Ning took back the spear and grabbed the corpse of the fox midair. "You shall fill the belly of one of my beast," he said as he teleported back down.
He called out Night and Blue, who fell to the ground, bleeding quite profusely. "Do you guys want me to help you, or do you want to heal on your own?" he asked.
"I can do fine on my own," Night said.
"I'm fine too master, but… I think I brought trouble for you by using one of the 10 drops of the True Dragon's blood essence that you gave me," Blue said in a somber voice. It was noticeably weaker now in terms of the aura than beforehand. Losing a single blood essence really did hurt his potential a lot.
"It's fine. You guys did well and don't have to worry about any of this," Ning said. He then threw the fox body onto where Night was and said, "Eat that."
Night looked at him with a surprised face, but then quickly nodded and started eating.
"As for you," Ning said as he looked toward the flood dragon. "You gave up something important to you just for me, and that is something I can't help but admire, so I shall gift you something."
He said and started fiddling with the air. Ning's face twisted into unpleasantness a few times, but Blue stood there without any movement. Finally, after a minute or 2, he successfully managed to do something using the new system interface that was so hard to navigate.
"Here," he said as 5 drops of blood essence suddenly appeared in mid-air.
Blue's eyes widened in shock and amazement as he felt the aura coming off of those 5 drops of blood. "Master, that's… that's a True Dragon's Blood Essence. I only used a single one; I can't have 5 in return," Blue said.
"Just shut up and take it. This is your master's order," Ning said and forced the 5 drops of blood into Blue's mouth. Blue gratefully took it in and showed a satisfied smile.
Ning put him back into the beast and space and looked back at Night who was halfway through eating the fox's corpse. He could see slight happiness in the otherwise stoic face of Night.
He slowly drifted next to Night as he stroked his back while he ate.
"So, you already broke the bond, huh?" he asked.
Night suddenly stopped eating and didn't speak for a while. Ning just stood there without saying anything either. After a while, he finally spoke again.
"I was wondering why I couldn't feel the bond at all. Although, I guess that measly bond made using a trash taming skill couldn't last that long anyway," Ning said.
Night still chose to not speak. He didn't know what to say.
"Do you wish to leave me?" Ning asked in full seriousness. Finally, Night showed some reaction. He turned towards Ning as he looked at his face in shock.
"I'm not joking, Night. Tell me if you want freedom, I will grant it to you. I care more about you three as friends rather than just subordinates, especially you," Ning said.
Night drooped his head down and thought for a while before saying, "No!".
Ning was taken back a little. Night continued, "I want to stay with you. In fact…" he hesitated for a while as the next sentence coming out of his mouth would be the most important sentence in his life.
"… please bond with me again," he said.
Ning looked at him with shock. "Are you sure Night? You don't have to force yourself to do this if this is out of some petty belief of needing to repay me or something," he said.
"No," Night said. "I've already made up my mind. I wish to stay with you forever."
Ning looked at Night's resolute eyes for a second and sighed as he started smiling again. "You really are the best, Night," he said as he walked towards Night.
He gave the giant beast an embrace. Night too changed his size a little to get small enough so that Ning could fully embrace him, and returned an embrace of his own.
"Alright, I'm starting," he heard.
Suddenly, an intense force ripped through his consciousness, but he didn't do anything to stop it. Slowly, it spread through his entire mind as it started forcing it to submit to the new force. Night did that without hesitation.
Finally, the force that dominated his mind went dormant, and a Master-Servant relation was set between Ning and Night once more.
"Thank you, Master," Night said.
"You don't have to call me that," Ning said with a smile. "Alright, finish that thing fast. I will store the other corpses… although I don't see any," Ning said.
Aegis had crushed everything into a single ball of flesh and blood, and Ning didn't want to pick that up. Blue's dragon breath had ripped away from the bones of the monsters themselves and nothing more remained than a few body parts here and there. Finally, Night's black fire simply destroyed everything down to its atoms.
Ning sighed as he thought how monstrously strong his beasts were getting.
He took Night back into the beast space so that he could go back into healing. Then, he opened the status page and sighed.
"That's like a year or two's worth of energy I wasted in this fight," he thought. It wasn't just the fight he spent his energy on, but rather after it too. Blue's 5 drops cost quite a lot as well.
"Whatever, it's just a few years. I can go into closed cultivation like everyone does and gathered ages worth of energy in one seating," he thought.
"For that though, I need a good place I can stay at, some form of sect or some other place I can call home for a few centuries," he mused to himself.
He thought about going back to Hyesi's place but quickly decided against it. If he was going to do something new, he might as well experience something new.
"Since I'm already here in the Central Continent, Why don't I look around and see what I can find?"
