The beam of light hit the house, making yet another hole in the building.
"Okay! I think we're done testing for today; we caused more than enough trouble already." Ilay said out loud as he stepped away from me.
"Noo, come on, I was curious to see what the other transformations were capable of doing!" Leo complained with his notebook already in hand.
Where did you… Ah, right, you've got that teleportation ability now.
"Can you tell us what the other forms can do?" Ilay asked.
Both of them stood around me waiting for my next move, so I shot out another beam towards the sky.
"This form can shoot these beams; they're not really dangerous but can make plants grow out of your injuries. The other ability is to nullify any artifact's power that comes in contact with my blood." I explained the switched form.
The many wings disappeared, and new wings emerged; large scales emerged throughout my whole body. My body felt so heavy and strained I immediately fell on my knees; it was as if all my strength had suddenly left my body.
Whatever that power was, it was still vividly fighting back against me.
"You…" I tried to get up, but the more I tried, the heavier my body became.
This little shit… How dare he…
"Whoa, are you okay?" Leo asked me as he tried to wipe away the sweat appearing on my face with the sleeve of his shirt.
I, on the other hand, was fighting desperately to get up. At first I managed to raise one knee from the ground, but when I tried to lean on it, my feet sunk to the ground, breaking the concrete road that led to the entrance.
I leaned backwards to be able to make my heel touch the ground, then I mustered up all of my strength to push myself back up, screaming from the pain and effort it was taking me.
It's useless fighting back! Your power is now mine! Give it up. I have unlimited time to tame you. My entire family is made up of the best possible explorers that have ever existed. You're nothing compared to what they have and what I'll also receive in the future!
He had to be somewhere, so I closed my eyes and focused on the flow of demonic energy and quickly spotted a clump of energy at the center of my chest, so I rapidly used my hands to rip away the scales covering the chest and ripped out the core responsible for all of my problems, which was lodged into my chest.
A giant crystal with a yellowish color that was see-through, I immediately crushed it with my hands, and the moment I did, I was finally able to take a breather.
"What have you done, you crazy bastard!" Ilay shouted at me, punching the back of my head.
I was so focused on taming the demon that I had completely forgotten about them.
Leo was on his knees, crying at my feet, while slowly gathering the broken shards of the crystal. Ilay, on the other hand, was seemingly enraged.
"Don't worry, it's all fine, see the hole… Wait, what?"
Blood was leaking out of the hole in which that demonic core was stuck.
Whatever, I can't do anything to fix it. I might as well keep testing out my powers.
I concentrated the energy into the scales I had removed and tossed away earlier, made them melt away and turn into a weapon, the first weapon that came into my mind, a large spiked ball attached to a long chain.
Creating the weapon cost a significant amount of energy, to the point it forced me to revert back to my human form. In return, the weapon had become a demonic artifact permanently; its abilities were simple: the more the ball is swung, the lighter and faster it gets.
My legs were trembling and my body was sweating profusely when the transformation ended, but I paid no mind to it. I tried spinning the chain, but my arms were too tired, so I handed the weapon to Leo before passing away.
"Are you finally awake? What exactly were you thinking? You could've simply told us out loud! There was no need for a live demonstration of your powers!" Ilay nagged at me the moment I opened my eyes.
His voice echoed multiple times in my ringing ears.
"AH! Fuck! Shut your fucking mouth! You're too loud this early in the…" I was about to say morning but then realized it was the middle of the night.
I had a bunch of blood bags slowly supplying blood to my body. A machine standing next to me was monitoring the status of my blood vessels, heartbeat, bones, and brain. The white room I was resting in most likely belongs to a restaurant.
"How could you have been crazy enough to rip your own heart out and turn it into a demonic weapon? What the hell were you thinking?" Ilay shouted once more.
Ohh, give me a break. I just recovered. Is that how you treat a… Wait, what? No, I didn't take out my heart; it was a crystal… I swear to God it was just normal.
When I tried to remember, the sharp pain in my head only got stronger; glimpses of those memories rushed in. The demon had taken hold of my heart and wanted to use it as a hostage to take over my body. Everyone was doing their best, and I…
I ripped my own heart out of my chest, smiling in the face of death as I crushed it with my own hands just to give a middle finger to that dragonic demon; only then did he finally start obeying my orders.
I couldn't help but laugh. I almost died because I wanted to show off something I thought of as a barely passable ability but wanted to brag about, saying it was mid at best.
Just how stupid am I?
One look around showed me that my family this time wasn't even present in the room to wait for me to get back up after almost risking my life.
Family above all else… Father, did you really forget about such a precious motto? Why can Uncle and his family remember it at all times…? Yet you can't?
I could feel a sudden fit of pain in my chest, as if my heart was slowly being squeezed by this sense of… disappointment.
What were you expecting? For them to wait for you to wake up after passing out 2 times during the same time? Aren't you being a little greedy?
I ignored the voice that spoke behind me, swallowed my own saliva, and used my hands to wipe clean my eyes, but when I tried to get up, Ilay pushed me back to the bed.
"Stay there; you just had a pretty delicate surgery. Just rest for now." He whispered to me.
The reason was simple: Leo was sleeping on a chair beside an open window.
"So what now? How much longer am I supposed to stay here?" I protested as I put myself in a more comfortable position.
"We'll have to wait for the doctor to—" He wasn't looking me in the eyes; his eyes were wandering around the room. Judging by the tone of his voice, I could tell he knew and was simply not telling me the truth.
"Don't pull this shit on me; tell me." So I called him out for it.
"We can't be sure… what we did-"
And with that, I summoned my trusted weapon, Colorful Madness, pointed it at my head, and immediately fired a round. Ilay was faster than my reaction time and pulled my hand away from my head; however, he didn't expect the second gun I summoned under the bedsheet that shot directly at him.
When the wave of power hit me, I could immediately sense why it caused so many problems for other explorers. As soon as it was hit by that strange power, the demon residing in my left pinky finger began to act out, not because it was trying to take control of me, but because whatever energy had just struck me was slowly shredding it to pieces.
Ilay took a second to take a breather; he was seemingly out of breath and collapsed shortly after.
"What have you done, you fool!" He tried to scream, but his voice was slowly fading away.
"I just healed myself. If the experiment provedg, it's that one shot should easily be able to fix any minor injuries. Now let's go home! I'm starting to feel hungry and have no plans to eat shitty hospital food." I said as I jumped out of the bed.
I felt a spice of demonic energy in the air the moment my feet touched the ground. The commotion had woken up Leo, just enough to put him on guard, not enough to let him know who he was truly attacking.
He had jumped from his seat and was now flying over the bed, blue flames in his hands, ready to shoot them towards me.
"Dragon!" I shouted as I brought forth my own power.
"If you think I can block that, you're out of your mind!" A voice warned me before I got absorbed in my body.