Alex slowly opened his eyes.
He stood up with a sharp movement, as if driven by a bestial reflex. His legs carried him without hesitation… but immediately, he felt that something was wrong.
His limbs.
White. Tense. Skeletal.
He raised his hands in front of him, stunned.
"What… is this body?"
He ran, panicked, toward a nearby pool of blood. He leaned over, looked at his reflection.
His eyes widened.
His skin was dull, tight, like parchment stretched over sharp bones. He no longer had a single hair. His skull looked like it had been carved with a knife. And his ears… long, thin, pointed, like the elves in old tales.
But his eyes… his glowing pupils still burned with the same intensity as before. A deep, burning, untamable light.
[CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE EVOLVED INTO A BLOODTHIRSTY GHOUL]
He remained silent for a few seconds before exhaling:
"Honestly… it's not that bad. Better than being a bat."
A strange smile stretched across his cracked lips.
"And at least… I can forge."
He started to move, testing his new shell.
He ran.
And immediately, his body shot forward like an arrow. He tried to stop… but slid for several meters, unable to brake.
"Too fast…!"
He jumped next, just to test.
His leap launched him nearly twenty meters high. He plummeted back down and…
Crashed to the ground with a dull thud, cracking the earth beneath him.
He grimaced as he stood up.
"Damn… it's gonna take some getting used to."
Naked as a worm, he looked at the corpses around him, then picked out some clothes: a black cloak, a tunic, leather pants. He left behind the too-heavy armor.
"That would just weigh me down."
He flexed his arms, observing the power stored beneath his thin skin.
"I feel strong enough to take on that damn fire breather."
His gaze lifted toward the mountain, where the black dragon had flown earlier.
He crouched, tensed all the muscles in his legs, then launched himself into the air with all his strength, rising nearly fifty meters high.
"Aaah, it's too fast for my eyes! How do those stupid birds do it? Urgh… I swallowed a fly!"
Without wasting time, he dashed at full speed toward the mountains.
Toward the dragon.