"There was 103 eggs, 86 of them have already hatched. We can't categorize those creature, none of them are alike. A few of them have regained consciousness. They seems to have varying level of intelligence, but all of them are closer to monsters than humans. Sir Bert is hoping that they are just infants, and might grow stronger and smarter later on. Thanks to him, we moved fast enought and most of the eggs were already safe in the Alban Fortress before they started hatching. Except for the 3 largest ones who were too heavy. The cultist tasked with the transport decided to move them last and they ended up hatching on site. Our men didn't dare attack our Lord's Gifts and most were killed by them. The rest have retreated."

A cultist was briefing the cultist Pope while walking down a dark corridor.

"What about the heroes ?"

"They are 56 of them. It is the highest number of heroes ever recorded." Worried the cultist. "But according to our intel, they might also be the weakests. They all have extraordinary talent, but they were just summoned and most them had never heard of magic before. We couldn't learn anything else as they are living sheltered in the Imperial Palace for now. However, there are rumors that each of them may have received a gift from Ephrenos, the God of Justice, during the summoning."

"We could try assassinating them, but without them we wouldn't stand a chance against the monster's armies. We must go back in hiding. We need time. Try to collect more intel on both their heroes and ours. Ael will take clear of cleaning the Altar." The Pope looked over his shoulder at the giant following behind him. "Try to make it look like we failed. You are allowed to kill the 3 Gifts if you can't get them back."

Back in the cell, "Consciousness" was finally done absorbing the fisherman's soul fragment. As he had expected most of his memories were useless to him right now, but you never now when tying a good knot might be useful.

As he focused back on the sea of soul fragment, he could feel that he became noticably bigger. He was tempted to start absorbing another fragment right now but the situation outside of his body was still uncertain and he couldn't trust "Beast" to take care of anything beside breathing.

Well apparently eating too. As he looked outside, he could see his hand bringing the last bits of bloody meat up to his mouth. The ground in front of him was covered in blood, and it took him a few second realize what the "Beast" had feasted upon. He was disgusted, but not surprised as he was now a monster, he would have been more surprise to end up vegan. He was actually thankful that their body didn't seems to have taste buds. He could still feel the bloody meat go down his throat, but no taste.

"Consciousness" also took note that their shoulder had already healed itself. This was a surprise, not the super-regeneration factor, but the shoulder was either broken or dislocated. In the first case, the shoulder would have most likely badly healed, and in the later case, his shoulder would have needed to reseted back in the shoulder join.

Yet "Beast" was now easily moving his shoulder around. So his super-regeneration was smarter than the simple human healing power and could properly regenerate worses injuries. Excellent. His first and foremost goal was staying alive, and being inside an extremely agressive monster wasn't helping, so in term of survival chance, this was the first good news.

He also took notes of 2 other important facts.

First, his body was getting better, not just healing, better. The pain he used to feel all around his new body was slowly disappearing and his muscle felt stronger.

Second, he could see better, his vision wasn't just getting sharper, like if his eyes were healing, it also felt as if they were more light in the room. He first thought that his eyes were adapting to the dark, but it was now more then that. He was slowly developing night vision.

He now understood how amazing his newborn body was. He was born less then day ago from his estimation, but his body was growing and adapting to his new environment extremely fast.

Maybe not that fast. It has now been a few other hours and "Consciousness" learned to communicate with "Beast". They weren't really talking as "Beast" didn't seems to understand him, but like an angel on his shoulder, "Consciousness" could sort of get "Beast" attention to certains things. "Beast" was still extremely suspicious of the voice in his mind but it seemed to try to keep him alive. "Consciousness" also learned that he was underestimating "Beast"'s intelligence. As opposed to when he first woke up, he didn't seems to only move based on instinct anymore.

In term of communication, "Consciousness" could read "Beast"'s memories and mind, even if the latter weren't exactly expressed with word and more with emotion and visualisation. Reading thought his memories, "Consciousness" learned that he had been silent for more then 3 days while absorbing the soul fragment. The meal he saw "Beast" finish wasn't actually the first one but already the fifth entire body he ate.

He had another pleasant surprise when "Beast" curled down in a corner to sleep. While "Beast" was sleeping, he could have full control of the body and could move around. When the "Beast" woke up, he still easily took back full control of the body but "C" realised that this time he could control the body better, and he resisted a bit longer. He attributed both of those improvments to him growing bigger in the Sea of Souls.

