Chapter 1886: Truth Revealed
Chapter 1886: Truth Revealed
"Indeed, I do know what the humans are like, War Tyrant," the ancient Elf agreed.
"You may simply call me Karl, or Avatar, if you prefer. The other title sounds like you expect me to attack at any moment."
The Elf stared meaningfully at him for half a second, and Veda began to laugh.
"He’s got you there, Karl."
"Hey, whose team are you on here?"
The dragon gave him the same look as the Elf did, and in Karl’s mind, Cara began to laugh.
The dragon was only here for the knowledge to be gained. She wasn’t actually his ally, and had no intentions of picking a fight with anyone. If things got too messy, she would simply transform and fly away to watch from a distance, or find other interesting things.
The Elder turned to the locals. "{These are not Demons. The one with the blue eyes is a dragon, and the other is something else entirely. But neither is a demon. You were right to call us, these creatures are much more dangerous than foreign humans, or if they had been actual demons.}"
"Man, they’re just dragging you today," Veda laughed.
"Right? You’d think that the World Dragon did something personal to them."
One of the other Elders gave him a look that was clearly intended to shut him up.
Veda’s eyes flashed blue with curiosity. The mention of the World Dragon had set them off. They definitely held a grudge. But the Elves and the World Dragon weren’t natural enemies. He was a nature adjacent deity, and he was even on good terms with the Spider Goddess of the Dark Elves.
"Please accompany us back to the Temple, and we will explain everything," one of the female Elders insisted.
Her silver hair was pulled into a severe bun, and her face lightly wrinkled, which was still a lot of aging for an Elf.
Karl followed them across the small village, which turned out to be much more advanced than he had expected. They had all the modern amenities, including runic disks that they used as a form of transport through the forest.
But the outside of the building were designed to Elven preferences, being all natural and blending into the forest.
"This barrier is curious. Can we stop to examine it?" Veda asked as they approached a white marble temple.
"You may examine it from the inside once you have passed through. It is a barrier of truth. No transformation, illusion, deception or lie may exist inside its confines. It was created by the last demigod of our people before she was slain."
Veda nodded and stepped through, only to find herself in dragon form.
{Ooh, this is fun. I can’t shift back, and I can’t even shrink myself. I like it, very honest. I wonder if I can use it to fact-check books.}
And with that, Karl considered the dragon officially lost.
She might be present in body, but her mind was already deciding which of the tomes in her inventory to check first, to see if they were destroyed, which would be a tragedy, or if they would simply highlight the false and misleading passages.
Karl followed them through, and the barrier glowed bright gold for a few seconds, while the world seemed to spin around Karl.
That caught everyone’s attention, as his form was rapidly shifting between a dozen different forms, before it finally settled on one.
Karl looked down at himself, and found that the form it had picked was not one that he had ever used before. In fact, he didn’t even have a transformation to attain this form.
{That’s curious. I have never seen this form before. If this is the true form of me, should I not be more familiar with it?}
Instantly, he realized that he was not speaking out loud, he was simply projecting his thoughts into the minds of everyone around him, including the plants, which responded with a shake of their branches.
Then, he caught a look at his own face, in the fountain.
He looked just like one of the Pet Sitters, but he had a miasma of black and gold aura around him, and black dragon wings on his back that didn’t seem to be a proper colour.
Karl thought about that for a moment, and realized what had happened. He had multiple bloodlines and constitutions. The spell couldn’t make sense of them all, so it had blended them into something that represented what he truly was.
And that was somewhere between a Chaos Dragon and whatever the Pet Sitters were.
He was also tall.
The Elves barely made it to his waist, and even the full form of Veda wasn’t particularly impressive standing next to him.
"Ah, I knew it. War Tyrant of the Darklight Host is what you truly are. No matter your intentions, you will always be what you were born to be," the Elven Elders decided.
Karl shrugged, and noticed that his hands had long black claws, much like Matilda’s. They were both there and not there at the same time, permanently linked to the Chaos Plane. But more importantly, this form was beginning to feel *right* in a way that his human form no longer did.
His Cat Demon form felt like him because he used it so long, but ever since he became an Immortal, his human form had felt more like a costume that he put on for others.
Now, he was beginning to realize why.
It wasn’t his natural form anymore, he was simply used to it, and was using it to hide the changes that had been made to his constitution by the effects of the skills and upgrades his body had undergone.
[I like it. It’s very you, but with face tentacles. Opal says that Dana is going to love those.]
Karl sighed. [Opal, behave for a minute. Don’t you start writing weird fan fictions before I get home.]
Cara laughed and appeared next to them in her badger form.
"And a Chaos Badger? Seriously? Fine. Since you’re here, please accept our hospitality, spawn of the Chaos Plane."
Cara smiled at the Elder, and then took out a whole platter of cupcakes.
{For you. I thank you for your hospitality.}