The First King of Beasts

'Hmm, this new attribute that has appeared..' Dustin thought to himself. He was thinking of adding some points to it, but then again, he decided after thinking a bit about it that he would allow it to grow naturally for now. The meat he was eating was truly special, as it even increased his vitality while introducing a completely new attribute stat for him. Something he never would have thought of.

As for now though, he would still keep the knowledge of his system to himself, Eir needed not to know.

After the shocking change, Dustin just tried to speak to the system a few times, but it wasn't until the last try that he decided it was pointless. If the system was going to say something, maybe it would do so after it was ready. Come to think of it, ever since he entered this room, something seemed to have changed within him, and Dustin did make that note, but it was minimal it didn't cause him to bother much.

Dustin remained on the floor lying down like he was doing nothing, with his eyes closed. While there, he was looking for a way to improve his new skill Sixth Sense, but unfortunately he just didn't how to go about it. The skill let him perceive his environment within a certain distance. It didn't give him clear vision of it, instead the way it worked was that it allowed him to sense the presence of things around, and then his brain could use what he had sensed to create some type of mental image.

After some more hours passed, the portal Eir went through opened again, and in walked Eir looking.. normal, like nothing had happened. Of course, Dustin couldn't see him, so there was no way of knowing what he looked like, since the portal closed before Dustin could look at Eir. Seeing as he wasn't the most reactive type, the opening of the portal didn't alert him and he just slowly turned to Eir who walked out of it and into the room they originally were in. From what Dustin could feel however, Eir's breathing was just like it was before he left, normal. Nothing seemed to have changed at all, except for... On closer inspection, if Dustin just stressed his sixth sense a little more, he could notice something was amiss within the approaching Eir, but what was it?

Seeing as Dustin could sense energies to some extent, which was also why he could sense the portal open, what he just sensed in Eir was more like an energy, but one that was foreign and not supposed to be there. For whatever reason, it seemed to be rebelling against Eir's energy very strongly, and Eir's energy was also fighting back, and the whole thing was happening continuously.

"Welcome back. You really did take hours." Dustin said as he sat up near the table.

"Yeah, I didn't deal with the usual stuff this time anyway, I went for the stronger ones."

Eir just walked towards the table and sat down, then he brought out a chunk of meat from seemingly out of nowhere and placed it on the table. The meat looked to have been nicely cut before hand into measured pieces. 'His skill in butchering has really max out throughout the years.. or decades.' Dustin thought.

Without much more time spent on other matters, Dustin picked up the meat and bit right into it. As he could feel its freshness and tougher texture, he also noted that this one wasn't as bad as the others he had eaten before now. The taste from this meat was better compared to the previous ones and was way manageable. Maybe to others, it might just taste like bad tasting raw meat, which would cause them nausea and other forms of reaction, but for Dustin who had tasted worse, it was like a noble's delicacy. The only down side about this meat was the incredible toughness and malleability of the meat, it was almost like flexible plastic if there was to be a comparison. He had eaten hard meat before, but this was on a whole other level. At this point, he would be hard pressed if this wasn't some kind of training to turn him into a wild beast.

As Dustin continued eating the meat, he quickly realized that there wasn't a single thing in existence that didn't have it's faults. This meat's fault was simple, it was just too tough. He only managed to eat a little about just a hand full, but he already felt like taking another bite of anything would cause his teeth to fall off. It was so bad that he had to take a break and even the thought of swallowing the chunks whole and leave the rest to his digestive acids.

Another different thing was the different feeling he got from eating this meat, as he could this time feel the subtle energy that coursed through him from his abdomen throughout his body, reaching certain places. Dustin just relaxed himself as he leaned backwards while using his arms as support. He thought about the thing he saw in Eir, and as much he would have loved to mind his own business, he just couldn't get it off his mind. It wasn't like that would be something Eir wasn't aware of since he would definitely be better at sensing energies than him, so he just let whatever was to happen, happen.

"Hey Eir.." Dustin said, then waited for a reply before continuing.

"Hm? What is the matter?"

"I noticed something amiss within your energy, and it seemed like something I can only describe as a foreign energy that may be trying to invade yours.. What is that?" Dustin asked directly, not cutting corners.

Eir remained silent for a while, and the dragged out silence was starting to get awkward, and just as it became too much and Dustin decided to forget about it, Eir responded. "That, is dark energy." He said.

"Dark energy?" Dustin said, his voice sounding more like a statement than a question. "It is related to the darkness attribute right? Or is it just the same thing?"

"Well, it is the same, just that one is just a way to explain the attribute, and the other is the way the energy is named." Eir explained.

Naturally, even without asking, Eir was well aware of what Dustin was looking for, so he cut straight to the case and began attending to Dustin's question.

"You see, my body isn't well attuned with dark energy, and because of that it is constantly fighting against the energy in my body." Eir explained. He paused for a moment, trying to structure his sentence in a way that it would make sense when explained, and after some quiet seconds passed slowly, he continued..

The thing was that Eir had tried to eat the demon meat himself previously many years ago because of certain reasons, but the problem he faced was that his body wasn't compatible with it, and neither was his energy. Instead of producing the desired effect, but energies within him instead, began fighting one another as the rejection from both was pretty strong. In the end, he succeeded in devising a slow death for himself, as the feud between both energies were slowly damaging his spirit and killing him.

"You see, the problem all started from the innocent mistake of me eating the meat while within the place where I sealed the demons. Back then, I used to spend weeks in that place fighting and killing the demons in order to kill all of them so that I would be able to release the seal and return to earth. For different reasons, I decided it would be a good idea to incorporate the darks energy into myself, and the best way to do that was take in the dark energy from a rich source.."

"The demons themselves." Dustin completed.

"Yes. It was a more dangerous method, as I could have just absorbed the little energies that flowed through that place since the demons had been there enough to cause the change in energy that flowed around that space, but the again that process was going to be very incredibly slow, so I decided to take the fast route and just ingest the flesh that contained high amounts of it. In the end, the little wisps of dark energy in the surrounding also got absorbed into my body, and the amount was too much all at once, causing damage to me instead of helping." Eir explained.

"But, doesn't that mean it is dangerous for me to be trying this method? Which clearly failed?" Dustin asked.

"Well normally, this process wasn't supposed to be this destructive, even though I was impatient. I learned of the possibility of mixing energies myself from someone I used to know, but alas, my luck was just bad. Actually, I suspect it is because of me being a godlike being."

"Huh? But how? Shouldn't that be the reason why it would even work?" Dustin asked a little confused.

"Well, normally, but the thing is since I became a being close to godhood, the energy within my body consolidated and established a firmer and deeper root in my very being, defining the kind of existence I am. That would mean that..."

"The dark energy would be trying to obstruct and change your very being and existence." Dustin completed.

"...Yes."