Becoming a Monster

Chapter 519: Chapter 518: How did this happen?

None of the others moved to stop it.

To them, there was nothing to question as Kratos gathered the attack, his focus fixed entirely on Varkesh.

Fenrir’s pupils dilated as he watched. The longer he remained still, the more restless he became, his instincts rising with the tension in the air. Watching Kratos act in his place only made him wish it had been him instead.

Kratos did not hesitate. The energy in his mouth condensed further, compacting into a concentrated blast with no room for restraint. Once it reached its peak, there would be no pulling it back.

It was at that moment that the ground beneath Varkesh shifted.

Roots tore through the ground without warning, rising and wrapping around him as they formed a barrier between him and the attack.

At the same time, Pandora appeared next to Kratos. There should have been no reason for him to stop. Among them, authority was clear. Outside of Noah, only Ailetta and Arachne held any real influence over the others, and Pandora was not among them.

And yet, he didn’t move.

The energy slowly receded as his gaze locked onto Pandora,

To anyone watching, the silence between them was unsettling. Neither of them moved, and neither gave any indication of what would happen next.

They stood there, facing one another as if the next action would decide everything.

Fenrir snorted at the sight. He had seen this too many times before.

There were times when Pandora would appear beside Kratos without a word, and the two would remain like that for hours, neither moving nor speaking, as if nothing else existed around them.

Kratos never liked excessive noise, never cared for conversation, and yet Pandora’s presence gave him something he couldn’t find anywhere else. Her illusion carried no presence, no aura, nothing that his other senses could pick up, and in that absence, his thoughts stilled.

His instincts were always aggressive in nature. His thoughts were influenced in the same manner. If something moved, he instantly sought it out as a threat. When he sees someone strong, he has to rein in his urges.

But when around Pandora, it was quiet, and for once, nothing was triggering his violent instincts.

And for Pandora, it was different.

Noah was her world, but that world had always revolved around him. The others existed within it, but they never truly acknowledged her in a way that Pandora could feel they were a part of it.

Kratos did.

When he looked at her, he didn’t look past her illusion or treat it as something empty. He acknowledged it as if it were real, and in doing so, he gave her something she hadn’t realized she was missing.

Recognition.

It wasn’t something either of them spoke about, and it wasn’t something they needed to do.

It was simply there.

Their stare seemed as if it would continue, as it always had before, stretching into one of those long, silent exchanges that neither of them ever broke first.

But Varkesh’s movement disrupted it.

Kratos’s attention snapped back to the tigerkin beneath his foot, and the pressure he applied made Varkesh groan as his chest strained under the force.

"No..."

Pandora’s voice came at the same time her roots coiled around Kratos’s leg.

Kratos turned back to her.

For a brief moment, there was something in his eyes that did not belong there.

Confusion.

"Need him... alive..."

Pandora’s words came slowly, but there was no hesitation behind them.

Kratos didn’t respond immediately. He looked down at Varkesh, then back at Pandora, and finally toward the direction of Noah.

He was aware that Noah stood beside Pandora’s main body. If she was interfering, then there was a reason for it. Even if the reason wasn’t something that he agreed with, if Noah was there, then there was the possibility that he at least was aware of it.

Kratos took a moment longer than usual to consider it.

"Okay." That was all he said. His serious, blunt tone was just as intimidating as his appearance.

The tension in the air didn’t ease. His presence still carried the same aggression, the same readiness to act, but Pandora didn’t react to it.

Her roots loosened around his leg without hesitation, and the ones wrapped around Varkesh withdrew just as quickly, receding back into the ground as if they had never been there.

Kratos stepped to the side, but he didn’t leave.

His role hadn’t changed. He remained there, watching over the tigerkin.

There was no way to know if he would act again, no sign that the threat had truly passed.

But Pandora didn’t question it. Once he had spoken, she had already accepted it.

Her form faded soon after, disappearing without even acknowledging Varkesh’s miserable state.

—

There was an awkward silence after she left. It was broken only by the strained groans escaping Varkesh as he struggled to push himself back onto his feet.

He didn’t understand why that presence had saved him. But as he thought back to the roots that had wrapped around him, and the figure that had appeared before Kratos, the memory began to settle into place.

A dryad.

He had never seen one before, let alone a corrupted one, so the connection hadn’t come to him immediately. Now that it had, some of the panic began to ease.

The dryad deciding to save him couldn’t have been from its own volition.

Which meant... Gwen had to be involved.

That was the only conclusion he could reach, and it was the one he chose to believe.

It wasn’t that he was certain; he didn’t have much of a choice, because he had nothing else to hold onto.

If he tried to rush in again, he doubted that the dryad could keep that monster from taking his life the next time.

So he stayed where he was.

His body ached as he straightened, his chest bruised, his face beginning to swell, but he forced himself to remain standing as his eyes stayed fixed on the entrance.

He waited.

Seconds stretched longer than they should have.

He had already felt her presence once, and during that time, he had a gut instinct that something was wrong with it.

And the longer nothing happened, the more that unease began to return.

Then something finally moved.

It was subtle at first, just enough to draw his attention. Every gaze shifted toward the entrance just as quickly.

Varkesh had forgotten to breathe as his focus sharpened. He expected Noah to be the first to step out.

But it wasn’t him. Something else emerged instead.

A shape unfamiliar to him, a monster he hadn’t seen among the others.

At first, it didn’t make sense. A place like this, filled with monsters, should have held countless others hidden away, so seeing something new shouldn’t have surprised him.

And yet...

This one did.

There was something about it that unsettled him the moment he laid eyes on it, something he couldn’t place, but couldn’t ignore either.

It stepped out slowly, just enough for its form to be seen beneath the light spilling from the entrance.

At first, Varkesh couldn’t make sense of what he was looking at. The figure was humanoid, but other than that, it was yet another creature that he had never seen before.

Dark, uneven, and jagged antlers curved upward from its head, and faint violet light pulsed through them like veins. Its eyes held the same glow, shining with an intensity that made it impossible to look away.

Its body was slender, almost fragile in appearance, but that illusion didn’t last long. There was a strong presence behind that embodied it; his instincts warned him that this creature was dangerous.

The closer it came into view, the clearer it became that it was different from the other monsters there.

It wasn’t its appearance that was different. At the end of the day, it was a monster.

However, it didn’t carry itself as one. It moved with slow, hesitant steps as if it were afraid. Its confidence, or self-esteem, must have been low because its eyes would shift back to the ground or close every few seconds as it took deep breaths.

Varkesh couldn’t understand what was wrong with it. In fact, he didn’t understand why he even cared. He should be looking for Gwen to come out anytime now.

And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t take his eyes off of the new creature.

Finally, when the creature fully emerged into the light, her head lifted, and her wide eyes searched frantically for something before landing on him.

Varkesh wasn’t sure what he expected to feel from the creature’s eyes, but what he felt triggered a deep foreboding.

His hands shook first, and then the strength in his legs left him as he slammed down onto the ground, knees first.

The relief in those eyes told him everything he needed to know. It was the same gaze he received every day since he met her. The gaze of a kind and loving woman who selflessly carried everyone’s burdens despite her own, while doing it with a smile.

He came here exactly to prevent this from happening. He thought that the two would be given a choice; he was prepared to be in the position that she was in.

"...Why did it turn out this way?"