"My lord?" Soea sounded worried, her voice was shaking and think with emotion.

I felt a warm dampness on my chest from where she had obviously been pressing it against me for the entire time I was unconscious, she had only raised her face when she felt my movement, the redness around her eyes were obvious.

That's when it was obvious that while I had shielded her from the worst of the emotions, the telepathic connection hadn't been closed, so she had seen what I saw and felt a muted version of the emotions that I felt.

I raised a hand and gently brushed her cheek, before drying her eyes, "Are you okay?"

I still felt worried for her, even though she had only felt a small part of what I did, though she had seen it all.

Soea didn't respond, she just grabbed my hand and held it to her face.

Suddenly there was a loud 'bang', causing Soea and I to flinch. When we looked up, I saw that the Salamander King had been picked up and thrown a few meters by a man who visibly glowed through the joints of his plate armour, a single white, feathery, wing grew from his right shoulder-blade.

"Soea, protect the Salamander King and go back to the castle."

Jumping to my feet, I prepared a couple of Runes for simple combat spells, half of which were for physical and magical reinforcement.

Nodding at my words, Soea ran over to the Salamander King and picked it up, running towards the castle and carrying the massive lizard.

Arriving in front of the man in an instant, I unleashed dual Flame Blasts.

Flame Blasts were high damage, low cast time, but high Mana cost, Runes.

The twin pillars of white flame manifested and slammed into the glowing man, pushing him backwards, his armoured feet digging furrows into the hard ground.

This gave me some space to move and to prepare, using which I pulled my favourite daggers out of my Spatial Storage.

Feeling around in my instincts, I found the command, and retracted my wings. The two appendages retracted until all that remained were two feathery tattoos which covered the skin of my back. Without the hindrance of the wings, my maneuverability decreased, even though it meant that I couldn't fly without levitation magic.

All of this took less than a second, though with my sped up perception of time, it felt like minutes. I was ready, both my weapons out and in position before the glowing man had stopped skidding.

He regained his feet with a snarl, charging at me. Without warning, his wing dispersed into hundreds of glowing feathers, which shot towards me like bullets.

I had no idea our wings could do this.

However, in my slowed perception of time, the feathers seemed to almost crawl through the air as they flew towards me.

Spinning my daggers rapidly, I formed what would look like two solid shields in my hands. As I both deflected and cut each feather, the halves fluttering to the ground, the glowing man arrived in front of me.

Having taken it either from a Space Storage, or Spatial Ring, he was now wielding a massive broadsword.

He shouted out something, it was so drawn out in our accelerated world that I wasn't sure what it was, though I could guess that it was 'Die!'

Without waiting for the sound to catch up to us, he swung his sword at me, trailing an aura behind it.

 

Master had taught me to not block a larger weapon head on, especially since I wielded daggers, so I stabbed the tip of my left dagger into the weak point that was located just above the guard of the huge sword.

I used the point of impact, along with the power I put into it, to divert the trajectory of his blade, causing it to miss me. Using the minimum amount of power and energy necessary to deflect the enemy's weapon.

While the glowing man was still unstable from the swing and subsequent deflection, I spun my right dagger and changed my grip, stabbing at the gap in his plate helmet.

But he reacted inhumanly quickly and instead of impaling his eyes, he moved his head back as the tip entered the gap, flinging the helmet off his head and onto the ground.

I could finally see his face, the strangest thing about it that his skin glowed from within and his eyes shone so brightly that I couldn't figure out their original colour.

He snarled at me.

Using the inertia of the stab, I slipped my body around him and stabbed him in the back of the neck with my left dagger.

While this guy was powerful, it was obvious that he had never fought someone like me before, he seemed to have originally been a Paladin and trained against people of similar power before the change, everyone he would have fought after the Transformation would have been much weaker than him.

As his body fell to the ground, he looked dead.

But I made sure, setting his body on fire and rapidly burning it to ashes with a 'Hellfire' Rune.

