Chapter 138: Arrival (1)
Translator: Leo Editor: DarkGem/Frappe
Clamors of Harpies blocked the sky and took the sunlight away from the deck. Some of them landed on the mast while making strange noises.
"Ha!"
A strong sailor hurled his spear toward one of the Harpies and penetrated its chest. The Harpy’s body drew a curve in the air before it fell into the sea.
It seemed that the Harpies were enraged after one of them was killed. They finished dropping the stones and started attacking the sailors on the deck with their sharp claws.
The noises of Harpies’ wings mixed with the sailor’s battle cries fired up the battle. They engaged in close combat. The entire place was in complete chaos.
The Harpies left some deep scratches on the sailor’s s.h.i.+elds, but several of them had already been slain by the experienced sailors.
Angele stood there and watched them fight quietly while Tymoral was already preparing his spell.
Tymoral opened his arms and raised his head. His incantation was weird but fast. As he sped up the incantation, blue steam started rising from his body that looked like burning flames.
The steam was covered in a blue glow, which quickly spread into the air. Some of the flying Harpies fell into the sea and the others fell onto the deck after inhaling the steam.
Their bodies started drying up. The weird steam drained their life energy, turning it into blue mist within seconds.
*PA*
A Harpy fell beside Angele, who witnessed the strange change happening to its body. The Harpy’s muscles started to shrink. Its appearance turned from young to old before dying and its body ultimately ended up looking like a dried-up mummy.
Some of the sailors had been frightened by Tymoral’s spell and as they turned their heads around, they looked at him with fear. They wanted to stay away from him because they were not sure if the blue steam worked on humans as well.
The Wizard apprentices by the stairs were praising the power of a formal Wizard, but some of them had become scared because of the dried-up Harpy corpses, causing them to step back a bit. Velvet did not have the chance to learn spell models yet, so she envied people who could control such mysterious energy.
Half of the Harpies in the sky were killed by Tymoral’s spell and the rest of them were flying around while howling. One of them started retreating to the direction they had come from. The Harpies on the deck had realized that they could not win and so wanted to escape as well. They swung their wings quickly with many gray feathers dropping onto the floor.
"Master Angele, what are you waiting for? They’re already leaving," Tymoral yelled, and chuckled after.
Angele smiled and shook his head. He slowly pulled the crossguard sword out of its sheath and then looked at the Harpies in the air. He quickly stepped forward and brandished his sword.
*CHING*
The blade disappeared into the air, leaving only the handle of the sword in Angele’s hand.
A rain of metal needles covered the area above the deck.
The remaining Harpies started falling after being hit, only two of them had dodged most of the needles as they flew away from the s.h.i.+p in desperation. Most of the Harpies dropped into the sea as the rest fell to the deck, causing it to produce loud noises.
Everything had happened way too fast. The people on the deck had not yet realized what just transpired. They stood there for a while before they started cheering.
"Yes!"
"Praise Master Angele! Praise Master Tymoral!"
"All hail the black robes!"
"The Future! The Future!"
Some of them were yelling the Wizards’ names, while the rest were yelling the s.h.i.+p’s name.
Angele looked at Tymoral and saw him smiling while shrugging.
‘That’s the power feared by the mortals…’ The thought came across Angele’s mind as he stared at the corpses of the Harpies on the deck.
****************************
Inside Angele’s cabin, a pile of corpses of Harpies was at the corner. The dark blood on the floor made the room stink.
Angele stood beside a long white table in the middle of the room with one of the Harpies’ corpses right in front of him. The body was completely intact. Only a long metal needle could be seen at its temples. Blood was dripping down the needle slowly.
The Harpy’s body was facing up and its large wings were hanging down the table. Angele walked around the table before realizing that the torches on the wall did not bring enough light to the room.
His brows furrowed. With a flick of his finger, a small bright fireball appeared beside his face and the gentle light helped Angele to observe the body better. The fireball just floated there without moving.
Angele was satisfied with the light and started checking the Harpy’s head.
The creature’s skin was protected by hardened stratum corneum. Its face looked identical to a female human. Angele pulled its lips and saw the sharp white teeth.
There was still some rotten meat between the gaps of its teeth that stank.
Angele scrunched up his brows and slightly tapped the needle around its temple. The needle left the creature’s body by itself and dropped to the floor.
The creature’s neck was covered in white fluffy hair. There were nail-sized red moles under its armpits.
Milk came out of its breast after being squeezed by Angele. He quickly collected some of the milk as a sample for further research. It seemed that this one specimen was pregnant and it almost looked like there was a ball inside its abdomen.
Angele thought for a while and formed a silver scalpel in his right hand.
*CHI*
He carefully cut the creature’s abdomen open and started observing.
Angele put his hands inside and slowly removed its organs one by one. After several minutes, some of the creature’s organs had been lined up on the table.
"Wait, this thing has no respiratory system?" Angele was surprised.
"Liver, spleen, heart, stomach, and intestine, but where’s the lung?" he muttered.
Angele stopped for a second and started removing the uterus. He quickly cut it open and saw a small red thing inside.
An embryo of a Harpy. It was about the size of a human’s fist and it was turning dark purple. It must’ve already died.
Angele slightly nodded before putting the embryo on the side. The only thing he had not checked yet was its eyes. Their pupils were yellow and looked similar to the ones cats had.
‘Now that I have a general understanding of its physical structure, I should start extracting its blood.’ He walked to the other corner of the room. His lab equipment was there along with a large gla.s.s bottle with a long black metal pipe on its neck.
Angele clapped his hands and a flame appeared below the gla.s.s bottle.
He cut the creature’s neck open with the scalpel and started harvesting its blood with a large metal beaker while the bottle was being heated up.
It took Angele two minutes for the blood to stop dripping and it already filled up several metal beakers.
After that, Angele brought the blood to a boil and with the special potion he added into the gla.s.s, the blood would not solidify after all the water was gone. He spent about two hours repeating the process for all the Harpy corpses inside the cabin.
The large gla.s.s bottle was already full of Harpy blood.
The dark red blood inside the gla.s.s was bubbling and the translucent gla.s.s bottle looked like a large red gourd.
Vaporized water went down the metal pipe, exiting the cabin as white steam that had the stench of blood.
Angele waited beside the table. He would pour some green potion into the gla.s.s bottle every ten minutes through the metal pipe.
One hour later.
Most of the water in the blood was evaporated, and Angele put out the fire under the bottle.
He then quickly drew a strange rune on the surface of the bottle. The red rune started glowing as Angele moved his finger.
"Crionnant, the Hymn to the Blood," Angele whispered.
*CHI*
The bubbling blood inside the bottle suddenly started moving toward the center and was turning into a walnut-sized ball.
After several seconds, only the dark red ball that remained was floating in the center of the bottle quietly.
Angele opened the bottle and the ball slowly moved onto his palm.
‘This is the best I can do right now…’ Angele mumbled as he gazed at the ball.
This ball of blood was not congealed. It had already solidified.
‘Create task. a.n.a.lyze the blood ball,’ he ordered.
Seemingly infinite blue light dots started flas.h.i.+ng inside in his eyes.
‘Task completed. List of its contents will be presented now.’ Ten minutes later, Zero reported.