Mutagen

Day 131 - 11:29 PM - Glassgow Quarry, King of Prussia, Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States of America

The pressure that Mark felt made him jump back and take some distance away from Heron. And there, he watched the latter transform in quite an unsightly way.

Heron's body started to tear with bloody cracks appearing all over his skin. Blood even splattered around as his violent transformation started. Nevertheless, despite the brutal display and changes, Heron did not show any sign of pain on his face.

The whole body of Heron started to pulsate before it began to swell. As his muscles and flesh bloated, the cracks on his skin became deep and wide.

Mark watched as Heron's body grew larger and larger. He then started to see the patterns that appeared as the skin began to get loose. Before the torn skin got peeled off, it turned into metal.

The torn skin became layers upon laters of irregularly shaped scales that riddled Heron's swelling body.

It did not take long, and Heron's body stopped growing. Still, Mark was already staring up a four-meter fleshy monster. After all, after Heron's body grew, the torn skin was not enough to cover his whole body anymore and was left with his muscles exposed.

And while Heron's body grew, it also changed its shape. His upper body was now larger and disproportionate with his legs and head. The muscled arms he had could even reach the ground despite standing upright.

Heron's face also changed. He now had a long beak with insect mandibles at both sides. The eyes that looked human before were now three pairs of oval compound eyes arranged in a semi-circle across his forehead.

Another thing was there were a pair of absurdly large wings on his back that was enough to cover his body when folded. However, it did not have any feathers. In fact, even though Heron's name was a bird and he had a beak and wing, not a single feather could be found on his body.

Still, Mark knew that it was not the end of the transformation. After all, aside from what remained of Heron's skin that turned into metal, the other things he showed before was still missing.

And as Mark thought, Heron's body immediately exhibited further changes.

Gaps opened up between Heron's muscles, showing his silver-colored bones. From there, silver-colored slime flowed out, which started to cover his body. 

The slime flowed, covering from the tip of his hands to the sole of his foot. It began to form armor encasing his body. No, rather than armor, it was more appropriate to call it a metallic exoskeleton.

And finally, the feathers that were missing appeared in the form of that metallic slime. It created layers upon layers of metallic feathers in that metal-covered wings.

RUMBLE!

The ground shook as the four-meter silver monster took his first step.

There, the final touches of Heron's transformation ended with the growth of talons on his foot, claws on his hands, and a silver-colored fur around his neck and wrists.

Mark looked at the monster in front of him that he could not fathom what to call. It had the exoskeleton of an insect, sharp claws of a feline, talons of an eagle, scales of a lizard, mandibles of an ant, eyes of a fly, beak of a heron, wings of an eagle, mane of a lion, and the body proportion of a man that skipped leg day.

'Wait... the last one was true but inappropriate.'

Mark scratched his head as he observed Heron's current appearance.

It was not wrong to say that this guy was like a Chimera. That was the most appropriate description of a monster that appeared to be made of body parts of different creatures.

However, Mark was also reluctant to call Heron a Chimera because of a reason.

If one was to describe a Chimera, it looked like a monster with body parts from different creatures slapped together in one body. One look at it would give a person a sense of feeling. It was a kind of feeling that each of the body parts it had was not meant to be together. 

A sense that made a Chimera an aberrant to the norm. It was because the body parts of the Chimera retained the appearance of the animal it was supposed to come from.

Heron, however, was different.

Sure, he had body parts of different beings, but still, it was more appropriate to say that he had body parts that had the nature of other creatures rather than belonging to others. 

And more than that, each part that Heron had shown an association with the others. Everything might have a different appearance, but all of it was made of silver and had metallic properties.

ROOOOAAARRR!!!

Heron faced the sky and roared. That roar was loud enough to be heard for more than a kilometer radius. Even the surroundings shook because of that roar.

Mark retreated further. He was a bit careful about roars after his experience with the other Infected Kind this afternoon.

Fortunately, this roar could not disorient the people in the surroundings.

It was only a pure roar to show dominance and strength.

"Let's continue!"

Heron, whose voice had turned gruff after the transformation, shouted while looking down on Mark.

BAM!

The ground collapsed as Heron ran in all fours like a gorilla. It was quite expected since there was no way that his body would be able to run upright with that body proportion. Nevertheless, despite his large body, his speed did not reduce at all. In an instant, he ran a dozen meters. 

Mark could only look up, and a set of half-meter claws were already falling towards him from above.

With a red glow on his feet, Mark jumped away. At the start of the battle, Mark and Heron had almost the same speed. Now, it was still the same. However, with the latter's body that became larger, Mark needed to exert more effort and speed in dodging.

CRASH!

The claws missed and hit the ground, causing even greater destruction in the surroundings.

Not minding the large rocks flying around, Heron chased after Mark, waving his claws once more.

