which included illusions, she might be able to use magic to mimic speech somehow. She couldn’t imagine where to start with that, though, and would have to talk with Roman about it. She’d hoped half-dragon form would solve the problem, so she hadn’t thought too hard about the topic.

Sable’s head was going fuzzy, the glow of her hoard lulling her back to sleep, so she said, [We’ll talk more later. I need to rest.]

Maybe Aylin replied, but Sable was already drifting off.

***

She woke six to eight hours later, with the moon high in the sky and darkness having settled over the forest. This time, she truly did feel better: [Recuperate] had brought her HP above the halfway point, and her mana slightly above the one-third.

Like usual, her magical resource regenerated slower than her health. Usually it regenerated much slower, actually—Sable suspected the severity of her wounds had closed the gap somewhat, slowing her health regeneration to a crawl. It made sense severe injuries healed slower than shallow ones, and her HP reflected that.

Aylin and Granite were asleep. Ignisfang was curled a short distance away and was watching her. She nodded at him, and he returned the gesture with a more respectful one of his own.

She stretched, her muscles aching at the motion, and several of her injuries pulling, but it felt nice to work her muscles out.

There was one last thing from the fight against the cultist that Sable hadn’t fully addressed or considered.

Her mind had come briefly into contact with the goddess of consumption, and it wasn’t just the experience that had branded onto her psyche. She felt something inside her, a remnant of having communed, even unwillingly, with such a primordial and uncontrollable entity. A hunger.

She closed her eyes and focused inward. It wasn’t paranoia. She felt something. It was faint, but gnawing, an itch that had burrowed deep inside her. Slowly, as she focused on it, the tight, writhing knot came closer into focus.

***

Seed of Hunger

***

Sable twitched, her eyes shooting open. She didn’t know what she had expected, but receiving information as if she’d used [Inspect] hadn’t been it. Her suspicions had been doubly confirmed, though she’d already known the gnawing sensation wasn’t just inside her head, but genuinely a mark from having come into contact with the goddess.

What did it mean? Unfortunately, [Inspect] and further introspection didn’t reveal much. The affliction—thought whether it was truly that, she didn’t know—sat in her stomach, present, though not overwhelming. She had no great hopes it was a good thing.

She hesitated. But maybe not a wholly bad thing, either. Clearly, meddling with divine powers could bring enormous strength. The cultist had demonstrated that many times over. She had no clue what this seed of hunger was, but while it might bring detriments, could it bring benefits, too? If she utilized it properly? Though how to do so was far beyond her.

As was a recurring trend in her life, she simply lacked the proper information. That was becoming an increasingly frustrating roadblock. She needed to have a better idea of how this world worked at large. Maybe if she’d known more about this ‘Lady Xenaya’, she could have expected that a cultist would still be out there with a way to summon her.

Though she suspected that this sequence of events was simply so far outside the norm that even a well-versed local of this world, like Roman, couldn’t have reasonably planned for it.

Even so, Sable didn’t like being in the dark. She had a headache-inducing amount of priorities to juggle, but she moved her goals to infiltrate some more advanced society—one of the human kingdoms—higher up on that list. She needed to visit libraries, speak with people, find tutors, and get a better sense for the world. If not to have a better ability to plan for catastrophes like what had happened today, then for foresight on what greater threats awaited her as her notoriety grew. It wouldn’t be long before word of her spread, not now that she was conquering her way across the Red Plains in earnest.

She finally roused herself and ambled off her hoard. Her left arm still ached, but she didn’t outright limp anymore, even if it wasn’t pleasant resting her weight on it.

No longer feeling like death, she wanted to test her newest ability.

Without ceremony, she activated [Halfdragon Form].

Frostfire puffed out around her, and she was suddenly standing, in humanoid form, in the center of a large crystalline glyph. The white markings were made in her class’s eponymous element, the burning-hot ice setting nearby grass smoking. It faded before anything could ignite.

