Evolution...but this time permanent

You're awakened by sudden screaming, along with suddenly landing prone on the floor. You groan, rolling over to push yourself up. You feel your wings fold along your back as you rise to a kneeling position. "You okay, Kris?" You glance to the elf, and she looks terrified at the sight of you. Glancing down at yourself, you find that you'd somehow dropped your polymorph overnight, reverting to your nephilic form. Thinking quickly, you polymorph once more into your human guise, looking the brunette in the eyes. "Kris, Kris! Listen to me. I'm not here to hurt you, okay? I'm still the same guy you met yesterday."

She's cowered up against the corner, half-dressed and pushing herself as far away from you as she can. "Y-you...you not Dusk!" She shakes her head in disbelief.

"I am Dusk. I'm a monster, I get it, but you can ask Camilla if you want, or Garth, or Gilford. I don't want to hurt you. I'm here to help. I saved you from the goblins, and I saved a half-dozen other people, too. I'm not one of the bad guys." You breathe, placing your hands flat on the bed. "Please trust me on this. I can't even use most of my powers when I'm in human form."

Her anxious face tells the whole story.

You sit there, waiting. How long does it take for her to grab Camilla? Kris had insisted on going to find the captain alone, despite probably not knowing where she was. In the meantime, you take a closer look at your 'evolved' form. Not much has changed, at least from your first-person perspective. Your skin seems to have gotten darker, and you think your horns have gotten longer, but you can't notice anything else different. What about that edict business? Could I just tell the goblins not to attack humans? I feel like that's cheating, somehow...

Eventually, the pair of brunettes enters the inn room, with one looking at you curiously, and the other looking anxious.

Camilla is the first to speak up. "Did...something happen? You're looking...different, today."

"This," you gesture at yourself, "is the result of conquering those goblin tribes. My magic got boosted a lot, and I can order around the goblins better, but not much else changed, by the looks of it.

"I...sorry, Dusk." The elf fiddles with her hands as she avoids your gaze.

You polymorph once more, to hopefully relieve some of her tension. "It's not your fault, Kris. It can be...a lot to take in." You glance to the captain apologetically.

She sighs, crossing her arms. "You really need to do better with your reveals, Dusk. This is the second time, now. Next time it happens, the girl in your arms might just stab you."

Kristhyra looks to Camilla with confusion as you respond. "Yeah, I know..." You rub the back of your head. "If I'm being honest, this wasn't my fault, though. At least, I don't think it was..."

"Well, it doesn't matter now. Kristhyra, as I was saying before, it's an open secret that Dusk is a monster. He and one of the goblins are...mostly welcome in town, so long as they keep helping defend us from other monsters. Remember when I talked about Eve last night? She's the goblin."

"If you can trust me, you can trust her. She's very loyal to me." And that has absolutely nothing to do with the tattoo on her stomach.

Camilla shrugs. "I'd use other words, but we can say she's loyal." Is it just me, or did that sound agitated?

After excusing yourself, you fly off toward the hive for your morning meeting with the Hornet Empress. Or at least...you would. However, the small pond forming from your old crater grabs your attention. It seems much more filled, so you accept the seemingly minor detour to take another look at it.

As you're about to land, you quickly realize something wrong with this 'pond'. It not only seems to have filled more, it seems to have bulged, forming some sort of pseudo-sphere. You cautiously approach it, conjuring forth your dark blade just in case. As you do, it seems to...shift. You pause, letting the 'pond' settle, before you realize: what am I doing? You activate God's Eye, and what you see immediately makes you flap your wings back so you can stand on the edge of the crater, just as two tendrils reach out to try to grab you where you had stood before retreating back into the blob. What the hell? When did a giant slime... You remember the previous day, when a slime appeared and made a beeline for the too-blue water. I guess I didn't kill it...or maybe another one appeared. You spend a moment looking at its stats, wondering how it got so powerful. So, slimes eat things and leech mana... The only thing it seems to have eaten was the water...

