Chapter 457: CHPT 457: Radicalized by Transformation
Breakfast ended as usual. Unusually. Claude listened in as Ursula caught up with their friends and did what he could to shrug off the eyes of everyone. It was easier, that or having the stares and suspicions spread out from just him made things easier. Either way, he left breakfast early.
Ursula was happy to scarf down the rest of his breakfast anyway. And he was more than happy to get away from the people.
They had training. Training for the Slayers World Tournament that was only a month away. But before that, he wanted to spend some time with company that was a bit more.... welcoming.
Predator's Forest was just as he remembered it. Large, vast greenery swallowed up the memories of mundane and discomforting University norms. There were tree's as tall as the sky-scraping wooden monoliths in the Vada District wilds. Each one filled with massive Night Hawks or varying hybrid breeds of Falcon. Some even coughed up balls of fire that lit up the green shadowy grounds he traveled.
Speaking of grounds. The dirt trails were as soft as he remembered, littered with the paws of varying quadrapedal breeds. He could smell them as they followed him on the trail. Studying, remembering.
A howl split the silence, sending birds to the sky and smaller critters running.
Frosty's howl tended to do that. It freaked out the natural world. Assumedly because Frosty-- as of late, was unnatural. They could feel a presence of something else within the VanaWarg. They could feel the Jotunn and Aesir essence within. It scared them.
It warmed Claude. He stopped in the middle of the trail. Noticing the snakes in the grass that followed doing the same. He listened, hearing many bodies ripping through the woodland until Frosty burst out of a bush.
"Deja vu almost, right?" Claude said to Frosty as he gripped his massive tusked fangs to playfully shake his brother's massive cranium. Quickly after he scratched his sides, feeling his nails running over muscle as solid as iron, like a dozen layers of perfectly sculpted abs over tungsten ribs.
"We got training in a little bit. Nothing you aren't used to.... just remember, you don't kill unless I give the word. You'll know when it's time to get busy." Claude explained as he stood up from petting Frosty and adjusted his armor. Was he still growing?
Frosty barked in understanding and licked his knuckles. His tongue felt like a wet pad of razors.
The pack his brother was alpha over barked along with him as if they too were ready for training.
He remembered the canid creatures faces better than most of the students in the cafeteria. The WolfHounds. Tall as all hell with slim graceful legs and vicious fanged snouts. Some grey furred and sharp eared while others were brindle colored and floppy eared. Only it wasn't cute. It made them look gritty. Like they just ripped their way out of an alleyway in the slums of SkyHaven leaving nothing but empty trans cans and throatless corpses. Claude felt a sense of relation to them in regards to his own roughened appearance. On more than one occasion Ursula has told him he was.... classically handsome, but when he looked at the battle hardened canine hybrids, he saw himself.
As for the Vulpine survivors of the MAE Trials. They were creatures of their own echelon. The Vulkura twins had grown in his absence. The orange and black magically transformed Foxes looked older. They watched him, smaller than the other Canines in the pack but equal-- if not higher in power.
Something purred from above him. Claude was taken out of the Foxes fiery eyes as he look up. Two lime green eyes peered down at him from the topside of a branch spiraling through the woodland.
"Hey, Loba." Claude spoke through their mental connection.
Loba looked away from him, towards the entrance into the forest a mile back.
Claude's scarred long nose moved as he sucked in a breath of air. Smells of sweat, paper and ink rode the winds. New and unnatural in such a place.
It wasn't a student. He could tell by the growing undertones of intense fear..... and excitement?
Claude's nerves shook if only slightly. He calmed himself once before heading towards whoever just entered Predator's Forest.
***
After a few minutes of walking, Claude rounded a hard corner carved into the soiled trails of the forest and found himself facing a man. A feeble and middle aged man drenched in sweat. His glasses so thick and powerful it looked like he wore twin microscopes on his face.
"Prof. Alvis?" Claude yelled out to the Professor peering into the woodland surrounding them.
"AH!-- Haha! C-Claude. Positively marvelous!"
He stuttered less when he was truly immersed in something.
"What are you doing here, Sir?" Claude questioned. He didn't want to get too close, all of the Predator's inside the forest were still following him and the Professor's intense fear might give them the wrong idea. He was connected to Frosty and Loba-- his siblings, but the others not so much.
"It's.....I-It's amazing. They're all following you... almost every one.... like they're moving on one string. One link...." Prof. Alvis whispered while he continued to look around the forest, flinching at every sound.
"Prof. Alvis." Claude said a little louder.
"Y-Yes?" Prof. Alvis finally looked at him, running a hand over his gelled down comb over hairstyle.
"Respectfully, what are you doing here?"
Prof. Alvis eased, "Oh! Training is beginning and you weren't present. I was sent for you."
Claude felt his stomach twist ever so slightly as he caught the blatant incorrection.
Loba hissed.
"Professor, I don't hear anyone on the training field. I still smell breakfast from the University. And why would they send a professor who isn't Reborn to a forest full of creatures known to hunt Humans?"
Prof. Alvis laughed weakly before stopping to adjust his glasses, "Senses like that can make you i-intelligent in a very different way. Someday. Hehe.... But y-you win. Class hasn't started yet, and I wasn't sent here. Not by anyone but m-myself. I wanted to study you m-more....."
"We just needed confirmation for my claims during the investigation." Claude replied.
Prof. Alvis looked genuinely offended for the first time. Even a classroom full of uninterested students didn't move him as much as Claude's comment.
"Oh come on, Mr. Grey. My life's work isn't backing up the white lies of an adventure story. Research, analysis....d-discovery. E-Experimentation!..." He flinched as Loba hissed directly above him. Telling him to watch his tone in her feline dialect.
He cleared his throat and continued, "What you.... y-you and Ursula have grown into.... it's the basis of the Third World Power Transfer Theory in excess. It's building upon that theory. H-Hell it could be the formula to saving New Gloria! If more of us could j-just embrace the adversity as you two did.....hhehe.... maybe m-more could return as you two have. P-pressure makes diamonds, Mr. Grey."
Claude watched Prof. Alvis.
"Through proven theory and research, it is my job to find diamonds."
PWSHHH!
Prof. Alvis was taken out of his moment as an adolescent Dinosaur burst from the bushes and flipped him onto his back, planting a massive clawed foot onto his back.
The creature looked over to Claude and croaked warmly. It's black scales and green eyes watched him. Ironically enough, the creature had diamond colored double scales running around it's eyes and down it's back.
"OH-- GODS IS THAT A PROTARTYRANNUS?!!"
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
_Avatar0FFury_
_Avatar0FFury_ ERhm! Among the number of students shocked by Claude and Ursula's return, others like Prof. Alvis are intensely intrigued by the academic concepts that can be pulled from their experiences. LMK what you think and thanks for reading. Sorry i wanted this chap to be longer but I have to meet with some friends. The pace will pick up very soon dont worry.
Weekly Power Status
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