Shifter - Infinite Transformation-Chapter 56: Invader In The Camp

We tumbled to the ground. My arm pounded, and I felt the wounds that had stopped bleeding not too long ago tear open once again. The battle was atrocious, but I was clearly at an advantage.

My opponent was weak. I wrestled him to the ground much easier than I’d feared and pushed the conjured bread deeper into his mouth. His muffled scream barely reached me, but his widening eyes certainly did.

For a moment, I felt bad. He did not deserve to be killed just for asking some questions. Then I saw beyond the farce the soldier had put on. There was the same coldness I’d noticed at first. I thought it had faded, but the soldier had only concealed it.

He wanted me dead. No, he would have had me killed. The reasoning eluded me, but it did not matter as I drove the Bloodleer thorn deeper into his neck. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

At last, I noticed something that made my skin crawl: we were not alone in the tent. I hadn’t even thought about the possibility before I shoved the soldier inside, but there they were. Two men and a woman were busy on the other side of the tent, naked on a mattress. One of them was Captain Anthea. She was being railed. Good for her... bad for me. Not that she was enjoying two young men, but that I had barged into her tent. I couldn’t care less about her sex life.

I shot to my feet, glad the two men were still inserted in their beloved Captain, holding her tightly even as they stared at me and the other soldier like deer caught in the glowstone’s light. A moment later, I was out of the tent.

Twisting and turning my head, I ignored my wildly thrumming heart to the best of my ability and shifted into the only human soldier form the others hadn’t seen. I transformed into Cedric. His leg was still a wreck even if it looked alright, and his form’s back was not in the best condition either. I really didn’t like this form, but it was the only form I could safely shift into.

Pain raced down my arm, and I blanched. This form had the exact same injuries as my other Accessible Shifts. It only made sense, but the blood drenching my sleeve was bad. The hole in my hand was fairly distinct and would expose me if Captain Anthea or her loverboys noticed it.

Increasing the distance to the Captain’s tent, I hurriedly moved to the tent furthest from hers, twisted my arm behind my back, and pushed my chest out. That was the least I could do to look somewhat close to a proper guard... or so I could only hope.

Then I shouted from the top of my lungs.

"Intruder! There is an intruder in the camp! A vile assassin!" I screamed, then took a deep breath.

"You there!" There was no one where I shouted. "The intruder went north! Follow him!"

A moment later, Captain Anthea barged out of the tent, fully clothed. She got faster out of bed and into her clothes than I had expected. Fortunately, I’d been fast enough. Captain Anthea didn’t pay much attention to me.

"Where did he go?!" She only snapped at me and cursed when I pointed north. "You useless piece of shit. Why did you not stop him?"

Before I could even try to come up with a plausible excuse, Captain Anthea released her whip and charged in the direction I’d pointed.

My breath was still stuck in my throat when the Captain was no longer in sight. I didn’t dare to breathe until she was long gone. The heart beating in my chest didn’t really obey me when I tried to calm it down. If anything, it only accelerated when one of Captain Anthea’s loverboys emerged fully clothed from the tent.

"You there!" He waved at me, motioning me to come closer. "Get over here and help us!"

I wanted to deny the order and tell him that a higher-up had told me to guard the tent, but I didn’t even know whose tent I was protecting. With my luck, the tent belonged to someone the loverboy knew.

The loverboy was insistent and urged me to come closer and help them. Then–

Human has been defeated. Shift has been updated.

"Fuck. Why are you so slow, David?!" came the voice from inside just as we were about to enter.

The second loverboy leaned over the soldier I’d killed, his hand pressed against the soldier’s neck. He cursed some more, and his head snapped up to meet our eyes.

"He’s dead." His attention turned to me. "Are you one of the guards here? How can someone be this stupid?!"

He got up from the ground, eyes filled with fury and frustration. "I should have you hanged for your stupidity. If you are a guard, you should have identified everyone entering this part of the camp. How could someone be too stupid to identify an intruder?!"

The second loverboy ranted some more. He clearly had other issues, but first and foremost, he wanted to blame and curse someone for what had happened. And it was not like he had the wrong target. I was at fault, in more than one way, actually.

And that was exactly what the second loverboy seemed to notice as well when his eyes trailed to my injured arm. Did he really recognize the injury? Was it that obvious for someone who’d been busy railing his lover?

Before he could do something, I used Burst. My body screamed at me, but I did what I had to do. The loverboy clearly noticed something amiss. Hence, I unsheathed my blade and rammed it into his neck before Burst’s effect could wear off.

My legs hurt, and I could have sworn I heard something snap. The second loverboy collapsed to the ground while the first shouted and stepped back. Something materialized around him, so I shifted into the Airborne Archaeopteryx and used Sonic Boom once.

The loverboy’s eyes were wide, his reaction to my transformation one of paralytic shock. That worked well in tune with Sonic Boom. He screamed as the racial trait struck him, and I shot toward his face, clawing his eyes before using Sonic Boom a second time from close up.

At last, I shifted back and thrust my steel blade into his chest, taking advantage of the situation.

Human has been defeated. Shift has been updated.

Human has been defeated. Shift has been updated.

The loverboys’ and the soldier’s corpses lay sprawled out before me. The loverboys hadn’t even been armed, yet they had felt even more dangerous than the soldier. They all wanted me dead, in one way or another.

Were they justified? I didn’t know anymore. I certainly felt like I had to kill them because they would have killed me otherwise. And I was not done yet. The eggs were still in the other tent, and my cover had already been blown. Almost.

At least they now knew that there was an intruder in the camp, and that was already bad enough.

"I am so fucking tired," I groaned, exhaustion tugging at me. "Just give me those damn eggs and I’ll never return to the Zetrian Empire... maybe."

Probably not. I felt like I was going to return to the Zetrian Empire even if I were to make it out alive here with the eggs. We were tied in so many ways.