Halcrem had two forms: one as a large lion-like man and one as an actual lion. Greyson could only sigh at his inability to look inconspicuous. When he was a man, he was like a large muscular giant and when he was a lion, he was a flaming orange and yellow lion. At first, Greyson worried that he would have to hide Halcrem away in Al"s sh.e.l.l until they were in the Beast Empire to prevent anyone from wanting to attack and capture Halcrem again for the slave trade. In the Beast Empire, Beastmen were extremely common and thus not targeted, however, the humans all desire to have Beastmen as their slaves due to their strength and rather simple minds. Once he arrived at the border city of Greenwolf Country, Forstford, Greyson"s worries were quickly washed away. All over the city, he saw Beastmen of many different forms. Some looked related to a bear type beast, other serpent type beasts, even cat beasts. Seeing the scantily clad cat women, Greyson could not help but glance over at Lucius still sleeping on his shoulder.Almost right after he left Iris City, Greyson fed Lucius the flower petal. At first, he could not see the effect, however, he could feel that Lucius would wake up any day now. It had only been around half a month, so he was feeling very pleasantly surprised. It seems that the City Lord was not lying when she spoke of the petal"s wondrous qualities. He could not help but wonder about the original flower at this point. No wonder the Midnight Order decided to attack, just an old petal could work so well, he could only imagine what the real flower itself could do. Plus, he was not aware how old this petal actually was. Apparently, they do not wither after falling off the flower, so that petal could have been hundreds or maybe thousands of years old after being placed in storage.
Shaking his head, Greyson decided to force such distracting thoughts from his mind. It was not like he would ever get to see the flower, so there was no point wondering about it. Seeing the high population of Beastmen, Greyson walked to a rather covered alleyway and allowed for Halcrem to appear.
"It seems that you will not stand out much at all here, so it"s fine if you just walk around in the open with me." Greyson remarked.
"Makes sense. This country is so close to the Beast Empire, the slave traders must catch Beastmen leaving the Empire all the time." Nodding his head, Halcrem was not surprised.
"If you thought as much, why did you not just tell me?"
"Hm? Well, I just a.s.sumed you would know better than me. I do not leave the Beast Empire very often." Scratching his head innocently, Halcrem slightly blushed looking embarra.s.sed. Speechless, Greyson could only agree that in theory he looks like he should probably have known better then someone from another Empire, however, he was also someone from extremely far away. Thinking about it, though, the logic behind the large population of Beastmen was not hard to understand. Just like Halcrem, there must be a mult.i.tude of Beastmen getting captured all the time after they leave the Beast Empire. All of them would not hope to get rescued either, according to Halcrem, because the beast clans did not really care about lost Beastmen. They had an unlimited supply as long as they could capture a human woman or man.
"Well, let"s just go." Waving his hand dismissively, Greyson proceeded to walk out of the alleyway to try to find some kind of escort mission to continue on his way towards the Beast Empire border. He imagined there must be a lot of caravans moving in that direction anyways. As Halcrem and Greyson walked together, Greyson could only grumble in unhappiness. Before now, he had never really felt small since he was around the average height of anyone his age. However, in front of Halcrem, he was but a child. He could not keep up with this giant"s stride and continually had to almost run just to keep up. Chuckling, Halcrem could easily see that Greyson was having troubles, thus he quickly picked the young boy up and placed him on his shoulder.
"Hey!" Greyson quickly huffed angrily. However, after sitting there for a little, he could finally understand why Lucius liked laying on his shoulder so much. It was rather comfortable. Looking around, he realized his vantage point was much higher now and he could easily spot the posting board in the common square.
"Alright, Halcrem, I get it. You are big and large. You can put me down, I see the board. Hmph, just you wait, don"t you know that humans grow extremely fast once they hit their growth spurts? It"s just because I am too young now." Although he knew he would definitely never be as big as Halcrem, he could not admit defeat so easily. Halcrem just continued chuckling in response and slowly put Greyson down. Quickly walking over, Greyson scanned through all the postings for help. Around half were for help inside this city while the other half were for missions leading outside of the city. Looking for a relatively easy one with decent pay was still hard. Usually the people giving out the reward would either be too generous meaning that the mission was probably extremely dangerous and hard while the rest would give too little because they wanted to save money and did not need really strong people to protect them. Finally, his eyes lit up as he found a suitable escort mission. Actually, he could not help but notice that most of the rewards were higher here than usual. He started to have a sinking feeling that traveling in Greenwolf Country was not easy. Before making his way to the meeting spot indicated on the posting, Greyson decided to eat in one of the taverns in the city to gain some information.
