Noah woke up, invaded by hunger so intense that he could barely think straight. However, the memories from his dreams still filled his mind and created amazement.
'I've missed something!' He exclaimed in his mind as he took a bunch of Daniel's pills and random magical beasts' body parts and quickly stuffed them in his mouth.
To his surprise though, those nutrients only appeased him for a few instants before his hunger filled him again.
Noah roared in anger as he started to unload his stash of magical beasts' corpses and devour them as they piled on the ground of his cave.
There wasn't any corpse in the fifth rank in his space-ring since he had used all of them to reach the middle tier. Yet, that large amount of nutrients in the fourth rank ultimately managed to satisfy him. His hunger was still there, but he could bear it in that intensity.
'There is something hidden in the mutagen!' Noah thought as he activated the Divine Deduction technique to review everything that he had learnt since he came to that world.
The images that he had seen in his dream didn't come from the Cursed dragon species, nor a Bloodline Inheritance. Those were actual human memories!
Yet, he hadn't eaten a human's dantian in a while, and he didn't even rely on the properties of his mental energy after he became a rank 5 mage. The only meal that didn't belong to his usual regimen was the Elite beasts.
Nevertheless, those were magical beasts. It didn't make any sense for them to carry human memories unless they weren't just beasts.
'How much did they hide? Where do their lies stop?' Noah cursed as he asked those questions in his mind.
Why were there human memories hidden inside the mutagen carried by the Elite beasts? Were they once humans? Were they descendants of humans transformed into beasts? Or did they just eat someone that had seen those scenes?
'Did the Elite beasts even appear naturally?' Noah thought as he began to suppress those doubts.
He wasn't even sure if the Elite humans had the answers to his questions. Most of their history might have been lost during their retreat.
'We can only advance further and explore more ruins.' Noah concluded, but he realized that there was another issue connected to his discovery.
He didn't have a way to justify what he had found. He couldn't assure the assets back on the volcano of the validity of his dreams without exposing his hybrid status.
They would never believe him unless he revealed the features of his body-nourishing method, which was something that he obviously wouldn't do. However, he had to give them some hints at least.
Having other experts researching the Elite beasts while he explored the world would improve their chances to discover something, and Noah didn't want to remain in the dark.
"There might be something wrong with the Elite beasts, like some kind of toxin," Noah said through his special notebook, "This feature might be hidden in the laws that rule it."
That message was all that Noah was willing to reveal. It wasn't much, but he believed that creating doubts would force the experts to investigate the matter thoroughly, especially since he was quite respected in that field.
Noah suddenly sensed a presence reaching for his cave, and he couldn't help but smile when he recognized it.
"You are awake!" June exclaimed as she broke the entrance and flew straight in his embrace.
Noah felt his arousal filling him as soon as she reached him, but he suppressed that feeling when he saw that she had improved and her body had even reached the fifth rank.
The memories during his breakthrough were so shocking that he didn't have the time to check his centers of power before June arrived.
The first thing he felt when he focused on his body was an immense quantity of raw power. He had reached the middle tier, which made that center of power far more potent than his spells. The physical strength hidden behind his almost impenetrable skin was so incredible that Noah feared that he could hurt June if he weren't careful.
His mind and dantian had improved too during his sleep, and he could guess by their enlargement of those centers of power that he had spent less than two years asleep.
'Harmony seems impossible for me.' Noah sighed as he thought that.
His body was advancing in the fifth rank when his dantian was still in the solid stage of the fourth rank!
That difference in power though wasn't really his fault. His mind and body were simply off the charts when it came to growing speed. His dantian grew at an incredible pace too, but it couldn't compare to the other centers of power.
One of them had a head start, while the other could rely on the superior prowess of the cultivators to obtain nutrients that would be impossible to get otherwise. Instead, his dantian only surpassed the realm of the geniuses, but it didn't enter in the otherworldly one where his body and mind were when it came to growing speed.
Also, it had only been a bit more than ten years since he reached the solid stage. Having a personal cultivation technique made him surpass any genius, but it couldn't create miracles.
Noah and June caught up, and she updated him on the situation in the human domain.
No major event had happened while he was asleep, but it seemed that there was tension building up between the Elite humans and the cultivators of the four forces.
The bloodlines had become more demanding in the last period, but God's Left Hand always refused to negotiate again. She couldn't care less if the Elite humans didn't have enough assets in their mating sessions since her experts were already doing an excellent job.
She didn't need to send more troops in the clutches of those mysterious natives.
"You do realize that I could hear your moans while I was fighting?" Faith said as she appeared in the cave too and joined their conversation.
She had improved too, but she didn't experience any breakthrough since she had advanced during their exploration already. Instead, she seemed to have achieved some success with the training method obtained in that world since her mental waves were somewhat strange.
"What is the reason behind your message?" Faith asked at some point.
"Call it a hunch," Noah said. "I feel that the mutagen inside the Elite beasts and the drawings under the ruins are connected."
Faith accepted his explanation and didn't mind that he was keeping something for himself. She couldn't possibly know that the phrase that Noah had heard before waking up made him worry.
His instincts had begun to convey a sort of bad feeling once Noah stabilized his new state, and he couldn't pinpoint the actual origin of that sensation.
'What did they mean with perfection?' Noah questioned himself once again when their discussion ended, and they resumed their training. 'If only beasts can be whole, where does that put me?'