Chapter 787: The fourth day of the development trial (part 20)

"Humph, aren’t those bastards interfering way too much, what’s the damn point of holding a mortal level trial when cultivators can casually step in", said the wild dragon princess as she saw the red beast being destroyed by the blue flame pillar.

"Grrr", the lynx who was helping encircle the horses that weren’t pinned to the ground, let out a soft growl as if to answer Alice.

"Sister Guardian says that what happened here is not normal, since back then when she met other humans other "beings in the sky" besides the one watching over this zone, never appeared until much later", said Kana as she translated the lynx’s words for everyone.

Since Guardian has decided to join Aster and the girls, she was open to speak about her most guarded secret, what happened three hundred years ago which resulted in her being basically the sole adult animal alive.

But right now, wasn’t the time for that, which is why she didn’t bring up the subject, as of current, the most important thing to do was to interrogate the king, since the blue flaming board didn’t kill him, then it meant that them learning about the circumstances that led to his change was allowed.

’Perhaps, we could have interrogated the anaconda as well, if Espi didn’t kill her, probably what the blue flaming board didn’t want was for us to obtain her blood and flesh since the skeleton was left behind, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem with this guy, given the current state of his body’, thought Aster.

With his abnormal sight even at mortal rank, he can tell that the horse is not going to leave behind any remains once he dies, his corpse will probably turn to ashes, which is why they have to interrogate him now.

"Kana, help me speak with this guy", said Aster to which the little girl nodded as she approached the king alongside Aster and the filly.

"I won’t sugarcoat it, answer my questions and you’ll leave in a relatively decent manner", said Aster to which the emaciated horse snorted.

"I’m going to die anyway so get lost!", is what he answered according to Kana to which Aster smirked as he added.

"Sure, you are going to die, but how and when is completely up to me to decide", Aster then took out a dozen of potions from a backpack and forcibly poured them into the mouth of the king, which slowed down the decay of his body, even igniting a trace of vitality in his previously ash dead eyes.

"Alice, he is all yours", unfortunately the previous glimmer of "hope" of the king was short-lived as Aster called Alice who had a wild smile on her pretty face.

"I had to move logs a whole damn day so that these provisional gloves were given to me and you dared to damage them, you are so dead~", said the wild dragon princess as she started beating the hell out of the king.

"Neeeigh!", for the next twenty minutes countless pained screams echoed through the distance as Alice played her part, beating the horse until the effect of the potions ran out to then feed him more potions and continue.

In case you wonder why wasn’t Vivian’s poison used to pressure the king, it’s because he might die out of fright if he was exposed to that given his current state, while Alice fists only caused him pain, so long as his life was sustained with potions, his previous situation of decaying in a matter of minutes could be extended for hours, and that was a fate worse than death.

"I-I’ll speak!", one had to give it to the black horse, he actually endured a few rounds of being Alice’s sandbag, previously every other animal was pleading for mercy in less than five minutes, in part is because he was being constantly fed potions though.

"Tsk, I wanted to beat him up a bit more", casually said Alice as she gave the horse one last kick to then happily throttle towards Aster and cling to his right arm while giving the ice princess and the little girl a condescending gaze, which made both Aria and Kana slightly pout, unfortunately since that lazy and indifferent dragon princess had "worked hard", this much of a reward was perfectly normal, so they could only snort in their hearts.

"Ahem, please tell him to speak about how he ended up like this from beginning to end", said Aster to Kana who looked at Alice sticking to Aster like bubblegum to ultimately be unable to shamelessly ask for a reward in exchange for her work as a translator, only for Aster to chuckle as he patted her head.

"Your balance while standing on Ember’s back was amazing, I already have something in mind for you to make further use of your riding skills", he said which made Kana’s eyes sparkle.

"Mm, thanks big brother~", with a happy face that didn’t match the current situation, Kana asked the king what Aster wanted to know and the answers made the present people frown as the story was unveiled.