Master had always agreed with the saying that I had told her, 'Always double tap', though she also showed me another meaning of that saying, which was a lot of fun to learn.

Seeing the fall of the glowing man, all of the enemy soldiers backed off.

I rapidly stored all of the feathers, which had reformed a wing, in my Spatial Storage. For some reason, the entire wing gave off only as much Holy Power as the feather that I had used in my Transformation.

The fight was over in somewhere between one or two seconds, two sets of moves were exchanged.

Soea had barely made it to the castle and thrown the Salamander King inside by the time I had killed the glowing man.

I was pretty sure that it would come back to bite me, but I wasn't in the mood, and I had been told to go to the Human capital, so I ignored the retreating soldiers.

Turning away, I extracted my wings out of their tattoo mode and jumped into the air.

With a few hard flaps, I arrived back at the castle.

"My lord!" Soea softly exclaimed as she lunged at me, her wings flapping, increasing her speed. She slammed into me, wrapping her arms around me in a tight embrace, she said nothing and just latched onto me.

I felt my mood lifting so I began to gently stroke her warm hair.

All of the soldiers had left, so still carrying the overly attached Soea, we stood in the courtyard.

The Salamander King was missing, and in its place was a large egg that shook occasionally.

Soea looked confused when she saw it, it seems that she hadn't being paying attention to the lizard, she had been focused on trying to see if I was okay during the fight with the glowing man.

I cast Miniaturization Magic on the egg, picking it up.

Soea seemed to be rather talented, she could wrap herself around me like a rope, and manage to stay attached if I moved, even if I bent over.

She looked at the egg, her already large eyes widened, she seemed to find it fascinating.

Detachment herself from me, she moved around and held out her hands, looking up at me with puppy eyes.

Of course I didn't reject her silent plea, I gave the egg to her.

"Yay!" She exclaimed softly, holding the miniature egg, cradling it softly to her chest, her eyes contained a strange longing look. It was as though the egg had triggered some innate mother urge, or maybe an instinct of the Dragon Soul.

The Dragon was a female.

I walked towards the throne room.

Soea followed along behind me, cradling the egg, there was a small skip in her step.

It made me glad to see that after seeing and experiencing my memories didn't hurt her mind, though I still had to bury the pain.

Though, to be honest, I was slightly jealous that she could feel like that.

I know, I am not a good person.

But I was also highly relieved, I didn't want her to experience suffering like I did.

Was this normal?

When I laid on my bed, Soea followed her tradition of kneeling in front of my mattress for a second as she carefully placed the Salamander King's egg down. After securing the safety of the egg, she crawled forwards onto my bed.

Laying by my side, she rested her chin on my chest and lay an arm over it, both her legs wrapped around both of mine. She seemed to be holding me in a way which pressed as much of herself against me as she possibly could.

"My lord, Kirrin..." Soea started saying something, seemingly awkward, unable to finish her sentence.

"As you saw, she was the princess of the Human empire when I was summoned, and she was my first love," I probably didn't have to explain this, I felt like saying it though.

Soea nodded gently.

"I wish I could take all the sadness from you, help you. You are my first love, my Lord...I love you, my Lord... If you were killed, I would slaughter anyone who ever hurt you." She stared into my eyes, her tone both firm and comforting, her hands gripped my shirt tightly.

"I," I struggled to say the words, every person I had said these words to had died, but I wanted to say them, and I meant them, "love you too."

I really meant those words, for I tended to fall in love quickly. With Kirrin, it only took me a few weeks to a month, and something about Soea reminded me of Kirrin, so much so that it was faster in her case, having only been a week and a few days.

But, I could never confess to the girl first, she had to say it before I could admit my feelings.

My voice was so quiet that I thought that it would be difficult for Soea to hear me, "please, don't be like the others that I have loved, those who died."

I felt a dampness on my cheeks, but found myself laugh at my own words, "I will protect you to the best of my abilities."

As I spoke, I had been stroking Soea's soft hair.

