CALAMITY CORE : FREE THE WORLD

CH.61 'FANGS BARE'

On the main street both leading up to and encircling the mighty golden tree at the heart of Iwatayama's surrounding outer city, the Chimeric trio of Andrei, Baka-Bayashi, and Vivian had been joined by Saionji as a matter of protection. It hadn't been more than a few days since Andrei's encounter with Asura, and in that time, some of the Beastkin of the city below the tree had attempted to offer money to those human members of the Nowhere Generation. Bids on their Chimera friends.

Thankfully, those that went with the Chimera were the likes of Saionji, Okuri and Suzuko, or Hirano and Shimoda. There were times when Andrei wouldn't join them, out of his own nerves, though there were times when he would let Ra talk him into traveling with them just in order to see the sights. To prepare for a battle against the likes of Asura, whom Ra had already begun to theorize on in Andrei's dreams.

In the grey city, the landscape personified in Andrei's mind during his sleep, the boy and the dragon spoke. Andrei sat on the porch of the eerily familiar house, and Andrei on the street. The two hadn't fought in some time thanks to this new revelation. "Boy... that pearl, the one the man produced from nothing. What do you think would have happened if you took it? Was it some sort of veiled attack on us? Some sort of primal explosive spell?" At the mention, Ra held out his hand, and condensed an orb of black-red flame in his palm.

"No. The energy wasn't a remnant... I could almost smell it, like I did on Vivian and Bayashi. That's the only reason I moved at all." Andrei clenched his fist and looked at it as his arm hung over his skyward facing knee. "I felt almost hypnotized by it, like some kind of moth to a flame. It might have been something organic, like our- my chain." He caught himself, not wanting to admit that he and Ra were slowly growing more in line with one another as the world moved around them. He unballed his fist and sighed.

"Some kind of organic function... I suppose I could see it, but..." Ra placed his sharp nails against his chitinous, scaled chin, and felt the leather between the plates of natural armor. "If I were in control, I would change your body far more than a simple function like that chain, so why wouldn't he? If he was too weak, he shouldn't have been able to communicate so fluently... My kind only earn sentience with power."

Andrei blinked, then grew silent as his mind began to race. There had to be something that they were missing... That was when it hit him. "What about the rat-demon?" He looked up to Ra, staring at the bipedal dragon in the molten yellow pools that were his eyes. "He wasn't exactly strong, but he could assimilate others' mass into himself, and puppet it around." Andrei then recalled the faint memory of Saionji's not so distant clash against the grafted dragon. "Maybe their power is similar, except this time it's merely a puppeteer-type Chimera, as opposed to whatever the demon of Nagoro was...."

Ra's lips jutted out as he thought, and the dragon scratched his head. The warlord demon wasn't much of a thinker, nor a pre-planning tactician, so this theory was most likely the best either was going to come up with. "So those pearls, it might've been like that meager 'dragon' your human friends fought. I see..." Ra's lips then turned upwards into a smirk. "That means we'll need to weed out every last one of the things before he dies for good. And I might get a decent meal in that case, even if they're spread thin. As we shatter his false cores, I'll get a better taste for his power in specific."

Andrei shook his head and scoffed. It seemed less like Ra was interested in hi-jacking his body at this point, and more like he was keen on catching his next meal. "Everything's a game to you, isn't it?" The boy asked, secretly relieved that the dragon wasn't at his throat.

Before the boy could open his eyes the next morning, Ra bobbed his head and shrugged his shoulders, throwing out his hands as he seemed ignorant to if he knew his own goals. "One of us will come out on top eventually. For once, I feel like the journey is far more enjoyable than the road there... You're weak, so this little adventure you're going on is only to make you a worthy foe."