It didn’t come as a total surprise that the skill didn’t provide her clothing; she was naked. At the same time, that was a problem. Did every transformation revert her back to this state? Or would clothes that she put on carry between forms, and she just needed to find some to start with? If it weren’t the former, then there were going to be some annoying logistical problems that came with swapping.

She only mused over that for a second. She was far more interested in the transformation itself. Holding two hands up, she marveled at the white skin on display. Having been a dragon with shining white scales, she supposed it made sense that her human form was equally pale—but still, she was surprisingly so, her skin made of marble.

She looked around at the small island. Fortunately, Aylin was still asleep, and she was the only one Sable would be embarrassed to be seen by, right now. Granite was also sleeping—or at least inert in his pile-of-rocks form—and Ignisfang was a giant scaled wyrm, so she didn’t mind that he was watching her. Or, mostly. It was like being naked around a cat. Weird for illogical, hard to explain reasons, but hardly enough to make her blush and run to cover up.

The pristine lake surface provided a mirror for her. She crouched down in front of it, and blue eyes looked back at her. For the second time, she was disoriented by the difference in her humanoid form, and what she really looked like—or had, back on Earth. The features given to her weren’t hers, and didn’t even resemble her. She was a new person, through and through.

Strangely, that was harder to take in than having been turned into a dragon. One was a transformation so different from her natural state that it had been easier to digest, not harder. Having returned to a somewhat human form, the lack of similarity between what she used to be, and what she saw now, produced a wave of vertigo.

An adult face with regal features looked back at her. She’d been somewhat concerned that as a ‘juvenile white dragon’, she would receive a human form that was childlike, but that wasn’t the case.

She had sharp, prominent cheekbones, and blue eyes that seemed to pierce even her as she gazed into the water. Her resting expression was both haughty and nearly hostile, and Sable frowned, then tried to actively ease it into something friendlier—it didn’t really work.

Two bone-white horns protruded from her head, tucked between long, equally white hair, and she wonderingly felt them up. Besides her tail—a thick, scaled protrusion reminiscent of her dragon form—it was the most non-human part of her. The pointy ears also gave away that she decidedly wasn’t human; she felt those up next. Honestly, she’d say she was closer to an elf mixed with a dragon than a human. Though she guessed she didn’t know what elves looked like in this world; she’d only heard they existed.

As for her physique at large, it was hard to tell exactly how tall she was without any guides to go by, but she got the impression she was taller than she’d been on Earth. Maybe by a lot. The ground seemed farther down than in her memories, though obviously much closer when going by the standards of her dragon form. She tentatively guessed she might even be past six feet tall. It would make sense for a dragon’s humanoid form to not be diminutive.

She had a lithe build. She wasn’t muscular, but neither did she look overly soft. Most of the fat had been burned off of her. Well, besides up top, which she had mixed feelings on. She had a lot more there than she used to. It was one of many changes to her previous body that left her disoriented.

The part she cared most about, though, was that she had hands again. Fingers. The ability to grab things. The usefulness of that couldn’t be understated. Her mouth was a close second. She almost jolted realizing she could finally talk.

“Hi,” she whispered down at her reflection. “Hello.”

Even her voice had a certain harshness to it. A regal sort of arrogance dripped from even the simple words, completely without her intent. She wrinkled her nose. Once again, there weren’t many similarities to her old self. She’d been remade in entirety. Twice.

For a short while longer, she looked herself over. She briefly considered experimenting with her capabilities—both her weaknesses and single strength in this form—but decided it could wait for later.

Her experiment concluded, she returned to her dragon form. Like before, the skill activated in a burst, and an even larger white glyph coated the ground beneath her before quickly disappearing. Oddly, her dragon form felt just as comfortable, if not more, than her human one. She had really adjusted to it.

She wasn’t at full fighting condition, but after her long rest, she was healthy enough to return to Verindale and aid the warriors she’d left behind. Her goals hadn’t ultimately changed—she still needed tributary cities, and time waited for no one. Verindale needed to be conquered as much as ever, especially with enemy forces posturing to conquer Rustspike territory themselves.

She would experiment more with her human body in the future, but for now, duty called.

She was, as she’d once put it, a very busy lizard.