Reincarnated as a mana core

The dogs began barking again and Rash cursed. So much for his heavenly break not that he had believed he would get one. He sighed and got up from the ground. Couldn’t those stupid dogs take a little bit longer to find his smell after he went through the river?

He couldn’t smell that good could he?

Rash activated his mana sense and looked eastwards. Once people had completed a quest they tended to have more mana inside of them than the surroundings. It was something he had learned after being chased for two days by these crazy lunatics. 

Hopefully the others had reached their destination already, because he couldn’t do this for another day.

Rash got a glimpse of the people chasing him and turned around to run away through the undergrowth. His long tail swished over the ground behind him, creating an obvious trail for the bloody believers.

The shout of the damn neo christians reached him. “Run faster or do you want the demon to get away and spread evil to the world?”

Again they called him a demon. Someone really needed to open their eyes.

A chorus of voices answered. “No!”

Or don’t. Better erase this blight from the surface of this planet. 

Rash had no idea about the exact number of people chasing him, but he knew that their leader was a lesser angel accompanied by at least 8 other guys.

He jumped over a small trench in the ground and continued running through the birch forest.

Luckily they had known about the angel fanatics and unluckily they had been forced to flee from them.

Rash wasn’t sure how long ago it had been exactly, but maybe 2 weeks ago mana had spread to their village. 

The neo christians had claimed it to be a blessing of their god, but Rash just questioned their ability to read and comprehend things. On the other hand he had to admit he would have believed them if the system hadn’t sent out a message. People of his village devolving into feral animals wouldn’t be the worst their god had done.

Turning him into a beautiful blue scaled lizard human on the other hand was something the cunt of a god would never do, no he believed that mana had just revealed his inner beauty.

Rash ducked, evading a low branch and ran through a small gap between two bushes.

You would have thought that the change mana had brought with it would cause confusion and panic among the people, but they didn’t have the time for that back then.

Of course not all of the villagers had changed and mutated and that was the spark for disaster, because the neo christians rewarded people for pointing out demons to them or even strike them down. They also punished people who did not report any changed humans with a torturous death, so needless to say people had immediately attacked or ran towards the nearest church. 

The village had devolved into a brutal brawl after the change and it had taken the group of lizard-kin more than two hours to band together and then run away. They had all gotten a quest after that, that pointed out a possible location to rebuild and to gather strength.

Rash changed his course more northwards. If he wanted to get there before he was completely exhausted he couldn’t do another detour. He could only hope that the others had already reached the place and were ready for a fight.

The group hadn’t been fast enough and the hunting party had slowly caught on to them. This is what led Rash to be here. In a rather rash decision he had volunteered to distract the hunting party as long as possible and catch on to the others.

A horrible screech sounded out from ahead and Rash looked up. Inside one of the birch trees sat some kind of violet squirrel. It was as tall as a human and undoubtedly had been one once.

The thing opened its mouth and screeched again, presenting its teeth to Rash in the process.

He continued running and screamed back at the stupid squirrel. He already had enough things trying to get a piece of his tail and didn’t need another one right now.

The squirrel seemed to be surprised by the action and didn’t do anything so Rash was able to run past. He took a glance over his shoulder, but the squirrel had disappeared. That was totally fine by him so he just forgot about it again.

The dogs barked again and Rash could tell they were slowly catching up again. They had done so often in the last two days, but he had always been able to use the terrain to his advantage or his tail. It had been a surprisingly good tool in fights.

If they got too close to him this time though, it would be his end. He was just too tired to think of a way to use the birches to his advantage and he couldn’t fight against that many people simultaneously.

Rash continued running and slowly got into a rhythm. A bit later he ran past a batch of silver grass, but he didn’t put energy towards wondering about the strange plant.

As Rash continued running more and more batches of the silver grass appeared until a small clearing opened up in front of him. In the middle of the clearing a weird plate hovered and he got the impression that space was rippling around the thing.

Rash was pretty sure that this was what the quest had been talking about and ran towards it. He used his arms to shield his face in the case that this was not a portal and closed his eyes.

Then he ran into the portal and promptly tripped over something. Rash was too surprised to catch himself and slid a few very painful meters over the ground.

His head softly impacted something and he groaned out loudly.

Rash rolled over on his back and opened his eyes, looking into the face of a beautiful green scaled lizard girl. He grinned and completely ignored the wooden spear that was pointed at his face. “Hello there pearl.” 

The girl blushed and looked away, but held the spear in place.

Rash could hear a relieved sigh from somewhere to the side and turned his head in the direction. The leader of the refugee group looked at him. “At least you are alive. Sadly your personality came back with you too.”

Rash crossed his arms, still laying on his back. “I just have to appreciate the beauty of nature.”

He winked towards the girl and then pointed at the portal. “By the way, the group of fanatics and dogs are about to come through there any second now.”

The group of armed lizard people around Rash tensed up and he used his tail to get up. He turned to the girl and gestured towards her spear. “May I use that? I have a tiny grudge against those people after the last two days.”

The girl was still a bit red in the face. She offered him the spear and he took it while smiling brilliantly at her. She blushed again, turned around and distanced herself a bit.

Rash flexed his muscles and took a test swing with the spear, a smirk on his face. How he loved these exciting times!