Overpowering the creature was easier said than done - they were monstrously strong for their small size, and belched flame at every opportunity. Their scales raised from their bodies to make them seem larger, and to make them spiky, thus unpleasant to eat. However, this scale-raising behavior also caused them to tangle themselves even more once caught in a net, and opened plenty of gaps for Lucian to shove the tracker-spike into. Once it was done, Makhus drew his sword and joined Lydia in the slaughter. Whereas she elegantly manoeuvred her sword through the air, accounting for its momentum as she smoothly gestured it through its motions, Makhus just dashed towards the edge of the clearing. He jumped ten metres straight up, spinning on the way up, before cutting down four of the creatures in an explosion of light and movement alongside the branches they were sitting on.
"Still too slow..." he muttered in dissatisfaction as he sheathed his blade. He turned towards Lucian and Lydia, commanding: "We'll take the marked ones around half a kilometer to the north-east. In the meanwhile, set up a proper camp and mark the trees, do not forget that we’ll need to get the Kite’s corpse down the mountain eventually, even if we butcher it where it dies. We will ping the spikes and track them to their nest in a few hours."
A few hours later, the party of three had traveled a fair distance up the mountain slope. Makhus had sent out two tracking pings at this point, and with the direction consistent, the only thing left to do was to continue following the signal direction while looking out for any environmental signs. Many of the typical signs were, however, conspicuously absent.
The further into the mountain-slope woods they pushed, the warmer and dryer the air became. Not nearly as gentle as this temperature gradient, however, was the physical transition, or rather the lack of one. There were no real early warning signs, in fact even the mundane birds and animals didn't seem too worried - the three cultivators were what caused the greatest commotion among them, including the smaller not-so-mundane beasts. In short, the newly-awakened Wildfire Kite was not severely disrupting the local ecosystem. Yet.
They set down at the side of a small creek to take a short break and to reorient themselves. Makhus doffed his armor for this short time.
"I've noticed the total absence of burn areas, or even scorch marks. Usually they space them out, but not this much," Lucian remarked.
"Maybe territorial instincts kicking in early. Maybe they further from the nest they go the healthier they are. Who knows," Makhus thought aloud. "The author of 'Bestias Arcanorum Addendum Ikesia 3621' didn't much seem to care for the child-rearing behaviours of dragon-descendants unless it was directly relevant to how they threatened human settlements. Wildfire Kites manage their territories rather than deplete them, and they are one of the youngest dragon descendant species, so it was not documented during the Late Ankhezian Era."
"I always found the volume number to be absurd. How many volumes can there be? Just ours is hundreds of pages, and it's not even a complete copy..." Lucian muttered to himself, scraping a bayonet with his teeth. Its edge gleamed like a razor, and several grooves had been scraped into its flat, yet Lucian didn't have a single visible cut.
Makhus couldn't help but chuckle at that remark, while Lydia couldn't help but correct the younger man: "3621 is the year it was published, sword-brain."
He wasn't entirely wrong. The Newman Sect's copy of the ancient bestiary detailed several types of dragon-descendants, with better-known species such as Ankylosaurs getting a short book's worth of detail. As far as other beasts went, Makhus guessed the sect's copy covered around thirty species in total. It was clearly written for and by cultivators, detailing how the beasts could endanger mortals and sects, how they should be hunted, and how their bodies were best used.
"Dragon descendants, monsters, cultivators waking up or coming out of hiding, ancient ruins awakening, whole sects revealing themselves to the world. One struggles to comprehend how the Emperor was able to force the world to change so severely."
"He wasn't. Not truly. I'm sure Tian Feng would be satisfied to know that you think this was his direct doing. The truth, as we understand it, is at once far more mundane and far more complex. Beasts, cultivators, and entire sects went into hiding due to his catastrophic war with the Three Kings, both during the war and after it as a result of the Cultivation Suppression Edict. It's easy to decide that you'll just hide for a few centuries when age cannot claim you and you can spend those untold centuries slowly growing stronger. And now... It's all waking up again. Not because he gave his permission by revoking the edict, that was just him seeing the writing on the wall. I don't think it's all because of Ubul's death, either. I think the world of cultivation would've woken up regardless. The Blue Moon War just accelerated it."
Makhus looked at Lucian.
"You're living proof. How many cultivation methods were created or accidentally rediscovered as a result of the war? Victory Demons. Rudimentary Fog-breathing. Simple Armament Aura cultivation. It goes on and on."
"I don't follow. What does it have to do with me? I mean... A soldier taught me, yes, but-"
"Bayonet-eaters. That's what they call people like him - and you. We didn't bring it up because we thought you simply didn't wish to speak of the matter, but we still structured your training to push you along, at least as well as possible for that unorthodox method. Don't tell me you haven't caught on."
As he met Lucian's iron-clad stare in kind, the swordsman glimpsed the cogs slowly beginning to turn behind his eyes. Lucian's eyes went wide, and he exclaimed: "Oh, bayonet-eater, because I eat bayonets! Yeah, that's a good name!"
Makhus' lip twitched. He then erupted into laughter. Unbothered, Lucian hemmed and hawed as the cogs in his head spun and spun and eventually settled.
"But... Hm... If my training schedule all this time has been laid out to help me advance, am I not a failure? I have not yet been able to move past the initial stages."
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