Desper lay on the ground, surrounded by the corpses of the lizardmen he had just killed, his consciousness fading as he had lost a lot of blood.
He took out a small green pill and put it in his mouth. The Healing Pill dissolved instantly and filled his body with a warm stream. His wounds stopped bleeding, but they were still too painful after the adrenaline had disappeared.
"Ho.. how did you do that?" a stuttering voice asked.
Desper raised his head and saw Eland. His expression kept turning from shock to worry to relief to questioning.
His shock wasn't unreasonable. Desper was only in the Third Stage of Muscle Cultivation. It was impossible for him to kill even one of the M-7 monsters, let alone three.
Enduring the pain coming from his foot, Desper forced himself to stand.
"No! Let me… ask you!" he shouted in anger. "How did they get here in the first place?"
He was really furious. Without his Svikari Power, and without Zen killing two M-7 lizardmen and nearly paralyzing another, he would have had no chance to be having this conversation.
Eland was startled by Desper's snap.
"I… I don't know," he also seemed confused.
"Huh?!" Desper was stunned.
Eland was the leader of the team. It needed a huge amount of knowledge and experience to pass the leader's test. It was very strange for him to not know why the monsters had attacked Desper.
Eland explained with a frown, "These monsters' behavior was very weird: most of them were supposed to chase Silas, Taros, and me after we lured the O-3 monsters. However, most of them ignored us and surrounded Bron and Arkan, then you."
Desper was astonished and didn't know how to react. Then he remembered something. "What about the horse?"
"The horse?" Eland didn't understand.
"I tried to escape when I saw them coming, but the horse suddenly panicked and threw me off."
"I know that the Crimson Horses are very cowardly, but you were closer to the monsters when you jumped off than I was when my horse threw me off."
Desper made sure to stay at a safe distance before watching the fight.
Eland's frown became deeper. He shook his head. "I really don't know. Maybe the horse sensed something from the monsters, so it reacted sooner than expected. When we get back, I will inform the sect about that. If there is really something, the Elders should be the ones who know about it."
Desper clearly wasn't satisfied with that. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
By that time, the rest of the team joined them. Zen came on the Azure Horse, Silas was helping Arkan walk as he was injured, and Taros was carrying the middle-aged man, Bron that looked like a corpse in his arms.
Eland looked at Bron's body and asked, "How is he?"
Taros only replied with, "He will survive."
Arkan and Bron were the ones who suffered the most from these monsters' strange behavior. It was a miracle that they were still alive.
Eland nodded and looked at Desper. "So… how did you kill these monsters?"
Desper took a deep breath. It was the moment he had feared the most.
He stated, "I have to thank Zen for that."
Everyone looked puzzled for a second.
"Me?" Zen himself was confused.
"Yes, you," Desper confirmed. "Without your arrows, I don't know what would have happened to me."
When Eland and the others focused on the monsters' bodies, they noticed some broken arrows piercing their backs.
"I thought that I missed most of them," Zen said, surprised.
Desper raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you think I put them there myself?"
"Of course not," Zen shook his head.
Seeing that Eland and the others were convinced, Desper sighed deeply in relief. He didn't exactly lie, but he twisted the truth.
Of course, it was him who put these arrows in the monsters' corpses. He was terrified when Eland looked at him before he could do that. However, luckily, when Eland saw that he was okay, he went to help Bron and Arkan. Desper used that time to use Zen's missed arrows to hide the truth.
He also broke the arrows to prevent Zen from retrieving them. Zen was a professional archer; he would have definitely noticed that Desper had shoved them himself. He could no longer use these arrows, so he wouldn't care to pull them out.
Eland glanced at the monsters and inquired, "Which monster did you kill first?"
Desper was puzzled, but he still pointed at the M-7 monster he had killed first, the one that was really injured by Zen's arrows.
Eland walked toward it and placed his token over the corpse. In the next moment, a small yellow sphere penetrated through the monster's body and came out.
It was the monster's core.
The disciples used their tokens to collect the cores because collecting them manually would take a lot of time.
Eland threw it at Desper. "Keep it with you."
Desper raised an eyebrow. "What should I do with it?"
Usually, all the cores the team had collected would be split between them after the mission. Surely, they wouldn't trust Desper—the weakest one—to keep them.
Eland explained, "We, disciples, usually keep the core of the first M-Rank monster we killed as a mark of our first victory."
