When Talos arrived in his clearing he dropped the rhino down and pulled the head out of the body. He held the head in his hands looking at it. He used his mana sense to look for the beast core and found it was not in the head.
'Great.'
He was going to melt the horns and skin down and refine his tail blade with them. For now he left them aside and walked to the giant rhino. He did the same to it and found that it's Beast Core was near it's stomach.
He would find it later, for now, he got to work tearing off the rhino's armor which was also it's skin. With how big it was, it would take a while normaly, but he used his fire to weaken it to make it easier to tear away.
After removing all of the outer armor and skin, he placed it in a large pile next to the tunnel down to his lair. With the corpse's armor removed, he flipped it onto it's belly and like always, gutted it.
When he did that, he found the Beast Core which was the size of human fist. Large for sure, he tossed it into his mouth and swallowed it. He had eaten several Beast Cores of diffrent elements, but like always, his increased affinity for some was used as resistence.
This time, he gained resistence to light magic and better control over it. He would need to practice with it while the metal affinity was a derivative of the earth affinity. This was absorbed by his body as he already had the earth affinity.
Once the full energy of the Beast Core was used up, he used his powerful flames to cook up his prey. In less than a minute, the huge corpse was steaming with a irrasistable smell. He dug into his prey and crunched through meat and bone like he always did.
Small insects and bird like creatures flew down into his clearing as they knew he never ate the intestenes. They picked off the meat from those which he allowed, but they knew better than to approach the main course.
That was for him only, so while they ate his leftovers, he enjoyed himself on powerful flesh. The nutrients and mana were drawn out by his stomach to better be used by his cells to fuel his growth like always. By the time he felt fully satiated, he had eaten his weight in meat with plently still left over.
When he was done eating, he dragged the rest into his lair to store it. Once his meal was safe, he returned to the surface to deal with the horns and armor. He walked over to the pile of metal.
'Time to get to work.'
He spun his blade around and looked at his sword. Over the course of two years, he constantly added more fire ore after purifying it as he grew. He did not have many more metals to use, but the fire ore was working fine for now, but this was a good addition.
He took a deep breath and began to heat up the pile of metal armor with his flames. His flames now had a slight purple tint to them and the way they burned was odd. They kinda moved like lightning did, but it was barely noticible.
After a minute the metal armor was bright white with heat. He reached down and bit down into the metal to lift it up. He placed it on his tail blade which began to heat up by itself. It's heart caused the metal he was adding to it to melt and with his earth affinity he dragged the molten metal across the edge of his tail.
Using his flames, he encorporated the metal into his blade over the course of an hour. Every day he did maintaence on his tail blade refining it as was his new species instict. No Glavenus would ever be satisfied with their tail blade as it could always be sharper and contain better metal.
Talos was no exception now, so when he was done and stopped heating his blade, it rapidly cooled as the new metal was added to it's. When he was done, he bit down on his blade and dragged his mouth across as he honed it to razor edge.
Once he was done, he channeled his Sword Will through his tail blade and found it worked great. His tail blade was a dark black, but now it had a light edge to it. He loved how it turned out so he ripped off the horns from the skull and added them as well to his sword.
They were formed from the same material so he just increased the material in his blade. He could feel his pride at his blade so he did his every day ritual. After a big meal, he decended into his lair to sleep to allow his body to grow.
When he was done, he surfaced and got to training his sword skills, his Sword Will along with his magic skills. He would spend countless hours every day in his forest home growing and training himself.
After he trained, he ate, slept, hunted, and repeated every day. Every day, he grew stronger, faster, more skilled, and even more feared by the monsters in his woods. As he grew larger, he began to expand his territory.
He traveled farther in search of prey which also increased the number of battles he found himself in. However, the larger he found himself as he aged, the more in need of prey he became. He had to eat so much to fuel his growth that he began to over hunt his territory.
Most of the creatures their migrated away in fear of him, so Talos made the decision to become nomadic. He began to travel huge distances in search of prey and battles to hone his skills with the blade.
As time went by, his power continued to rise as he began to tap into the dorment divine power of his soul. He did not know he was the son of a goddess, but he knew their was something odd about him.
In his travels, he sought to understand this, but it seemed to be something he was not strong enough to understand just yet. In the end, it settled into the back of his mind as he continued his journey and migration.
Slowly but surely, Talos fully adapted to the wild insticts of being a monster with the inteligence and will power of a Demigod. His reputation began to spread as a sort of myth among the factions slowly.
---
After traveling for thousands of miles in 4 short years, Talos had become a massive creature. From tail to head he spaned 26 meters and he was incredibly muscular. In his travels, he had seen forests, plains, swamps, caverns, and currently, he was in a vast tundra.
The snow and ice continued to pelt him with it's force while the chilling winds continued to hurl against his body. However, Talos was unnaeffected as his body continued to emit a warm heat to fend off the cold.
Far off into the distance was a titanic herd of mammoth like creatures that were covered in white fur. They had giant tusks made of ice and they were thousands. They knew he was there as he had taken a few of them as prey, but he was far from the only predator here.
