The rewards are sweeter than their flesh

John stalked through forest unconsciously starting to slowly transform into his draconic form. His teeth transform into swords and his jaw extends looking like a alligators mixed with a dragon. Three sets of horns form into a slight crown, once seven sets form the creature transforms into a demon lord. His eyes fill with blood lust and he began to munch on a arm he had somehow got in his hand. A terrifying sounding crunch responded through the area as he has completely consumed the arm in less than a minute.

It looked as though he had teleported through the tree tops and dived at each enemy puncturing their bodies easily. That was only till he made it to the final group of three. He felt immense power radiating from that group so instead of immediately jumping in he used his cursed flaming cyclone. They burned for several seconds and the flames stayed on them as their dwindled slightly. John picked out the weakest and quickly dived from the trees, he punctured the mans chest. The barely managed to dodge a spear aiming for his skull, his face cut open only two inches as his scales had increased in defense. John whipped the man he killed's head off and his scales sealed. He was ran through by the second mans spear, it pierced through his lungs and came out on the other side.

John slid down the spear and ripped the mans head off and began digesting it. After pulling the spear the rest of the way out, he pinned the last man to the ground with the spear. The man bleed out quickly from the grown spear and as John approached him licking his lips in anticipation he noticed a ring on his hand.

He pulled the ring off and put it on his own hand as he began to finish his "snack". Suddenly while he was munching on the last bandit he felt his mind pulled into the ring. The ring wasn't very big, but it was at least twenty feet on all of its sides and was cluttered with items, such as scrolls and spells piled up in one corner, pills and potions forming a mountain in another corner and lastly a few weapons of high quality and some books in the remaining corners.

"Ah…. So it's a storage ring, like the ones in the webnovels I use to read". John fiddled with it a bit more, before remembering the carriage he had to guard. After traveling back through the forest he landed silently on the roof as if he never left, to bad he forgot about the fact that he was completely covered in blood and had a few human chunks left in his teeth.

Nevertheless he started to systematically go through the cluster fuck of a ring he had obtained.

The mission finished quickly and let traumatized looking merchant paid over double the missions price with all the blood that coated John.

After exiting the area, he unfurled his wings and flew back to the guild. After getting the ring John decided to seclude himself to start experiment with the contents.

The pills and medicines were mostly useless to him, but there were a few with good effects like the body strengthening pills, the energy strengthening pills and the potions that if you slathered it on you back would increase the energy absorption process.

The body strengthening pills were especially good, as since he had the body of a dragon hybrid he had the innate ability of the beasts. The beasts only needed to absorb energy to raise their realms and that same effect applied to his body. The beasts could either increase their realm by just absorbing the energy in the air which took a long time, or they could eat the bodies of beasts in higher tiers and realms or at the same realm as them. Since he had eaten all of the bandits his body had advanced to the next realm, but if one center of power advances to a high realm than the rest the speed of their advancement increases several fold and the effect is even better if it's just one left in a realm before the others.

That's also not the only thing of use he found in their, every song book and scroll were useful either because they were worth a lot or items like the cobratic runes they were from a beast that developed a mental sphere and it allowed for the person who looked at it to slowly and safely expand their mental sphere.

He had gotten one cobractic rune for the third realm and one for the fourth realm, while he had also gotten a lot of books regarding inscription methods, the only problem with that was that they work off of using meditation to enlighten oneself on the words of heaven and earth, allowing them to inscribe better, the better they are able to hear the words of the world. By nature as a hybrid between human and beasts his existence went against the laws of heaven and earth so he couldn't use conventional inscription techniques.

He had found only one of said techniques which excluded heaven and earths laws allowing for the user to use inscriptions every with having to affinity for traditional inscription methods. Its name had been long forgotten but it allowed the user of it to absorb energy from the world and imbue it with their own specific meanings and the allow them to infuse it into a weapon.

"Well I guess I'll be in seclusion longer than I thought". He said with a chuckle and began his practicing.