Unsure what could have caused the slime to grow so big, you begin cutting it down to size. Not risking getting grabbed by its tendrils, you launch dark bolts from the edge of the clearing. It's almost sad, seeing the slime squirm around in response to your attacks, but even according to the god of monsters, these things need to be kept in check. Well, they also think I'm a slime, so that's not necessarily a good thing. After much absent-minded blasting, the slime seems to dissolve into a puddle of...slime, for lack of a better term. God's Eye seems to confirm that there's nothing left, since no stat sheet pops up anywhere you look within the crater. It's annoying that I can't seem to scan the entire crater at once and need to activate the ability so often for it...maybe there's something I can do to upgrade God's Eye?

"Em isn't going to see you today." The wolf-man stands guard at your usual entrance to the hive.

"Really? I came all the way here - at her 'request' - and she won't even dignify me with her presence? What kind of bullshit is that?" You flail your arms in anger.

"She's not feeling well after the birth of our daughter. She said she'd meet with you tomorrow." He huffs, raising his hackles. "You got a problem with that?"

"Yeah, I got a problem with that. She wants me tomorrow, she'll come get me herself." You turn to begin walking off, feeling a hand on your shoulder.

"You'll come back tomorrow, or that town of yours is gonna get another 'visit'." He bares his teeth as you turn your head.

"And if that visit isn't from the Empress herself, I'm not against coming back...to burn this place to the ground properly." You shrug him off, but you're pretty sure he wasn't holding onto you with all his strength. "I'm not one of her drones, and I won't act like my time isn't important." With a flap of your wings, you take off, not leaving room for debate.

You land in Eve's village after a much-needed time calming down, ready to take the ranger to meet your maybe-future-party-member. However, when you land, it seems as though there's excitement in the air, with the goblins having an enthusiasm that wasn't present the last time you were here. In fact, one of the nearby goblins takes your hand and begins leading you to your tent (that you've never used), sounding proud as she(?) speaks gibberish to you.

What you see when you enter the tent surprises you. Standing around four feet tall, barely clad in a too-small fur dress, and looking relieved to see you is a green goblin with purple patches along her skin and a small horn poking out above her left eye. "Chief? I think something happened to me last night..."

You stand awestruck for a moment before speaking. "Eve?" You immediately use God's Eye, quickly finding that she somehow evolved into something called a tyrant goblin.

"Uh, yeah...I don't know what happened, but I'm...like this, now, I guess..." She twiddles her thumbs as you continue to take in her appearance.

You only now notice that the other goblin has left the tent. "Look, everything's fine... Remember that conversation we had about you not wanting to evolve?"

A shocked look appears on the goblin's face and she begins stepping back. "Did I do something bad? I didn't want to-"

"Relax. Relax. You're fine. You didn't do anything wrong." I don't think, at least. You take her shoulders to hold her in place. "You evolved. Neither of us expected this, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. Maybe this happened because you helped me conquer the other tribes. Maybe you said certain things that triggered something. It doesn't matter now. You're still you, right?" Carnachias' careless words ring in your ears before you mentally shake it off. "You're still Eve, and that's not going to change, alright?"

She seems to at least somewhat calm down with your spiel, and takes a deep breath. She pushes forward and hugs you tight. "Are you sure I didn't do anything wrong? You're...not mad at me?"

"Eve, why would I be mad at you for evolving? You didn't hurt anyone, right? Well, more than needed. If so, then there's nothing to worry about." You wrap your arms around her, patting her head.

Hello, Readers! I realize now that we're averaging well over ten chapters per in-world day, which makes things really slow for pacing and means it'll be years before we see Dusk get to properly encounter the Saintesses or Demon King. Things will be going a little faster now, and from here on I plan on having fewer than ten chapters per in-world day, likely even fewer. On top of that, we're officially at the point where I'm not writing chapters way ahead of time. I actually wrote this one only two days before the day it'll be posted. As a consequence of that, I'll be asking for your opinions more often in the comments, like right now!

This story has recently reached 500 likes! That's nearly ten/chapter, and I'm really happy about it! To celebrate, there will be a Q&A for the characters. In the comments of this chapter, for the next week (up until October 17th, 2022) type in your questions for ANY character in this story (even those that haven't shown up yet, like Sakurai or Halicarnassus). I'll try to answer as many as I can in-character, while still avoiding spoilers for future chapters. Hell, if you want to ask me, questions, feel free to, but make sure it's easy to tell the difference between questions for me and questions for Dusk the nephilim.

Anyway, thanks so much for reading, and I hope you all have a wonderful day!