My Reincarnation as a Chicken

"Hey, Arisu. Why won't Hefla respond to me?", Ulva, riding on the back of the massive horned rabbit king, questioned. The one being asked wasn't sure how to respond after knowing what just happened.

It wasn't long after the war started that Arisu, Ulva and Dharm were given a mission by General Reiman. It was mainly a mission for Arisu, but Reiman felt that he had to make some use of the others, so he had them act as her partners for this mission.

Arisu was both excited and anxious, but she believed that now, she probably stood a chance against that fiend. The horrid mindless monster that had given her a tough time for 1~2 years straight with absolutely no respect to her, the oldest bunny matriarch in Larm.

It took 3 days of tracking, for them to actually find Hefla's whereabouts. He was closer to the edge of the forest that led to South, but for some reason, none of Reiman's spies had been able to track it down. After encountering the fiend, it was a long-heavy battle that lasted 2 entire days, with Arisu mostly dealing damage and the other two having to hide and recover since they didn't even come close in power and stamina to her.

In the end, the one who actually dealt the silencing blow was Ulva with her scythe. It was like she was an entirely different person all together and that terrified Arisu.

She had heard from Ulva that her scythe had a mind of its own and that it was dangerous, but she always assumed that she was blowing things out of proportion. Even if the scythe had a mind of its own, it was limited by Ulva' overall stats, meaning it could never be stronger than her. But when Ulva summoned it, Arisu actually pictured the image of Ulva somehow dominating her in a fight.

This wasn't possible in the slightest, but when Ulva was overwhelmed by her scythe, her demeanour and aura gave off a sense of hopelessness to some opponents.

"Hefla just makes noise. This unforgivable trash can't talk.", Arisu smacked the big black rabbit on the side and laughed. It responded to the hit, with drooping ears, kept marching forward, started to make an odd sound.

"Isn't it weird though? That he simply submitted to us out of nowhere?", Ulva pointed out. From her perspective, all she did was punch Hefla and the fight ended. In her mind, there was no way that should have tamed Hefla to such a degree.

"He's just a coward. Stop thinking abou- go tell Reiman that enemies ha-", before finishing her sentence, she kicked both Hefla and Ulva away, but had opened herself to an incoming attack. The attack landed dead centre on her abdomen and smashed her through a couple of trees before she knew what had happened.

"Arisu!", Ulva's concerned shout entered Arisu's ear drums, creating a weird shock in her body. Arisu recovered almost immediately and she looked at the source of the attack.

It was a creature with red skin, golden eyes and grey hair. The creature possessed the dry, warty skin that trolls did, but its size was smaller than that of the usually bloated physique trolls were born with. Whatever creature it was, it mattered not to Arisu.

She kicked off towards the monster with full lethal intent, but had her kick stopped by ten ogres jumping in front of her and nullifying it completely, forcing her to retreat.

The red creature started to mutter something which Arisu couldn't understand. She hated the fact that it was so difficult for her to perceive what other races said. At first, the only one that understood her was Hinotori, but after acquiring a blessing from her, Arisu could understand every other race. Yet, now that Hinotori was evolving, her understanding was fickle. These was one of those moments were everything sounded like noise in her ears.

The red creature flexed his muscles and started to laugh, still saying something Arisu couldn't help but feel was important. To her, one of the oldest living kings of Larm, 10 ogres were the equivalent of 10 ants she could squash unknowingly. So how in the hell did 10 of them cancel out her kick?

She couldn't help but feel like the red one was explaining something about it.

Sick and tired of all the noise they were making, she fired off a blast of pure white light at them, but they all evaded it. Quickly, she charged at one ogre and kicked him dead centre in the chest, but rather than him being smashed or her leg passing through, he was only kicked back quite far.

'How!?', the other ogres saw her moment of confusion and decided to pounce on her. With a simple spin kick, she managed to repel them, but from the sky, she saw two wyverns diving at an unavoidable speed. Reflexively, she let go of her humanoid transformation which had a much lower defence, allowing her body to tank the attack and be drilled into the ground without feeling much.

She transformed back, to escape the crater, then pounded hard on the ground, erupting gems and crystals from beneath her feet. These crystals were a random mix of elemental crystals that were in the ground and exceedingly abundant in Larm.