Turns out the former king of herbivores had a couple of "dreams" a certain day, in the first one he saw many different animals and other "creatures" fighting and killing each other like there was no tomorrow, this included himself who was killed by a familiar being, the crazed bear.

The previous dream repeated itself three nights in a row, making the king believe that it wasn’t a mere dream but a future situation, then the second dream came into play, in this one he saw a location that was out of the scope of his territory, namely the grassland where the horses live.

In the second dream the king saw a red stone appear at a specific spot within the desert, next to a small oasis, so filled with curiosity to confirm if what he was seeing in his dream was real the king made a secret trip into the desert where to his surprise, he found an oasis that perfectly matched the one in his dream.

From afar the king saw a coyote approach the oasis to drink water but then red bone chains with spikes in them emerged from the water and crushed the coyote, pouring its blood onto the sand, then the red stone that the king saw in his dreams emerged from the sand.

Of course, after seeing the previous, the king didn’t dare to approach the red stone afraid that he would end up like the coyote, but at the same time, the stone crumbled apart leaving behind a bunch of red dirt which is the origin of the red soil in which that red arm bone was buried by the way, a pair of red fangs flew out of the crumbled red stone, stopping in front of the king.

What happened next was obvious, he accepted the red fangs and became a carnivore, this was an important point of the story, as it signaled that the king wasn’t forced to change into whatever he is now, he out of his own will chose to go through this transformation even knowing full well that... he will have to eat his own kin after that.

"So, you saw such a bizarre scene and still decided to go through it", said the filly with an ice-cold voice after listening to the previous, to which Aster who has been paying attention to the black horse through the whole story casually added.

"Looks like you need another dose of "persuasion" since you dare to keep things to yourself".

"W-Wait!", the black horse, seeing the red eyed creature glare his way, immediately screamed to then spill the beans.

"Besides the powerful aura that those fangs gave off, meaning that by eating them I would grow stronger, I could instinctively tell that my lifespan will be increased due to them, in fact with each different prey I consume I gain more years to live, that was the second reason as to why I went through with my decision of taking the fangs", said the king.

"It wasn’t a matter of survival, you simply were a coward, if you would have told aunt and my parents about your first dream, we could have thought of a way to overcome it, however you knew that even if that was the case you were going to die a few years later", said Ember with an angered expression on her face.

Horses don’t have exactly long lives and the now black horse despite having become the king of herbivores, knew that he only had around ten more years to live and he had no idea of how to become stronger.

So, what drove the black horse to throw his own kin away was the fear of his lifespan running out, rather than the great battle he saw in his dream.

"So, after you took those fangs what happened?", asked Aster seeing that the filly could barely keep herself from trampling the black horse to death on the spot.

"All kinds of marvels unveiled in front of my eyes, I learned how to become stronger easily, how to change my body to that of a perfect predator and simply put my plan into action, basically I had to put a bone from a prey into a pit, cover it with the red soil from back then and pour large quantities of blood onto it, to then consume it when the time was right, I did so with a frontal leg bone of the leader of the desert horses".

"Then one of my subordinates brought me a partial corpse of a strange creature that also walked like you and I proceeded with taking its arm bone, unfortunately the process was incomplete, otherwise I would have been able to reach the level of that bear!", said the black horse with hatred in his eyes after being reminded of what he lost due to his fight with Aster and the others, only for Guardian to pour a bucket of cold water over his fantasy.

"Nonsense, that bear is immune to even my lineage suppression, I was taken by surprise due to that and that’s why I have this scar, at our level the physical strength is secondary, the one to succumb to the suppression of the other will be the one to die in this case you would have been unable to move under that guy’s pressure and then you would have been killed and eaten by him", said Guardian, to which Aster added.

"Speaking of which, why did you want to kill the bear, supposedly after obtaining those fangs you shouldn’t have worried about the bear as you stopped being the same horse as in your dream, to go as far as to try and work together with that anaconda, I don’t believe it was your idea".

