When the space crack closed a silence settled in the basement-like room with no windows.

Several People in black capes that covered their faces stood watching the tank with white liquid glowing with a dim barely audible golden hue, yet seemed to erase shadows in the room with its brightness.

"He seems to be dead." Said the rough loud female voice from under the cape of a person that stood several heads above everyone else in the room, almost hitting the ceiling with her head.

"Unfortunately." Said the man at her side calmly.

"This does not change the price of my service." Said the giant-like woman.

"Of course, Lady Night Breeze." Said the man bowing slightly.

"Tsk." Voiced the woman as if annoyed with his compliant voice expecting him to bargain. "Alright, I'll give you a discount as we don't need to send your squad back." She added turning around and waving her hand, making the man smile in silence under his cape.

Another crack in space opened in front of her and she stepped through it disappearing from the room. The next moment people left in the basement heard a snap of fingers and space crack slowly closed.

"Alright, start the preparation of the device. We can finally work on our project with this amount of divinity." Said the man that spoke with Lady Night Breeze.

"What about the corpse?" Said one of his helpers.

"Take it out, and hang it above the tank, let it drip off all the precious liquid. Then bring it to the monster dismantling room, his body is well saturated with the liquid. If chopped to pieces it'll serve as good ingredients in many of our experiments." Commanded the man.

"Yes!" Said all the people in the basement getting to work.

*****

As Lady Night Breeze stepped through the crack in space, walking out of it inside a small room filled with books, she snapped her fingers without even turning back to gaze at the closing space crack and walked toward the corner of the room, stopping in front of the hanger.

She took off her cape revealing her strong shapely body and hung the cape on the hanger. Under the cape, she wore an elegant black robe that hugged her strong muscular body revealing every shape of her body, especially her incredible, opulent chest. 

The robe was quite similar to a mage's robe but without the sleeves and with wide splits on the sides allowing more freedom to her legs revealing them up to her hip. She had muscular hands and strong long legs with thick thighs that would undoubtedly attract the gaze of any male that could lay his eye on her.

What stood out in her appearance was her black skin filled with dirty white colored spots in the shapes of torn and ripped holes as if her body was full of scars. Among them, there were a few long slit-looking spots that struck the eyes the most. One such scar-like edgy-looking long line was going from the middle of her thigh up her revealed leg toward her hip, hiding under her dress as it reached her waist.

The other spot was splitting her face diagonally coming from her right eye over her nose and toward the left corner of her lip as if a hideously looking scar.

She was a gorgeous woman, but these contrasting lines all over her body as if she was full of scars made everyone shiver when they looked at her for the first time.

With a loud sigh, she walked over to the table and dropped on the chair, raising her hand adorned with several rings. At a small tug of her will a bottle appeared out of her space pocket ring and fell into her palm.

She opened the cork and downed the bright cyan liquid of the high-level mana restoration potion. Then she waved her hand and the empty bottle disappeared back into her pocket ring.

She reclined in her huge leather chair that looked like a throne and closed her eyes as she felt her mana starting to restore. But a sudden sound from the drawer broke her meditation state, making her long ears that stuck out to the sides shudder from surprise, and turn from side to side as if searching for the source of the sound.

She opened her eyes with a face of annoyance and opened the drawer taking out of it a magic far-talking device.

"What?" She said in her usual rude behavior without hiding her annoyance at whoever was calling her.

"I am glad to hear you too Lady Night Breeze. How is your health, how do you do? Me? I am fine. Quite good actually."

"Fuck off." Grumbled the woman. "I don't care. Tell me what you want or I am hanging up."

"The White Bull clan is no more. White Chieftain and all his male offspring are dead." Said the voice from the device.

At these words, she straightened in her chair bringing her full attention to the conversation.

"We sent the merchant, she will soon be in our hands." Added the voice.

"And the experiment?" Asked, Lady Night Breeze. 

"We are ready. Several test subjects successfully passed the acclimatization. The high council members are already reserving the time for the procedure."

