Alex returned back to the Stepstones tribe with tears flowing down his face and holding the dead body of Li Yun.
His mind was all but blank as he slowly made his way toward the hall where everyone was gathered.
The hall was just as gloomy, if not more, and entering the room only made Alex feel worse.
The chief turned around to look at him and saw his wounded daughter. "Yun!" he shouted as he swiftly made his way to his daughter to check his injuries.
He grabbed her away from Alex's arms.
"Quickly, we should place you by the fi--" his words stuck in his throat when he saw her pale skin and lifeless eyes, reminding him of what he had seen 7 years ago when the previous beast horde had attacked them.
That time, it had been his wife that had died, and this time...
"Daughter? Yun? Wake up. Please, wake up. Yun?" he started shouting. Everyone turned to look and saw that she had died as well.
Most thought of consoling the chief, but they were too busy mourning for their own kin.
The chief cried for minutes as Alex stood there blankly. The chief finally looked up at him with clear rage in his eyes.
He grabbed Alex by the shirt with one hand. "You said she was safe!" he shouted. "You lied to me."
Alex tried to speak but no words came from his mouth. There was nothing he could say here that could remove the blame from him. In some ways, he wanted the chief to blame him so that the feeling of guilt he had been having could be justified.
"You let her die!" he shouted.
A few members of the tribe quickly came up to the chief and tried to calm him down, fearing that Alex would lash out.
However, Alex didn't have it in him to lash out. He couldn't even take any action. There was anger in him, boiling on the inside, but he couldn't find it in him to pour it outside. All he could do was say, "I'm sorry. I couldn't save her."
The chief couldn't find it in his to say anything and simply cried.
"How... just how could it have happened? You said you left her far away," the chief said. "How did the beasts get to her?"
The anger boiling inside Alex finally found a way out as viciousness filled his voice. "It wasn't the beasts. It was the men responsible for sending those beasts," he said.
"What?" the chief asked with a confused voice. The others beside him were confused as well.
"This beast horde attack, it wasn't random," he said. "Some men purposefully sent the beasts here so that there would be fewer beasts they would have to worry about. It is likely that... that they found her while returning."
The chief's face darkened as his eyes grew hateful. "These were the task of men?" he asked. "Not only did they kill my daughter, but they were responsible for all the tragedy today?"
"Yes," Alex said. "And I will go kill them."
He turned around without waiting for a response and walked out. The fury that had been dulled due to the shock of seeing Li Yun dying had resurfaced and the only way to calm it down was to kill her murderers.
"They couldn't have gone far," he said to himself softly and brought out of the leopard from before. The leopard was the only beast that was swift enough to make the journey he was about to make.
In doing so, the blood beast was most likely going to get weaker to the point where it would become useless. If the current status of the beast was anything to go by, it would most likely disappear entirely.
But, that was the last thing Alex cared about at the moment anyway.
He rushed the blood beast, making it spend every little blood aura it had in it, rushing through the desert at a very high speed.
His spiritual sense covered a large area as he searched every direction in search of any signs of humans.
The blood leopard ran through the half-moon night even as its speed dropped continuously by every second.
After an hour or so, the beast was so slow that it was weaker than Alex himself, having slowly lost its blood aura. It had, after all, fought for hours even before this.
Still, Alex found it better to ride on the beast instead of running to rest his body which had worked for too long without any sustenance to keep him going.
Besides, there was no point in changing his steed at the moment. After all, he had found the people.
A group of men and women either rode on a few beasts or simply walked as they slowly made their way northwest. Some of the people there were wounded, but not all were.
There were nearly 40 different people here, along with 12 different beasts that they rode.
The ones that rode the beasts were mostly the ones that were wounded. They all looked very similar in terms of clothing, but they all had different types of tattoos on their chests or arms to denote which tribe they were from.
The symbol of tumbleweed meant that the person was from the Tumbleweed tribe. The ones with the snake tattoo were from the Desertsnake tribe.
The ones with the horns were from the Bullhorn tribe, and the ones with the wave-like tattoo were from the Blue lake tribe.
Finally, the ones with the Arrowhead were from the Arrowhead tribe.
"That was tough," a woman from the Tumbleweed tribe said. "I nearly died fighting all those beasts."
"Yeah, it's hard to route the beasts as they usually don't want to go anywhere but north," another person said, one from the Bullhorn tribe.
"Do you know why that is?" a younger person belonging to the Bullhorn tribe asked.
"The beasts used to stay in the north for the longest time. We're not sure why, but our best guess is because of the lights in the north. When that light disappeared, the beasts came from the north that day," the man said.
"Any idea what was up north? Why were there so many beasts there?" the younger man asked.
"No idea. No one could really tell since no one could ever go past that monumental amount of beasts after all," the man said.
"Well, now we won't have to worry about them," the young man said enthusiastically.
"Maybe not. We might have to do one more round of it," another person said, this one belonging to the Desert Snake tribe. "Hehe, let me find the best tribe for it this time, okay?"
"Sure," A woman from the Arrowhead tribe said. "These goddamn northern tribes live so far apart that I don't want to do it again. Although, you will have to make sure it's a sizable one."
"Yeah, yeah, and I don't know who leaked it was us doing that, but we'll have to make sure no one finds out," the other man said. "It was a shame that I had to kill that little cutie from before. If she hadn't put up such a fight, I would've taken her as a--"
*BOOM!*
A loud explosion shook the ground as sand blew up in everyone's face.
"What?"
"A beast?"
They were all surprised and immediately got ready to fight. However, a second later, they had to switch their focus away as a bloody rain started pouring on top of them.
The rain lasted no more than 5 seconds, but those 5 seconds felt like an eternity as not just rain, but bones and guts flew down as well.
Aside from that, a single head fell. The head belonged to the man from the Desert Snake tribe that was just speaking.
Everyone was shocked at the sudden and violent death and couldn't help but get scared. They grew alert and searched for the beasts, only to find something glittering in the sand.
"Is that... a sword?" one person asked.
"How is a sword here? Where did it come from?" they started wondering.
The young, curious man moved before any of the adults did and reached for the sword. He grabbed it and tried to pick it up but no matter how much strength he used, he could not move the sword at all.
The 16 tons heavy sword was not something this young person could ever hope to move.
Alex arrived from behind the falling sand as if appearing from a curtain. His eyes were filled with rage, his face with disgust and his heart with a will to kill everyone here.
He grabbed the sword that the young man was struggling to move and pulled it out of the sand.
"How old are you?" Alex asked.
The young man looked at how easily Alex pulled the sword out and couldn't help but be surprised. He understood that the man who looked just as young as him was very strong.
"Who are you?" the others asked while pulling out their weapons from this back.
Alex didn't look at them, however, and stared at the young man in front of him. "I asked you, how old are you?" he asked again.
"T-Twenty-two," the young man said.
Alex nodded when he heard the words. "22, huh?" he asked. "Old enough."
No one saw when Alex's sword moved, but they did see when the young man was carved into two from his left should to his right chest.
"You bastard!" the men shouted as they immediately ran towards Alex to kill him.
Alex saw that and got happy. He wouldn't have to worry about the people here running away when he started the slaughter.
