Four hours before two thousand Free Humans were transported to each Silver Grade Pranic Beast.
Having finished transporting the grey sand to the Sandy-Grey Void ring, Inala and his group of Empyrean Zingers finished cleaning up all traces of the grey sand in the region.
He arrived at the corpse of the dead Millinger and fished its skull counterpart, one created through the Empyrean Extraction Prime Skill. Having used it enough times, Inala’s proficiency with it had improved by leaps and bounds.
It allowed him to understand the Prime Skill’s efficiency in function. It wasn’t a necessity to keep the target alive for all its data to be inscribed into its skull.
The Prime Skill could also be applied upon a dead target. But there were some issues here. Once the body dies, the brain remains alive for a short duration.
As long as Empyrean Extraction was activated in this window, data regarding the target could be extracted. But the more its activation is delayed post the target’s death, the lower the efficiency. This is because of the brain’s degradation.
The obtained data might be corrupted, with large parts of it missing. And depending on the delay, the corrupted and missing parts would only increase. Finally, once the brain dies, using Empyrean Extraction Prime Skill wouldn’t gather any of the target’s data on its skull.
Therefore, it couldn’t be used on corpses.
Ideally, Inala wanted the data of a female Millinger too, but he couldn’t risk everything for that. None of the female Millingers were close to death by the time Fhoong Brimgan’s final body was killed.
Therefore, Inala had no means to kill one of them.
Also, trying to harm one in that situation would simply reveal his existence. If they were to set him as a target to hunt, Inala’s life would be forfeit. Even Fhoong Brimgan was nothing in the face of nine Millingers.
Inala, as a Body Stage fledgeling would barely be enough as dirt under their feet. With their bad matchup in abilities, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.
Even against a Centinger, he needed to exercise utmost caution. Because, a direct hit from its artillery strike, and he would collapse as a leather sack. The fact that he managed to survive through this and even bagged the data of a male Millinger was a tremendous achievement.
Oftentimes, greed became one’s downfall. Hence, he didn’t push his luck and became satisfied with what he had obtained.
The Empyrean Zinger King carefully carried the skull counterpart of the male Millinger while Inala touched the Millinger corpse before him and activated Mystic Bone Art.
The bones of the Millinger turned into fluid and slowly flowed out. He carefully collected it into a large sphere, observing it in praise, “This is very tough. As expected of a Gold Grade Pranic Beast’s skeleton. I can transform this into the vehicle that would take me to Asaeya.”
By creating a vehicle using a Millinger’s skeleton, Inala would be very safe travelling within. There were three Millinger corpses in total. He carefully extracted their skeleton and condensed them into a large piece of bone.
During this time, the Empyrean Zinger Commanders condensed the skeletons of all the Centingers. There were plenty of casualties on their side.
Finally, the Empyrean Zinger Scouts visited the cities and extracted the bones of all human cultivators, segregating them based on their cultivation. Not many bones remained intact in terms of ratio. But as a whole, there was a large population of people whose bones weren’t melted by an artillery strike.
They were all collected and condensed into large pieces according to their quality. The same also applied to the Slump Lizards.
Currently, not a single Slump Lizard was alive in the region, entirely eradicated by the Centingers. Therefore, not many of their skeletons remained intact enough to be collected by the Empyrean Zinger Scouts.
Under Inala’s orders, all bone clusters were transported to Ellora City.
After carefully storing the Millinger’s skull counterpart, Inala accompanied the Empyrean Zinger King and returned to the Rooster Tribe Settlement, having put on their armoured disguises.
He entered the settlement and let out a shriek. In response, two armoured individuals walked out of the tunnel, leading the people hiding there.
The armoured individuals bowed to Inala and stood at the very back, allowing the people to pour into the settlement.
Inala waited patiently as the people gathered before him. Once all forty thousand Free Humans were there, he announced aloud, “The mating season of the Centingers has just concluded. Fhoong Brimgan lost his life hours ago. He was the last of your Kingdom to die. Hence,”𝗈𝓥𝒍𝐞xt.𝒞𝒐𝗆
He stared at them, pausing for dramatic effect before shouting, “You’re the sole survivors.”
“And here’s the situation.” He said in seriousness, “What happened this time was an unfortunate twist of fate. But this region is by far the safest in Sumatra Continent. And that’s thanks to the hard work of four Silver Grade Pranic Beasts who maintained diplomatic ties with Fhoong Brimgan.”
“What is he talking about?”
“Diplomatic ties? With Pranic Beasts?”
“It feels absurd!”
“No need to worry,” Inala waved casually and snapped his fingers crisply, causing two armoured figures to walk in from the settlement’s unsealed entrance and drop a thick scroll on the floor. “One of you curious ones, open the scroll.”
The scroll was heavy, weighing at least thirty kilograms. It caused a loud thud when it slammed on the ground, raising a faint dust cloud, and causing people to retreat from it instinctively.
“Let me,” An old man responded to Inala’s words, one of the people who came to subconsciously rely on him, treating Inala as his spiritual pillar.
The old man unfurled the scroll with difficulty, for a moment feeling his head spin at the fine print written on it with grandeur, detailing lines upon lines of information, too complex for an unscholarly person to make sense of.
But what he, along with the rest of the people could feel was the dense Prana radiating off the scroll. The old man fully unfurled the scroll, watching it span a length of ten metres. At distinct segments along the scroll were footprints of various Pranic Beasts, numbering four in total.
“This is the agreement between the four Pranic Beasts and the Ganrimb Kingdom’s King, Fhoong Brimgan. The Prana waves you’re sensing are from the involved parties. As for the details of the diplomatic agreement, you can read the document fully and make sense of it yourself.” Saying so, Inala took a seat on a nearby boulder and turned silent.
One of the refugees with greater academic qualifications took the initiative to read the scroll. Detailed in the scroll were the functions of the four Silver Grade Pranic Beasts—Carcass Snail, Rooted Clam, Mudropper, and Boutique Lizard.
The scroll detailed their involvement in ensuring the region within the Sandy-Grey Void ring remained peaceful for close to eight centuries. It also showed how both the Kingdom and the four Pranic Beasts intended to cooperate for mutual benefit and growth.
There was no such agreement originally. It was simply a tacit understanding between both parties. Inala simply created this scroll to fool the people into believing the narrative he wished to feed them next.
After accessing Fhoong Brimgan’s data, he created a scroll using the same techniques that the Ganrimb Kingdom Royalty employed for confidential documents. As the data regarding its manufacturing was stolen from the individual maintaining the highest seat of pecking order in the region, the level of the document was the highest.
Mixed among the refugees were scions hailing from noble families. When these people observed the scroll, they verified its legitimacy. It was why the rest of the people gobbled up the information readily.
The highlight of the scroll was the final line. Upon reading it, the people stared at Inala with hopeful gazes.