The herd was being followed by many predators who used them as prey. Each breath he took caused a big mist as the heat of his breath clashed with the cold of the tundra.
"This is quite nice."
The clash of tempatures allowed his Adaptive Evolution to subtlely change him to better retain his heat in this environement. He did not really need it as he was warm blooded and could regulate his own body tempature.
He continued to travel for hours unbothered by the distance he walked. But, just as he was observing the herd, others were also watching it and him.
---
Several miles away, some people were using long distance spells to observe the herd. At the front was a large man who had a pair of black cat ears emerging from his head. His tail was kinda cat like, but it was hairless and looked more like a devil tail.
(Baleth from the Ars Goetia is a humanoid cat Demon with a trumpet. AKA, cat people.)
With him were 10 more people with one being a young girl.
"Lady Baleth, the Hel Mammoth herd is in sight. We should be able to capture a calf to be your familiar if we are careful."
Lady Baleth was the current heir of the Baleth clan and today was her 15th birthday. She had just received her Evil Pieces and she wanted her familiar to be a powerful one. Her main affinity was with her clan ability over Sound Waves.
However, her main elemental affinity was ice magic so she wanted a familiar to match that. Her clan had sent her out along with their guards to safely capture a Hel Mamammoth calf during thier migration.
They at first were focused on the mammoth's until young heir used her own magic to extend her sight. She observed the herd looking for a particular notworthy indivigual, but she by mistake passed Talos. She froze when she saw him as she had never seen a creature like him.
"Guard Captain Zalister, look over there, beyond the herd."
He was curious about what she saw until he saw Talos who by this time was looking at them. He had noticed the gaze and knowing he was being watched squinted his eyes and snorted as a warning.
'Keep well away.'
He continued on his march ignoring the people who saw him. The Guard of the noble Devil turned to her.
"He noticed our gaze. My lady, I think I know that creature. He has been spoted a few times during his migration. No one has fought with him as he keeps to himself, but he picked up a nick name as The Bladed Rex."
She could understand why as she observed him.
"Because he looks like a t-rex with a tail?"
The captain nodded.
"Exactly. I would not pick a fight with him as he is a fire monster and you are looking for a ice affinitied monster. I say we let him be."
Lady Baleth was not dumb and nodded.
"Agreed, but let's remember him. Lady Berith would be a great partner to him."
The Captain thought of it.
"I agree, but the danger of capturing him alive will propabily exceed the gain."
Lady Baleth squinted her eyes as they did not have the current means to contend with him.
"Let's still tell her. Her 16th birthday is comming up and imagine me giving her him as a gift. How she would thank me?"
Zalister did not think so.
"Just remember, your life is more important than a gift. Just observe him at a distance and in my opinion leave him be."
Lady Baleth was a noble felt it was such a waste.
"Let's contact my father and ask what he thinks."
Zalister sighed and called the Lord of Clan Baleth. The man quickly answered as sending his daughter out was a risk, but she could not be couped up. She needed experince, but he was still afriad.
When he appeared as a projection through the connection he was worried.
"Zalister, is my daughter safe?"
"I am fine dad."
The Lord sighed as he turned to his daughter dressed in thick winter attire.
"Valentina, you had me worried. What is it?"
"Father, we have encountered The Bladed Rex."
Lord Baleth thought about it as he had heard a few rumors about that creature.
"Ah, that wandering monster with the tail sword? I have heard stories of him as he passed the territory of a few clans. They left him be as he did not seem intrested in us. What about him?"
"I want to catch him. He is a few miles ahead of the Hel Mammoth herd and considering that Lady Berith's birthday is comming up I thought catching him for her would be a perfect gift."
Lord Bereth thought about it as a few clans were intrested in catching The Bladed Rex. He had not been seen in over 2 years so this might be a chance.
"Tell me Zalister, how much bigger is he since the old report."
When Zalister looked out at Talos, he took a estimate.
"Much bigger. 2 years ago, when he was first seen he was around 15 meters. In the past 2 years, he had gotten at least 10 meters bigger."
Lord Bereth made a desision.
"We will go ahead with the capture. I will be there shortly as I gather a force to catch him. Keep him in your eyes."
"Of course."
When the communication was broken, Zalister turned to Valentina.
"I hope this is worth it."
She just smiled.
"How bad can it be? He is just a monster."
---
Talos in the distance had not heard what they said, but noticing how they were focusing on him now his insticts began to warn him of danger. .
'These Devils are planning to catch me aren't they? Not happening.'
Under the watchful eyes of the Baleth Devils, he became vanished. He had adapted invisibility suprising them. Lady Baleth had her eyes focused on him and even then he was just gone.
"Since when could he do that?"
Zalister shook his head.
"I have a bad feeling about this. Let's just cancel the capture and leave him be."
Valentina shook her head.
"We will find him. There are several creatures who use invisibility and they still have been found. I order you all to look for him."
The 9 other guards aside from Zalister bowed and took off into the sky with their wings. Meanwhile, Talos noticed the flying devils and tensed his tail blade. He was neutral, but now that they were after him he would be their end.