How people (or wolves) change

'Dear diary

Today I met a God

And he was a right twit, I mean, gosh. He comes up to me acting all benevolent, saying I have the esteemed opportunity to become one of his mistresses. Do I look like I want to be a mistress? I'm not some easy whore he can smile at and get in his bed. He can go fuck himself for all I care. Eye of the moon, what sort of stupid name is that? You wouldn't catch me ever calling myself 'Ethenia of the ground' or something, that's just stupid, silly and downright embarrassing. Anyways, Father calls for me now, something a party in my honor for doing such a good job with the kingdom...'

The page ends there, and so does all of Kai's coherent thoughts. Looking down at the mess of jumbled up pages again, he pauses and lightly pinches himself, just in case.

How are these pages still intact after this long, then again they are barely holding on... But this is the Ethania that Failure was on about, this is her diary, it has to be. But didn't he describe her as kind and caring, but she seems rather crude in reality, and wasn't she meant to be a princess? Who on Eart- this forest would teach a princess that language?

The dirty and decrepit pages in the hollow are definitely Princess Ethania's diary, excitement starts to build up in Kai's abomination blood covered chest as he now has the opportunity to do one of his goals here.

Find out what the fuck everything is.

Looking back down at the makeshift diary, he reaches out to turn over to the next page and-

"What do you have there, Catalyst?"

Kai freezes, slowly turning his head and seeing the familiar sight of a humongous gray wolf. Aldred has the same black, gooey liquid all over his jaw, the black blood creating a fearsome sight when combined with the darkness shrouding the wolf, a primordial being come to claim the lives of any who wronged it in the past.

"Oh... uh... I just found some pages on the ground, there all blank and stuff though."

The wolf grunts in response, not caring anymore about what Kai has. Aldred has much more to worry about than old sheets of paper after all.

He doesn't care... paper must be common around the forest or something.

"Just dump them and go, we have something to deal with in the Dome."

Kai flinches and puts the dairy under his arm, but he still starts following the moon wolf as he trots, tail swinging back and forth.

"Uh... I'll keep them, I really like drawing... you know?" He lies, then pales, completely forgetting one crucial thing about the moon beast...

Aldred can sniff out lies.

The wolf's nose twitches and he turns his head, his eyes narrowing as he does. Speaking in a low tone he asks

"Why lie, Catalyst? What's really on those pages?"

Swallowing, Kai feels a bead of sweat form on his forehead as he tries to think of a way out. Anyone, anything, just something that can get him out of this situation.

"Just some diary entries, I was just curious what they said. They're not-"

He was about to say nothing special, but catches himself after realising that would be a lie. Biting the inside of his cheek in thought, he slowly continues stringing together his excuse.

"- really anything nice, the language is all rude and barbaric, the person who wrote it must've had a hidden personality."

The wolf studies Kai, peering into his eyes as if he's trying to discern his true thoughts. Aldred yellow eyes seem to try and suck him in, as if trying to devour his soul.

Terrifying

A few tense moments of silence later, the wolf let's out a grunt and says:

"Alright, Catalyst, if I were in my youth I would probably be interested, but diary's? How drag."

The monstrous beast then turns itself back around and starts marching, presumably in the direction of the dome.

Picking up the pace to keep up, Kai strides behind the wolf. Just as he is about to sigh in relief, he frowns and asks:

"Wait... you said we had to deal with something back in the dome, what is it?"

The wolf continues to walk, not bothering to turn its head. Letting out another gruff grunt, he answers.

"Think about it, Catalyst. How could Calestrom know we are coming when he deserted weeks ago? Go on, answer, how would he know?"

How am I meant to know? Maybe we just got unlucky, it's certainly happened to me a lot recently.

Genuinely not knowing the answer, Kai is about to speak up... but then he realises what Aldred is hinting at.

"Oh... one of the moon beasts in the dome must be a spy."

"Exactly, Catalyst, and they must be skilled if they can avoid my nose. Either that or we were just predictable, but I doubt the latter."

Doubt clouds Kai's mind. It's true that one of the moon beasts could've been a spy, but since him, Noelle and Sofia arrived, the beasts started searching around the forest looking for humans to recruit them, it's not impossible that the spy is human.

Could it be Noelle or Sofia? I highly doubt it but I can't know for sure... Is it bad that I can't know for sure? But doubting the people I've been with isn't a good thing, am I just a bad person? I mean... Sofia saved my life, Noelle did as well too when we fought the wolves. I don't know...

After an hour, the Poisoned status effect dissapeared and so did his lethargy. Still, he was only on 4 HP. He was left on 62/70 after fighting the abomination, and kept losing one a minute. He would've survived anyway but having only 2 HP would be scary, anything could kill him. He got to 5 HP the hour after he first lost damage, him taking damage in the fall when he plunged inside the abomination.

The only thing being, Kai still doesn't know how he took damage due to the minus will stat and lost mind. The effects of Goblin and Hobgoblin mode are not worth the risk, but so far it's worked out fine. After he got to 5 HP, another minute passed and he lost one more before the poison ran out.

Now that the hour has passed though, familiar sights come into his view. He can see the trenches that he first saw when he got here. The familiar sight meaning they were getting closer to the dome, Kai speaks up and asks;

"So how are you going to find the spy?"

"Pretend I'm unaware there's a spy, ask casual questions and make my decision then."