’Damn it, they even know about that, did the anaconda tell them everything’, thought the king to then answer as he saw Alice smile which wasn’t a smile.

"I was the one to suggest it to the anaconda, but the idea came from... the blood silhouette, which was also the one that taught me how to prepare the materials for my perfect body, but the knowledge simply appeared in my head and when I prepared the materials, my blood flowed out of my mouth on its own, I didn’t even get to see it until today", said the horse, that was the last of his secrets.

’I see, so that’s the difference between this guy and the anaconda, the anaconda probably stumbled upon something a supervisor was doing in secret and gained some side benefits due to it, but the horse was chosen by a supervisor, as for the bear it must hold some importance to those other supervisors, I just wonder why didn’t the flaming board kill it personally’, concluded Aster.

The anaconda was way smarter and cunning than the black horse, so the fact that the idea to join hands to hunt down the bear came from the black horse was weird, but if he was directly "guided" by that red blood silhouette then things made sense.

"That’s enough, Ember, he is all yours, the rest of us, let’s pack our things, restrain these horses and prepare to return to the camp", said Aster as he turned around to give the filly some privacy, this was her personal vendetta after all.

Everyone but Kana left, neither Aster nor Sarina interfered, this was a valuable learning experience for the little girl, the black horse actually tried to beg for mercy from the filly.

"I know I was wrong, tell that strange creature with golden eyes to give me more of those potions, if I eat meat and drink blood for a month, I will be able to survive!", he said, only to be met with a cold glare from Ember.

"You are disgrace to our race, I’m only relieved that my parents didn’t get to know how much of a coward you truly were, at least as an enemy you still had the dignity of a warrior unlike now", said the filly as she raised her right hoof.

"Nooo!", amidst the king’s pleas, Ember stomped her right hoof on the king’s head, breaking his brittle skull and killing him on the spot. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

"Hsssss!", then as Aster expected the horse’s corpse turned into ashes the next second, completely disappearing from this world, the ambitious king of herbivores that aimed to become a perfect predator died just like that.

"Sister Ember...", seeing the filly silent, Kana placed her hand on Ember’s head but didn’t say anything else, after a couple of minutes they joined Aster and the others who had finished administrating poison to the black horses alongside invigorating potions, this way if they ran, they would die after not getting more dosages of antivenom by midnight, so they didn’t even need to restrain the horses and instead used them to carry the backpacks and even rode on their backs.

"We have gained more than an hour thanks to our new "friends", so we can collect food and then pick up the cobras and the anacondas before returning to the camp", said Aster.

Since they now had the black horses, they would move fast even if they carried a lot of stuff so they could make a small round of gathering before going back.

...

After moving around the mapped route, they had of the forest, Aster and the others hunted a few of female boars and gathered medicinal herbs as well as edible herbs and fruits, not to mention that they packed half of the remaining top quality iron ore in Guardian’s den, there were around thirty something horses and yet they couldn’t move more than half the iron ore, so you can imagine how much of it there was, with that the immediate necessities of the sect for steel should be completely covered

"Cobra grandpa!", as they approached the area controlled by the snake races in the inner part of the forest, Kana waved her hand at the old cobra king who was finishing putting things in order.

"Hissss", with a soft sound, the old cobra king called the ones that will attend the banquet, namely all the children and half of the adults as well as the pregnant female cobra from their side, from the side of the anacondas the anaconda young leader, the children and half of the adults as well.

The snakes from the python and black mamba race were not invited to the celebration, they had originally sided with the anaconda after all, it was already magnanimous that their races weren’t purged, still they were forbidden from increasing their numbers for the next couple of decades and while still a part of the four major races in name, they were now reduced to act as "guardians" of the snake races, if conflict arose, they were to be in the front line at any time.

"They are ready big brother~", said Kana as she and Vivian put empty bags were the children of the two races entered ready to be transported, the younglings and normal sized adults also fit in the bags, but the biggest anacondas simply laid on the backs of the horses, they weren’t big in number so everything was fine.

