Spirit Taming

Chapter 551: Parasite Remains

The moment that Reese watched Clark slash down the last living blood needle parasites, he dropped to the ground. The memories were too vague for him to know, but he had the stories. Every single story about how the independence of his entire family and the village they had come from had been lost. How dangerous parasitic beasts were.

The fact that they had just found such a place so soon after leaving Terra City was also a massive red flag. It was more than just an insult to every single tamer working hard to grow. This was a clear act of war that was banned between city conflicts. Instead, this was used by the evil and disgusting monsters pretending to still be tamers.

"Reese, this is not the same as the tragedy your family and elders faced when you were too little to even know what a parasite was. This is the blood moon cult sending people off to cause trouble. We can send a report to Terra City and let them handle these things. We can't go back."

When Clark spoke, his words dripped with anger. But he also held himself in check. He had the determination to be able to make himself and the others tougher. They had to grow more so that they could stop disgusting things like this from happening.

"We already managed to find these things before it spread too much. We are lucky that we did too. We can warn everyone of others like this." Maria had the more positive take on this. Her views were able to push Reese back to looking up at the group. He clearly hurt right now, but he had a clear path now.

Clearing the path to his goals was a great way for Reese to understand that he would be able to stand taller than what his ancestors did. The family that was lost many years ago during battles against parasitic beasts would just be the base for him to carve his own strength out of. The path he took would just be highlighted by that.

"You can go and warn professor Wright about this, right? You don't have to guard us. You were only able to go so far anyways." Clark looked down at his shoulder. He had not missed for a second that the assassin beetle had been sent with them as a watchful eye. It was just Professor Wright's way of protecting them a little more.

The entire group was surprised to see the assassin beetle show itself before flitting away at a speed they could barely see. "Professor Wright had that beast keeping an eye on us a lot. It's a dangerous beast but it's very small and good at hiding in plain sight." Clark knew that the others would have asked anyways.

"It's also why we don't need to stop moving forward after we burn the rest of this up and move those trees from blocking the stream."

It was a quick order since everyone was still a little mixed up after seeing such a mess of monstrous demonstrations. However, Isa and Ralph were already on the mission. They were burning away the remains of the blood needle parasites and focusing flames on the bones of the living hive. Crim was right there mustering whatever dragon flames he could.

'Hidden quest completed- Cultists' hidden schemes

The blood moon cultists are clearly moving in secret to cause more damage and trouble throughout the human controlled lands. They are breeding fear to hide their true movements.

Requirement: defeat one of the hidden cultists and their evil plans.

Reward: parasite burning pill formula.'

The hidden quest proved why Clark's thought about not getting a quest was foolish. This was another instance where he had a quest the entire time. It was just lucky chance that they noticed a dead beast infected with parasites. Their group could have just walked on their way. But because Reese was with them, they looked in to it more.

They explored and found the source of a problem before it could grow terribly.

Reese took a loud and deep breath. But when he stood back up, his eyes were clearer. "I went a little overboard there. I will do better." Reese made a solemn promise before standing up to help the others. He didn't even notice the odd looks everyone had started to give the dragon welp which had started eating the burned up bodies of the parasites. Apparently its stomach was hot enough to burn them up.

It was an ideal snack for it.

"Hey Maria, I have something you should work on in free time." Clark's sudden call surprised Maria. The two of them hadn't had much to talk about in the last bit of their journey. Things had been too serious to really relax and talk about whatever.

"This is… how do you have this!?" It was natural that Maria would be surprised by a random alchemy pill formula that Clark had randomly taken out of nowhere.

"I picked it up along the way and just held on to it. But it looks like it's useful now, right?" The explanation didn't even faze Maria as she started to read through the ingredients they needed.

"These are easily available herbs in the wild. The spiced black berry is normally toxic and only eaten by birds, the withered dandelion is literally everywhere, and the other three herbs are basic healing herbs that everyone has. I could make this without even needing to burn or heat things. It's all about drying with low heat then powdering them.

Next pressing…" Her reading attracted Ella who called back the blue flame skeleton since it drained a huge amount of energy from Ella. she was still adapting to that.

"This is a perfect antidote for these things. If many tamers are ankle to carry this, then the issue is resolved. Most alchemists can make similar medicines if they knew they can sell it. But for our uses and as a medicine to have available, we can maximize it." Ella saw it as a great way to be able to protect themselves and anyone they bumped in to.

With Ella becoming involved, her and Maria were quickly running through what they did and did not have. lucky for Maria, Ella was able to easily find the place in the books they had where they could reread the environments and how to harvest these herbs. That alone was enough to cement the production of this alchemic pill.

"I didn't expect you to have that." Isa spoke up after she felt that the energy ehr blaze elemental could use had reached a stopping point. The blaze elemental was still adapting to its new form. It needed to rest and keep itself in good condition to stabilize its recent growth. This was normal for any beast.

"Who cares about pills or alchemy? We all saw Shy using her shadow threads to control the smaller parasites!" Jerold jumped in too, but this time, he drew a lot of attention to Shy who had not really joined battles in some time.

"She did well. Shy has been training herself a lot and with our bond stronger than before, she is able to use more shadow energies than before. She still has control over some of the bodies of the blood needle parasites, but they are dead so she can't force them to move too much." as proof, Shy made a few twitch before Ralph burned them up.

"It's still great. She can soon use those skills to break down enemies and make chaos on the battlefield. She can sneak ahead with me and we can do some good damage." Jerold was thinking about how Clark could send him and Devi ahead to scout, then Shy could set traps or cause chaos for them to ambush whatever opponents they were after. It was perfect.

"We will see what she can do after a little more training. It took a lot of shadow energy to use that attack in the rain. If it was sunny, then she might not have been able to use as many shadow threads. But if it was the middle of the night…who knows." Since Clark was unsure how Shy would have adapted to the different available shadow energies at the time of day, he wouldn't force anything yet.

But he did like the potential plan.

Looking over, Clark saw Brad standing with Reese. The two looked like they were not saying a word at all. However, everyone knew that the two were saying more by not speaking than anything. The two were a close pair because of their training and goals. But they understood one another enough not to need to speak.

"The body of that cultist had some things on it. A few metal rings with blood moon symbols on them. Clark, tell us what they are." Ralph was a little blunt, but Clark would do exactly that. He held open his hands and wiped off the soot from the burned rings. His eyes narrowed as he took a closer look.