His eyes were a red-amber colour and now had slit pupils. His forearms had black scales, and his hands were coated in these same scales. He possessed a tail with a sharp blade on the end of it.
"The Phoenix Scorpion-Dragon. A strong beast." Keagan commented.
The beast was of the -insert rank- rank and as a result, and had been handed to hm as a gift from his father for his achievement. One would need to be of the advanced stage of the novice tier in their path of cultivation to have conditioned enough qi to access the powers of a beast through a beast dantian.
Swipe!
With the swipe of his clawed hand, waves of sharp flames sliced into the bodies of many of the beasts, and he then advanced with immense. He threw several attacks, only having to hit each beast once to defeat them.
His attacks were quite frankly relentless, and he punched the last seal beast to the ground to crush its skull.
His tail waggled after such an intense fight, but he began to return to his ordinary human body. His beast qi flowed back through the nodes in his body and retreated to its respective dantian, that was located near his right shoulder in his torso.
He looked calm and tranquil, covered in blood with the seal beasts surrounding him. Keagan promptly began extracting the crystals from these beasts, and Elric did the same.
Across the zone from them, Abel, Zeke and Duncan were still searching for their next target.
Abel and Zeke were at the front of this trio, that used their superhuman senses to better locate any enemies. The surroundings were awfully quiet, though, and it seemed totally devoid of life for a time.
The area possessed this level of extreme heat that made Duncan quite uncomfortable, but the other supernaturals barely felt it. For Abel, it just felt like a soothing warmth and this was the same for Zeke.
Their bodies weren't exactly sweating, and were more than durable enough to well, endure this heat.
They arrived at a large rock, slowly walking around it to see if any creatures lurked behind.
Sniff!
Abel came to a sudden stop after taking a large sniff. He scanned the surrounding area with quick, hasty glances but couldn't seem to find where the problem laid.
"What's wrong?" Duncan asked, from behind him.
"I smell blood and flesh. There's gonna be a really badly mangled corpse somewhere here." He explained.
"Isn't that a given? It might just be some beast with its guts ripped out."
"No, I meant of a human. A mangled human corpse is here." He specified.
This statement sent a shiver down the young boy's spine. Abel and Zeke still seemed indifferent to the new information that they had gained, and just continued to move on forward.
"I smell it too, now. Let's go." Zeke said, signalling for them to move forward.
They crept forward slowly, taking slow and steady steps. Abel was slightly crouched down, ready to enter quadrupedal movement at a moment's notice.
Upon becoming a hybrid, he noticed that he could actually run faster when he ran on his hands and legs. Also, he pick up speed far faster and he would usually use his hands and feet to speed himself up before resorting to bipedal movement.
He might've been faster on all fours, but it wasn't exactly a good position to be in for fighting.
The two vampires soon got the smell together, and could hear the crunching and chewing of flesh being eaten. They both looked at each other with alarm before looking ahead.
Zeke took a few quicker steps ahead, before coming to a sudden stop.
"Oh my god!"
Arwin, with a face covered in blood, was crouched down beside a human body with its torso brutally destroyed. Its ribs had been snapped out one by one, and the organs that laid within such torso had also been mostly removed and ripped apart.
He had a chunk of flesh in his hand, and had tears that flowed down his cheeks, mixing with the blood on them.
"I'm so sorry... I... I couldn't control it!" He exclaimed.
"Don't worry, I'm not a hunter like you're supposed to be." Zeke replied, crouching down to the body.
"Why is he eating human flesh? What is he?" Abel asked.
"He's a weredragon. To survive, like how we need human blood, they need human flesh." Zeke replied.
"Oh god." Duncan whispered from beside them, stumbling into the desert rock they were stood by.
His heart was racing, and the scene was almost too much for him to stomach. The strong stench of blood, mixed with bile and other things was utterly revolting to him.
However, upon saying this, Zeke rushed in to grab his bloody hand. He inspected it closely, before Arwin pulled it back and shoved it away.
"Get away you dem-... just get away!" He shouted, backing away from the vampire.
"He still has his hunter markings. He's still a hunter." Zeke said, looking on incredulously at Arwin.
"What, so is he like a hunter-weredragon hybrid now?"
"This shouldn't be possible. When a hunter is bitten by an alpha, either they become the supernatural species that bit them, or they just die. There's no situation where they remain a hunter and that doesn't even make any sense." Zeke explained.
From crouching next to this corpse, he swiped at the pool of blood on the ground and had a taste of it. His demonic face took form as he did so, but he then continued examining the corpse in front of him.
"Oh gosh, you can see the robes. This guy's from the Immortal Fist Academy. We can't be seen around here if we want to stay safe. Just get away from here now, let's go!" Zeke insisted, walking away.
Duncan and Abel followed, but Arwin remained stood still.
"What are you doing, come on!" Zeke insisted, signalling for Arwin to follow after them.
This is what he did, and they jogged for about a kilometre before stopping.
"Just let me die here. I'm no better than any of you, I no longer deserve my life." Arwin said dejectedly, looking at the ground.
"Oh please, get over yourself. Getting you the human flesh that you need won't be a problem, my compulsion will allow you to do that with ease."
"What? You want to kill human beings?" Duncan asked, taken off guard by his careless, nonchalant attitude.
"Well, if I don't get the human flesh that your brother requires, he dies. Do you want to let him just die?" Zeke asked.
"It is what is right." Arwin objected.
"Anyways, I don't need to kill any human being. All I have to do is maybe cut off their limbs then give them a strong enough healing pill so they return to normal. We could even do that a few times on the same person and get some fresh meat for him."
They all talked about what their next steps were going to be, and the sun soon set.
Since they were going to be out here for a few days, they needed to find a good place to camp so that they'd be safe.
They arrived at a large desert rock, that seemed to have a rather flat top. Zeke inspected the walls of this rock, before black veins scurried down his cheeks.
"We should rest up here. Come on, guys."
His red aura of qi cloaked his body, and he leaped up, reaching several metres into the air before grabbing onto a rock to keep himself up with just a hand.
Abel did the same, but was able to use his hands far easier than Zeke could. It looked like he was just running up the side of the wall like an animal would.
Duncan used his qi and he was able to climb the rock too, although much more slowly. He was also much more scared and did so in a careful manner.
Reaching the rock, Arwin leaped up explosively, nearly jumping as high as Zeke did with his first jump. He then charged up the wall even better than Abel did, before rolling in the air and landing on his feet gracefully.
The other students couldn't help but clap for him, but the hunter didn't feel as happy as them.
"Come on, man. Did you not see what you just did there? Liven up a little!" Abel said, tapping him on the back.
Upon just tapping him once, he backed away and looked at him with hostility.
"I said back away now! I'm not happy with the thing I've become, and I don't care how you want to make me feel about it. We are all demons, how could you believe we deserve life?" Arwin asked.
"Why would I think I don't deserve life? You've gotten this twisted image of who we are and who you are now." Zeke replied, making Arwin scoff.