"Oh," Ning said, a little surprised. "Was that girl wrong then? Just how new was she that she got so many things wrong?" he thought.
"What do you do then? Tell me the process by which these hybrids are made?" Ning asked.
"Well, we did first use to pump blood into the volunteers to give them powers, but it usually did not work. What would happen is their body would reject the blood immediately and show the adverse effect to their bodies."
"The changes would happen, but they would also die. I and many of the physicians tried different ways to perfect this stuff," the physician said.
"We tried lowering the dose of the blood, or changing the number of different blood that was put into them, but it didn't work. It showed some improvements, but the death count was still high, being as much as only 1 working out of every 20 candidates," the physician said.
"That many died?" Ning asked in surprise. "And the volunteers still agreed?"
"We never told them. All death was dealt with in secret and the only ones that knew were leaders and us physicians," the physician said.
"So? What happened? What changed?" Ning asked.
"So, we decided to stop infusing blood. Since the beast's blood was fighting the volunteer's blood, we needed to make it so that the volunteer's blood always won in that fight, and that was when our leader came up with the idea."
"Instead of pumping in blood, we used bone marrow. We performed a bone marrow transplant from the beast to the people and immediately started seeing success. The death rate went down from 19 out of 20, to 3 out of 5 in just a few experiments."
"Now, every other bone marrow transfusion we do results in a new hybrid," the physician said.
"Bone marrow? Ursna didn't say anything about it. Do the hybrids not know about it?" Ning asked.
"No," the physician said. "If we tell them, the leader is afraid that they will stop working for him and instead go and try to do it themselves," the physician said.
"What about the beasts? Are any still alive?" Ning asked.
"No," the physician said. "Let me show you, master."
The physician walked into a certain room and Ning followed behind. There were a few other people in that room wearing uniforms similar to the physician.
"What is this?" Ning asked when he saw the horrifying scenery of a giant squirrel hanging on the wall. Not only was the squirrel dead, but it was flayed open as well.
Besides the squirrel was a vulture-like bird that was similarly flayed open. The guts of both of these beasts were on the ground and the physicians were stepping on them to reach the beasts' chest and limbs.
"Who is that?" one physician in the room asked.
"I don't know," another one answered.
"Oi, is that a new candidate?" another one asked. "Why did he come from the front? All newbies are to come from the back."
"No, this is my master," the physician replied.
"What the hell? Your master? Since when do you have a master?" the confused physician asked.
Ning coldly looked at the group of physicians who were drawing out blood from the beasts in a bucket and got angry.
He brought out his spear that he had kept away and slashed at the unassuming physicians. They were much easier to kill than the hybrids, but that was obvious.
Ning attacked killed every single one of the physicians. He then sent out fire towards the two dead beasts and immediately burnt their corpse to ashes. "I hope your next life is better," he prayed softly.
"Oh no, master, the blood," the physician said. "The leader will get mad if we pollute the blood."
"Why would he be angry for polluting blood? Don't you need bone marrow more than blood?" Ning asked.
"Yes, but the leader wants all the blood, and he wants it to be pure. That is why he doesn't want to let the hybrids take care of the beasts on the outside. Partly because he doesn't want to let them know that blood marrow is what we actually need to make new hybrids, and partly because the leader doesn't want the blood they bring to have impurities in it," the hybrid said.
"I see," Ning said. Then he pointed towards the door behind him and asked, "Is he your leader?"
The door burst open and a tall… being walked in. The beastlike human or humanlike beast had long black hair, a face with 8 different eyes, ears in the shape of cats, dragon scales going up through his neck, two fangs pointing out of his upper jaw as two tusks coming out of his lower one.
There were bat wings behind his back, but they also looked like they had feathers in them. There were gills along the side of his neck and his chest looked hairy like that of a chimpanzee.
His hands looked like tiger paws with claws on them and his lower legs looked like the legs of a horse with hooves on them.
He stared at Ning and the physician with blood-red eyes.
"Leader, you're here," the physician said nonchalantly.
"Is this treason?" the leader asked.
"No," the physician was confused. "I am just showing my master around."
"Your… master? That should be me," the leader said. "Did he kill everyone in the cave?"
"Yes, my master did," the physician said.
"And you helped him?" the leader looked at the physician with hints of anger and confusion.
"Well, since you are already here, no need to keep you around," Ning said. "Go and attack him with all you've got. I want to see just how strong he is."
"Yes, master," the physician said and rushed at the leader with no regard for his own life. He brought out a sword and started attacking left and right. However, his strength did not stand up to the strength of a Hybrid with the bloodline of what seemed to be many creatures.
"Not bad," Ning said, looking at the leader. "You are the strongest one I've seen in here.. You do deserve to be the leader."
