"You killed your subordinate just to test my strength? I have never seen someone so evil and cowardly as you," the leader said in a hoarse voice.
"Oh, that guy wasn't my subordinate or anything. I just met the dude like 5 minutes ago," Ning said.
"But he called you 'master'," the leader asked with a face full of confusion.
"Yeah, I can see where the problem is, but it doesn't matter. Since you are the leader, you should have more answers than these dead guys," Ning said.
The leader didn't say anything and instead looked at the bucket behind Ning and suddenly got angry. "You ruined that bucket of blood, didn't you?" he asked angrily.
"The hell? What do you want to do with that blood? Drink it?" Ning asked. "So what's wrong if it's polluted? You guys use the blood marrow anyway."
"You will die for this," the beast shouted and lunged at Ning.
The leader slashed his sharp claws at him and managed to land his attack, however, instead of making any sort of cuts, his claws instead broke off.
"What?" the leader shouted in surprise.
"You think it's going to be easy to fight me? You hate humans right? They got defeated by me will be quite disgraceful to you," Ning said.
"Don't get ahead of yourself human. Just because you blocked one attack won't mean you will block this one as well," the leader shouted.
Suddenly, a sharp scythe appeared on either of his arms as if he was wielding two tonfa. The scythe seemed to belong to one of the legendary mantises that Ning had learned about.
"You seem to have a hell of a lot more augmentations done to your body than any of the other people I've seen here. Did you start off by experimenting on yourself? You must've been one sick bastard," Ning said.
"What need do I have to experiment? Hmph! Enough talk from you, you will die for what you've done here today," the leader said.
"Can't you say anything else? Because there isn't a way for you to kill me," Ning said.
"We'll see about that," the leader shouted and ran towards him.
Ning sighed and caught the two scythes with his bare hands. The leader was once again shocked to see his attack be stopped like this. There wasn't even a hint of blood coming from Ning's own hands that caught the scythe.
"What the hell are you?" the leader asked. "There is no way a normal human should be able to catch such a sharp scythe with their own hands."
Ning was about to say something when the leader attacked him once more. He launched a fire attack towards Ning that threatened to engulf him fully.
However, that too didn't work on Ning. Ning easily extinguished the fire as if it was nothing.
"No way," the leader said in shock. "Even phoenix fire doesn't do anything to you. Are you a beast in disguise as well?"
"What?" Ning felt that the question was absurd.
"No, that's not it," the leader said as he looked at Ning with a scrutinizing eye. "I see, a Spirit Transformation expert. No wonder they are all dead and even I can't do anything to you."
"Oh," Ning said with a hint of surprise. "You not only know about the spirit transformation realm but could also tell I had broken through to it."
The leader said nothing and started calculating stuff in his head.
"Give up, dude. Everyone in your base is dead, and you will soon follow through as well," Ning said.
"Hmph! Why would I care about my death when I'm so close to achieving what I've always wanted?" the leader said. "As for those that died, good. I wanted to get rid of those failures somehow. They would only harm my army in the long run."
"Your… army?" Ning asked.
"What? You thought you got all of my Hybrids? The ones that succeeded are safely waiting for me to come back," the Leader said.
"So the ones that I fought weren't the ones that succeeded?" Ning asked. "Makes me curious what the ones that succeeded look like."
"You will never see," the leader said. He took two more breaths and sighed. "I was so close. Just a few more beasts and I would've succeeded."
"What are you talking about?" Ning asked.
The leader suddenly glared at Ning. His eyes turned purple and two beautiful butterfly wings popped out from behind him.
The spiral designs in the wings started moving around and a sense of calmness entered Ning's mind. He felt like he could just lie down and rest for a while. There was no need to worry about anything in the world.
This was true bliss.
The moment Ning felt this way, he shook his head and sent away the thoughts. But in the short period of time it took him to do that, the leader had run away.
He had fallen victim to the hallucination technique of a ShadowGod Butterfly.
"Tsk, where did he run off to?" Ning wondered and quickly ran out. He went outside of the room he was in and arrived at the hall he was previously in.
There at the center, the leader stood with his back turned to Ning.
"You didn't run away?" Ning asked curiously.