Desper looked at the core in his hand with mixed emotions. He thought of it as a childish tradition, but he still kept it with him.
"Okay, let's leave," Eland declared.
Saying that, he took out a small wooden tube and blew into it. The tube gave out a loud whistling sound. After that, the six Crimson Horses that had run away came back. Desper's horse was one of them, and it looked normal.
'Maybe there was really something strange with these lizardmen,' Desper said inwardly.
Everyone mounted his horse, Taros still carrying Bron. Eland got onto his Azure one. Desper was a little afraid when he mounted his horse.
He sighed in relief as the horse didn't do anything strange.
His eyes widened as he thought of something. "Please don't tell me…"
"Yes, we are moving slowly," Eland confirmed his thoughts.
Desper was about to explode in frustration. The day started with eight hours of absolute boredom, followed by thirty minutes of life-threatening danger, and then back to boredom again.
…
To reach the Spatial Crack, it took them less than 10 minutes. To get back to the Beacon, it took them another hour of slow movement.
They tied their horses to the wall. After that, the team members entered the Beacon through a relatively big door, Taros carrying Bron and Silas helping Arkan. Only Desper and Eland remained outside.
Desper looked at the other six horses that were already there before they came. "Why is there another set of horses here?"
Eland answered, "In any case, if the horses die or get tired, we will use these."
Desper frowned. "Then, why didn't we come here faster and use these horses after?"
Eland smiled and replied with another question. "What if the previous team had used all the horses before we came?"
Desper exhaled deeply and didn't respond.
He couldn't walk on his left leg, so he used one of the swords to walk. He moved closer to the wall on which various shapes were glowing with different colors. Some were protruding and some were sunk into the walls.
'Arrays,' he named them in his mind.
They were formations that could modify the Essence to perform various tasks.
"Why are there so many of them?" Desper asked, admiring them.
Eland stretched his back and answered, "Every one of them has a different task. One to magnify our Essence fluctuation, so the monsters can feel us from far away, hence they attack us and ignore the common people."
"Another to alarm us when there are monsters nearby. A third to burn the monsters' corpses so they don't pile up around the Beacon. And many others like those for our basic needs: warm water, cleaning clothes, getting rid of waste…"
"That is… amazing." Desper really liked them. "Who made all of these?"
There were a lot of arrays on the walls and the tall pillar. Above that, this wasn't the only Beacon. There were many more scattered across other areas of the sect. Not only that, but the sect itself was full of arrays: the Silent Rooms, the tables in the Order Hall, even the tokens of the disciples had small arrays set on them like the one they used to extract the monsters' cores. It must have taken a lot of time to set them.
Eland explained, "During the building of a sect, many Array Masters will come from the higher sects to set these arrays. Then one of them will stay in the sect to maintain them and form new ones when needed."
Right now, all of humanity was united together to repel the monsters' invasion. Ignoring the Zlodei and Svikari Clan, there were no internal conflicts or wars between humans. Building a new sect would be happy news since it would reduce the pressure on the other sects.
Eland walked toward the door of the Beacon. "Let's get inside."
Desper followed him and was a bit disappointed when he saw the inside.
He found himself in a single large chamber. The walls and roof were gray without any decoration. Near the door, there were ten beds arranged in two rows, with a closet beside each of them. A vast collection of weapons hung on the wall opposite the door, so the disciples could use them if their weapons broke or got lost. In the entire chamber, there was only another door for the bathroom.
The Beacon was made like that so the disciples could respond very fast in any case.
Desper saw Taros, Silas, Arkan, and Zen each sitting on a bed, cultivating with their eyes closed. They didn't need anyone to watch the area, as the arrays would alert them if a monster came near. He noticed Bron lying on a bed like a lifeless body, his torn clothes revealing many wounds that made Desper wonder how he had survived.
Desper expelled these thoughts out of his mind. He chose a bed and sat on it like the others. After blindfolding his eyes, he activated his Bloodline and started cultivating as well.
He almost died on the first day of the mission. He needed to become stronger because he couldn't use his Svikari Ability every time he got into trouble.
He also was thinking about the strange behavior of the monsters today.
'Was it because of my Svikari Bloodline? But Varik didn't tell me about that. Maybe it is because of my strange Origin?'
Desper shook his head, realizing that thinking too much wouldn't benefit him, so he focused on increasing his cultivation.