And as expected, Mark managed to dodge it, although he had to move wider distances.

However, the large portion of the quarry was already trashed. The large rocks flying around buried a lot of infected that were trapped at the lower levels of the quarry.

Heron continued to chase after Mark, making attacks, once after another. But then, Mark's movement's changed, and the way he dodged the attacks and the flying debris became more and more efficient. That was when Heron noticed that his opponent was releasing strange energy in the surroundings. And there, he saw that Mark's eyes were glowing with a purple light that waved around as he moved.

To Mark's sudden change, Heron made his attacks even faster. His claws could hardly be seen by a regular human's eyes anymore.

The sudden increase of speed caught Mark off guard. After all, it was quite hard to believe that a large creature like Heron would be able to increase his attack speed further.

But there, as Heron's attack was about to hit Mark, he turned into a black mist that moved between the gaps of the former's claws.

BAM!

The ground shook once more, and the rocks flew everywhere. That caused Heron to lose track of Mark, who suddenly turned into a surge of black mist. The dark surroundings made it even harder for Heron to see.

But then, Heron felt movements from beneath him.

There, Mark had already swung his swords towards Heron's body.

CLANG! CLANG!

Two loud metallic sounds echoed as the [Slicer] and [Divider] clashed with Heron's body.

"Tch. As expected."

Mark clicked his tongue as he vanished once more since Heron tried to crush him.

Evading the attacks of the giant Heron, Mark appeared several meters away. He stared at the part that he slashed and could see that his swords only left scratch marks on that thick silver armor.

Heron also paused a bit and looked at his belly.

"HAHAHAHA!" Heron laughed as he saw the scratches that Mark left on his body. "This is more like it!"

Well, this guy seemed to be pleased that Mark could still do some damage even if he already turned into this form. Nevertheless, it was far from enough to actually kill him and not even enough to disable him, either.

There, Heron turned towards his Queen.

"Christia, this human can only do this much to me... I can just kill him in this case!"

Heron's ego seemed to have inflated because of this.

On the other hand, Christia sighed.

"Heron... What are you talking about? Killing him? You can't even touch him."

That was right. Since the start, Heron was not able to make a single hit on Mark. Besides, he already showed his ability to turn into mist and evade the attacks even more.

"He can't do anything to me, either."

Heron argued.

This made Christia rub her forehead as she turned to Mark.

"Can you please stop holding back? You are fueling my King's ego further."

Mark turned to Christia with a tilt of his head. That exasperation of hers gave him a thought.

"So, there is another reason for suggesting this challenge, is it? Something you haven't told me."

"Unfortunately, yes," Christia shrugged. "I'll tell you about it after you defeat my King."

"Okay, then. Also, how can you tell that I'm holding back?"

Mark asked.

"It's not like I can tell exactly. It's just the energy that surrounded your body barely moved at all."

Mark frowned at Christia's reply. It seemed that she could feel the energies around in his body, similar to how Annica could see it.

Then, he shrugged. He also wanted to end this as soon as possible. However, the rule of this battle was not to kill each other. In that case, he also wanted to see all of the abilities of this guy to the end. It was to prepare for the future if he actually needed to kill this guy.

Still, he could not use the crystals or his Miasma in this fight at all. It was clear that this Heron guy had some ability to gain new mutations. This fact prevented him from using psychic attacks just in case this guy obtained them too.

"Alright, I have no choice, I guess."

Mark gave up on thinking. Of course, he still decided to not use psychic abilities. And that left him with one option left.

And there, the surroundings rumbled. Even Heron was surprised and could not help but step back as he felt the pressure that suddenly spread out with Mark at the center.

Mark's body started to release a red glow, the black markings on his neck, wrists, and ankles that he received after absorbing the Deity of Bloodshed, began to spread. His blood-colored wings spread out, and his hair grew longer. The horns and fangs he hid also appeared. Then, blood swirled out of his body, creating a sinister-looking armor to protect his body.

Heron and Christia were surprised at this. The two could feel that this transformation was far different from what they, the Infected Monarchs, and human Mutants, had.

This pressure, this dread, it was totally different from what they encountered so far.

For Christia, she was convinced because of this. Mark was definitely not a normal being.

Despite the pressure and dread, however, Heron still looked at Mark with excitement. He was anticipating what kind of fight would Mark show him in this form.

Mark's transformation finished. He looked at his hand, clenching it several times. The feeling of releasing this form was unpleasantly satisfying for some reason. It was like he was freed from some sort of shackle, but there was also the disturbing thought of destruction.

With his transformation finished, Mark threw the [Slicer] and the [Divider] into his ring. The two swords he liked the most had no use in this battle at all.

There, Mark looked at Heron and smiled. The latter was the same, although it looked different because he had a beak instead of a mouth.

BAM!

Both of them kicked the ground at the same time, causing the entirety of the quarry to shake.