But then just as Aster was about to give the green light to return to the camp, he received a mental "message" that someone was putting something in the storage of the camp, which is the newest method to transmit important information with urgency they have.

"Let’s see what’s going on", Aster extended his hand and retrieved a few pieces of paper which contained information written by Mikaela judging by the orthography.

"Did something happen?", asked the purple lightning princess as she saw Aster slightly frown upon reading the information, which he then handed to Valentina as he said.

"They are fine, but it seems we’ll make another stop before returning to the camp", and with those words Aster guided the group through the forest, in a different direction than the one they used to move through it before.

It’s worth mentioning that the previously followed route, basically avoided the areas where aggressive animals that might even attack Guardian lived, which basically reduced to two races, lynxes and wolves.

The more Aster and the others advanced through the forest, the more Aster frowned, for a good reason, he didn’t see a single wolf nor a single lynx on the way, which coupled with the information he received from Mikaela made him feel like there was something ongoing behind the scenes, however it was getting late so he ultimately led the group out of the forest.

"Senior brother is back~", as usual Aster was welcomed by the girls in charge of watching over the border of the forest.

"Senior brother, sister Angela asked for you, sister Valentina, little Kana and miss lynx to go to sister Mylene’s workshop as soon as you returned", said another of the girls of the sect to which Aster nodded.

"Thanks, the rest of you help me accommodate our friends and the black horses, Kana, miss Valentina and Guardian, follow me please", he said.

The camp of the sect was bustling with activity, even without Angela in sight, which is a rare thing as the receptionist girl is always moving around watching over the different ongoing projects, everyone was doing something.

"Hello ladies, we are back", said Aster as he entered the tent where Mylene worked with the girls from the alchemy peak, which weren’t here as of current, only Mikaela, Angela and Mylene were present.

Well, there was "someone" else in the tent, but it wasn’t let alone a member of the sect, but even human to begin with, laying on top of a blanket there was a bandaged and currently sleeping wolf.

"The gathering group found him still conscious and severely wounded at the edge between the outer and border areas of the forest, surprisingly unlike what a wounded animal should be like he didn’t show any aggressiveness towards the girls and instead "drew" this with his claws before collapsing on the ground", said Mikaela as she handed a paper with a rough feline-like sketch.

The thing looked like nothing special as if it was drawn by a three- to five-year-old kid, but when you take into account the fact that a wolf drew it on the ground with his claws, then it becomes an amazing thing.

"I proposed to bring him back and treat his wounds, since the image he drew clearly was picturing miss Guardian...", mumbled Angela, the major decisions are pondered over by the leaders which include Aster, Valentina, Mikaela, Agnes and Angela, the elders as well as the girls from Aster’s group all have the right to vote, but in this case since a large part of said group was out of the camp, Angela took the decision herself.

Of course, Mikaela and the others agreed to it, but she didn’t dismiss the responsibility, since it’s obvious that something attacked the wolf which potentially means danger for the girls of the sect, however Angela believes that the information they could get from the wolf is worth the risk.

"It was a good decision, how long until he wakes up, Mylene?", asked Aster as he nodded at Angela which made the receptionist girl softly smile.

"There were many wounds and he had lost a lot of blood, honestly it was quite something that this guy was still conscious when we found him, after giving him some potions, he is out of danger but won’t wake up until tomorrow morning", said the pink haired girl.

"Okay, let’s put some restrictions on his body and leave a couple of guards to watch over him after dinner, we’ll talk about this in the morning", said Aster.

He recognized this wolf, it was the lone guy that they met the first time they deepened into the forest, he left a decent impression in Aster’s mind because the wolf didn’t mind them at all and he simply went his own way.

Back then Aster and the others didn’t know about how different could the animals that live here be, but now it became obvious that this wolf was like the toad which has become Mylene’s workshop pet, an animal that has already developed past the limits of its race in terms of mentality while not being a king.