22 CHAPTER 22 – Awakened Beasts.

"Oh, what do we have here?"

Alex had been running from his place to the guild, he was not even breaking a sweat though. With his SS-raked stats, it wasn't hard for him to run this distance, still, if he were to use his full speed then he would reach the guild within an hour and also get a good workout.

He kept running until he heard a whimper, 'hungry, hungry...' he followed the voice he realized that it was not a human, as his Mind of Master passively lets him talk to any living entity.

When he found the source of the voice, he was a little surprised to see a dog- no, a wolf covered in blood, and even though it was very small, maybe a just-born baby, it still had an amazing affinity to darkness.

So, he picked him up and cleaned the blood on its body with water magic after he realized that the blood that was covering her was not her own blood.

Yes, it was a newborn female wolf, he then followed the trail of blood only to find the dead mother of the wolf, even the bay wolf saw her mother in front and even though the wolf didn't have any energy left in her, she still tried to move towards her.

Alex sighed when he heard the child calling his now dead mother as if she was alive, she kept repeating 'Mama, mama…...' only to get silence in reply. Alex sighed again and pressed a point on the neck of the baby wolf, making her pass out.

Alex looked at Mother Wolf, contemplating whether he should take out the Mana core from it as it was an S-ranked beast it must have it.

In the end, he decided against it, leaving it for the baby wolf to decide in the future, and made a clean compartment of 2x3x5 m on the ground using the earth element and then picked up the wolf and gently placed her inside.

Even though the wolf was 2m high, 4m long, and might weigh more than 300kg it wasn't hard for Alex to pick her up.

He then used wind and earth elements to air-pack the mother wolf within the ground, so that her body which would have stayed without decaying for a long time as an S-ranked beast would stay like that for a lot longer in the air-tight place.

Alex also placed a permanent disguise over this place so that no one would be able to know that there is something inside, and even if someone did find something they wouldn't be able to see the Mother wolf that is buried inside.

After burying the mother wolf, he washed away the blood in this place so that it would not attract any other beast in the area when things were done, he embraced the wolf and started running towards the guild, though this time his speed was a little faster.

When Gates appeared and the awakening happened, it wasn't just humans who were awakened. Animals all around the world also started awakening, making many national sanctuaries or national parks, even some forests a restricted zone for normal people.

When the animals awakened just like humans, they also awakened skills and received different stats.

However, there was one difference, and it was that animals absorbed mana from nature to grow stronger, they can't increase their power with awakening potions or any other external agent.

Still, that didn't mean they were very strong, it took them a long time to even rank up with absorbing mana from nature.

In the five years since the appearance of the gate there have only been two or three animals that had grown stronger than S-rank and reached SS rank, the humans, however, believed that they were just stronger S-ranked monsters since the humans still don't know about the ranks above S-rank.

Having strong monsters outside the gates, ready to destroy a city is something very concerning but there is something beneficial as well.

Some people have awakened tamer skills, and the stronger ones can even tame the S-ranked monsters or animals, adding to the power of humanity.

So, not everything was bad even with the threat of SS-rank animals attacking some city looming over.

The humans are not weak enough to be defeated by a single SS-rank animal and SS-rank animals never group up, if they do meet each other then it is only to kill one another.

Some monsters do not wish for violence and only want peace, so they don't disturb the humans and humans also don't disturb them, some monsters are friendly towards humans, trying to help them fight in the gates and also other animals.

Then there are those who just want to kill humans and other monsters alike, they are the animals that have always stayed on the top of the food chain and do not want to lower themselves to others.

As for how these things are known? It is because as the monsters grow strong, they can speak and the S-ranked monsters can easily speak like humans, so, conveying their intentions is not hard for them.

As the monsters grow strong, they can manipulate their size to make themselves smaller, making it more convenient for them to talk with humans, still, they prefer not to change their size. Then there is the material that one can get from the monsters, unlike the gate monsters who disappear after dropping something, they do not disappear.

Many people awakened crafting or smithing skills and these monsters provide the best materials they could hope for, from fangs, skin, and fur to the bones and tendons, everything in the monster's body is precious.

But the most important thing is the magic crystals in the case of F-A rank monsters and Mana cores for S-rank monsters. These things can be used for many things such as providing weapons with different abilities, using them as energy generators, making potions, and many more.

But the Mana core is something that has very high value as not only does it give a stronger boost for everything a magic crystal can do it also has a special function: Humans can absorb the magic energy inside the Mana cores to grow stronger and so can the beasts, then there is also a chance that the one can get the ability that the owner of the Mana core had.

So, this is a very desired item by anyone and whenever it is found by someone if they are strong enough to protect themselves, they simply use it or keep it for future use.

If they don't have power however, then all they can do is sell it to an auction house, and even there they need to be careful, or they might die even before getting a chance to know how they died.

As people grow strong their lifespan also increases, for example, an A-rank raider could live up to an average of 120 years with ease, and that too at a time when normal people have an average life of 60-70 years, whereas an S-ranked Raider can live up to 180 years.

The same is true for the beasts, as they grow strong their life span increases even the animals that live up to 2-3 years could be able to live up to 50 years not to talk about the ones that already had the life span of 100, 200, 300 or more.

