CHAPTER 98: INVESTIGATION REPORT

Chapter 98: Investigation Report

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It was already afternoon, and the sun high in the sky lit up the entire forest below, where just the previous night such an enormous commotion had taken place that it had alerted everyone.

The investigation had gone on without pause, and finally, after hours and hours of the investigative team digging through the underground area, several discoveries, and conclusions, had been made.

Now, in a temporary outpost near the mine, a large tent served as the command center.

Inside, seated behind a table covered with maps and a few other documents, was a middle aged man.

He was the leader of the investigative team sent here to find out what had caused all that chaos, as well as everything related to the sudden appearance of that strange creature.

He wasn’t alone in the room.

Sitting with him in the small meeting space was another man, a tall figure with long red hair tied back and a pair of sharp yellow eyes, watching, together with him, the person who had just entered the tent.

That man was none other than the headmaster of the academy, who had decided to stay behind after the battle to help with the investigation.

He and the investigation squad leader had been waiting for the investigative team’s report, which had finally arrived.

"Speak. What did you find?" he said in a heavy voice steeped in seriousness.

It was only natural, after all, this matter involved a Spirit realm being that had appeared out of nowhere and, if not stopped in time, could have caused a catastrophe in the capital.

This was far too important to take lightly.

The subordinate who had just entered understood this as well.

Hearing his superior’s command, he nodded, took the report where all the details had been written down, and began to speak.

"From our initial investigation, this was supposed to be just a newly discovered spirit stones mine, found by one of the main families of the capital, the Yao family.

We contacted one of their elders and learned that today was supposed to be the date for an expedition by a team of mercenaries they had hired to defeat a beast, presumably stage five, inside the mine.

According to what he said, something happened, and the mercenary squad left a day earlier than planned.

There’s been no word from them since."

"Our investigation team found that there was indeed a spiritual vein in the mine’s underground cave, but it’s intact.

However, the cave floor where it was located had collapsed, opening a path to a large underground area connected to a large tunnel, which in turn branches into several side channels.

From the traces we found, it seems someone fought inside the cave, and we believe that’s also the cause of the floor collapse.

Supporting this, we indeed found a large number of human corpses, most of them charred, in the underground area, along with several beast corpses as well." He paused for a moment.

His voice had been tense the whole time, but no one interrupted him, letting him continue and finish the report.

"We can confirm there was a battle here between humans and beasts.

From the residual spiritual energy traces, we can tell the human squad was mostly made up of second and third order individuals, with a few at the fourth order.

As for the beasts... we’ve confirmed the presence of several third and fourth stage beasts, very likely led by one at stage five."

From what they knew about the Mad Jackals mercenary squad, they seemed to fit the description.

But as for the beasts, their level of strength was a bit too high, though not high enough to raise any real suspicions, at least for now.

The man then took another sheet of paper and went on,

"Based on the strong spiritual energy fluctuations concentrated at the battle site, the destruction appears to have been caused by an Earth grade item... but we don’t know who used it or the precise details of the fight.

We can only assume it was an extreme measure to wipe out the large group of beasts."

The squad leader, hearing this, said nothing, he simply stared at him in silence, fingers drumming lightly on the table.

"Continue."

"We explored deeper into the underground area." The subordinate flipped through the report.

"Among the tunnels, we found numerous dens of beasts. Many had already been killed, but some were still alive.

We counted an excessive number of nests... far too many." He paused, looking at the others with a grim expression.

"Among those we found, most were insect type beasts and other species that live underground, but we also found several that normally wouldn’t live in such places, and among these, some that shouldn’t even be in this part of the forest at all, given their nature." He listed several of them, and the more he named, the more serious the squad leader’s expression became.

"It’s rare for these kinds of creatures to share the same space... unless there’s a single will guiding them."

The headmaster, who had remained silent the entire time, nodded as he said,

"A beast tide."

"That’s what we believe as well," the subordinate confirmed.

It didn’t take much to realize that if such a large and diverse group of beasts had decided to live together peacefully in these underground nests, it wasn’t by choice;

it was because they were under someone’s control.

And it didn’t take much to figure out who that someone was, but that realization alone darkened everyone’s expression.

According to the report, they had also found the area where the beast was believed to be asleep.

After mapping out the various underground tunnels, they discovered a clear pattern among them.

The main tunnel seemed to circle around the area where the enormous cocoon was located, and all the secondary branches of those tunnels spread out like roots from the main tunnel, all leading back to it.

Needless to say, this discovery deepened everyone’s frown.

It was the first time they had ever seen anything like this, but from what they could tell, the entire underground network was too perfectly arranged,

almost as if someone or something had intentionally set it all up there.