"My work here is done, so I have no need to run away at all," the leader said. "I would've loved to have the blood of 5 more beasts to cross the threshold, but no matter, I have other ways of doing that."
"What are you ta—"
Suddenly, the blood fountain behind the leader started vibrating as the blood-red crystal at the center of it started shining.
The blood in the fountain started spiraling at it started entering the crystal.
Ning couldn't understand what was happening, but before he could even begin to try to understand, all sorts of changes appeared on the leader's body.
"Since I no longer need to live, let me take you along with me."
The leader's body seemed like it was constantly phasing through multiple different beasts at once.
Sometimes he would have long sabertooth, sometimes he would have tusks. Sometimes he would start popping out wings with feathers on them of multiple colors, while other times he would have bat wings.
Furs grew on his body that changed to scales that changed to furs again. His eyes changed colors constantly, and so did his hair.
Seeing all the different aspects of the beast in the leader truly shocked Ning. 'Just how many different beasts' blood and bone marrow did he acquire?' he wondered.
The leader jumped at Ning with the full intent to kill and die in the process. Ning dodged the attack and punched him back.
The leader was sent far away with a single attack.
Although the changes were surprising, they weren't of many effects against Ning. Ning could easily kill him if he wanted to right now. But he was a little concerned about the crystal behind him.
"What is that crystal? What is it doing?" Ning asked.
"No need to ask. Just kill me," the leader said. He had fully given up on his life, but he was still trying to fight Ning.
"If you want to die then stay put. I will kill you," Ning said.
"No, I will do whatever I can to you here. I don't know how strong you are, so I need to be cautious," the leader said.
"What?" Ning was more confused. The leader constantly changed his intentions in his speech. Sometimes he would say he wanted to die, and sometimes he said he needed to be cautious.
'Does this guy have a mental problem?' Ning wondered.
The leader jumped at Ning once more and attacked him. Fire, water, wind, rocks, lightning, blades, bashes— whatever the leader could do, he did.
It didn't have any effect on Ning, but he was very relentless. Ning started getting tired of it all and decided to end it.
Just as the leader was jumping at him, Ning jumped forward too and punched him directly on the chest.
The leader's chest caved in and a few ribs even poked out of his chest. He smashed on the side of the cave and was stuck there.
Blood started flowing down the cracks on the wall and onto the ground. The leader started wheezing as the air barely stayed in his lungs at all.
"Hehehe," the leader started to laugh in between his wheezing.
"This psycho— why are you laughing?" Ning asked.
"I've remembered your face," the leader said with a crazy smile on his face. "I will be sure to kill you the next time we meet."
"What are you—" Ning stopped speaking as he felt massive vibrations coming from behind him. He turned around to see that the blood in the blood fountain had completely dried up. The red crystal lost all of its colors and was now just a simple white crystal on top of an empty fountain.
"It's done," the leader said with happiness appearing on his face. "It's finally done. After so many years, I have completed my duty."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Ning asked, but the leader was slowly dying. He was on his last breath and either didn't want to talk anymore or couldn't reply anymore.
"Who are you?" Ning asked silently and decided to check. He used the Qi Analysis to check him, but that didn't provide any information.
One interesting piece of information that it did provide was that the leader did not have a name. "That's never happened before," Ning thought and used the Omni-Analysis on him.
The same stuff started appearing at first, but as Ning read more and more, his level of confusion kept on increasing instead of decreasing.
Finally, he saw information that was perhaps the most intriguing of all. "The leader… was a clone?" Ning thought and reread the part just to be safe that he was correct.
"A clone of what? Or wh—" he stopped speaking as the answer popped up in front of him.
Ning's eyes went wide as he finally understood. "He was a clone of Jha'Akim," Ning thought in shock.
"What… what did he do?" Ning thought. He suddenly turned around and looked at the crystal once more. The crystal was something that the system said was unnatural and needed to be destroyed.
"System, tell me. What is the purpose of that crystal?" he asked.
<The crystal is used to transfer blood from this point to someplace else>
A deep, terrifying feeling appeared inside of Ning. He swallowed his saliva and asked, "Transfer blood from here to where?" he asked, praying that what he thought wasn't right.
<The Crystal is being used to overcome space to transfer blood from the fountain to a being called Jha'Akim>