What a bunch of weirdos, they had done practically nothing to conceal themselves. No trail sweeping, divergent pathways, scent dispersal, or anything of the sort. It was almost like they wanted me to kill them all. From what I had ascertained the place they had returned to was just a base of operations, their true place of origins were probably hidden elsewhere. I had a feeling that if I attacked right now and sent them scattering, a few of them would run back to their own homes.

The only thing left to do was see if my hypothesis was indeed correct. I flew up until I reached an appreciable height then I began a hard dive straight into the ground while accelerating myself towards the ground. Of course, the meteor look wouldn’t be completed without flames. I spewed the cold flames out of my mouth and they spread rapidly through the air towards everything they could. Hopefully they wouldn’t reach Mary. I smashed into the ground in a cloud of dust, blood, poison, and fire.

I had to wait a moment for my body to reform into a proper functioning shape before running around and taking some nibbles from frozen statues. Now that I thought about it, who would stop me if I decided to set the entire forest ablaze? I had to send Mary away first if I wanted to do that but it was worth a try, plus, this realm was separated from the actual world so it wouldn’t be too bad.

***

He had feared this day would come, incidents of soul practitioners invading and attacking the outskirts of their realm were becoming far too common. It was now inevitable that full war would break out, even then it had been assured the moment their two worlds became connected.

“Your Highness! Someone has set fire to the great forest!”

“Have they been caught?”

“There was a bit of difficulty restraining him but he now rests in the main prison.”

“Any particular details I should be made aware of?”

“The flames he used were cold and he was able to regenerate quite rapidly. Aside from that he didn’t have any other abilities of interest. His strength is on the lower side and he barely matches up to our soldiers in training.”

“Bring him before me immediately.”

***

Fuck, these restraints are ridiculous. I could transform but they would just tear through my flesh and bones to continue restraining me. I guess I was just destined to be captured. Who knew that cold fire could actually be stopped, I should’ve guessed it earlier but all it took was spraying cold air on it to kill it.

What did you expect? There is no such thing as a fire that doesn’t burn fuel.

How was I supposed to know there are shifters with elemental abilities?

How do you think they managed to not get invaded by the guys on the other side?

Okay smartass, let’s focus on what we came here to do.

Let me know if you’re going to kill children or women ahead of time, I don’t particularly enjoy seeing such things.

So much for being a smart guy. What was a kid doing in prison anyways? From what I saw the other guys in here all looked like heinous criminals.

“Hey kiddo, how’d you end up in here?”

“...”

“You know, if I break out I’m not going to take you with me if you keep giving me silent treatment.”

“...”

“Hey guard, what did he do?”

“...”

“Come on man, just tell me. I promise not to kill you when I break out.”

“...”

From the side a random prisoner spoke.

“That boy tried to kill one of the royal court members.”

“Woah, that’s pretty impressive. Those asshats must be having fun fucking each other in the ass, I find it hard to believe that any nation with royalty can actually have a functioning government.”

“Do not slander the great ruler!”

“Oh, scary! I sure do hope that the lowly king of this pathetic nation doesn’t hear the words I’ve spoken. Who knows what he might do when he realizes that I speak the truth?”

“You dare!”

“I do, what are you going to do? Sit down like the slave you are and continue staring at the wall, I liked you better when you weren’t speaking.”

I silently giggled to myself as the guard fumbled with the keys and opened the gate to our cell. He rushed over to me and lifted his arm to smack me, in return I transformed into my beast form and ripped the top half of his body off with my jaws. I bit off the parts of my limbs that were restrained and waited for them to regenerate, the one on my neck posed some difficulty but I managed to rip off my own head and remove it.

“Hey kid, come here.”

I grabbed the keys from the guard and started pushing keys into keyholes until I heard something click and the shackles fell off the kid. I also unlocked the shackles for the random prisoner who had spoken and left him with the keys.

“So, you wanna come with me kid? I have a feeling you won’t be able to survive the persecution of the higher class.”

“...”

“Fine, I’ll just take you with me then.”

We were underground so I couldn’t transform into my full size but I was still big enough to grab a child with one hand.

“The rest of you guys are on your own, good luck!”

I tumbled through the hallways and splattered any guards I came across. I had a feeling I was getting closer to the outside but I couldn’t tell, worst case scenario I would just dig out. It was a good thing that I could retract my wings back into my body, having them out now would be a massive inconvenience. After crashing through a couple more hallways and going up a few stairs I finally stumbled upon a giant hall from which I could see sunlight shining through the giant doors that were wide open. There were also a bunch of soldiers led by a nobly dressed man.

