Ominous thunder boomed across the sky as the Frozen Forest's chilling winds caused Kai to regain consciousness and shiver violently.

He didn't know how long he had been absent-minded, the pain from the transformation causing a sheen of sweat to appear on his body even with the fridged conditions, but his senses told him it would be dawn in a few hours and that he would need to speed up if he wanted to ensure the dryad returned with plenty of time to spare.

Kai attempted to move, yet it felt like his entire body was restricted by an invisible force. His insides felt cramped and awkward and his muscles, pathetically weak and slow.

Slowly, painfully so to Kai's senses, he managed to raise a pale, skinny hand in front of his face.

Opening and closing his fleshy fingers, resulting in his hand repeatedly forming a fist, mainly to ensure that the strange appendage was his own, Kai frowned in disgust as his senses looked inwards.

"What a weak, feeble container? Who in their right mind would chose this kind of body willingly?"

This was the first time Kai had ever attempted to take on a different form, and while he could see some small benefits from being able to do so, the disadvantages were glaringly obvious.

Kai's exploration of his new digits halted abruptly as a panicked thought flashed across his mind's eyes. Using his sixth sense, he dove into his body and monster core, quickly discovering that his dragononic essence and resources were stored correctly, before releasing a sigh of relief.

A memory fragment had bubbled up, one detailing the events of a dragon who had failed their transformation and lost their true body. It had taken them decades to rebuild it and even then, the body had been a shadow of its former glory.

In the future, when he achieved the Divine Beast realm, he would be able to store the human blueprint, as well as his own, in his core and remove much of the risk. But for now, at least when transforming into a human, he would have to ensure he wasn't distracted at a critical moment.

Sweat covered his snow-white brow, his new skin never seen daylight, as he realised how foolish he was to attempt his first transformation in the middle of potentially hostile territory while he had already depleted most of his energy.

The sweat soon chilled and started freezing on his body, causing Kai to curse, his limbs beginning to lose their feeling.

While his outer appearance had changed drastically, his biology had basically remained the same if you excluded the change in size.

Without his massive body generating warmth, the dragon's blood and muscles soon started to become sluggish.

Waking himself from his wandering thoughts, an occurrence similar to when he first entered the Frozen Forest, Kai looked at the Dryad's crystal, no more than a stone's throw away, and attempted to stand.

Not even a breath later, Kai had face planted the floor, his arms and legs sprawled out at odd angles.

While his dragonic memories had enabled him to retract his true form and create a human body, it contained no information at all in how to move it.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, both from exasperation at his lack of thought that led to this situation and the stinging sensation on his lip, Kai attempted to stand again, only to be met with the same result.

Releasing a hiss in frustration, a sound that enraged him further due to how pathetic it sounded coming from a human-like throat, Kai rolled onto his front and, deciding that he would need to take things one step at the time, attempted to move similar to how his natural body would.

To anyone watching, the naked teenager rolling around in the snow would have been incredibly amusing. That was until they noticed his pale skin, short black hair and glowing red eyes and his odd, inhuman movements. At that point, they would probably be terrified and run towards the nearest outpost screaming that demons had started to invade through possession.

In no less than thirty minutes, Kai had managed to discover a method that enabled him to move around, using his hand's and knees similar to how a human infant would crawl, and started heading towards the nearby tree.

Reaching the tree, Kai slowly pushed himself up, using his grip on the trunk to support himself as he finally managed to stand upright.

"The fuck! What is wrong with this crappy, piece of shit body."

To say Kai was angered at his inability to utilise the human body would be an understatement.

If it weren't for his drive and willpower to return the Dryad, he would likely have given up a long time ago and gone looking for some unfortunate soul to take out his pent-up stress on.

Step by step, Kai started to slowly stumble around the tree, using it as a brace, as he gradually worked out how to centre his weight and that the trick to walking was similar to catching himself each time his body fell forward.

The entire time this was happening, Kai couldn't help but release vulgar curses, many having not been heard for hundreds of thousands of years. Amongst them, were varying vowes of vengeance and retribution towards the goddess that apparently helped shape the human race in her image.

Little did Kai know, that across a distance unimaginable, the goddess in question had heard his statements and, using the smallest amount of energy so she wouldn't be discovered by the mortals that now hunted her, smiled warmly at the dragon's attempts and even giggling at his groundless threats.

She could sense his frustration and that he had no intention to follow through on them so turned a blind eye to something that, in the distant past, would have normally resulted in a bolt of divine lightning striking the perpetrator.

To her, the grudges between the dragon race and gods were well and truly over. Both of their kinds had lost to the mortals and been exiled from the twelve worlds, forced to hide in the void and sub-worlds. In fact, the two species had even started working together, something that took thousands of years to organise, planning their return to the mortal worlds.

Just like the mortals, when faced with mutual extinction, old rivalries had been pushed aside.

As to why the Goddess had noticed Kai, many of the mortals had forgotten the god's names, not that they would use them frivolously, meaning that when Kai had used hers repeatedly in vain, it was easy to notice.

Now that the gods had suffered the same defeat as the dragon's and were tentative allies, feeling a sense of comradery, instead of becoming enraged or cursing the young dragon due to his continuing barrage of insults, the goddess laughed and sent a small, intangible amount of energy towards Kai's body to help him achieve his goal of moving in human form.

After she had done this, the goddess retracted her gaze.

At the back of her mind, the mortal races that had turned against them were beyond redemption, even worse than the demons and devils that had always hindered their plans and Kai's dislike for the goddess's creations matched her own so she instantly took a liking to the young dragon.

The goddess face released another impression of a smile as her aura started to fluctuate and she disappeared from the realm she was residing, heading towards the dragon's banished lands query as to why they had started the infiltration and sent in forces to the mortal worlds ahead of schedule.

To Kai, he momentarily felt eyes upon him, not even lasting a second, before a warm, comforting energy filled his muscled and relieved his fatigue. After thinking for a few moments, he shrugged his shoulders in defeat and continued to practice walking.