Becoming a Monster

Chapter 669: Chapter 668: Too Strong to Measure

Just as Noah had been judging the humans standing across from him, the humans were doing the same to him.

For Thalric and Malachi, their attention naturally focused on Noah first.

It wasn’t because he looked the most dangerous.

There were several creatures around Noah that appeared far more threatening at a glance. The massive drake alone would’ve been difficult to ignore, while the flaming werebeast and giant armored demon beside him possessed larger, far more imposing forms.

Compared to them, Noah’s relatively smaller frame should’ve made him one of the easier creatures to overlook.

Yet every time Thalric’s attention tried to move toward one of them, something inside him warned against it.

Noah’s presence demanded too much of his attention.

Thalric had already felt a glimpse of it from a distance, but standing across from Noah made the difference much clearer. There were eight summoned celestials standing with them, beings whose very nature gave them an advantage over the corrupted creatures they were here to fight, along with seven S-rankers, including himself.

Yet even with all that strength gathered on their side, it did little to lessen the pressure coming from the one standing at the head of the monsters.

It left Thalric with the uncomfortable feeling that taking his eyes off Noah for too long could easily be the last mistake he made.

From the way Malachi’s usual smile had yet to return, Thalric doubted he was the only one who felt that way.

Yet despite how much of a threat his instincts told him Noah was, Thalric couldn’t help feeling confused by what he was seeing.

This wasn’t the demon they had been told about.

Or at least, he didn’t look like it.

Thalric’s gaze lingered on Noah’s face. There were still enough inhuman features across the rest of his body to make it impossible to mistake him being no different than a monster. But his face was undeniably human.

It immediately reminded Thalric of what Bailey and the others told him.

Their original world didn’t have monsters or mana. And most lived in a world devoid of the struggle for survival, where the most danger came from those like themselves instead.

From everything they described, most of them had lived relatively peaceful lives before being thrown into a world where creatures capable of tearing them apart were everywhere.

Noah had come from that same place.

Yet in such a short amount of time, that world had somehow turned one of its humans into… this.

If they had met under different circumstances, Thalric wasn’t sure what he would’ve thought. There was a part of him that might’ve even pitied Noah after wondering what someone who grew up without any of this could’ve experienced to lead them down such a path.

But Thalric didn’t have the luxury of worrying about that right now.

What mattered was why Noah looked like this at all.

Bailey and the others had described something different when they spoke about him, but that information was already old enough that Thalric couldn’t place too much importance on the change.

Varkesh, however, had seen Noah only a few days ago.

And from everything the beastkin told them, Noah hadn’t looked anything like this then either.

That was what Thalric couldn’t ignore.

There was no telling how quickly someone like Noah could change, especially when Thalric still didn’t fully understand what Noah was.

A human? A demon?

Or had he truly become that most tabooed existence within the Church? The one thing that all humans had been taught to fear, despite none having ever appeared within their world.

Beings considered God’s true enemies, whose presence had never been recorded once since the creation of their world.

A devil?

Thalric didn’t know.

And right now, figuring that out wasn’t nearly as important as what he could actually see and feel for himself.

Now that he felt the strength coming from Noah, it was difficult not to question whether his appearance was the only thing that had been different when Varkesh encountered him.

Was this form responsible for the strength Thalric could feel from him?

Or had Noah already been this strong a few days ago?

The second possibility bothered Thalric considerably more.

Thalric had always believed there was more to Varkesh’s survival than what they knew.

The beastkin had never claimed that he somehow escaped from Noah after everyone else was killed. He openly admitted that Noah had allowed him to leave, which meant there had to be a reason why Varkesh was the only one permitted to walk out of the forest alive.

But that was where Thalric’s suspicions differed from Malachi’s.

Malachi believed Varkesh was working with Noah, working with the demons. And although Thalric couldn’t completely dismiss the possibility, he wasn’t willing to brand someone a traitor simply because an enemy had chosen to spare their life.

After all, if that alone was enough to prove someone was working with demons, then the same could’ve once been said about him.