Now that I had enough room I quickly shifted into my largest form and continued charging forwards. The downside about my ability to shift was that strength didn’t transfer to my original body and was directly correlated to the size of my form. It was kind of like the difference between a flaccid and erect penis. The man and his soldiers also transformed into giant beasts to fight against me. In my first encounter against them I was faced with shifters who possessed all kinds of elemental abilities. The ones with the greatest combat ability were always the ones with earth abilities.

The defense and offense of their bodies heavily outclassed those of other classes. Their bodies were coated with powerful metals that essentially formed an exoskeleton and the ability to lengthen their range of attack with metal proved to be quite a lethal ability. In terms of physical capability these boys outclassed every other group I had seen so far. This specific group consisted almost entirely of these earth shifters… I couldn’t wait to eat them. I dropped the kid behind me and shortly after was impaled by a swarm of spikes. I turned on my flames and they softened the metal enough to make them slip out of my body.

The first shifter I encountered was the man in noble clothing. He heavily outclassed me in terms of size and power but I had the power of fuckery on my side. As I ran towards him I sprayed a mixture of frost and toxic fog towards him. I could see that his body was visibly beginning to weaken from the poison. It was at an extremely slow rate but it was good enough. All I needed was one bite, if I could get one bite these guys were fucked. There was still one trick I hadn’t used yet as well. Another wave of spikes flew towards me but this time I pushed my entire body out of the way using air and flashed past the man and into his soldiers.

Causing damage to his gigantic frame would be nearly impossible but his soldiers weren’t as powerful as he was. They were still larger than me but a difference in strength was the difference between life and death- and in this case it was a major difference. Their bodies succumbed to the poison rapidly and they were left almost defenseless. I latched onto the nearest one and poured electricity into his body, the bad part about metal was that in most cases it was extremely conductive. I heated up my teeth and my victim with some fire and bit into them. My teeth slowly sank through his metal exterior and reaching flesh took nearly an eternity but I got there.

I began furiously shaking my head to rip the piece of flesh out and finally got it after nearly pulling my teeth out. I forced the metallic meat down my throat and waited for my body to change. This time was a little different from the other times, I could feel something crawling inside of my body and solidifying. Like there was another body part being added or something. The outside of my body was also being coated with a hard substance. It felt attached yet not really a part of me at the same time. Whatever, time to finish them off. The fire that constantly enveloped my body now heated up my claws.

Hiss!

I sliced through the shifter I was latched onto with my heated claws and pounced onto the next nearest one.

Hiss!

The sound of sizzling flesh whispered out from its body. These claws were amazing! More spikes flew into my body but the majority of them barely penetrated, the ones that did pierce through came directly from the noble shifter. The insides of my body also met the spikes with great resistance as well, I guess it wasn’t only the outer layer that had been improved. The noble shifter had already turned around and was bounding towards me.

Killing him would take a lot of effort and trickery… fuck it, I’ll just skidaddle and come back to deal with him later. I pushed myself back to the kid and grabbed him before pulling out my wings and taking off. While flying through the air I sprayed flames onto the surrounding buildings. I had kind of come to an understanding of how exactly my powers worked. The range and power of my abilities increased as my natural strength increased, they also increased accordingly to the amplification of strength from my shifter form.

As of my strength at the moment I estimated that my flames were able to travel nearly one hundred meters. My shifter form was eleven times stronger than my human form, which was about nine times stronger than the average human. Overall I possessed the strength of ninety-nine humans. Based on my estimations the range of my flames had a base of one meter, and that was amplified according to my strength. If only I still had my soul, I was curious to see how it would affect my strength.

I don’t think our soul is gone, it’s more likely that it has been sealed away.

Well, can you find it?

How do you expect me to do that?

I mean, you're in my head and stuff.

You have a poor understanding of what I am.

I do indeed. Just see what you can do, I’ll try to fix it on the outside.

…

Droves of shifters were now flying towards me from all directions. There was something I had been wanting to try. If I could mix cold and fire to get cold fire what would happen if I mixed poison and fire? The fire I had been spraying was exactly that. It had turned green and the smoke it released also had a green hue. I wasn’t sure if it was consuming poisons or something but I was sure that the smoke was poisonous. What about all three? What would happen if I used all three at the same time? I added frost breath into the mix and the strangest thing happened.

