"Yes, that is me," the drake said.
"What about the others? I saw many broken statues in the cave. Did Jha'Akim do that?' he asked.
"Yes," the drake said. "We couldn't stop him at all. He suddenly gained a massive boost in strength and physically pushed open the coffin before proceeding to slaughter us all."
"He was so strong that the only thing we could do what stay there and die to him. He started smashing our statues one by one, but it seemed that he didn't know about this secret realm. So, to save them, I jumped into the portal and closed it off from this side," the drake said.
"In fact, I am surprised you even made it here somehow. Is it because of this teleportation skill these children say you have?" the drake asked.
"Yes," Ning said. "But let's not talk about that right now. I will go and find him," Ning said. "Hopefully, he's not too strong."
"No, don't!" the drake said. "That bastard is much stronger than he ever was. I don't think you can fight him at all."
"Don't worry, I'm strong too. But, I will be careful," Ning said.
"No, you will just throw away your life," the drake said. "Oh god, if only we could cultivate to the Spirit Transformation realm as well. We wouldn't have to worry about this monster coming out of nowhere."
The drake's lament reminded Ning of something he had been curious about but always forgot to think about.
'The reason they can't breakthrough to a higher realm is because of a wound, right?' he thought. 'System, do you know what wound these guys are talking about?'
<Yes>
'Well, what is it?' he asked.
The system gave an answer that surprised Ning on a level he hadn't expected before. He thought about it for a bit and asked, "is there anything I can do about it?"
The system gave him another answer where the main process of healing the so called 'wound' was to sacrifise himself.
"Yeah, I'm not doing that," Ning said. "Let's think of this later. I need to find out where this Jha'Akim guy is at."
"I will go now," Ning said to the beasts.
"Master, we want to come help as well," Night and the others asked.
"No, it's too dangerous. I don't know exactly how strong this guy is. He's been biding his time for years, so he should be way stronger than he was when he was put into the coffin."
"I don't want anything to happen to you guys," Ning said.
"No, master. We want to help. Even if it's not directly fighting, there should be other ways to help," Blue said.
Ning was about to refuse once more when he thought of something. 'That bastard has people working for him, doesn't he? If Jha'Akim himself is too strong, then I might not be able to take care of all of them myself,' he concluded.
"Alright, come. Let's go," Ning said.
"Yes, Master," the beasts said as they happily jumped into his beast space.
Ning was about to leave when he stopped and reached into his storage bag before taking out a pill. He threw it towards the drake and said, "it will heal you to a certain degree. Use it."
After that, he left. He didn't bother flying to anywhere and directly teleported to the cave with the broken statues.
"May you guys find peace in death," Ning silently prayed for the dead beasts and flew towards the exit seal.
"Most of these beasts were heavily lacking in anything organic. Their blood and muscles were so low that it wouldn't amount to a single beast's if we combined it all. So, Jha'Akim shouldn't have gotten anything out of these dead beasts," Ning thought.
Ning passed through the exit and reappeared inside the tomb.
"There was no commotion here when he exited, so he must've been teleported to either of the other 2 continents," Ning figured.
"The clone said that it was a little early for him, but he would find a way to get stronger, didn't he? Now where exactly would Jha'Akim go to incre— Oh no," Ning said as a sudden realization hit him.
"ELY!" he thought and immediately teleported inside the island that was the Origin. When he reappearead, he could see in the distance two people fighting with each other.
One one side was Ely with her numerous artifacts flying in the air, both going on the offensive and defensive at the same time.
The many artifacts made her very hard to deal with, but even then Ning could see that she had a broken right arm and was incredibly hurt right now.
On the other side was… a human. A normal looking human flew in the air wearing nothing but a simple white robe with fully white hair. The male human didn't seem to be having much trouble fighting Ely at all, and even seemed to be enjoying it.
Ely was standing on a chariot with a spinning disk in front of her that she was continuously throwing at the man.
However, the man was too fast to be hit by anything. He has a smug smirk on his face and he dashed forward once more.
Ely brought out a shield to block his attack, but that wouldn't stop him at all. At the most crucial moment, Ning teleported right behind the shield and stopped the man's attack together.
"Ning, you're back," Ely said with happiness and relief returning back to her face. However, Ning's face did not have any of those emotions.
"Don't be so happy Ely," he said. "This guy is too strong, even for me."
The man stopped and looked at Ning as a face of confusion and question appeared in him.
"Have I seen you somewhere? Your face looks… familiar," the man said.
"Tsk, so you are Jha'Akim, huh? I don't see any beastly features in you," Ning asked.
The man didn't speak and instead kept looking at Ning. Finally he realized where his sense of familiarity came from.
"I see," Jha'Akim said. "It was you who made me come out right when I was ready to breakthrough, aren't you?"