...
"Hey, have you heard about the recent Blood Wolf Bandit attacks?"
"Of course! Everyone in this country has heard of them, why are you bringing this up?"
"I heard that Old Ray"s son was killed in the most recent attacks. He was delivering the smith"s newest weapons and tools to Worcester City."
"d.a.m.n! These bandits keep getting worse and worse, aren"t they?"
"Ugh, everyone knows that they are definitely part of the imperial family. Who doesn"t know that the imperial family of Greenwolf Country were originally bandits? Where do you think the Greenwolf name comes from? The Greenwolf bandits that used to terrorize this area!"
"Shhh! Keep your voice down! Do you want to get us killed? Who doesn"t know that this stuff is taboo to talk about!"
In on the secret rooms, it would have truly been difficult for anyone else to listen in, however, with Greyson"s elf bloodline, he had superior hearing ability. Eavesdropping in on their conversation, Greyson finally began to understand why the rewards were higher in this city. With such rampant bandit attacks happening everywhere with suspected ties to the imperial family, how could the low-level commoners not try to pay more for security. Although this could make this job a bit busier, Greyson was not too concerned at his level of power. Halcrem was actually equivalent to a magister level magician, he was only captured so easily because the slave traders had tricked him into drinking a poison. Thinking about this, Greyson had cold sweat form on his back thinking of his reckless actions from before. He a.s.sumed that since those weak slave traders were able to capture Halcrem, he was therefore weak which gave him such confidence to break the seal and chains so early on. Such a powerful being suffering from a simple plot...Greyson could only shake his head in pity towards the simple-minded nature of Beastmen. Lucius had once told me that a lot of magic beasts were similar, only high-level bloodline beasts were born with intelligence similar to humans.
"Hal, it seems that we won"t meet much trouble before arriving at the border." After spending a couple days with the lion man, Greyson soon grew much friendlier. Much to Halcrem"s chagrin, he, too, was added to the list of friends that suffered from Greyson"s horrible naming sense. However, no matter what, he was thankful to Greyson so he decided to not pick a fight about it and just accepted his fate.
"You speak correctly, Benefactor." Halcrem spoke with slight reverence in his voice. Greyson could only feel helpless. He had mentioned multiple times for Halcrem to just refer to him by Greyson, but he insisted that Greyson was his savior so he needed to be treated with respect. "
The real problems start when we enter the Beast Empire..." Coming to this point, Halcrem could only look at Greyson with slight worry.
"Hm? What is it?"
"Benefactor, might you have any way to transform into a magic beast? Like a dragon since you have some dragon bloodline in you. I think you might be underestimating the hostility that beasts feel towards humans. Yes, there is trading which occurs, but that is only with the really powerful tribes whom the humans do not dare to offend or attack. What about the thousands of other tribes and beast species that suffer due to humans enslaving and killing them for materials? They have barely any contact with humans and they will attack on sight. I can lead you to my tribe, but I worry that before we even get there we will suffer from multiple attacks. Normally, there is a lot of infighting between different magic beast bloodlines and tribes, however, against humans they unite quite easily under the banner of the magic beast race." Looking slightly grim, Halcrem could only speak the truth otherwise it would be too late for regrets later. Greyson"s expression could not help but change at this point. It seems even his teacher was not aware of the true level of hostility towards humans.
"What about elves? I can make myself look like a full-blooded elf fairly easily."
"Elves?" Halcrem paused for a moment before shaking his head. "Benefactor, it is not that I want to make things tough on you, but this truly is no solution. The Beast Empire"s relations.h.i.+p with the elves is definitely not as hostile as it is with humans, however, that does not mean much. Both races are extremely proud and they see any race that is not theirs as lower. You can imagine the type of fights that commonly occur then between two such arrogant races. The only reason there is more cooperation is because elves are so proud that they disdain to resort to tricks. They believe their race is blessed and extremely powerful so they have no reason to resort to underhanded methods. Therefore, the beasts are less wary in interactions with elves."
Hit by such a truth, Greyson could only sink into deep contemplation. He really did not have a solution at this point. He could only transform up to his shoulder into the dragonform. He did not tap into enough of his dragon bloodline at this point since he started concentrating on awakening his elf bloodline first. Eden had once shown him her own full body transformation, so he knew that he should be capable of at least that. Although he would only be seen as a Beastman, that was still better than being a human or an elf.
