The two people who emerged from the Portal wore ordinary clothes: short-sleeved Linen Cloth shirts and Linen Cloth shorts. Their shirts fit snugly enough, but their shorts were extremely baggy, not fitted at all.
Their expressions were somewhat vacant, though their eyes shifted from time to time, showing everyone that they still retained their own awareness.
At Arugal's gesture, they tilted their heads toward the sky, opened their mouths, and roared.
Their roars deepened from low growls into full-throated bellows.
Their appearance changed dramatically as well. Their entire heads seemed to split apart, and hair sprouted wildly. In the blink of an eye, fur covered their whole bodies.
Fangs, savage eyes, and enormous wolf heads appeared before the onlookers. Their bodies, previously only a meter and seventy centimeters tall, shot up by a full head, instantly reaching over a meter and ninety.
They went from short men to towering ones.
Their muscular bodies were fully twice as powerful as before.
It was not just their appearance that changed, but their strength as well. Initially, they had only been at the sixth tier. That was respectable, but among the Syndicate leaders present, everyone was at least that strong, if not stronger.
After all, the Syndicate was unlike other organizations. Other organizations valued succession. Even someone without much strength could hold office, provided they had the right to inherit it. The Syndicate was different. Here, the strong devoured the weak without pretense. Weakness was a sin, and the weak would be replaced by the strong. If you were powerful but had no inheritance rights, you could simply seize what you wanted. If you had both strength and inheritance rights, there was no problem at all.
Having inheritance rights without the strength to back them up was nothing more than courting death.
Thus,