For some inexplicable reason, Arisu had always loved crystals. From the moment she was born, she always sought crystals. She would always eat them over other food sources. She preferred to have them over having a colony of fanged rabbits she could be safe with. To her, crystals were everything. Her unusual and unhealthy obsession with them led to her developing in an unusual route for fanged rabbits and before she knew it, she was a bunny matriarch. Even then, she couldn't care less about anything other than gems. Her own children were nothing more than pebbles in her eyes.

That very same obsession had led her to develop the skill Advanced [Efficient Miner]. A skill that allowed her to sense the location of precious minerals, as well as uproot them with ease. This, coupled with a new blessing from Hinotori developed the unique skill [Diamond Cutter]. A unique skill with the same function as [Efficient Miner], only that it allowed the user to immediately refine the mineral and utilise it in any way the user wanted.

With [Diamond Cutter], Arisu crafted readily explosive elemental crystals which she shot off at random towards her opponents, hoping to kill them. Fire, lightning and wind elementals exploded violently, causing an unnatural eruption of gale and breaking the ground beneath them.

"Hahaha! Such pebbles can't harm us."

Finally, Arisu could understand the voices of her opponents. The red thing jumped down in front of her and tried to grab her head but she slapped his hand away. Holding back the urge to straight out attack once again, she decided to use restraint just like Grimm had been teaching her.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"Wha-!? I introduced myself already! You brat!", out of nowhere, the red creature exploded with rage and his skin turned red as he glowed with power. Arisu recognised this as the [King's Aura] skill that she very well possessed.

"You're a king as well?", she asked, somewhat underwhelmed by his dramatic display of power.

"Yes!" He spat in her face with veins snaking out. "I'm Zodd of the East! The strongest troll king to have ever lived and you, little girl will cower in fear! Now!"

Arisu wiped the saliva from her face and growled.

"Don't you ever, dare, spit in my face, you stupid pebble!", Arisu activated her skill [Goliath's Roar], amping up her voice and causing the ground behind him to shake. Zodd could feel goosebumps rising up on his dry skin and a sense of dread akin to the one he got from whenever he faced the tyrant Krull, entered his heart.

However, that sense of dread now turned to excitement as he grinned maniacally.

"They said to capture you and the girl alive, but you're probably as strong as Lord Krull, right?", he pointed right at her face.

"Who?"

"If I beat you right now, that means I don't have to listen to a word Lord Krull says!"

He unleashed a barrage of attacks that Arisu either accepted or avoided. It was flurry of attacks that pushed her back, breaking the ground and creating a lot of violent wind, yet to Arisu, it was a waste of time.

The other ogres jumped in from behind and Arisu was ready to deal with them, but Zodd jumped before the ogres.

"If any of you dare to interrupt this fight, I'll kill you myself.", he ordered, then immediately swung his arm at Arisu's neck. She flipped back to avoid it while kicking Zodd in the chin, lifting him up into the air.

He fell back down, with his face bloodied and a few teeth shattered. From the way he shakily moved, it was obvious to Arisu that the kick had dealt immense damage to him.

If Arisu had to define her opponent in one word, she would have to call him 'Weak'. Barely any of his attacks did any sort of significant damage even in her human form. It was so terrible, that frankly, Arisu who normally wouldn't even consider other possibilities, tried to think up whether he had a plan in mind, but he clearly didn't.

There was a belief that went that, it would take 10 D-ranks to beat a C-rank, and 100 C-ranks to beat a single B-rank. Arisu, was a B-rank and Zodd was worth about 10 C-ranks. 11 if she was being generous. In no universe did he stand a chance against her. The ogres present were each worth about 10 C-ranks themselves and with the wyverns in the sky, maybe, they could equal 122 C-ranks. Even then, Arisu was worth 10 B – ranks herself, so altogether, they could at best waste her time and eventually die.

Yet, he told them all to not interfere. There had to be something else up his sleeve, right? Arisu wasn't the brightest in the box and even now, it was almost impossible for her to think up something sketchy in a fight. Being a straight and honest fighter, she hated the scheming types the most, but she had to admit that they were exceedingly dangerous. Especially people like Grimm who always claimed to be weaker than everybody.

"Here it comes! My ultimate punch! The [King Killer]!", he roared, as his fist grew in magnitude with red aura surrounding it.

'Is this why he's so cocky?', Arisu still failed to understand what he was making so much noise for. 'Maybe if I get hit, I'll be killed by it?'

