“Do you sense anything?”
Eren asked Reen. They were in the disputed area between the now-killed mana beasts. The dual berserkers had left the region. And Eren was now treasure-hunting with his demon beast to get his hands on Malva Hibiscus.
“I do. There are a few good mana-imbued herbs in the region. But the one with C-Rank mana is the only one as far as I can tell. That’s what you are looking for, Erni?”
Reen asked Eren after detecting the presence of herbs in the vicinity through har stretched mana sense. The latter nodded and told her to guide him there to the herb’s place.
Reen, the treasure-seeking mean machine led her master towards the ingredient he needed the most at the time. And the latter couldn’t help sporting a smile after he saw the herb inside a narrow cave that had only one opening.
Eren didn’t approach the C-Rank herb right away. Because some herbs had a defence mechanism in place. Rankers needed a few special techniques to harvest them.
But Eren knew the ingredient wasn’t of the harmful kind. Well, not really. But the ingredient was known to release an irritant gas in response to the perceived threats. The butcher had studied the ingredient at the academy’s library, knowing about all the information there was to know about the same.
The irritant gas had the harshest ill-effect on the F-Rankers. But it wouldn’t work on the C-Rankers. Therefore Eren told Reen to harvest the ingredient by giving her proper directions while he stayed at the back observing the process.
But that was not all Eren had told Reen to do. He had come prepared after knowing about the irritant gas release of the ingredient and decided to harvest that as well.
Therefore, he handed a potioneering F-Rank item to Reen that he had purchased from Jack. It was a simple container in the form of a run-inscribed vial. The user needed to run their non-elementalized mana through the item and it would suck in the surrounding air, safely securing it within itself.
Reen did as she was guided by her master. She had picked up a few of Eren’s skills in potioneering as well. So she wasn’t a complete amateur when it came to handling potioneering ingredients.
Like this, Eren secured two crucial items from his meticulous planning apart from the two treasure-chests that were the mana beast bodies. Now the path to becoming Levine’s disciple was open to him.
************************
Eren was seen laying on his bed the next day. He was reading a tattered book that didn’t look like it was taken from the academy’s library.
This was one of the study materials he had seized from the cultist hideout. It seemed like the book contained a general summary on the study of Therianthropy and demi-humans, written by someone in the first-person narration:
Eren read out aloud:
“Mutagen!
This is the elusive genetic element humans need for their successful transformation into that of demi-humans and break their shackles of staying as ordinary rankers.
Mutagen can be considered as the most basic form of a genetic makeup that is based on the stable fusion of human and beastly genes. Ideally, a stable mutagen would be passed down through generations until it regresses into that of a human or beast gene later down the line.
But the study in the field of mutagen is extremely lacking at the time I’m writing this note for myself. Or to be more precise, the core studies that have been done till now are all either destroyed or kept hidden by the kingdoms.
Most of the continent’s history of the past 700 years has many loopholes. And some descriptions of now-ruined areas and events are heavily redacted.
If my guess is correct, then the entire continent faced something horrible of an unprecedented level in the past due to the rankers’ pursuit of becoming demi-humans. That’s why all the kingdoms and empires came to a unanimous decision to get rid of anything that was linked with the study of mutagens and demi-humans.
But this is where the establishments are going wrong. Oppressing the information would only birth the curiosity in rankers’ heads and make it grow at an incredible rate. I’m no exception to this rule either.
The study of mutagens and the lost path of becoming a demi-human is fascinating to me. And one day that lost path shall not stay as lost to us anymore.
The previous studies on this path have been kept away from the reach of normal rankers by the establishments. So we will just start things from scratch and arrive at the answer with our efforts.
It’s not like we didn’t try. We experimented with the shapeshifter demon beasts and made them mate with human partners. But no matter what we did, no pregnancy occurred from those experiments.
We have concluded that human and beast genes are incompatible with normal methods of child conception. They repel each other. We had subjects mate daily for months on end. Yet there were no results.
The path of therianthropy focuses on pseudo-mutagen that is obtained by using only the fusion of human and beast blood at a superficial level. And with all due respect to the rankers who have researched on and taken the path of therianthropy, it is nothing but a cheap imitation of the original.
Therianthropy has many limitations. And it is something that makes you start from scratch with every ranker. That is because the pseudo-mutagen doesn’t get passed down through generations.
After all, therianthropy doesn’t harmonize the human and beastly genes. The two distinct gene makeups of humans and beasts just get glued together through the use of a permanent spell instead of getting mixed.
The lack of harmony between the human and beastly genes is the reason behind why therianthropy falls short in paving the way for rankers to become demi-humans. It is a half-assed answer to something that is immensely phenomenal.
But I’m not heartbroken. Because I found something of immense value while exploring a nameless ranker’s utopia. It was the skeleton of a human ranker with a bone density that was many times greater than the ordinary rankers.
We have run some tests now. And we are sure that it is the skeleton of an actual demi-human. Although we can’t do much after that due to the ruined state of the skeleton, we are now sure that demi-humans exist. Or can exist. Because they had existed back then when history was yet to be made and redacted.
As long as we know that our hard work can get us the fruit we need, we are ready to bear the hard work.
If the establishments want us to stop pursuing the lost path, let them try!
– JJ Edgar.”