Rise of The Demon General

"The land of your ancestors?" Amon asked.

Xlasstazh nodded. "Well, if we are to cooperate with you, I guess it wouldn’t hurt for you to know about our history." He gestured for Amon to follow him. "Ublaith mentioned that you are considered high ranking among the humans. In that case, you should have known that we took many humans whenever we raided a human settlement. Have you wondered why we do that?"

"I thought at first you consume humans as a delicacy. From what I see around this room, it appears not to be the case."

Many of the organic materials strewn around the room were a combination of human and Cryanid parts.

"Yes. Your previous assumption is wrong, but I suspect what you have in mind now is correct. Yes, we use those humans for our flesh-altering experiments."

"How did you learn flesh alterer skills?" Amon asked.

"Because we were created from one," Xlasstazh answered. He studied Amon’s reaction and remarked, "You don’t sound surprised."

"I have an inkling that you are a result of such a process. If it is true, then your kind is a product of a full-body alteration. According to public knowledge, no full-body alteration has ever succeeded."

"We are proof that it did, very long ago. We don’t know for sure how long ago. It was probably several millennia ago. The first of our kind wasn’t exactly thrilled about themselves to keep a detailed record."

"So, the first of your kind was the result of a successful full-body alteration. Afterward, you breed naturally?"

"Yes. Almost every Hyanid still alive now is the descendant of the full-altered humans."

"Almost? There is someone who is a fully altered human still alive from the past when Hyanid was created?"

Xlasstazh nodded. "This someone is our brood’s supreme leader. He possesses such a long age thanks to his cultivation. He is the last of the fully altered human-Cryanid fusions. He himself doesn’t remember much about that dark past. After such a long time, our memory tends to blur. I don’t know if it is the side effect of our half-Cryanid brain."

Xlasstazh brought Amon into a small room behind the workshop. One side of the wall was filled with glass cylinders. Inside the cylinders was yellow liquid. Floating inside the liquid was a lump of flesh. Upon closer inspection, the lump of flesh was a half-formed embryo. The embryo looked similar to a human’s but also had the characteristics of an insect’s.

Amon remembered Dao Su’s tale about a fabled flesh alterer rumored to have successfully achieved a full-body alteration. He asked Xlasstazh, "Your ancestors. Were their alteration achieved by it being conducted while they were still inside the womb?"

"That’s correct," Xlasstazh confirmed.

"How can you be sure about the method? Didn’t you say your ancestor’s memory is fuzzy?"

"We didn’t rely on memory for the method. We have the research documents of the flesh alterer. It detailed the method used to create our ancestors."

"Really? The flesh alterer is so magnanimous that he shared his documents with his experiment subjects?"

Xlasstazh chuckled at the remark. "He shared nothing. Our ancestors seized his research."

After seeing Amon’s inquisitive look, Xlasstazh elaborated.

"Though the memory of our ancestors of that distant past was hazy, the tale of our origin had been passed down through the generations of my kind. The tale said that the flesh alterer that created us underestimated our ancestors. He reveled in the success of the first full-body alteration and decided to raise my ancestors. He taught them the human language and even the cultivation method.

"All the while, he continued to perform the experiments to create more full-body altered subjects. He tried to perform the same experiments by fusing other spirit beasts with humans. For some reason, he could only succeed when he used the Cryanids as the fusion material.

"Our kind grew to adulthood much faster than the humans. The flesh alterer began to use our ancestors as assistants. Little did he realize that our ancestors were smarter than they appeared. My ancestors continued to study under his guidance while feigning a lack of intellect. He thought that because we are half-Cryanids, our capacity to reason was also halved. He thought my ancestors didn’t truly understand what was going on, while in reality, they fully understood the situation.

"They understood they were not nature’s creation. They understood the flesh alterer was only using them for his own gain. He treated them like disposable products. My ancestors endured the oppression, torture, and forced experiments. Through many years, he created many of our kind with his experiment, but he also caused innumerable deaths to my ancestors. He continued to do so in an attempt to perfect his method.

"When he finally accepted that his method only worked by using Cryanids, he was about to publicize his research to gain recognition. Unfortunately for him, our ancestors paid attention. They knew that if he did that, their chances of survival would go down drastically.

"Hence, they decided to act, even when they still had many things they could learn from their creator. They worked together and took the flesh alterer by surprise. They didn’t immediately kill him. They incapacitated him, gathered all his documents, and fled to the wilderness.

"They forced him to translate those documents. Over time, they understood they had to retreat further. If humans learned about them, they would for sure be hunted down and studied."

"The safest place to retreat to is beyond the misty border," Amon remarked.

"Not exactly the safest, but that’s what our ancestors decided to be the best for our kind’s survival," Xlasstazh said. "The environment beyond the border was not a suitable place to live, but our ancestors made the impossible possible with their tenacity. They also had the natural ability to live underground thanks to their Cryanid traits. We slowly grow our number, through various means."

"Various means... Is that why you abducted humans?"

"You are quick to catch on," Xlasstazh said. "You see, despite being half-Cryanid, our reproduction pace was more like humans, much slower compared to Cryanid. Thankfully, we had fully mastered the flesh-altering method developed by our creator. We took female humans and used their wombs to increase our rank."

"The abductions recorded in my faction’s reports indicated that you not only abduct female humans."

"That must be after we gain control of the Cryanids. Before that, we worked patiently and carefully. We also performed the abductions rarely and from different human settlements so as not to arouse suspicion. I believe humans at that time only considered the abductions as random missing person occurrences."

"The Cryanids weren’t always under your control?"

Xlasstazh shook his head. "While we were created from them, we might as well be two different races. If anything, we clashed with the Cryanids a lot in territory disputes."

"How did you bring them under control?"

"That is a secret I’m not yet comfortable sharing with you."

"Fair enough. Back to the previous issue, then. Why do you now abduct humans on a large scale without any concern for their gender? This war you waged on the Mercy Faction, I can tell that it was more about mass abducting the humans rather than colonizing the territory."

"We are a patient race," Xlasstazh said. While his insect face showed no emotion that Amon could glimpse, Amon could hear the pride in his voice. "We don’t do things recklessly without a good chance of succeeding. Even with control over the Cryanids, we know that trying to wrest control over the land from humans will be suicide with our current power. No, conquest will be the next phase of our plan. Our objective for now is the mass growth of our brood. You might not have noticed, but we don’t just target humans when we attack human settlements. We also take the cultivation resources, mostly pills and ingredients."

"I see... You want to increase both the number and the overall cultivation power of the Hyanids."

"That’s right."

"It still doesn’t explain why you abduct male humans. Also, you mentioned you are a patient race. What triggered your kind to escalate the assault on human settlements ten years ago? If your objective is to grow your number, it is safer to continue doing it covertly."

"Hm... The answer to your first question is in the next room."

At the end of the room with the glass cylinders was a door. Xlasstazh held the knob to this door. He opened it and gestured for Amon to follow him inside.

Before amon entered, he had heard the inhuman growls from behind the door. Walking past the doors, he saw a long room divided into three lengthy sections. The center section looked like a long hallway. The other two sections were separated from the center section by metal trellises.

Behind these trellises were countless mutated beings. They looked like the Hyanids, but more feral.

When they saw Amon, they charged forward and banged on the trellis. Some made clicking noises, while others yelled like humans. None sounded intelligible.

"They are..."

"They are Hyanids created neither by natural reproduction nor the womb-fusion method," Xlasstazh explained. "They were produced by fully altering existing humans using the combined parts of the Cryanids."