The flames began to travel through the air and freeze everything just as cold flames did, but the things that were frozen began to release a bluish green smog that slowly filled up the surroundings and air. Under normal circumstances I would have stayed to eat but I really did not want to get actually captured. I hadn’t expected a simple nobleman to possess such a high level of strength. If they had any elite fighters then I would be screwed. I also had to get the kid out of the danger zone. Had he been any other kid I would’ve just left him in the prison but he was special.

In every story where there were nobles and royalty there was a person who had been wronged in some way. They were usually the access point to some well hidden plot to overthrow the nobles. If I could get this kid to speak I could toss this place into chaos. Plus I really wanted to live out the fantasy of torturing corrupt nobles. Now that we were being encircled by soldiers I had to put on some evasive maneuvers. I dived down to ground level and returned to the smallest shifter form I could. Even though I wasn’t significantly larger than usual there was still a decent amount of amplification on my abilities.

It was very tempting to crash through walls and buildings but I resisted the urge and continued making sharp turns. I had decided to place the kid on my back and encased him in a husk of metal to keep him safe just in case there were any mishaps, it would be a shame to lose that which was already in my hands. I surrounded myself in a thin layer of flames to burn any scents I might have left behind and further disturbed my trail by knocking things over and redirecting smells with air. I even closed some passages up using my newly gained earth manipulation abilities.

The guys flying up above couldn’t see me through the cover of the tightly packed buildings and smoke. Then there were the guys on the ground who were all rushing to kill off the rapidly spreading flames and fumes. I had caused enough chaos to make slipping through the cracks easy to do. While running through alleyways and tight passages I nearly crashed into a group of robbers. From what I could gather they were holding up a cloaked figure. Now, this was most definitely some strange plot convenience.

“Who are you?”

“You’d better not try anything stupid.”

Once they saw me they all transformed into their beast forms and prepared to attack. Cloaked figures always had a story so there was only one option in this situation.

“Run alo-”

Crunch!

I increased my size a little and crushed his skull in my jaws. The others prepared to attack but I quickly impaled all of them with metal spikes and relocated their heads into my mouth.

“Where are you headed? Let us come with you. I’ve got no money but I can guarantee your safety.”

“...”

“I’ll just follow you anyways.”

I returned to my human form with the kid still on my back and waited for the man to begin moving. I could still use the new earth abilities but they were heavily weakened in my human form just like all my other abilities. Well they weren’t really weakened, they just weren’t at full potential. The mystery man silently stared at me for a short period and decided to turn around and start walking when I began to start making poses.

“Did my attractiveness scare you?”

“...”

***

She wasn’t sure if the training truly was working or if her body had just adapted to the intensity but her strength and speed had risen significantly. Compared to no improvement at all this was great news. The first to join factions were bored kids with nothing better to do and people simply looking for a home to call their own. After them came the inquisitive few who wanted to see if superpowers really did exist. Then came the flood of people who stampeded and stomped one another for the opportunity to join a faction. The powers were real, and it wouldn’t take long before a new era began.

She had introduced her mother and sister to this new method of training with minor success. Hopefully whatever strength they were able to gain would be able to protect them until she became powerful enough to guarantee their safety. What did that woman mean by telling her that her role in this world was greater than she believed? She had never really believed in these kinds of superstitions but it didn’t matter what she believed. The world had changed and it wouldn’t wait for her to accept it.

***

Amazing! Even under the oppression of numerous seals and curses his soul was still growing stronger! She could now understand why there was such a great fear of world destroyers, their existences completely defied the rules of reality. If she could harness these capabilities and discern their principles she could change the very rules of the world itself! Was this the key her mother spoke of? She just had to find a way to get a piece of his soul.

***

What kind of freak can just spend all day completely decimating someone's body? She hasn’t even attempted conversation once, does she not get bored?

Who knows, these people could have lived for an eternity already. Would you still feel the need to engage in small talk if you already knew everything there was to know?

You are overestimating her.

It never hurts to overestimate the capabilities of your opponents.

Pfft, an opponent on the bed maybe. The reason we aren’t in chains and being dissected is because she needs something from us and if I had to guess it’s probably something you can’t take forcefully.

What could she possibly need from us?

That’s a great question, hopefully it’s not anal.

…

[Writers Notes - If you think about it, there's millions of stories happening each with their own main character right now. Aside from that, tell me about a time when you read a fantasy book and the kingdom wasn’t corrupt. Never in the history of ever has that ever happened, we don’t even need to look at stories to figure that out. A single glance at our history is enough to prove that humans are corrupt.

Oh yeah, remember, always run away from a fight you can’t win. Dying helps no one. In fact, run away from every fight if you are going to get in trouble for it, mysterious accidents can always be arranged after the fact.]