Introspection

An eerie silence predated Verdant Oakwoods. The instinct of every monster, animal, or insect in the vicinity of the great meteor that fell from the heavens in the afternoon silenced all noises that they might have made. The silence was only finally broken in the dead of night, when the moon spread its light over the land.

Two red eyes flew open, and a pale man with black hair lying in the centre of a crater several times his height violently coughed out blood that splattered his chin and clothing. He turned his head to the side to spit out blood that had caught in his throat, then slowly swivelled his head to look at the moon.

Noah had lived.

Snakes were not resilient animals, and the amphiptere, the winged snake, had inherited this weakness. This was why Noah knew that he would not last long in the air, given how tired he had been before even assuming that form, only adding to this weakness. He realised that the Hero's inexperience and strength might mean he was unused to getting hurt, which could cause the Hero to turn desperate or, even better, become enraged, and begin to rapid fire without much thought.

He then had put on a dramatic show of dying. What snakes did possess was an extremely low metabolism. This meant that when they were not moving, they could lay there without needing any sort of nutrition for ages.

After a full hour of lying there in the crater to ensure that the Hero would not check on his body to ensure his death, he had managed to recover enough mana to change form. Any other monster that wasn't of the snake family would have required much more nutrition and sustenance to recover his mana.

Once the sun set, he transformed into a vampire, a being that received nourishment from the moon. Noah let out a sigh, letting the events of the day play through his head.

'What a conundrum. I want to say that I've succeeded due to having expelled the source of the overflow from these woods, but what is this sense of unfulfillment within me? What have I not done right?'

He shut his eyes, letting the moon nourish every cell in his being and hopefully cleanse his unease. To a vampire, the moon could temporarily function as a source of strength, but it was no replacement for blood or food. With the tired expression of a typical salaryman at work, he used nearby monsters as convenient food sources and brought himself up to full strength within an hour as he strolled back to the city of Odir in Haldor, the opposite direction that the Hero travelled in.

City Lord Cedric's request was complete, so he had no reason to put off some thinking, deciding not to use mimicry to get back quicker. He had a lot of it to do. Not that he was even sure what he needed to think about. It had been a long day.

Moonlight occasionally bathed Noah's figure in an ethereal light as he calmly strolled under the trees of the woods back to Odir. At this pace, he would take a full week to get back, but he really felt that he needed some thinking time and peace. It hadn't even been a full week since his traumatic loss to the Demon Lord. This was a good opportunity for him.

On the other side of the forest outside Eldoria, a towering man over seven feet tall mounted a bicorn and spurred it into motion. When the Hero rampaging in Verdant Oakwoods had spoken of his decision to stop, he had inwardly sighed in relief. The Hero was too strong, and no one wanted to inform him of the damage he was doing. They knew of his tendencies to hurt those that interacted with him.

When he heard about how the Hero had encountered and 'killed' Noah, however, his instincts whirred into motion. Did the man who survived against the Demon Lord really die such an insignificant death, against a rookie, at that? No matter how powerful, that was a tall task. His suspicions were raised when he heard about how the Hero did not check on Noah's body. 

He had heard about the events that occurred with the monarchs and the Heavenly King Spatialon that day. He knew that the monarchs wanted Noah gone. Though this man was not very loyal to all royals in Eldoria, the king himself was different. To him, the king was a being whose will must be absolutely obeyed.

And now he had the opportunity to do what his king willed. He would finish what the Hero started.

Noah, currently on his relaxed stroll, had no idea that the second-most powerful man in Eldoria was headed full steam ahead in his direction. All sorts of thoughts were running through his head at the moment, and he was coming to all sorts of realisations. About himself, his skills, his motivations, and his strength. It seemed that there was something very important at the core of it all that he had not grasped until now. At some point, he arrived at a cliff overlooking a large expanse of Verdant Oakwoods. Here, he sat down, closed his eyes, and marinated in the serene atmosphere, his mind still exploring his own secrets.

The man, on his bicorn, that was galloping at full speed towards the place where the Hero said he had his fight. The bicorn was a unicorn with two horns rather than one and was much more powerful and proficient in combat than the unicorn, though it did not possess its healing capabilities. On this beast of a creature, notoriously difficult to tame and therefore only practical for the rich, he was travelling at the same speed as a racecar.

Once he arrived at the barren circle of land where the Orc King had fallen, the man jumped off the bicorn, instructing it to stay in one spot. He then began to sprint, reaching almost half the speed of the bicorn, and arrived at the crater, where a large monster must have fallen from a great height.

At this moment, both parties had gotten close enough to detect each other. But one was too deep in thought and did not want to be interrupted. Thus, only the man acted on it. With a single powerful leap, he cleared the distance between the two, jumping the length of a full mountain.

A few moments after the impact of the man's landing just a few trees away from him, Noah slowly opened his eyes, and a jaded voice escaped his throat.

"I don't really feel like doing this right now, Delor. Another time, maybe? I'll try to clear my schedule within the next three to five business days."

"Disrespectful brat. I knew His Majesty could not have been mistaken. Today, I will kill you. How dare a failure like you stain His Majesty's pride? On that day, no less, when they were deciding the date of the continent, when all important figures were present. Die!"

Dashing forward with a furious roar, the Commander of the Eldoria Royal Guard thrust his spear towards Noah, who rapidly prepared to transform.