After hearing the smart answer from Aldred, Kai realises he has been underestimating the wolf's mind too much. He had been comparing him to Umbra the whole time, but if his familiar is 236 corpses old and is still childish, then how many corpses has Aldred lived through? He's millenia old after all.

Is that why he seems so tired though? Living such a long time... Is it a bonus or a curse?

Walking through the enchanting cave, Kai gazes at the murals again. The beautiful images still linger in his mind, whoever painted them had a real talent for the arts. Reaching the end, his gaze lingered on the image of the figure in the wooden armour, but he inevitably looked away and entered the Dome.

Looking up at the shining sun painted onto the top of the Dome, he still can't suppress a slight smile. The heat on his skin helps him relax and he's learned over the last few days how important a good sun is.

Even if its magical...

It provides heat, some vitamins, but it also helps people's minds, Take Noelle for example.

The woman who always wore a scowl on her pretty face now walks around the Dome with the sleeves of her purple bodysuit pulled up, showing off her tanned and muscular arms. All she does is challenge the beasts to fights and constantly practices her skills, even she can't suppress a smile. She doesn't even care if she wins or loses, she smiles as long as she gets something from the fight or from her training. The goal she is working for will be hard to attain, meaning the Arabian is happy with any progress made.

Wa'rak had been her main opponent the last two days, the ill-tempered wolf himself also seems to be enjoying their duels. The current record in their battles is 5-2 in favour of the moon wolf.

After their first duel, Wa'rak went all out and battered Noelle 4 times in a row, causing her to relent from future duels so she could focus on fighting some of the other beasts.

Two days of constant fighting and training later, Noelle, who was running on only four hours sleep in the last two days, challenged the moon wolf.

This duel, Noelle seemed to have either reached some moment of clarity in her training or was possibly using the skill she got at level 15, it kind of reminder him of how focused she was on her training back in the white room though, that same level of intense focus.

Kai still not knowing what that skill being. She seemed as if she could fall asleep at any moment, or just pass out from over-exhaustion, but she persisted.

Kai watched the fight from the sidelines when it happened and couldn't help but be in awe. Her scimitar shone with the reflective light of the artificial sun as she dodged and weaved through all of Wa'raks attacks, all the while she was landing shallow cuts on the wolfs pitch black body.

For someone like Kai, who never really liked seeing blood, he couldn't help but think the fight was-

Beautiful

Noelle's sweaty and claims hair sticking to her forehead, Wa'raks claws digging into the dirt to steady himself. The level of intensity and focus in their eyes is something Kai could never hope to have, but he has an inkling to why that might be.

Both of them have desires and goals... but what about me? Surely not dying is a good enough goal, but it's not good enough to compete with them.

After an extremely tense but exhilarating fight, Noelle managed to pin the wolf on the ground and place the blade right on his neck, earning her the win... but she promptly passed out not even a few moments later.

Wa'rak, who currently had the passed out Noelle on top of him, growled and stood up, leaving Noelle on his back as he walked over to Kai.

Softly, the wolf crouched down and let Kai take the sleeping Noelle off him. Once Noelle was off his back, Wa'rak turned to Kai and let out a small grunt, almost in approval, Kai knew the grunt wasn't directed at him though.

After watching Wa'rak walk away, Kai looked down at Noelle. She worse a peaceful expression on her face, but you could never know what she was truly thinking. Struggling to pick up the muscular woman, Kai roughly placed her onto Umbra's back and let his familiar carry Noelle back to her quaters, which was just a hammock in between two trees.

Sadly, once she woke up, she had a few hours of relaxation before Wa'rak challenged her this time, which he promptly won. Noelle's extreme concentration decreased after she passed out, but after her fifth defeat she went back to her training.

This was all this morning, but as Kai walks through the Dome, he can't help but look at where the fight occurred. The arena was empty due to Noelle and Wa'rak both being training respectively.

Aldred, followed by Kai, arrived at Failure's cabin. Walking through the door, Aldred, in his smaller size, walked over to the fire and laid down, bathing in the crackling flames of the fireplace.

Failure walked out from one of the closed doors, the charismatic man smiling as he noticed the duo.

"Ah, hello my friend, and Aldred. What brings you two to my humble abode?"

"We have a spy." Aldred growls, not bothering to open his eyes as he relaxes.

"Calestrom knew we were coming, he had a mini army of abominations with him, including five gibbous moon ones. I killed four of them but one must've gotten away."

Like a dog wanting food, Kai's ears twitch at the sound of something appetising, and it's appetising indeed.

"It didn't get away, I killed it."

Failure chuckles and waves his hand dismissively, taking his seat by the fire as he does. His pupils reflect the fire like a mirror would, the image clear inside his eyes.

"Kai, gibbous moon abominations aren't just something you can say you killed. You wouldn't even be able to kill a crescent moon one. They're horrible creatures, the dark side of any moon is not a normal place, most don't even know what roams there, only the higher ranked in society have any idea of it's dangers.

Kai frowns, not liking being made fun of.

"I've really did kill it though, it even dropped an item. Look at my bracers."

Kai holds out his arms, the dark red bracers around his forearm basking in the firelight, creating a fearsome image.

This time, it's Failure's turn to frown as he gets up, walking over to where Kai is sitting. He runs a finger over the thin blade on the edge of the top of the bracer and let's out a:

"Huh... you really did kill one."

Kai smiled proudly, a smug expression on his face as he watched Failure's confusion.

Worth it.