Becoming a Monster

Chapter 675: Chapter 674: Traitor

When Noah finally lowered his head, several of the humans gasped at what they saw.

His eyes had grown so dark that his pupils were gone, as if two pieces of the abyss had taken their place. Yet those who continued staring quickly found that their appearance wasn’t what made them so unsettling.

The longer they looked, the stronger the feeling became that their souls were about to leave their bodies. Those from the church, who could sense their own souls, knew nothing was actually happening, but that did little to stop the feeling from growing until several of them were forced to look away.

Noah slowly raised one hand, putting those watching him on alert and readying them for the inevitable battle.

Perhaps it wouldve been better to initiate it themselves. But who was brave enough to strike first? Most of them were hoping that the beings summoned to fight this demon, the very beings that they were all so supposed to put their faith in, would be the ones to lead them into battle.

But the entities had yet to move, and the church had yet to order them to move. They were still waiting for Malachi’s decision.

—

Noah had nothing left to say. Bailey had given him the answer he needed, and Noah was ready to begin the battle they had all come here expecting.

But just before he conjured his attack, his attention shifted toward someone else.

Thalric felt his body tense when those black eyes turned toward his part of the army, and he believed for a moment that Noah had chosen him as his first target. Only after following his gaze more carefully did he realize the demon was looking at someone near him instead.

“You still have a choice to make. Decide now, or I’ll choose for you.”

Confusion spread through the humans as they tried to understand who Noah was speaking to or what choice he expected them to make. It was nearly the same thing he had said to Bailey not long ago, making some wonder if the demon was still speaking to her but simply didn’t want to look at her anymore.

A shadow suddenly moved through the heavy rain, separating from the people near Thalric quickly enough that he initially thought someone had decided to attack without waiting for the order.

“Varkesh?”

Thalric questioned what he was seeing, then recognized the tiger beastkin. Varkesh might have finally let his desire for revenge get the better of him. As the only one to return from his last encounter with Noah, standing this close to the person responsible had already been difficult enough.

After watching everyone hesitate for so long, Varkesh had perhaps reached the point where he couldn’t take it anymore. The battle was clearly about to begin, yet no one had moved even after everything Bailey said, making it easy for Thalric to believe that Varkesh had finally decided to stop waiting for someone else to act first.

If that was the case, then he had little reason to hold back now that Noah stood directly in front of him.

For those first few seconds, Thalric could still believe Varkesh was rushing toward Noah to take his revenge. But those thoughts felt ludicrous after using a few brain cells.

If Varkesh had run away after watching his friends die in front of him, there was no reason he would suddenly rush to his death now. Noah had only become more terrifying since then, and Varkesh knew that better than almost anyone standing there.

And then there were the words the demon had spoken right before Varkesh moved.

Thalric watched as the tiger beastkin rushed toward Noah, only to stop directly in front of him and drop to his knees in the mud.

Right there, in front of everyone he had marched here with, Varkesh pledged his allegiance to the demon.

Thalric’s pride nearly crumbled as everything finally connected, but almost immediately, his mind began racing in another direction.

It didn’t make sense.

He knew enough about Varkesh’s history to know how much the beastkin cared about restoring his people’s image. Siding with a demon would accomplish the exact opposite, especially after spending years building a life for himself in a human city.

And Varkesh had been living in Ashenveil long before Noah ever appeared.

That meant whatever had changed had to have happened during that one mission.

“What in the hell happened back then?”

Thalric couldn’t stop himself from thinking about his own decision to send an A-rank party into the forest. At the time, it had been a reasonable response based on what they knew, but after seeing everything that decision eventually led to, he was beginning to wonder just how badly he had screwed up.

Yet that wasn’t the only reason his pride had taken a hit.

Bailey had already blindsided him with the truth about why she came here. Now Varkesh, someone Thalric had defended when Malachi accused him of working with Noah, was kneeling in front of the demon for everyone to see.

Was he really this bad at judging people?

Noah only looked down at Varkesh for a moment longer, once again thinking about how easily people could betray one another when given enough reason.

Varkesh had insisted that he and his kind weren’t monsters when Noah first gave him this choice, and perhaps he had been right. After everything that happened, the beastkin still chose to abandon the people he came here with, because doing so gave him a better chance of protecting what mattered to him.

In Noah’s eyes, that made Varkesh more human than he seemed to realize, and if he survived the battle, Noah intended to make sure that eventually changed.

Once Varkesh had made his choice, Noah sent him toward the weaker forces that would remain farther from the main fighting. Varkesh went without arguing, though his attention quickly shifted as his eyes began rotating in their sockets, searching the creatures around him for any sign of Gwen.

The longer he searched without finding her, the more Varkesh wanted to ask someone where she was. Yet, surrounded by creatures he barely knew, he couldn’t bring himself to approach any of them when he had no idea how they viewed someone who had arrived only moments ago with their enemies.

“You are searching for the one who isn’t with us.”

Varkesh’s head snapped toward the nearby voice as his eyes centered on Dobby, who remained beside Dog and Alexandria. His heart nearly dropped when he quickly assumed the worst.

“The one you seek is inside, guarding the home’s tree,” Dobby continued in his usual slow and calm voice. “Let her remain there. Our concern should be with those who seek to enter.”

Under almost any other circumstances, Varkesh would’ve had far more questions about how a blind cat knew who he was searching for when he hadn’t said a word. Right now, hearing that Gwen was not only alive but inside where it was safe brought him enough relief that he barely noticed how quickly his anxiety began to fade.

Even the doubts that had been eating at him since he made his choice seemed harder to hold onto the longer he stood near the strange cat. Varkesh didn’t understand why, nor did he spend much time questioning it when the constant tension that had followed him here was finally giving him room to think clearly.

For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Dobby also felt like the most approachable of Noah’s creatures. Varkesh found himself remaining near him, Dog, and Alexandria rather than searching for somewhere else to stand, deciding there was no reason to risk entering the fortress and angering Noah when he already knew Gwen was safe inside.

Now he only needed to survive long enough to see her again.

“You bastard! Did that beast betray us?”

The shout came from somewhere among the humans, breaking through the rain before several others quickly followed.

Whatever confusion Varkesh’s actions had initially caused disappeared the moment he knelt before Noah, and Thalric felt many of those angry gazes turn toward him as people began demanding to know what had just happened.

Thalric ignored them. He had enough questions of his own, and after everything he had just realized about how little he understood what happened during Varkesh’s last trip into the forest, there was only one person he wanted answers from.

“Varkesh!”

His voice boomed across the forest as he stared toward the tiger beastkin.

“I trusted you; we trusted you! Just tell me, why did you do it?” Thalric shouted, struggling to understand what could’ve happened during that mission to lead to what he was seeing now. “He killed your friends, so why would you side with him after all of that? Why would yo-“

“Enough talking.”

Noah cut him off before he could finish.

Words alone weren’t enough to pull everyone back to what was happening. Noah’s hand, still raised, suddenly began to build a massive sphere of mana. And that was only the start.

Ever since Noah had absorbed Ethaniel’s soul, his aptitude for controlling mana has risen to levels beyond what mages could dream of.

Mana was visually absorbed into the sphere, making it shoot up to twice its size within seconds.

The moment Noah summoned this sphere, God’s warriors finally acted without waiting for Malachi’s orders. Instead, they were acting on the voice that had begun to lose their trust in who they thought was one of their most faithful servants.