"And you tell me one of the last?" She said anger rising in her voice.

"Their resources are long since prepared. Yours are not even here yet. What do you expect?"

"Tell me where she is. I will get her myself immediately." Said Lady Night Breeze jumping up from her seat. Before closing her eyes for a second. "As soon as I recover my mana." She added sitting back down while leaning onto the table.

"I will contact the merchant and tell them. I'll call you back when I get the coordinates." Said the voice before the connection broke.

Lady Night Breeze stood up slowly from her seat and went to the corner of the room where a comfortable meditation spot was prepared on the floor. She sat in the lotus pose entering the meditation, but her excitement forced her out of the needed state of mind, breaking her concentration and prolonging her recovery.

*****

"He is back." Said Yuko suddenly attracting the attention of everyone in the carriage. "It was nice to travel with you Bri. I have to go. Come visit me sometime." She added.

"See you later, Yuko. Thank you for your help." Said Brianna sitting from across.

Noah closed his eyes his head bowing down as if asleep.

"This is kind of creeping me out." Said Samantha. "I was uncomfortable to ask before, but what the hell is going on with him? Why do you call him Yuko? What did you mean she took over his body?" 

"Sorry, it's not my place to reveal his ability. Ask him when he comes back." Said Brianna shaking her head slightly.

"Will he tell?" Murmured Samantha.

"If he trusts you." Said Brianna shrugging.

After this small conversation silence settled in the small space of the carriage as all the girls gazed at the only male among them, waiting for him to wake up.

But as time ticked and he did not wake up, Brianna's eyebrows creased.

"So is he asleep or…" Started to say Samantha but her words were interrupted as Noah's body suddenly emitted black smoke-like energy that instantly entwined his body, covering him entirely, and the next moment he disappeared.

"Holy fuck!" Cried Samantha jumping on the spot from surprise forgetting her sleeping sister on her shoulder.

Lilly woke up with a startle looking around in fear starting to scream as she pressed herself into a corner.

"Shhh, it's okay, Lilly. It's me, Sam. I am here. You are safe. You are safe." Said Samantha hugging her sister and calming her down.

"I saw a dream." Whispered Lilly. "That son of a bitch was dragging me back onto that bed." She said as tears fell down her cheeks.

"He is dead. That motherfucker is dead." Said Samantha hugging her sister tighter.

"I can put her to sleep if you want." Said Zinnia.

"No thanks." Said Samantha turning to her. "No offense but…"

"As you wish." Said Zinnia with a smile nodding slightly.

"What was that?" Asked Samantha a bit later turning to Brianna as she felt her sister calm down

Brianna turned to Zinnia and raised an eyebrow.

"The entry spot disappeared. He went somewhere." Said Zinnia shrugging.

*****

Noah appeared in his meditation room inside the Threadweaver mansion and immediately jumped off the bed rushing out of the room.

He ran down the corridors and came into the library looking around at the huge room full of books with a lost face as if not knowing what to do.

"Noah? Dear." Said Theressa's gentle voice from behind.

As Noah turned around he saw Tessa and Priscilla standing behind him a bit disheveled as they seemed to rush here as soon as Dahlia informed them of his return.

"What happened, love? What makes you look so disturbed?"

"I…I need to do something, I need to…" he started to say stumbling through words unable to stop the storm of thoughts in his head.

"Shhh. Love. It's alright." Said Tessa coming over and taking his right hand.

"What disturbs you?" Asked Priscilla coming over from his other side and taking his left hand.

"Tell us, how can we help?" Asked Tessa stroking his cheek gently.

"I need to save them. I want to…" Said Noah breathing heavily as if in panic.

"Alright. Tell us who. We will do everything we can to help you out." Said Priscilla firmly gazing at her mate with worry, as she saw him this much distress for the first time.

"Can you help me find information?" Said Noah finally calming down as he felt the firmness in his mates' voices that gave him strength of mind.

"Of course honey. I remember every book here by heart. What do you need?" Asked Tessa.

