The Calling of Wrath - Chapter 15 - Beast

                                                                   Cassandra
                                                    Year 819 | Month 1 | Day 5

A thick wave of black and red energy suddenly bursts out of my body, filling the cave and even spilling straight through the barrier somehow without damaging it, knocking the reavers away in the process. All while an excruciating pain courses through my entire body.

Then I hear a crack. And my own scream.

Everything after that becomes a bit of a blur of pain, extremely uncomfortable and probably unnatural movements of my joints and body itself, and more pain. Then everything suddenly snaps into place and the black and red energy suddenly flies straight back into me as if rebounding.

When my vision clears up again, I find myself with a very different viewpoint than before realizing that I’m on all four legs.

I turn my head, only to find that it and my body as a whole are completely different than before. But at the same time, it still feels completely natural somehow.

Although I guess it would be odd if my signature skill was made useless because I had to adjust to my new form every time I used it.

Anyways, I raise my head again before almost instinctively letting out a loud roar that sounds eerily like a lion and rushing towards the barrier.

By the time I leap out of the barrier and land with a splash in the shallow creek outside, causing the water to spray the black and red fur covering my paws, the reavers all begin to move back towards me, including the ones that were attacking the direwolf pack.

Right as I’m about to leap at them to attack, I notice a faint System note in the corner of my vision.

I blink slightly at the note before a grin – or whatever passes as a grin for what I’m assuming is a lioness – stretches across my lips and I immediately charge forwards towards the closest reaver before first swinging my paw at it. Surprisingly, my paw actually slows down as it passes through, causing a faint amount of red and black energy to begin visibly rampaging across its body, making it appear like normal.

Oh? So, does rampant Wrath energy knock them out of being ethereal?

If that’s the case…

I reach forwards to step on the reaver with my paw, crushing its body beneath it before letting out a roar and looking at the next closest reaver.

I think ten minutes should be enough to deal with all of these reavers. And hopefully it’ll make the other reavers too afraid to get near here in the future.

Because I can only do this at most once a week. Which isn’t even considering that I need to use the next two week’s activation of the skill for the other two effects in order to complete the mission.

Damn it! I was too busy earlier to think about it, but it also means that I’ll be stuck here waiting for two entire weeks!

I let out an angry roar before charging through the reavers to vent out my anger.

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After several minutes of tearing through the reavers, the few surviving ones manage to escape, leaving me heaving in exhaustion while covered in their thick, gray and green blood, along with some of my own as well.

Deciding not to waste any time, I quickly sprint to the river before jumping in to clean myself off with only a faint wince as the water touches the small wounds I received in the battle. Then I climb out of the water and turn around to look at my reflection while the skill is still active.

What I end up seeing looking back at me is certainly something.

I have pure glowing red eyes without even a hint of the black that I usually have.

But aside from that, I just look like a simple lioness. With black and red fur. Who is about three meters in length. And has three-inch-long red and black claws.

Okay, maybe not a simple looking lioness after all.

Putting my appearance aside for the moment, I turn around and begin walking back to the cave whilst scrunching my nose in displeasure at the smell of all of the reaver corpses.

I hope they at least serve to direct other reavers away from here.

Once I enter through the barrier into my cave, I look around for my clothes, only to not find them at all.

Just where did they go? Did they vanish? Did a reaver take them for some reason?

Wait, no, they should have been inside of the barrier, and the barrier is still standing strong at the entrance. So a reaver couldn’t have gotten in.

But then where-

My thoughts are cut off as a very familiar excruciating pain flows through my body while it tries to shift back to my normal form.

I let out a scream that at first comes out as a roar before slowly transforming into a familiar human scream while I feel myself collapsing to the floor.

“That… hurt…” I mutter as my vision begins to go black. But right before I lose consciousness completely, I notice that my clothes are back on.

At least I won’t end up naked every time I use this…

My thoughts trail off as everything goes black.

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                                                              Five Years Ago

The sweet syrupy sap of the World Tree flows down my throat with ease, causing a comfortable warmth to spread throughout my entire body.

A few seconds pass before the sacred beast in front of me says, “That’s enough, Cass.”

I immediately stop drinking it and lower the cup from my lips, only to hand it back to the man with tiger ears, sharp fangs sticking out of his mouth, and equally sharp claws on his hands as he takes the cup back from me.

“Would you stop calling me Cass already?” I ask the old man, slightly irritated with his blatant act of ignoring my wishes, “I already told you that only father and my brothers can call me that!”

The old man who doesn’t look a day older than his prime simply waves it off while bringing the cup back to the root and pouring the rest of the sap that I couldn’t finish back into the small pool next to it as he says, “Yes, yes, you’ve mentioned that before.”

He then turns back to me with a very gentle and wise look on his face that doesn’t match his appearance very well at all, “But I’ve known you since you were born, so don’t you think I’ve earned the right to call you that, hmm?”

I just groan again before turning away from the old man and walking through the grass-covered ground within the cavern towards the door.

Right as I reach the door, however, I glance back at the old man – who is currently smiling at me – before shouting, “Thank you for the assistance, senior Arnbjorn.”

Then I quickly hurry through the door to the sound of the old man’s chuckling.

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Table of Contents

For those of you who can't read the image:

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Due to your use of the skill The Calling of Wrath’s first effect, the following changes have been made to your status:

All stats while transformed will be doubled.

All attacks will disturb the Wrath energy within whatever is hit, causing it to run rampant in their body, sending very minimal amounts of true damage to various parts of them.

The Temporary Skill ‘Call of Wrath’ has been given to you to use once. This skill will release all of the Wrath built up within your body at once in a single breath attack. However, the longer you have been in beast form, the weaker the breath attack will be.

These changes will last either till ten minutes has passed, or you use the Call of Wrath skill.

Note: Whether you use the skill or not, it will vanish once you revert back.

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