Ahh, it was strangely relaxing, calming me.

Soea twitched, tears leaked from her eyes, "My lord loves me?"

She whispered quietly, staring at me with an imploring look in her large eyes.

"Yes, I do."

Soea smiled so widely that I felt the irrational worry that she would hurt herself.

Then came an awkward silence, we just stared into each other's eyes.

However, the strange atmosphere was broken as I heard a female voice whisper in my ear, "Go to the capital, if you wish to find that which will give you the chance at victory over Arre."

It seemed to be a repetition of what the strange girl in my mind said, the strange girl who hadn't actually ever been there in the past.

Soea looked surprised when I twitched.

Hearing voices in my head was both a surprise and not a good sign, I would have ignored it if not for two reasons, the first of which was that I recognized both the way the girl looked and her voice.

The second was that Arre wouldn't lower himself to the level of disguising himself, or sending a message into my head.

With a blurred out face and her highly identifiable voice, and the way that she dressed in clothing that was from Earth. Only Arre and one other deity I knew had ever shown signs of knowing Earth, let alone been there before.

The girl was the goddess that visited with Master once, I could never forget the voice I heard, but couldn't understand her words at the time, and her face was blurred like that as well. She had also confused Master, for she wore clothing from Earth, which I could identify of course, but Master couldn't.

I do not know what she was the goddess of, and I don't know how she knew Master, or knew of Earth, and why she appeared in my memories.

Even if it wasn't her, and was someone else using her form, it would require a demigod or Shureen of the Mind to break through my psychic shield. So whoever it was, if I could team up with them, it would increase my chances of beating Arre.

So, I decided to follow the instructions, I doubted that it was a trap.

If the girl was telling the truth, I couldn't miss this chance.

"Soea, I have to go somewhere; I leave the castle to you to look after until I return. Though your life takes precedence, don't try to fight if it looks bad. I would gladly sacrifice this place for your safety, keep this in mind. Protect your life."

I spoke quietly to her as I raised myself, gently disentangling her from around me, slightly reluctant when her warmth began to disappear.

She nodded as she looked into my eyes, she seemed to be able to see that this was important, she didn't object.

"As my Lord wishes." She whispered and reached up, her hand gently caressed, and then grabbed, the back of my neck, pulling my face down towards her.

Our lips touch, overlapping with a surge of warmth, and ever familiar electric shock. Soea's soft lips parted, allowing my tongue to enter her mouth, and she began to suck it. She knew that I liked this, and she seemed to like it as well.

Our kiss lasted a few minutes before I slowly pulled back.

Looking into her beautiful face, I saw her skin was softly glowing, her breathing disordered. Her eyes were slightly glassy, and she kept her lips slightly parted as she stared back at me.

"Be safe, my Lord." She whispered softly, her hands reluctant to part from me as I gently pulled away, getting ready to leave the room.

Taking one last look back, I quickly left the throne room and walked into the courtyard, it was time to see if this girl was telling the truth.

Sighing, I quickly took one last look around, double checking the Ward runes which layered the walls. The defenses seemed to be in working order, Soea should be perfectly safe as long as no one at the strength of the glowing man appears.

With that thought in mind, I flapped and rapidly shot into the air.

Spiraling upwards, I felt the cool air rustling my feathers, brushing my horns.

My hair fluttered in the breeze, for a while, until I got too annoyed by it, and manifested a hairband to tie it back into a ponytail. Manifesting simple items out of Mana was very simple, and even compared to my clothing, it was almost nothing.

Since it was difficult to fly and tie my hair back at the same time, I stopped and used a simple levitation Rune, floating in place as I fixed my hair.

 

I must say one good thing about Arre, when he makes a body for Heroes, he makes them look good, and combined with my demi-demonic Transformation, I thought I looked good.

My hair was rather stereotypical for a fantasy world, having the right half a deep onyx black, and the left half pure snow white, the total length was down to my waist.

Finishing my rather narcissistic primping, I continued my flight to the Human capital.