Then there is a fact that older animals could turn into a human form, it is speculated that the older animals have more control over mana or something but those are just guesses, as no one knows the real reason.

However, if someone were to ask Sophia then her reply would be simple, 'For those Beast to take a human form, they need to be using mana for a long time or it is simply that they have good control over their mana.'

This means the one or two beasts that take the form of a human in this world are someone with superb control over mana as the first option is not possible in just 5 years. There are exceptions, however, and those exceptions are the ones with higher graded bloodlines but leave these topics for later.

Alex felt the baby wolf trembling in his hand maybe because she was feeling cold from the wind as Alex's speed was quite fast or it was simply because she was feeling weak.

Alex didn't stop though; he just created a wind barrier around the baby wolf or the pup he was holding and then he used water healing on the pup as even though not much it would still energize the pup as well as heal the tiredness the pup had.

Water healing is done simply by removing the harmful or wasteful components of the water and only keeping the nutritious or healing components, it still needs masterful control over the magic and that was not something that Alex didn't have.

He carefully guided the water energy through every part of the pup's body, slowly making her healthier. After a while, the pup stopped trembling and her breathing had evened out, indicating that she had entered the land of dreams.

After continuous running, Alex finally reached the Crimson Lotus guild. When he reached the guild, he used the wind to make the pup float beside himself while also using the disguise ability to make the pup invisible.

It was then that he noticed that the stares of the people seemed a little different, he soon found out the reason as well as he heard some people whispering, 'He's the Honorary guild master….', 'He is the New S-ranker….', 'The third S-ranker of our guild….'.

He understood why he could feel different kinds of stares, some were happy, some jealous, some envious, some love, some awe, and many more but he felt one particular stare that was more intense than any other.

He looked at the source and found Frank, whom Alice had introduced to be the vice-president of the guild by showing his photo, but he found it strange since the feeling he got from this man's stare was as if he was being mocked.

It made him feel a burning feeling inside of his heart as if he wanted to tear that face off from that man, but he riled in those feelings and ignored everyone while moving towards Alice's office while also greeting anyone who greeted him, causing the girls to get stunned by his smile while the guys just looked awed.

He had also noticed that the pup had woken up when she was removed from the place it found cozy, but she just silently observed her surroundings without making any noise or showing any movements causing Alex to nod internally.

Frank who was left behind had his mocking expression washed off his face and now he was trembling uncontrollably, it was not because of anger or excitement it was simply because he was scared, scared that he was going to die.

Alex might not have realized but when he saw the mocking expression on Franks's face he unknowingly turned the suppression of Supreme human and Celestial incubus while focusing his aura on Frank along with the pressure of mana.

It only happened for a second and was only felt by Frank but that alone was enough to give Frank a sense of dread he had never felt, he wanted to kneel, he wanted to bang his head on the floor and die, he wanted to anything to apologize but the pressure vanished the next moment.

For a moment he thought that maybe it was a dream, but feeling his body covered in sweat and trembling of his whole body he knew it was in no way a dream.

Frank now felt that he shouldn't have gone ahead and challenged him without even knowing his power, but he knew that there was no going back now, or maybe he should just apologize to Alex.

He didn't know but he knew he needed to calm down as maybe he was thinking too much, he could not even understand what was happening and his head was a mess, so, he went back to his office after gesturing to a female staff member to follow him. he really needed to let out some steam so that he could think clearly.

//// Author Note: Alex keeps his bloodline suppressed because if the suppression was removed, either his charm would become even more disastrous or his presence would be treated like a god to be prayed in the mind of humans, as his bloodline was very high for the people with low leveled bloodline. The only ways for them to not be affected by his bloodline will be explained later. ////

Alex reached Alice's office and knocked on the door and heard "come in", so, he entered the room, but Alice didn't look up from the documents as she did not realize that it was him. It was after a while that Alice looked towards him with a frown, but the frown completely vanished when she saw who it was.

"Alex!!! You should have called out to me." She was going to shout at the person since she hadn't heard anything for a while, but she didn't know if it was Alex, or she must have left the work behind and greeted him.

"You just looked beautiful with that serious expression, and I couldn't bring myself to disturb you." Although Alex felt odd at how naturally those flirtatious words left his lips, he didn't think too much about it.

Alice just blushed and lowered her head at this and seeing this Alex walked in front of Alice's desk and sat on the seat in front of her.

"Where is Ann?" He asked changing the subject and Alice as if noticing her cue replied.

"She went to get something to eat as both of us were feeling hungry." She said and seeing Alex nod she was about to continue but Alex asked something that made her look at him in worry.

"Can you call the best healer you have?" Alex asked and Alice hurriedly got up from her seat and moved close to Alex checking him up and down, while she continued the inspection, she asked.

"What happened? Are you all right? Were you attacked?" From her tone, it was clear that she was worried, and Alex also felt good about it, but he needed to clear the misunderstanding.

"Hey, hey, calm down. I am fine, I wanted the healer for someone else." Alex stood up and held her hand and said looking in her eyes, Alice's head directly hung down with a furious blush.

"…" Alex was speechless and thought, 'What is this cute creature?'

...............................

Leave a comment or review to let me know your thoughts about my book!

Also, this is my discord channel if you want to give me some of your ideas about how the book can get better: https://discord.gg/m46f3zYZUq