Yet he still pushed back the absorption of other souls fragments to latter as the improvements were small and even the smallest soul fragment took him so long.  As the smartest of the duo, he needed to be attentive to any details that may help them. He tried to extract some informations of the guard's conversation using "Beast"'s memories, but as "Beast" couldn't understand them, he didn't remember them properly and they just became indistinct background noise even for "C". He needed to be the one actively listening.

Hooves were hitting the pavements, a group of a few dozen knights in silvers armors entered the premises of a small city as the sun was rising. The one leading the party was a handsome blonde man with blue eyes. He would have looked like a prince if not for the wrinkles and white hairs that betrayed his advanced age. Covering his armor was a white cape wearing a symbol representing a chain wrapped around a sword.

He was Mart Kelen, cousin of the Emperor and 4th captain of the Templars, an order of elite knight representing the Emperor's will.

He was sent here with his men on direct order of the Emperor to investigate a large scale genocide that happened a few days ago in a small city north of the capital.

The city of Rozenn was attacked at dawn, a group of cultists assaulted the city and started mindlessly killing everyone. A large part of the city's population managed to run away as the ennemy didn't have enought people to block all escapes routes, but the victims' number were in the tens of thousands. No alert were sent to the capital as the communications appeared to have been jammed. According to some witnesses, a large pentagram had appeared in the city center and a convoy of prisoners was being escorted toward it. The Imperial wizards had told him that it was most likely an extremely large scale sacrifice ritual, and according to the numbers, the largest since millenias, if not ever.

As the men approached the city's gates, they were welcomed with a grim view. The city's gates were down on the ground and bodies were covering the ground. According to the specialist with them. If the pentagram was big enough, they didn't need to execute people on it, they simply needed to be in its range. The city was a gigantic execution ground radiating an aura of death. The corpses were already a few days old and the smell was atrocious but the knights weren't impressed, they were all veterans fighters who had seen plenty of death and blood.

As the knights approached the city center, the density of bodies increased until they had to come down their horses. They kept going until they reached a massive pond of blood. The pond was around 50 meters across and around 2 to 5 meters deep at some places. Just like in the street that led here, there was a bunch of corpses on the pentagram itself, but those corpses belonged to the cultists. As the knights got close, one of Mart's Lieutenant knelt next to one of the bodies.

"This one is at least a Rank 6 Warrior."

"According to witnesses, there were hundreds of cultists. How many died here ? And against what ? The city's strongest inhabitant was only Rank 6 Wizard." Asked one of his men.

A mage in purple robes was being escorted by Mart himself toward the remnants of the pentagram. He started following the remaining lines of blood in hope of determining the magic circle's fonction.

After an hour of looking around, the mage reported back to Mart.

"Sir, this was a high level invocation cercle, at least Rank 8, like the one used in the capital to summon the heroes a few days ago. But this is a simpler and flawed version powered by black magic. The circle should have been used to try and summon heroes. However the flaws proved themselves deadly and something else was invoked. Can't say what exactly."

"It corelate to what we found, Sir. There are around 230 cultists' bodies around here. The strongest ones are 3 Rank 7 Warriors and 1 rank 7 Warlock. We also found mysterious body parts that looked like spiked tentacles. We can't identify the creature from this, but i would say it's strength is around Rank 8. It either ran away or they killed it and took the body." added the Lieutenant.

"So they tried to copy us and failed. After it backfired, they ran away." resumed Mart Kelen. "How many creatures could have been summoned ?"

"As i said, the circle is flawed. The rank 7 Warlock might have been the one who made it. More then 80% of the energy was simply wasted. If what Lieutenant said is true and the creature is Rank 8, only one." answered the purple mage.

"Send a messenger back to the capital to report to His Highness. Send a few groups of scout to try and find traces of the runnaway cultists. Tell them to stay alert, they may have laid down ambushes." finished Mart as he turn back to look at his men. "Group 2 will stay and keep the area secure until reinforcement arrive to clean up."

They were all at least Rank 6 and as he could see from the remnants of battle, they wouldn't have any problem if the cultist came back.

"Is that all, Sir ?" asked the Lieutenant.

"Our job was to investigate this place and we got what we came from. Tracking down the cultist or the beast, alive or not, will be a job for the Imperial Bureau."

On a roof a few blocks away, a shadow stood there, watching some of them start to set up a perimeter, while the others were going back to the capital, or chase away traces they wouldn't found.

The man was the silent giant Ael. The knights, the purple mage and even Mart Kelen, one of the ten strongest Knight of Empire couldn't sense him at all.

After confirming that they took the bait, he simply vanished in the shadows, leaving no traces behind.