"Bullmen clan of the Beastmen. I need information on them."

"Alright. There is such a book. Which clan specifically?"

"Red Bull clan and White Bull clan." Said Noah sighing heavily and then concentrating on his task as he calmed down feeling their holds on him as if anchoring him in the strong swirl of his thoughts.

"What else?" Asked Priscilla.

"Alchemy." Said Noah turning to Tessa. "Do you know of pills that come in red and blue colors? Red one gives power, blue one gives lust." He said thoughtfully but then felt a shake in Tessa's hands.

"H..how?" Asked Tessa in shock as her face went white. Then she turned to look at Priscilla and Noah noticed that Cil also went still after his words.

"How do you know of this?" Asked Tessa.

"You know of them? Tell me everything, it is important." Said Noah.

Tessa let go of his hand stepping back.

"I know of it." She said with an uncomfortable voice. "I made them." Said Tessa shocking him with this revelation.

"What do you mean made them? You produced such pills? You know the recipe?" He asked but saw Tessa shake her head from side to side.

"I created them. I created the recipe." She said.

"Why?" Asked Noah his eyes going wide.

"This is the medicine that mother created to suppress my…instincts when I was assaulted by my stage cross bottleneck." Said Priscilla.

"Where did you see this pill?" Asked Tessa.

"You sold dark society that recipe?" Asked Noah gazing at her sternly.

"What? No! Of course not! That was made just for Cil. Even she and Bri doesn't know the recipe! No one except for me knows of it!" Exclaimed Tessa.

Noah turned to look at Priscilla and saw her nodding. "Mother was careful to hide it even from us. Not me, nor Brianna ever figured it." She said looking worried.

"Then how? How can they produce it in such a quantity to feed the  whole town with it?"

"What?" Asked Theressa in shock her eyes going wide. "That's impossible! I never wrote the recipe down even once. It's only here! In my head." She said tapping her temple.

"What about the grocery list?" Asked Dahlia suddenly from behind them.

"What?" Asked Priscilla.

"Oh, my God." Breathed out, Tessa. "But I was careful and always added extra ingredients and changed the amount. They couldn't…" She said looking at Dahlia.

"How long were you making it?" Asked Dahlia calmly.

"Two years." Whispered Tessa. "Fuck." She swore a bit later.

"Hold it. Explain please." Said Noah.

"Alchemy recipe can be deciphered from the list of ingredients. As long as they know the ingredients they can perform countless try-and-repeat tests until they figure out the proportions and method of creation. That's why alchemists always have several suppliers." Said Priscilla. 

"All the banned, illegal or hard-to-find ingredients I ordered through them. Everything else, through Cass. Even then, I always added extra dummy ingredients to make them unable to decipher it. That's not some medicine we talk about, that's an alchemical potion. If they have the wrong recipe even if just a single grain of one of the ingredients in the spoon is wrong they would not know that they failed unless they tried. That would have countless crazy amount of casualties from side effects that these ingredients would give in some combinations. This should have beat off all desire to try this method of replication." Said Tessa.

"There is no spoon…I eat with chopsticks." Murmured Noah.

"What?" Asked Tessa confused.

"They went the hard way. I am sure they did those countless experiments, adding amounts grain by grain until they figured out the right amount. They can do it because these bastards capture whole villages of people that they may perform experiments on."

"Why would they need it when they never knew the effects of it?" Asked Tessa. "That makes no sense."

"Unless they needed it very much." Said Dahlia thoughtfully. "They knew what you made from these ingredients as they knew your situation. They may have thought of some other way to use such medicine. A way that made them persist in replicating it for a long time, incurring huge losses and even with many sacrifices." Said Dahlia.

"I see. They stole it. The recipe you made to help Cil. They thought of using it in such a preposterous way!" Said Noah clenching his fist.

"Tell me what happened." Said Tessa her face going livid with anger. "What did they do it?"

As Noah explained what he saw in the Eastern Kingdom the faces of all three women went white from horror. Even for monsters such inhuman acts looked monstrous.