Chapter 3

Living inside the Chimera's stomach felt like a short eternity. His flesh was slowly melted away yet his right eye always remained intact. He was aware that days were passing but never felt it. It was only when the Chimera's heart readied for a battle, the constant war drums of the beast's heart that his right eye glowed crimson and he awoke.

But the battles never lasted long. The chimera finished off its prey too quickly for Doryu to think about anything. The beast was ferocious with the way it fought, yet was too disciplined to drag a fight on longer than it should. That was until one day, the Chimera encountered a greater monster than itself.

"Doryu are you awake?" The dragon in his mind bellowed.

"Yes, Dragon" he responded.

"Ready yourself" she bellowed.

"How do I do tha-?"

He heard a shout that rumbled the earth, one that filled heaven itself with fear. The chimera's heartbeat raced to life as Doryu felt the adrenaline in the beast soar. Even if he was just a lowly eyeball in the stomach of a giant beast, he could still feel the chimera moving across the land, as it narrowly dodged attack after attack, the sound of flesh to rock reverberated across the chimera even to the depths of its stomach where Doryu laid.

The heartbeats got quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker an-, and then stopped. As Doryu for the first time in months saw daylight. That was because the chimera had been ripped in half. Entrails spilled to the ground, blood rained down, as Doryu saw himself and the rest of the beasts' stomach descend from the sky and onto the bloodied ground below.

It all made sense now. A colossus had come into the forest. A diety short of a God. One that towered above the tallest trees and crushed cities and towns for sport. THe monster held the corpse of the chimera in his hands, observing it as if a flower. Before dropping it down on the ground, right next to Doryu, the eyeball.

<Blood of a monster has been spilt, do you wish to consume Y/N?">

"Do it" Whispered the voice inside his head. And for some reason he listened.

Not much happened in the first hour. But by the ninetieth minute blood had slowly started to gather around him and wrap across his eyeball. By the second hour veins started to form around the eye and by the fifth hour tissue had been constructed across it. When dusk has settled in he had formed a head and by the time dawn appeared, Doryu had a body once again.

Only it wasn't his old body. He no longer had the scars from bad memories of years past, he no longer had a crippled spine and bloodshot eyes. No, he had a body of a regular man one that stood tall amongst the world.

There were still puddles of blood from the Chimera left around him. But Doryu thought it was time to move.

That's when the Dragon in his head stopped him and said "Drink it, all of it."