Thalric had been much younger when a demon chose to spare his life, and he knew there had been no secret agreement between them. Sometimes there were other reasons for allowing an enemy to live, and until Thalric had something more substantial to go on, he wasn’t going to condemn Varkesh based on Malachi’s suspicions alone.

If anything, Thalric had once believed Noah’s reason for letting Varkesh leave was far easier to understand.

A warning.

Noah had already made Ashenveil Forest his territory, and from everything they had learned about him, he had shown little interest in leaving it to attack the city. Even from Varkesh’s testimony, Noah wasn’t hostile toward them in the beginning. It was their side that started it.

Because of that, Thalric had believed there was a much simpler reason for why Noah allowed Varkesh to leave after killing everyone else.

Varkesh had seen firsthand what happened when they entered Noah’s territory and attacked him. By allowing the beastkin to return to Ashenveil, Noah ensured there would be someone alive to tell them exactly what happened and what would be waiting for anyone else who came looking for him.

Thalric couldn’t have known whether that was truly Noah’s intention, but considering everything they knew at the time, he had been willing to believe it.

At least until now.

His eyes moved away from Noah long enough to focus on one of the figures standing by his side.

Morvyr Vaelthorn.

Thalric had never needed to personally meet the elf to know who he was. Someone in his position couldn’t afford to be ignorant of one of the Demon Queen’s Arbors.

And seeing him there changed everything.

Malachi had believed from the beginning that Noah was a demon, so it wasn’t difficult for him to believe Noah was working with the rest of his kind.

Thalric had never agreed.

Unlike most of the people standing behind him, he knew who Noah actually was. He knew where Noah came from and that, regardless of what he had become since arriving in their world, he had once been just as human as Bailey and the others.

The Church calling him a demon didn’t suddenly make him an ally of the demons of their world.

Yet Thalric couldn’t make that argument anymore when an Arbor, a high-ranking demon directly under one of the most influential demon generals, the Elf Queen, was standing right beside him with a small army of demonic beings.

He didn’t know when the relationship between them had formed or what either side expected to gain from it, but those were questions that could wait.

What mattered was how much this changed everything he had believed before.

Especially his reason for why Noah allowed Varkesh to leave.

Thalric had believed it was a warning meant to keep them away. But if Noah was already working with the demons, and had known exactly what Varkesh would tell them once he returned, then there was another possibility Thalric could no longer ignore.

What if Noah had never intended to frighten them away?

What if he wanted them to come?

Thalric’s expression slowly hardened as his attention returned to Noah.

If that was true, then from the moment Varkesh was allowed to leave the forest, they had been played.

—

The silence between the two sides continued for a while longer, with neither making the first move.

Both groups were using the opportunity for much the same reason. Now that they were finally standing across from one another, there was no reason not to learn as much as they could about those they would soon be fighting.

For the humans, that meant more than judging what they could see for themselves.

Analysis skills weren’t uncommon in their world. There were countless variations depending on the person and their class, but most worked under the same general principle. They gathered different readings from whatever was being analyzed before compounding that information into grades that were easier for the user to understand.

It was one of the reasons scouts were so useful when entering unfamiliar territory. Even if they couldn’t determine exactly what an enemy was capable of, knowing its general strength could be enough to decide whether a group should continue forward or avoid a fight altogether.

Thalric had been using his own analysis from the moment they stopped.

After so many years, doing so had become second nature to him. He barely needed to consciously focus on it anymore, with the information he gathered feeling almost like a sixth sense.

Because of that, he could roughly sense the current strength of every monster he was about to face. And what he sensed was perhaps worse than not knowing.

Already, not counting Morvyr, Noah had at least six monsters by his side, each at least S-rank.

Thalric’s attention eventually returned to Noah as he tried once again to sense how the one leading them compared.

Once again, he got almost nothing.

There were only two explanations Thalric could think of for why his analysis continued to fail. Either Noah possessed some way of preventing others from properly sensing his strength…

Or the difference between them was so great that Thalric simply couldn’t perceive it.