After talking with the statues, Ning went and sent his beasts back to their new home.
"I assume you will want to stay here, right? Have fun. I will come to visit sometimes," Ning said.
"Thank you, master," the 3 of them said.
"Alright, I will go now," Ning said and left the place.
"Thank you, human, for bringing yet another descendant of ours," the beasts said.
"It's fine," Ning said. "By the way, I have brought in what? 50-some beasts by now, do you have a number on how many are out there?" he asked.
"A number? I'm not really sure," one of the beasts said.
"It should be around 150 or maybe 200? Not that many have left, but there have been quite a few," another one of the beasts said.
'200 huh? I wonder how many survived,' Ning thought.
"Alright, I will leave now," he said and left the cave. He flew up to the exit seal once more and was teleported again.
He got out of the tomb and reappeared in the Southern Continent. He grumbled about the teleporting experience for a few seconds and got back to the task at hand.
"Right, back to the mountain," he thought and teleported once again. He returned back to the room inside the mountain range and looked around.
There was no one in the room, not Ursna, or any of the other 4 people, so he sent out his divine sense.
"Oh, there she is," Ning thought when he finally found her and walked over to a somewhat hard-to-find room.
Ursna quickly turned around with a dagger in her hand ready to fight. "Who's th— Oh master, you're back," she said and put down her dagger after seeing Ning walk into the room.
"Why are you here? Did the people come already?" Ning asked.
"Yes, they came a few hours ago," she said. "But they haven't been coming up after they left."
"It will take them a while to truly believe that the monster is gone. The threat will keep them away for quite a while still before they truly believe that the monster is gone," Ning said.
"Anyway, forget about that, I have some questions for you," Ning said.
"Please ask, master," Ursna said.
"How did you acquire the bloodline of a Tri-headed Hydra?" Ning asked.
"I don't know, master," she said. "I went through a process, where our leader made us unconscious and did something to us. I only know that when I woke up, we were no longer human. Although, I think it has something to do with injecting the blood of the beast onto us."
"You are not sure though, right? That's a shame," Ning said. "Then can you tell me what you were planning to do with the mole once you caught him?"
"Oh, we bring him back to the hideout and there the physicians draw out blood from the beasts. That blood will be used to make us strong, I think," she said.
"So, what you're saying is you go out hunting for beasts so you can get their blood to become stronger?" Ning asked.
"Yes," she said.
Ning's face turned a little cold. This was torture that they were doing and that meant they weren't a good person in the least.
"Do the beasts die?" he asked, fully expecting an answer.
"Yes," she said, proving his hypothesis.
"I see, you people aren't good, are you? Tell me then, why didn't you want to kill the mole? Don't you just want his blood?" Ning asked.
"We do," the girl said. "I've suggested it many times, but we always get the same answer. They say we aren't as good as the physician in this sort of stuff since they need to be delicate to not dirty the blood, or whatever that means."
Ning stopped speaking for a few seconds. "What sort of beasts do you go after?" Ning asked. "I assume only the ones that have bloodlines of the legendary beasts, right?"
"Yes," Ursna said. "Our leader tells us where the beasts are and we just go looking for it."
Ning took a deep breath, trying to calm his anger, and asked, "How many people do you have in total?"
"There are about a few hundred Hybrids. We haven't reached a thousand though," she said.
"And how many beasts have you collected by now?" Ning asked.
"About 50 I think. This should've been 52nd or 53rd," she said.
"And after drawing out all the blood, they can't survive at all, right?" Ning asked.
"Yes," she said. "Well, they were at first trying to keep the beasts alive and draw out as much blood as they could by just keeping them there, but lately they have been drawing all of the blood and killing them."
"I see," Ning said. "One last question. What do you do to humans that you encounter during the missions to get back the beasts?"
"We do what we feel is needed, master," the girl said. "If the beasts are in the wild, we don't interact with humans at all. But if they are in a city, or sect, or family, we will go so far as to massacre them all just so we can get the beasts. We make it look like a normal attack though."
Ning sighed after hearing all of this. "I should've known after you tried to kill me," he said. "Well, I have one final order for you."
"What is it master?" the girl asked.
"Kill them all, and then kill yourself."
Ning stood up and left. He could faintly hear words that sounded like 'yes, master', but he didn't care much for it.
We walked out of the mountain range with rage in his eyes. "System, how many beasts have escaped the seal until now?" he asked.
<212>
"And how many have fallen victim to these hybrids?" Ning asked.
<145>
Ning's eyes widened. He didn't expect the girl to be so incorrect about her assumption. 'She must've joined late then, or the leader keeps stuff from them,' he thought.
"Let's go stop these people from killing any more beasts," Ning said.
He asked the system for the location of the hideout and disappeared. When he reappeared, he was in the northern section of the central continent.
He looked down at the massive forest that extended past the normal forest that surrounded the sun empire.
"So they stay here, huh? I guess that makes sense given how they seem to have gotten their hands on so many beasts. Only the central continent would have so many," Ning thought.
He then flew down to the ground and sent out his divine sense to check on the hideout. "Oh, there's a cave here," he thought and started walking.
Ning activated his skill to find signs of the beasts and all he could sense was a gigantic pulse coming from around here somewhere.
"It's like there are many beasts in there at once and the sense is all jumbled together," Ning thought.
He continued walking and came upon the opening to the cave where two people were keeping watch.
"Who's there?" they shouted the moment they heard him come.
Ning wasn't trying to be sneaky either. He was quite angry about what was happening and walked up to them in full view.
One of the guards was a man with claws for hands and had furs growing from all over his body, and the other person was a girl with a tail behind her and two wings sprouting from her back.
"So they have taken in the blood as well, huh?" Ning thought. Ning did not bother asking the system if they were innocent or not. Someone being part of something this horrendous could not possibly be innocent at all.
Ning pulled out his black spear without any notice and slashed it towards the man. The man tried to block it with his arms, but before he knew about it, his arms were on the ground, with blood gushing through the cut.
"AAAHHH!" the man shouted for just a fraction of a second before his scream was cut short from his head being cut off.
"Is your leader here?" Ning asked the girl who was on the ground, scared for her life.
"Y-y-yes," she barely answered.
"Good," Ning said and slashed her head off before she realized as well. He then walked into the cave with blood dripping from his spear.
On the initial steps of the cave, it looked just that, a normal cave. However, the further he went, the more lived in the cave became.
There were barrels and boxes all over the cave on the deeper end. A few people came running his way after they had heard the shout from the front.
The people who saw him were confused at first. They didn't see anything familiar about him and stopped to look at him. However, when they saw the bloody spear, they immediately recognized an enemy in him.
Ning was a little surprised when he saw them as well. These people were all different from each other, and every single one of them had some sort of body part augmented to look like that of a beast.
"Intruder, who are you?" they shouted at him.
"Where are you keeping the beats? I'm here to save them. If I can take your leader's head in the process, that would be better," Ning said.
"What? What do you want with the beast?" someone asked.
"I'm here to save them from you," Ning said. "So will you tell me where your leader is?"
"No way. Guys, he's here to mess with us. Kill him," someone shouted.
"Arrgghhh!" people shouted as they charged towards Ning with all of their beast skills they had acquired from the blood transfusion.