575 The Silver Giant, Herons Chimera-like Transformation (1/2)

Day 131 - 11:29 PM - Glassgow Quarry, King of Prussia, Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States of America

The pressure that Mark felt made him jump back and take some distance away from Heron. And there, he watched the latter transform in quite an unsightly way.

Heron's body started to tear with bloody cracks appearing all over his skin. Blood even splattered around as his violent transformation started. Nevertheless, despite the brutal display and changes, Heron did not show any sign of pain on his face.

The whole body of Heron started to pulsate before it began to swell. As his muscles and flesh bloated, the cracks on his skin became deep and wide.

Mark watched as Heron's body grew larger and larger. He then started to see the patterns that appeared as the skin began to get loose. Before the torn skin got peeled off, it turned into metal.

The torn skin became layers upon laters of irregularly shaped scales that riddled Heron's swelling body.

It did not take long, and Heron's body stopped growing. Still, Mark was already staring up a four-meter fleshy monster. After all, after Heron's body grew, the torn skin was not enough to cover his whole body anymore and was left with his muscles exposed.

And while Heron's body grew, it also changed its shape. His upper body was now larger and disproportionate with his legs and head. The muscled arms he had could even reach the ground despite standing upright.

Heron's face also changed. He now had a long beak with insect mandibles at both sides. The eyes that looked human before were now three pairs of oval compound eyes arranged in a semi-circle across his forehead.

Another thing was there were a pair of absurdly large wings on his back that was enough to cover his body when folded. However, it did not have any feathers. In fact, even though Heron's name was a bird and he had a beak and wing, not a single feather could be found on his body.

Still, Mark knew that it was not the end of the transformation. After all, aside from what remained of Heron's skin that turned into metal, the other things he showed before was still missing.

And as Mark thought, Heron's body immediately exhibited further changes.

Gaps opened up between Heron's muscles, showing his silver-colored bones. From there, silver-colored slime flowed out, which started to cover his body.

The slime flowed, covering from the tip of his hands to the sole of his foot. It began to form armor encasing his body. No, rather than armor, it was more appropriate to call it a metallic exoskeleton.

And finally, the feathers that were missing appeared in the form of that metallic slime. It created layers upon layers of metallic feathers in that metal-covered wings.

RUMBLE!

The ground shook as the four-meter silver monster took his first step.

Mark looked at the monster in front of him that he could not fathom what to call. It had the exoskeleton of an insect, sharp claws of a feline, talons of an eagle, scales of a lizard, mandibles of an ant, eyes of a fly, beak of a heron, wings of an eagle, mane of a lion, and the body proportion of a man that skipped leg day.

'Wait... the last one was true but inappropriate.'

Mark scratched his head as he observed Heron's current appearance.

It was not wrong to say that this guy was like a Chimera. That was the most appropriate description of a monster that appeared to be made of body parts of different creatures.

However, Mark was also reluctant to call Heron a Chimera because of a reason.

If one was to describe a Chimera, it looked like a monster with body parts from different creatures slapped together in one body. One look at it would give a person a sense of feeling. It was a kind of feeling that each of the body parts it had was not meant to be together.

A sense that made a Chimera an aberrant to the norm. It was because the body parts of the Chimera retained the appearance of the animal it was supposed to come from.

Heron, however, was different.

Sure, he had body parts of different beings, but still, it was more appropriate to say that he had body parts that had the nature of other creatures rather than belonging to others.

And more than that, each part that Heron had shown an association with the others. Everything might have a different appearance, but all of it was made of silver and had metallic properties.

ROOOOAAARRR!!!

Heron faced the sky and roared. That roar was loud enough to be heard for more than a kilometer radius. Even the surroundings shook because of that roar.

Mark retreated further. He was a bit careful about roars after his experience with the other Infected Kind this afternoon.

Fortunately, this roar could not disorient the people in the surroundings.

It was only a pure roar to show dominance and strength.

”Let's continue!”

Heron, whose voice had turned gruff after the transformation, shouted while looking down on Mark.

BAM!

The ground collapsed as Heron ran in all fours like a gorilla. It was quite expected since there was no way that his body would be able to run upright with that body proportion. Nevertheless, despite his large body, his speed did not reduce at all. In an instant, he ran a dozen meters.

Mark could only look up, and a set of half-meter claws were already falling towards him from above.

With a red glow on his feet, Mark jumped away. At the start of the battle, Mark and Heron had almost the same speed. Now, it was still the same. However, with the latter's body that became larger, Mark needed to exert more effort and speed in dodging.

CRASH!

The claws missed and hit the ground, causing even greater destruction in the surroundings.

Not minding the large rocks flying around, Heron chased after Mark, waving his claws once more.

And as expected, Mark managed to dodge it, although he had to move wider distances.

However, the large portion of the quarry was already trashed. The large rocks flying around buried a lot of infected that were trapped at the lower levels of the quarry.

Heron continued to chase after Mark, making attacks, once after another. But then, Mark's movement's changed, and the way he dodged the attacks and the flying debris became more and more efficient. That was when Heron noticed that his opponent was releasing strange energy in the surroundings. And there, he saw that Mark's eyes were glowing with a purple light that waved around as he moved.

To Mark's sudden change, Heron made his attacks even faster. His claws could hardly be seen by a regular human's eyes anymore.

The sudden increase of speed caught Mark off guard. After all, it was quite hard to believe that a large creature like Heron would be able to increase his attack speed further.