I'm not jealous. Just a little. I want Marcy to call me 'dashing' too. Okay? I can't even talk right now because I am a freaking wyvern.

And what is the deal with these angelic growth spurts? How tall will this guy get when he becomes 'adult'? Will it be seven, eight feet tall? It is not because he seems taller than my human form. No, sir. It is also not because the girls are staring too much. Maybe.

Helen too is still shaken, "What was it right now?" She asks the brand-new boy-band-member Zahariel.

"Monsters evolve, but that is a monster-exclusive thing. We angels get promoted. The demons too, as they are a twisted mockery of our brethren corrupted by Lucifer. The light just now, they should remember it very well. See, they are already routing. Let's go. They should be easy to pick off now."

Freaking showoff. I bet this pillar of light could be seen all the way back in Mirfield and probably Strawford and Barnsley beyond the mountains. We are closer to the demon's territories so it is in sight of the Fort Gehenna at least. What means we announced we have an angel with us to all the factions around us. I'd clock him if I had hands. On the other hand, he waited to do this light show here... I don't know.

And I think it is time to relieve stress doing some good old demon slaying. I roar and dive to approach the biggest group of enemies. The main group didn't rout. Their elites. The juiciest chunk.

"Lava Bomb." It goes down and... Hits a magical shield. The age of pushovers is over. Time to kick it up a notch. A hail of arrows and spells rise and wound Benorass, but they amount to only flesh wounds. The combo of a dragon's armored scales and a troll's regeneration won't be beaten by them.

Zahariel also finishes his chant, "Comet Fall." The burning comet descends with his peculiar trail of smoke.

Before the comet reaches the shield I finish another chant. "Pyroclastic Flow."

My second pyroclasm spell. A billowing cloud of smoke and burning ash forms and crawls close to the ground, choking the life out of the forest, turning it to cinders and clambering over the demon troops. It moves slowly, and the few demons outside of the shield run away from it and into the woods.

"Homing Multishot." Marcy pulls Benorass into a wingover and snipes the stragglers that separated from the group.

"Overboost. Firebolt Volley." Helen also peppers her share of targets.

The elite ones are still under the shield, but we can see the sparks as it spends energy to repel and repeal the deadly volcanic smoke.

I toss Lava Bombs and renew the Pyroclastic smoke when they go out of cooldown, and Zahariel keeps bombarding the shield with his Star Flare, the little sister to the comet fall; several mini meteors fall on the area and burst in a shower of sharp rock shards.

The shield falters and breaks, but their magicians just put the barrier back up. Even the combat-oriented demons have MP pools in the thousands, I shudder to think how much a demon wizard have. Probably above four thousand.

They fight back. Arrows and spells fly up, but they either are negated by the armored belly of the wyvern or I just regenerate the damage. Benorass' agility and my evasive skills also help avoid most of these desperate attacks.

This ranged exchange goes for a while. They lifted the shield back several times but for them even the ground becomes an enemy as the heat from the magma seeps into the earth and cooks them from below. We didn't get all of them, but the gruesome battle of attrition ended after the last heavy troop fell. This girl's wings feel heavy now.

Helen +3 levels ([4] Wizard: 67 > 70 (☆) ) Marcy +8 levels ([5] Guild Master: 65 > 73) Zahariel +24 / +12 levels ([5] racial: 1 > 25 / [3] Acolyte: 40 > 52 ) Beowulf +6 / +6 levels ([4] racial: 64 > 70 (☆) / [4] Wizard: 64 > 70 (☆) ) +105 SP Congratulations! You reached your job level cap. [Inactive Job Management] changed jobs to Apprentice Warrior.

And in our particular way, we also earned some sort of promotion. So many stars.

I cast frozen wonderland on the crater site and drain out the heat from the ground before landing. Everyone dismounts, I dismiss possession, and Benorass cries from the pain of overexerting her body. I keep her quiet with the domination magic.

Before collapsing on the vitrified ground to rest, I set a twilight totem and a sentry ward. It makes our position almost impossible to reach via stealth.

"Grendel, don't change jobs," Marcy warns me. "We would drop in stats and the enemy still lurks in the woods beyond."

We stay for a while wary of any attacks, but none come. People relax and begin to chat.

"By the gods. If I had to speak with that squawking voice any longer I'd go mad."

"Zahariel, you look so handsome. It is amazing. Congratulations on your... promotion." Helen rushes to compliment the new and improved seraph.

"If this guy struts through town like this, we'll need a dozen carts to scoop the swooned maidens from the streets." And now Marcy. I've lost.

I have to curb this envy I'm feeling. C'mon.

Helen crouches next to me, "Beowulf, how are you feeling? Are you hurt? Is the soul's vessel weakening again?"

I was going to make a jealousy scene to earn me some cuddle points but finally someone shouts in the demon language from the edge of the clearing, "Its Zahariel. The Seraph are back."

"They know who you are, wing-boy. Don't let them escape." But the demon that shouted was already sniped by Marcy.

