17 Red Dawn

The special lifeform wanted to retreat, it was nowhere strong enough to achieve the goal it was aiming for. He barely managed to evade the poison using his supersonic speed, which was obtained at a pretty high cost of mana.

Just as he was a kilometer away from the scene, he stopped. He had shed his shell, something he could only do once in a century; but that distraction would not last for too long. The humans it had ambushed weren't that dumb.

'I think this is already a safe distance… I cannot afford to lose more Mana; otherwise, even the weaker creatures will be able to kill me.'

"Where do you think you are going?" Just as it had eased down its worry, his heartbeat rose at an alarming rate.

"You-"

And it was no longer alive.

"Well, this was undramatic, to say the least," Zephyr spoke in a low voice and a rather odd tone, at the same time cleaning his blade from the odd liquid. Using the Root of Darkness, he had created a Darkness Clone which was the one he had used to kill the special lifeform right now.

A Darkness Clone also gave him the ability to switch places with the true body at any time he so wished. His consciousness could also swap or divided itself, commanding both bodies at the same time.

Also… It could effortlessly join the shadows and disappear from the sight of people, even most experts wouldn't be able to sense a difference.

Using the Root of Darkness, he quickly used the smoke to put the already decayed and basically useless corpse of the special lifeform into the middle of the crater. Anything which was useful, he had already taken.

~~

Arlo and Sion were exhausted. Arlo had used his Mana as a 'tracker' scanning the surrounding several kilometers just in case the special lifeform did an unusual attack, only running out of enough Mana in the final attack.

'I wonder if he's dead or not… hopefully, he is.' Sion gasped for air before almost falling into the ground, his knee supporting his body. He had lost too much strength in this battle despite not suffering that many wounds.

"Is everyone alright?!" Meres snorted, his free arm scratching the back of his head. For some reason that was the place which hurt the most out of all possible places.

"Geez, anyone has expertise in first aid? I'm not good enough." He added noticing the blood in his hands.

"I'm starting to feel…dizzy." Arlo used mana to keep the wounds in check.

Zephyr flashed into the scene. "Take these elixirs, I bought them off the market while you were busy Arlo." He threw 3 bottles at Arlo and the others.

Sion glanced at him before asking Arlo:

" Is he the one who is supposed to join the 'Withered Heart' Team?"

"Yeah, I don't think there is a set place for him however, he has no one to form a duo with. That won't be a problem since I've been asked to join the team as an honorary member for now, until he gets used to the atmosphere."

"Where's the corpse of that monster? It can probably be used to extract hundreds of Mana Stones." Meres said, his bloodlust already exhausted thoughtfully after this match.

Sion did not respond almost immediately, instead, he jumped down into the crater created from the power of the combined power of their attacks.

Noticing the corpse was basically dry, his face was covered in disappointment and bewilderment. "Guys, I think it's still alive! There are no Mana Stones or any sign of Mana present in his corpse here."

Meres knitted his eyebrows, this was indeed a weird sign. "This can only mean two things; either it was not a natural oddity or unnatural creature… or simply is not dead."

Arlo was feeling better after drinking that elixir and decided to check the corpse himself. Using his mana, he managed to notice that it was indeed the dead creature's corpse.

"This is simply stunning. I've seen Magical Beasts drop less than ten Mana Stones, but never a total of zero."

The duo from the Withered Heart Team was not in a good mood. They had exhausted an enormous amount of power to try and gain thousands of Mana Stones… all for nothing.

Zephyr was silent; he still had no idea what the unique organism meant by 'deviant'. Unfortunately, he was too weak to gain access to Rank 4 Spells like 'Memory Search', otherwise he'd have used this opportunity to learn it.

While he had his own good share of offensive Rank 3 Spells, a Rank 4 Spell was too far from his grasp right now due to his limited budget.

He could only rely on the fragments of techniques from his previous life, which he could barely use in a minimal range.

'Too bad that most of the techniques I know are related to Martial Arts or Soul Techniques. 'Mana' was an unknown term back then… perhaps there were a few places which did use it though.'

After years of thoughts, he had reached the conclusion that ancient civilizations had indeed used similar energy to Mana in his original universe. Not like it mattered now anyway.

"Zeph, we'll go with Meres and Sion to continue our journey. The local headquarters of the Red Dawn Organization isn't too far away from here. We'll seek shelter for the night there, and we will also inform the higher-ups about this occasion. Understood?"

Arlo gave a bit of thought before saying. Zephyr merely nodded, not wanting to disrupt his chain of thoughts right now.

"Let's go then, I'll deal with the corpse," Sion said after finishing putting the entire corpse in a massive bag; using a rank 2 spell, the bag then became as small as a normal bag.

'To maintain such a spell requires colossal amounts of Mana… Incredible.'

Arlo was in awe; he himself could barely hold such a spell if required, but Sion seemed to not even be affected at all.

~~

[ Location – Local Red Dawn Headquarters] – 2 hours later.

"You can go rest for the day at the room with the number 666 above it." Sion threw a pair of keys at Zephyr who nodded. "But for now; come with me. Someone wishes to see you."

Arlo was left with no part in this, he was taken by Meres to somewhere else.

The headquarters of the Red Dawn in this region was not all that majestic. It was hidden by a Rank 5 Spell; making it impossible for even Foundation Creation Realm cultivators to notice it.

Speaking of that, his Qi Fetus had reached the limits it could possibly grow to. T

he Next stage was to morph the Qi Fetus into a sturdy core, entering the Foundation Creation Realm

One could have four types of foundations depending on one's talent/potential: Bronze, Silver, Golden, and Adamantine.

Li Xiao who was also a Qi User probably had a Bronze or Silver Foundation. Zephyr had not seen him much in action to really know exactly.

A way to know which foundation he had built, was to check the color of the user's Qi. Brown was connected to Bronze, white to Silver, yellow to Gold and green to Adamantine.

What Zephyr was aiming for was… something beyond Adamantine.

While to the public Adamantine seemed like the 'apex' of foundations; there were three more stages:

Purgatory connected to the Red Qi, Heaven which connected to the Blue Qi and Emptiness which connected to the white color as well; causing many to misunderstand it for a Silver Foundation.