About three weeks after the Abyss Worms had been moved to Icy Bastion, the first Ancestral Beast appeared near the town.
Of course, the town noticed the Ancestral Beast when it was over a thousand kilometers away, and it would take a bit for the Ancestral Beast to get closer.
Usually, due to an Ancestral Beast's speed, Shang had always called for the Security Agency as soon as an Ancestral Beast was found by the Surveillance Magic Circle. If an Ancestral Beast directly traveled towards the town, it would only need something like ten seconds to reach the town from over 500 kilometers away, which might just be barely enough for the Security Agency.
But now, Shang could let the Ancestral Beast come closer without having to call the Security Agency.
The Surveillance Magic Circle also kept track of a beast's power, and this one was only an Early Ancestral Beast.
The Magic Circles of Icy Bastion had changed, and instead of going completely into lockdown, the town simply gave off a yellow warning light when an Ancestral Beast was found.
This warning light would signify that the town would soon enter a short state of lockdown.
Some of the more interested High Mages looked at the map and saw the beast around 1,200 kilometers to the north.
Over the next couple of seconds, they saw the dot on the map move around aimlessly. Obviously, it hadn't found the town yet.
But it found something else pretty quickly.
The Abyss Worms' territory.
As soon as the beast took note of the territory, it started to travel towards Icy Bastion's direction with quite a lot of speed.
When it was just 600 kilometers away, Shang locked down the town.
The barrier isolated everything, not allowing anything to pass through.
And when the beast reached a distance of 500 kilometers, things rapidly changed.
The Ancestral Beast immediately stopped moving.
Then, with terrifying reaction timing and accuracy, it shot into the distance, away from Icy Bastion.
It had seen what beasts lived here, and it knew that it had no chance against them.
However, when the Ancestral Beast could see the worms, the worms could see the Ancestral Beast.
CRRRRRRR!
The ground below Icy Bastion shook violently. It was like a world-ending earthquake was happening!
That was exactly why Shang had activated the Isolation Barrier.
BOOOOM!
A couple of kilometers away from the town, the two worms shot out of the ground, taking to the sky.
The spectacle was shocking to the people.
It was like a mountain range had been launched out of the ground like a cannon and vanished over the horizon in less than a second, leaving two terrifying holes behind.
On the map, the High Mages could see two dots rapidly approaching the sole dot running to the edge of the map.
Eventually, all three dots left the map.
Around a minute passed.
And then, three dots entered the map again, but one of the dots had become far smaller.
The worms were not in a hurry while traveling back, and they took their time.
After around two minutes, they arrived at their holes again, but something new was accompanying them.
A leg.
The leg was a bit over 200 meters long, and it seemed to be the leg of some kind of big cat. Could be a tiger, a lion, or basically anything.
For the people of Icy Bastion, looking at such a huge leg was awe-inspiring.
Even though it looked small beside the humongous worms, it was still over 200 meters long!
The two worms crawled back into their holes, the one with the Darkness Affinity pulling the leg with it.
Shang knew why the worms hadn't consumed the entire corpse.
That last remaining leg would be used as nourishment for their eggs.
The stronger ones of their offspring would be allowed to consume the leg, which would rapidly bring them to the Commander Stage in less than a year.
The other 98% would be forced out of their home and would live in the icy wasteland around Icy Bastion.
By now, the surroundings had already completely changed, but the flora and fauna hadn't yet adapted.
At the moment, the area around Icy Bastion was filled with a thick sheet of ice while extremely thick, grey clouds blocked out nearly all the sunlight. On top of that, a thick and icy fog permanently clouded the wilderness, severely restricting visibility.
Almost all the plants had already been buried beneath a thick sheet of ice and snow.
While there had been some very few sightings of rare natural treasures, it wasn't yet common to find them.
Nature had to adapt first.
Meanwhile, the density of peaceful beasts had started to reduce. Since everything had only started a couple of weeks ago, there were still a lot of these peaceful beasts around, but it wouldn't stay that way.
Many Soldier Stage beasts could reach the General Stage by only consuming plants, but since there were no longer any plants, these beasts would be forced to either leave this area or kill other beasts for nourishment. One had to remember that, just because these beasts liked to eat plants, it didn't mean that they couldn't eat other beasts.
Additionally, with the first Ancestral Beast killed, a huge wave of worms would soon appear.
There would be thousands of them.
The mortals were still adapting to the new environment while several of the High Mages left the town.
For now, the town was shrinking, but as more and more rare natural treasures would appear, more people would return, and those people would also be more powerful than the old ones.
But Shang didn't care very much about all of that.
He had chosen these worms because of their two Affinities, and Shang was working hard on comprehending the Concept of Subtraction.
Sadly, Shang knew that comprehending the Concept of Subtraction would take extremely long.
However, he knew that he could definitely do it.
His confidence didn't come from his own ability, for once, but from the fact that he could purchase Grade Five Mind Flow Pellets with all the money he would earn in the future.
For now, he wasn't getting much money, but when the number of True Path Stage warriors increased, he could refer some of the less talented ones to the Temple of Blood.
But all of that needed time.
And for now, Shang could only focus on reaching the Peak Fusion Realm while trying to comprehend a bit of the Concept of Subtraction.