She thought this from the name given to the move, [King Killer]. There was no way someone would dub a weak move the name 'King Killer', right? It had to be something that could absolutely kill a king with one hit.

Arisu was ready to avoid the hit considering how slow it was, but then

"You're taking too long to beat something so weak, you stupid queen?" An unfamiliar voice called to Arisu. When she blinked, she saw a little boy with dark grey skin, stark naked and holding Zodd's fist with only one hand.

"Who are you?", Arisu was starting to feel like she'd been forced to care about too many people's identities in the past few weeks than she had in her entire life.

"You don't even recognise my voice? Maybe I just need to beat you up again.", the boy turned his head, allowing Arisu to get a good look at his features. His chubby cheeks, hair and eyes so black they seemed to suck in all light and a pair of crooked, branch-like horns that had little violet rose buds protruding out of his forehead.

"Hefla?"

"About time you heard my voice, you stupid queen."

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SYLPHIE POV

Ever since the war, Sylphie hadn't had a single moment's rest. Constantly working, creating renosue potions to heal troupes, working on weapons and even learning about enchantments. She even assisted Kara on her barrier invention a little bit, while still working on her own projects. It was no exaggeration to say that the West relied greatly on Sylphie's work.

A few months ago, she couldn't fathom herself doing anything more than just eating fruits while sitting in Diane's tree and watching the days go by endlessly, yet now she was here, sweating and working her hardest. Oddly enough, this kind of tedious of life felt more suiting to her than sitting about and playing with other sprites. Well, she never was like other sprites.

However, it was also true that the rate at which she worked would eventually cause her body to shut down. That was why, at this moment, even though she wasn't particularly happy about it, she chose to enjoy the sunlight while on her way to Diane's tree.

She had been working on a new weapon when she was summoned. She had to leave the rest of the work to her assistant, a shrewd looking goblin. He liked to complain a lot about how Hinotori didn't value him enough and said a lot of nonsense about how if it wasn't for him, she'd have died a long time ago. Sylphie didn't take it too seriously as goblins were selfish creatures by nature. A low-ranking goblin that hadn't even evolved yet had definitely never met Hinotori face-to-face before. In her mind, he was just an adorable lab assistant, just like Ulva.

The moment she arrived at Diane's tree, she was led inside by two sprites that still hadn't evolved. She tried to tell them to join Hinotori and evolve, but they all refused to listen to her, saying that doing such a thing wasn't the way Larm had planned things to be.

More and more, she was reminded of just how different she was from them.

On the inside, Sylphie saw two people sitting around a round table. It was lady Diane, looking as radiant as ever and General Reiman, a stark-contrast to the dryad head. The two seemed to be arguing about something, but Sylphie wanted to go back to work if this was a bad time.

"Um-"

"Take a seat, Sylphie. I've been waiting for you.", Diane cut her off before she could ask any questions. A chair grew up in front of Sylphie, so she sat down quietly.

"Shall we continue this discussion at a later date, rat man?", she proposed a ceasefire and Reiman simply got off his chair and marched away.

"I think you might want to hear this.", she tempted him. The general stayed and folded his arms.

"Hurry it up. I'm busy.", tapping his foot hurriedly, he urged her to get to the point. Sylphie, nervous about what this entire thing was about, couldn't help but fiddle with her arms while her eyes darted around the room.

She hadn't been around Diane much, apart from Diane occasionally passing by and just saying "hi" to her. This was the first time in a while that Diane had called her for a proper conversation and it was most likely going to be a scolding about something she did.

"Honestly, I wanted to tell this to Hinotori alone after Larm was united under her, but I guess I have to now."

Now both Reiman and Sylphie were invested.

"This is the truth about your origin, Sylphie. The reason why you were so different from the other sprites."

"How does that concern me?", Reiman, dissatisfied with this supposedly important truth, asked. Sylphie couldn't help but feel offended, but she could also understand his shock.

He was leading a war against two powerful forces and didn't have time to waste on other things. Though, Sylphie did remember a time when Reiman was free enough to wonder about what made her so different from others.

"In all honesty, I don't know if it will affect this battle in anyway, but I feel like this is something I need to say now."

"What could be so important that you have been waiting for that?"

"Well, it has to do with the King of the Forest Larm, and his creator, Kaleb Zen."