Had It All

4 - New Found Power

We arrived back at the village to see the aftermath of the fire. The villagers were busy putting out the remaining embers and collecting the rubble from the attack.

The villagers rushed over to me, asking what had happened, seeing the heroes behind me.

They were skeptical. The heroes had attacked our village and caused terror for years; it wouldn't be easy to put all of that behind us.

Having to explain the situation to the villagers, I told them that I had managed to overpower the heroes; but as I was about to land the finishing blows, we made a deal. A deal that if I let them live, they would serve us and help the village recover. I can't make my powers too known yet, especially since I wouldn't be able to have a good explanation for it. 

I looked around me and saw the corpses of the bears that I murdered earlier.

I should probably be able to use transform on them as well, as the window told me it works on any creature I murdered, and the bears fit both of those descriptions.

I tiptoed over to the corpses while everyone was preoccupied and used the transform spell on the bears.

"Conversion successful. Would you like to transfer the puppet's life energy to your core? Yes / No"

"This will convert their power and abilities to your own but will make the puppet significantly weaker and will lose all of its memories."

As the village is right now, it would probably get ambushed by a pack of monsters if we weren't careful, so we'd probably need some sort of defense force to protect the village from outsiders.

But at the same time, I want to test out this extraction power, since there are several bears, I could try turning all of them except one into my puppets, and extracting the energy of the other one...

"Transform."

"Conversion successful. Would you like to transfer the puppet's life energy to your core? Yes / No"

"No."

The bears regenerated their bodies in a matter of seconds, and as soon as they did, they bowed down in front of me.

"Please state your orders, sir."

Said a sudden voice in my head.

Noticing my confusion, the most formidable bear of the pack said,

"This is telepathy, sir. Since I cannot speak your language, this is the only way for us to converse."

"Are you the leader of this pack?"

I asked the bear.

"Yes sir, you're correct. I am the leader of this pack."

"Alright. It would probably be great to give you a name so... you're called Zerax from now."

"I am deeply touched, I cannot express my gratefulness, master."

"Zerax, I want you to lead your pack and protect this village. If something bad were to happen, alert me immediately."

"As you wish sir."

The pack dispersed, leaving me with one last thing to do here.

I walk over to the remaining bear's body, and state,

"Transform."

"Conversion successful. Would you like to transfer the puppet's life energy to your core? Yes / No"

"Yes."

The moment I answered, a stone seemed to leave the bear's body and entered my hands.

This stone is exactly like the one Kazai gave me, do I just crush it like last time?

I crushed the stone.

I felt stronger, but it wasn't a big improvement. Maybe transferring the leader's energy would've made me stronger, but the pack probably wouldn't function without its leader.

I lifted my head, to see that the text in the window had changed.

"New ability 'War Cry' learned. Would you like to be provided with more information about this ability? Yes / No"

"Yes."

"War Cry: Upon activating this spell the magic power of your allies is greatly increased. Cost: Drains magic over time."

This spell is amazing, especially for teams containing many forces, but would I have gotten the abilities of the others if I did this instead? Would it have been even worth it?

Then, the text in the window changed again.

"Would you like to turn the creature(s) into puppet(s) after extracting its life energy? Yes / No."

Considering that I transferred most of its strength and abilities to myself, I don't think it'd be a worthy addition to Zerax's pack anymore...

"No."

After dealing with the bears, I headed back to the village.