"This thing is pretty ugly."
"Does that surprise you, Raven?"
"I thought she will be more human since she can mimic the human form."
"She covered almost her entire body when she pretended to be human, so it was pretty obvious that she couldn't assume a form that would easily deceive other people. In the world there are many ugly people who don't even look human so she would probably be a very ugly woman with a very deformed face walking around the city, but this only works if she has an environment that she can easily pass as a human in a forest alone is not the case."
"I hope the realm can gain something from this magical beast, Ulric. I don't think using magical beasts that look like warped humans is very useful, it would be great if they could replicate her ability to transform her into a magical tool because I wouldn't drink a potion that has the effect of warping my body."
"There are two of us, I wouldn't drink a potion like that either. I don't want to spend the rest of my life deformed from a botched potion or die from the potion's toxicity."
Dying because you drank too many potions that end up being basically poison for your cup is a horrible death to be had, I've seen more than one warrior who chose to take his life rather than go through the suffering of rotting from the inside out. The element of life is not that effective in purifying the toxicity of strong or unusual potions."
"Do you think this is because alchemists are too lazy or because alchemy is really a flawed product, Raven?"
"I don't know, this is a very difficult question. I think alchemy can improve a lot as it is now much better than it was two hundred years ago, but that also doesn't mean it can't be replaced by something better."
"Can you two stop this pointless conversation?! We are not in a good place for you two to be talking, Luka has already finished binding the chains on the magic beast he and Rodriguez will take the magic beast back to base and transport it to its destination."
"The rest of the team will continue the mission; we have to find where this magical beast came from. Boy, try to find any traces or clues in this valley or we will have to start our search at random."
Idiot, he's really annoying. I wish he was responsible for taking the magic beast, without him the rest of the mission would be more comfortable, but unfortunately, he is an orange core mage so his firepower is great enough to protect me in case we encounter several enemies in the future.
"Okay, but you know that the magic beast has basically sucked all the mana and elemental energy out of the region and how it would be basically impossible to find a physical trace from several weeks ago since the first victim of the lizards disappeared several months ago, that makes it impossible to find a trace here. I can try harder I think it's a waste of time."
The shocked face of both Dean and the rest of the team was surprising, not one of them noticed this problem: A magical beast that drains energy from the environment fought here for a long period of time, it fought until it ran out of energy, how could it exist a trail of energy here?
"You should try to find any traces if you're lucky it still exists, after you've investigated the area, we'll start going to the edge of the forest looking for any traces of a secret base."
"Okay"
I left to make my way around the perimeter of the magic beast's nest before I was the target of yet another idiotic comment or order from the team leader. I wasn't the only one who got away from the group, Luka and the archer called Rodriguez left carrying the magical beast.
Finally finding out the name of the last member of the group, I got one last look at the magical beast before it left for its cruel fate. Turning research material from several mages of the kingdom will not be a pleasant experience, even if she is responsible for the death of one of my companions and the deaths of several people including children in the village, I don't think it's right to be happy because of the suffering that she will face.
I already accept the fact that in this life I'm a murderer I've killed many living beings and even had to use pain when interrogating a smuggler, and I know I'll do it again in the future, but I don't think I'd be able to 'study' and 'try on' a magical beast.
The captured magic beast does indeed have very human traits, but it is still clearly a magic beast. I think it's a shame that I won't be able to see her fully 'human' form or an even more bestial form.
I followed my fruitless search for any traces in the region, as well as noticing that a large amount of mana and elemental energy is missing from this region. The magical beast has really wreaked havoc on the region, the mana and earth element energy from the ground has been completely drained to a depth of several meters.
I find it very strange because apart from the fact that all the grass died as well as the trees near here, I don't find anything wrong with the earth other than it being harder than usual. Shouldn't something has happened to her differently?
This is the first time I've seen a handful of earth that doesn't even contain an elemental energy. Or maybe I'm just not able to see the elemental energy in it, maybe there's still such a small amount of elemental energy that it's invisible to my eyes.
But I still feel like the earth should start to give way in this area, maybe holes should look like or huge cracks.
After my walk along the edge of the powerless area I didn't find anything as I had expected. I went back to the rest of the team who were wrapped around Ana who was resting after her long struggle.
"I didn't find anything."
"How shocking."
"We don't have time to waste on joking."
"Let's go."
I don't think Dean's mood is very good right now, I don't think he's too excited to walk around the rest of the night looking for a base.
As he had said before we went to the end of the forest that was close to us now and from there, we started to go all the way to the border between the forest and the swamp. This swamp is very unpleasant, even far from it I saw how the poison element was in that water.
It was little more I doubt that this is salable to contact, looking at the swamp I realized that it would not be easy for someone to build a secret base in this swamp.
I wasn't the only one who found the swamp an unpleasant place, Dean made a disgusted face as he approached the swamp. All he had to do was breathe in the heavy swamp air for him to turn around and say we're going to look for the secret base in the forest.
The rest of our night was pretty quiet, we walked for a few hours and then ran until the sunrise began to illuminate the forest. After searching for so long we haven't found a single base or trace of anything that isn't an animal or magical beast.
But Dean didn't give up on finding his base in the forest even after the sun lit up the forest, he decided to continue exploring the forest. The rest of our day was spent in the woods looking for a secret base we couldn't find.
When we get back to base to rest Dean's mood is awful. He wasn't the least bit happy with the progress of the mission, over the next few days we scoured the entire forest and surrounding area looking for the secret base, but found nothing after hunting all this time.
Facing so many days of negative results our fearless leader decided that we should enter the swamp to look for the secret base there. It wasn't fun at all to enter a poisonous swamp it's not that simple, even though I used my wind element to stop breathing the poisonous air and my aura to stop the poison from coming into contact with my skin I still felt like I was being poisoned every day days.
Every day we went to the swamp I felt worse, even though I did everything I could to avoid absorbing the poison from the environment. Dean's insistence on this damn mission was so great that we spent five whole days in the swamp to cover almost the entire swamp.
The only good thing about this mission is that with a warrior and an orange core mage there wasn't even an enemy in the swamp that was a threat to us. The materials I took from the swamp beasts are really valuable, I think in these five days I collected more than forty thousand gold coins, magic beasts with poison attribute level three and four are very rare materials in the market.
But on the sixth day there was a change in our routine, we didn't go into the swamp. Dean has completely disappeared; we searched the entire base for him and didn't find him.
I was really surprised when this happened, but while I was surprised Raven went nuts, she punched a hole in the base's wall when she realized the reason for Dean's disappearance.
We were betrayed, but the biggest problem is whether he just betrayed our group or he betrayed the entire kingdom. Raven doesn't even stop to say a word and I sprint off to the room where the matrix is located.
I think our mission is over.