Chapter 344 Gotta Catch ’Em All? (2)

The zone they went to, was in complete contrast to the others. While the environment of the other trial zones was gloomy and often got on the nerves of the participants, this time around, the twin suns of Euphoria were shiny over a luscious green forest laden with hundreds of different trees.

The forest was gigantic, radiant, and diverse. Its canopy was contested by trees Ashton had never seen before, that permitted ample, shimmering lights to descend for scattered shrubs to control the nut and seed-covered grounds below.

Curling vines drooped from every tree. Below them was a range of flowers most of them had never seen before. These flowers were most likely unique to this region of the planet. In hindsight, the place was a perfect spot to have a romantic date or something. Especially due to its brightened-up and uniform scenery.

At the same time, the beauty of the place was contaminated by the discord of beastly sounds, predominantly those of foraging beasts that reverberated through the air and were in harmony with the splashing of fish in a nearby lake.

"This place is-" Ashton mumbled but Anna cut him off.

"Beautiful..." She said as her wide crimson eyes absorbed everything into her memories, "isn't it?"

"Y-Yeah, beautiful. That's exactly what I was about to say..." Ashton instantly agreed, before muttering his true thoughts within himself, 'I did not think it was disgusting or anything.'

[Sucker.]

'You want me to suffer one of these nights? My bad, I forgot you were a masochist.'

[Sorry to disappoint, but I don't have either voyeuristic or masochistic tendencies. Not that it's weird or anything, everyone has their own... kinks. But watching others sure as hell ain't mine.]

'Right... killing is more like your thing.'

[As is yours.]

Ashton couldn't disagree even if he wanted to. As he knew what Astaroth said was true. A year and a half ago, he wouldn't have even thought about killing someone, other than Mera for obvious reasons.

But now, he never hesitated before killing someone or something if they bared their fangs at him or someone he cared about. Honestly... it was a bit scary, now that Ashton thought about it. But Anna's voice derailed his train of thoughts as she had found something eye-catching there.

NovelBin

"Aren't these dogwood trees?" She asked while pointing towards a section of forest.

"They are... and not just one but an entire section of forest is covered by them." Ashton replied, "But then again, Otiga's report stated the forest arguably had floral species from various planets spread across the galaxy."

Some of these trees were familiar to the earthlings, letting them know this forest of a collective index of flora present throughout the galaxy. Just as the reports stated. Even though, Ashton and Anna already were aware of it, seeing it with their own eyes still came as a surprise to them.

However, there was one thing none of them knew but was shortly made aware of by Astaroth. This forest wasn't supposed to be a forest initially. At least it was not intended to become one.

[Back when the Xyran made Euphoria, we simply wanted to test out the variety of flora samples left behind by the Precursors.]

Astaroth explained the forest's origin story in much detail. The gist of it was, that the Xyran did not do it as some form of recreational activity. It wasn't a place they would bring their partners and have some lovey-dovey time with them.

They created this place because they wanted to know if there was a way to militarise these lifeforms. In their twisted way of thinking, the Xyrans thought everything the Precursors created had a secondary devastating purpose.

They weren't all that wrong about it. After all, unlike they were led to believe, the Precursors did create weapons. They simply never used them due to their 'morality'. But xyrans did not have that moral obligation... which resulted in quite a few disasters.

Those failures were probably the reason why a secret prison was created to force valuable information out of the Precursor's mouths. As without their guidance, the Xyrans would have probably destroyed the galaxy in mere days.

[Either way, back to the story... even after years and years of studies and experiments, nothing came out of it so we decided to give up on it. The trees were simply... just trees and nothing more. Since then, we decided to conduct different kinds of experiments and studies. The kind that involved studying different beings and even humans.]

'... your kind's obsession with humans gives me Yandere vibes, not gonna lie.'

[Can you blame us? After all, Humans were supposed to be better Precursors. It made sense for the Precursors to give you lot some kind of gift that made them a genetic wonder capable of ruling over the galaxy.]

[However, the humans were stopped from achieving their true potential as the precursors did not get to nurture them as they did with us Xyrans. If they had, we would probably be in your shoes and vice-versa.]

Astaroth carried on narrating the tale. The Xyrans hoped that the humans would be able to obtain some sort of powers and be trained into foot soldiers for their kind.

[The ones destined to rule the universe would help the ones who stole the spotlight from them... it was quite ironic.]

'Just carry on with the Xyran's tale of stupidity.'

[...]

However, upon realising that humanity did not even have access to the thing called 'Blessing' they were deemed useless and the project known as 'Garden of Eden' was abandoned. It was this abandoned Garden of Eden, that turned into a forest once the Xyrans left Euphoria for good.

[It's safe to say, the Xyrans never thought an unkempt garden would turn into a fully grown forest with its own ecosystem.]

'How would they? It's not like they ever thought about something before doing executing their half-assed plans.'

[Hm... that way of thinking sounds quite familiar. Wait! You do it too!]

'Of course, I do. You're my body-mate. What do you expect?'

[... Why do I always end up getting trolled by you, nowadays?]

'Anyways... could you tell me one tale about Xyrans that does not involve sick experiments or massacres?'

[Let me think... Oh, I can tell you about the time when the Council came up with the solution to excessive inter-breeding between Xyran families and decided to have orgies on a nearly unprecedented level involving various other species?]

'... what?'

[Yeah! A galaxy-wide orgy. One could say the Xyrans literally fucked the galaxy. Not the humans though, you know due to the superiority complex and shit. Apart from that, the fun did cause a lot of problems later... but who cares? Everyone was having fun. The ladies even had some tentacle stuff-]

'... let's stick to the tales of mass murders from now on.'

Ashton decided he was scarred enough and decided to focus on the trial. At the same time, everyone got their missions through the wristbands. Anna gave him a look and nodded. It was time to put their plan into action.

"Let's split and look for those who possess flight skills." Ashton reminded Anna, "They are the ones those radical assholes will go for first."

Nove l B(in).C OM

Anna nodded and departed on her own. While Ashton decided to hang back and observe others for a moment or two. Despite knowing that radicals were present in the trial zone, he did not have any idea who they were and targeting every single participant wasn't a good choice either.

'It's better to not accidentally piss off someone with a strong background.' Ashton thought to himself, 'Maybe I shouldn't say that, considering I'm going against a radical group.'

Since they could not randomly attack people, Ashton came up with a plan to think as those radicals would. Thus, they came up with a plan to look for people capable of flying.

The Pegasuses were flying creatures that only ever stepped foot on the ground to eat. One could argue they also came down to sleep, but that only ever happened once a month during a new moon, because that's the only time they slept.

A moonless sky was the only time when they could sleep peacefully without being noticed by their natural predators. It was also the preferred time to capture them. Sadly, the next new moon wasn't going to happen any time soon. Therefore there were only two ways to capture the pegasuses.

One was to lay a trap using their favourite fruits as bait. This method rarely ever worked since the pegasus were highly intelligent beings.

"The only one who will ever fall for such obvious traps as the young ones." Ashton mumbled before shifting his gaze towards the sky, "But that doesn't mean it easier to capture them because the mothers of the babies almost never let their young out of their sight. Which leaves the participants with one choice..."

Suddenly, a pair of wings appeared out of Ashton's back. The wings of a demonic Xyran. But no one would suspect that, because Ashton had changed the shape and colours of the wings using his [Alteration]* skill.

"We would need to catch them in their domain... the sky."

***

Author's note: If you don't remember the Alteration skill, you can read chapter 92.