In the end, Nial had no starting point to begin his research. He had too few clues about the past, the present demanded his attention and the future was still a blank sheet.
There were a few straws he could reach out to start researching and experimenting with but he was distracted by the sudden appearance of humans who were looking for their friends and family.
The humans were looking for the human poachers whom Erio and Nial had killed together, probably oblivious to their group member's fate.
At first, Nial considered ignoring them since it was not unlikely that they would simply leave but things turned out differently than expected.
The group of humans found the shelter and chose to approach it in vigilance.
However, what they didn't expect to encounter when they were still hundreds of kilometers away from the shelter was to witness the Eclipse Fire Lion pursuing its cubs that were running around wildly, playing in the open.
"Phoenix Fire Lions…weren't Rick and the others searching for the pregnant Lioness?" One of the older women asked as she pointed at the cubs, indicating that they were most likely the cubs of the pregnant Lioness.
"But what is this dark Lion? It looks like a Phoenix Fire Lion, just mutated or something like that," Another woman remarked, which was ignored by the other men and women as they stared blankly at the playing Phoenix Fire Lion cubs.
"How are those cubs still alive? Were our men killed?" The older woman questioned once again. She turned around to the others, just to freeze in her tracks as her eyes fell on a young man who stood in the midst of her people with a calm smile on his face. The young man's milky-white and lifeless eyes seemed to stare in her direction unfocused.
However, that was more than enough to cause a tingling sensation to sweep over her. The older woman stiffened and stared with an aghast look at the young man.
"Who are you?!" She hissed out, just for the smile on the young man's face to widen lightly.
"You entered my lands while radiating killing intent and you were staring at my subjects with greed. Of course, I will come over and take a look at the fools who think they can just infiltrate my territory without being noticed," Nial responded, without an ounce of respect in his voice.
He could tell that it was not possible to reason with the group of humans when he sensed their raging mana fluctuations. They were already prepared to fight with their life on the line when they entered the plateau and their temper flared even more upon spotting the Phoenix Fire Lion cubs.
"Your land, and your subjects? Are you…dreaming possibly? Or are you just drunk?" The older woman asked, looking at Nial with contempt.
However, just when she thought that Nial would remain silent, the eyes of the men and women around Nial widened and their heads flicked in the direction of the old woman, whom they stared at blankly. Rather, they were staring behind her, at the owner of the voice who responded to her.
"I am not dreaming, and I would be a little bit more careful if I were you!" Nial said in a quite but sharp tone. The deathly still Nial who had been standing in the midst of the men and women suddenly evaporated into thin air as he turned into black miasma that spread out all over the ground.
The older woman turned around slowly where she saw the eerily calm face of the blind young man. Goosebumps spread all over the older woman's body and she opened her mouth just to close it a moment later.
'I didn't sense anything…' She thought, unable to grasp how Nial appeared behind her all of a sudden.
"If you want to take revenge for your men and women, you will die right here and right now. If you dare cast your evil eyes at my subjects even one more time, you will die…and if you dare to do something stupid you will…" Nial trailed off, not completing the sentence intentionally.
"...die." The older woman completed, which led to Nial giving her a thumbs up.
"Looks like you understand what I am talking about," He said before he noticed that something was slightly amiss, "So, what are you going to do?"
Nial perceived his surrounding in the finest detail. That was also why he could easily tell that the men and women around him were shocked, maybe even a little bit anxious, however, they were not actually afraid. He may be misinterpreting something but Nial was pretty sure that he was missing out on an important piece of information!
"In that case…" The older woman spoke slowly, just to jump forward and embrace Nial tightly while a tremendous amount of Mana was unleashed from her body, "...we're going to die together!"
The other men and women retreated all of a sudden while the older woman's body began to expand.
'A self-destruction ability? Why the hell would someone bind an ability like that to their body?' Nial realized the moment his Mana Sense decrypted the churning mana fluctuations of the older woman.
He was not sure how the situation changed that quickly but he could tell that he had to act immediately.
"Terminate your ability!" Nial commanded in a domineering manner while unleashing Dominion with the Power of Chaos.
The Power of Chaos hurt as it swept through his throat but that was something Nial expected and endured willingly.
What Nial didn't expect was that the churning mana of the older woman wasn't showing any signs of calming down. In fact, it felt like the churning mana began to rage wildly when it sensed that someone was trying to force it to calm down.
The opposite effect to what was desired was set in motion, causing problems for Nial who was trying to cope with the mana that was unleashed by the older woman.
He could clearly tell how much damage the explosion of an Original at the mid Keltia rank would cause. Thus, Nial unleashed the domain of darkness which he covered in a dome of darkness before he released vines of darkness from all directions.
The vines of darkness coiled around the woman who was trying to drag Nial down with her churning Mana. However, Nial was only required to make two simple motions to cut off the arms of the older women before he shrouded them in a cocoon of reinforced dark energy.
The arms that were overflowing with churning mana exploded a fraction of a second after they had been severed from the older woman's shoulders, but they did not get a chance to cause any damage to the surroundings at all.
Nial's reinforced darkness cocoon absorbed the explosion's force without any issues. The force was spread evenly throughout the entire darkness domain where it was slowly being released to the outside, creating small shockwaves. These shockwaves didn't cause any harm. They were merely a means to expel the force that had been absorbed, nothing else.
The men and women outside the darkness domain could only see the darkness dome and the faint shockwaves that were released every now and then as they exchanged confused glances.
Explosions could be heard from within the darkness dome but nobody could actually tell what was going on inside, except Nial, of course.
As for the older woman who had thrown herself at Nial in a suicidal manner, Nial was pretty sure that her mind had been shut off the moment she had triggered her self-destruction ability.
But that didn't really explain what had just happened.
Nial knew that he had provoked the group of humans but that was not enough for them to feel desperate enough to attack him like that…or was it?
**
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