"Hey, Hal, I have actually been quite curious, how come you look so much like a beast even in your "human" form? My sister and I both have the dragon bloodline, but we look much more human. I could understand myself since I also have a stronger elf bloodline, however, my sister only inherited my father"s dragon bloodline and the human bloodline."
"Ah, well, this is actually a simple concept. Your father must not have been a full-blood dragon. He must also have been a Beastman. You see, my father was a Sun Lion while my mother was a Beastwoman from the same Sun Lion tribe. This way I inherited much more of the Sun Lion bloodline than the human bloodline. My strong bloodline presence is also why I can use all the inherent abilities of the Sun Lion and transform into a lion. Usually, Beastmen have a lot of differing bloodline amounts. It"s very muddy water. For you and your sister to even form dragon scales and have some inherent abilities means your father must have at least been half dragon."
"Oh, it is quite simple isn"t it? Do you have any advice on how to help tap into my dragon bloodline?"
"Advice? I"m not really sure... Benefactor must understand that these bloodlines originate from magic beasts. Magic beasts, no matter how intelligent, are still very violent and brutal deep down. Beastmen in the Beast Empire do not have any trouble tapping into this because we are constantly kept under brutal conditions from the moment we are born. I imagine that the first time you were able to transform into a dragon for was in a moment of strong blood l.u.s.t. Maybe you should try to tap into those feelings once again and it could help you communicate with your bloodline once more."
Although Greyson could understand this logic, his face couldn"t help but fall. For the longest time, he has kept that event in the deep recesses of his heart and mind. Every time he thought of Aria"s death, it felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing his heart. Halcrem saw that Greyson"s expression looked ugly and he could infer towards the situation.
"Benefactor, do you know what happened that triggered my transformation? My mother, the Beastwoman, she was raped and killed in front of me. While the a.s.saulters mocked and taunted me, I suddenly felt this murderous rage so strong that I could not control myself. I awoke all my abilities and broke through to the magister level at that point and ripped out their throats." As he said this, Greyson could hear the low growl in Halcrem"s voice. Surprised, Greyson looked over at his friend.
"What about your father, how could he let that happen?"
"Hmph! Him? I was born from ****, as well. Beastwomen are treated as s.e.x slaves most of the time. My mother treated me extremely well and did not abandon me like most Beastwomen do." Greyson could not help but feel that the Beastmen condition was really bad.
"Why does your race never try to revolt? A lot of you guys have talent and there would definitely be some of you that would grow strong." Halcrem just bitterly smiled hearing those words before shaking his head.
"Benefactor, you must have never experienced bloodline suppression. It"s an extremely nasty thing. High level bloodlines can easily suppress the magic beast bloodline inside of us and cut down our power almost by half. It"s the same for normal magic beasts, as well, not just Beastmen. Why do you think bloodline is so revered? Because it"s that important! Most races cannot suppress your bloodline, but dragons most certainly can. Your bloodline concentration is too weak compared to real dragons so they could easily suppress you. Well, actually, since benefactor also has the elf bloodline, it might make this condition different."
...
Greyson spent the rest of the night sort of s.p.a.ced out. He did not really desire to sink back into the experiences of that day. It was an open wound that is only temporarily stopped up. If he tore off the bandage, the pain was almost too much for him. However, Greyson knew that he needed the Calming fruit. He had to break through to the magister level! Giving up here is not what Aria would want either. Going back up to his room, Greyson sat down in the middle and began to close his eyes. He thought of all the moments he had with Aria. Although short, it was all still fresh in his memory. The adventures and the fighting together. Each scene caused a single glistening teardrop to form on the edge of his eye. As it slowly fell down his face, Greyson thought again to his anger and hate. He could feel his blood boil as the feeling almost became uncontrollable. Silver scales formed again on his arms and they stretched a little to his chest this time before stopping. Groaning, Greyson could not help but feel pain from this violent change. His eyes slowly opened and glowing purple eyes with black slits revealed themselves. His hair had also changed into the same grey of his sister. Checking his body, Greyson could only shake his head in disappointment. Looks like it would take a lot more tries before he could get a full body change. However, at least he got it to stretch pa.s.sed his shoulders. That means this was working!
There was nothing he could do other than get to work...