"I heard him. I can understand their language after all. If they know I am in this valley, they will avoid it like the plague." I have my doubts about this statement, but the ship has sailed.

"I have recovered. How are we going to proceed on the cleanup of the remnants? I want to go around the place and get the loot."

"Okay. Hurry up and get what you want, Beowulf. We are waiting here."

I run around the crater and store whatever looks useful. There's distorted armor that softened from the heat everywhere with charred bodies inside. I store these just so I can keep a body count. I can tell the relative value of things with sense treasure, so I just trust its input.

Some fifteen to twenty minutes later, I'm back. "Shall we go?"

"Right, Help us up, Beowulf." I give Marcy a hand in climbing to the saddle of the wyvern. And then Helen too. Why would Marcy need my help getting up? I bet she could just jump up.

I address the wyvern in the demon language, "Benorass, fly next to me, but if I descend to the ground you rise up and circle around until I return. You are forbidden to use the stinger under any circumstances." The enthrallment magic makes my orders absolute.

We fly in zigzag around the valley going west and picking on the demon survivors that fled in this direction. Hard to evade the capped Presence Detection of both Marcy and Zahariel. Once we made a round trip north and south without finding any, I descended and laid down a line of ten sentry wards, my maximum limit. It covered a line of more than five miles from the foot of the mountains down to the middle of the valley.

It is already past noon.

We searched and hunted east of the ward line until the end of the day, but no more demons were found. I got a hundred and fifty bodies, so about forty-something demons were able to escape. How many will make it back to Ft. Gehenna? I have no idea. Oh, wait. The seven tamers we killed back there, plus the four I've taken, it makes less than thirty survivors? It is... fifteen percent. It is an absolute rout.

Leave these remnants to try their luck in the depths of the Dragon Valley. If they go west I'll know.

I gather everyone and teleport to the hill's anchor plaza. There were some flame gorilla children playing around, but the wyvern scares them into hiding.

"It feels so good to be back home. But I guess it is goodbye Benorass now. She is not completely controlled and is too much of a liability."

"Wait, Beowulf." Helen tugs my clothes. "Can't she be tamed? It is a shame to lose such a magnificent ride."

"Not anymore. She was already tame, it is impossible to tame her again. She was imprinted with the magic power of the demon tamer and this imprint lasts forever."

"What if we overwrite it with an even stronger magic power?"

"It is impossible. Her pemadra will break from the stress if we just brute force it. And without one, the monster's body won't circulate magic power. A creature this big cannot exist without magic." It is like wanting to bleach with fire a paper page written with a sharpie trying to burn only the paint. "The only way would be to wait for her to lay an egg and tame the hatchling. But it would take years. And she has a chance of breaking free of the enthrallment every season. A rampaging wyvern in this settlement will do more harm than the demon scouts' assault. It is too cruel to keep her confined and brainwashed like this. You are a tamer too. Check the knowledge imparted through the skill."

"I... you are right. Not with the familiar contract, not with the tamer skill, not with the bee queen's powers. If there is a way, it is beyond our abilities."

"We can try one thing. Marcy, can you check the guild library in Mirfield for something? I will wait four more days then I will put her in the killing chamber."

Helen lowers her head and puts a hand to my chest. "I have a selfish request. Could you possess her when we do it? I don't want her to feel any more pain."

"This is acceptable. I can handle any kind of pain for my companions. I'll put her in the holding cell for now."

There is another problem. All this fighting made me reach the evolve cap way sooner than I thought. I'll have to hibernate-evolve again. For how long? sixteen days for another tier 4? Or go for a tier 5 but lose twenty-five days. The matter with the demons is not settled yet. I'll just linger at the cap for now. Also, what job should I grind now? I think an agility-based for the bonus to stamina. I'll reset the warding and go to sleep. Tomorrow we can think about these bothersome things.

The evolved goblins awaken tomorrow. We will need to throw an evolution party. Also, Cloude wants to go back to Mirfield. I paid him fifteen gold coins and sent him on his way.

The next five days were hectic. Helen hunted some monsters in the woods with the rats to get them to the cap and made all of them evolve. Mittens is also hibernating and will evolve into a knight mantis, a fourth tier race. The goblins awakened and the second group was put to evolve one day after. I moved the sentry wards back to our perimeter, but no demon ever appeared. We did make contact with another tribe of monkeys that accepted to join us. We really needed the reinforcements. It also marked the equinox. It is officially Spring. The draconians joined us.

The big surprises were Emory that evolved into a mouse rogue and got opposable thumbs and the Symians. This was the message I got when they awakened from their evolution.

Your contract with the tame monster was terminated. Invalid target.

They lost their status as monsters and became a new hybrid third tier race. And now there are six Symian villagers in Willow Hill.

I think I've done something either very good or very bad.

But Emory can now stand upright and manipulate stuff. He is two feet tall. He got some thief and roguish skills. I'll craft him some wyvern leather armor and a rapier.

3-D evolved Emory:

Credits: http://www.cadnav.com/3d-models/model-46288.html