Mixed Blessing System



Meanwhile, the coalition of hunters against Lothur, composed of humans, demons, beasts, and members of the Ancestral Folk, continued to scour the continent for their target.

Only a few weeks had passed since Lothur's appearance and the great battle for the Diamond-grade Soul Bone that had taken place on the southern border of Rablus.

Since then, Lothur's group of enemies, including those who had fought him that day and many others, had been searching for him.

But finding a Sage was not as easy as one might think!

To think that it would be easy to find Lothur because of the recent situation Leopoldine had been through was foolish.

That's because at least three wars were going on around Concordia right now, and at least two dozen young prodigies had advanced several levels to the 5th stage in a matter of weeks or months.

As unusual as cases like these, similar to the women of Lothur, were, they did happen.

Talented people appeared. Soul Bones and the 30 Magnificent Items existed. When some of these individuals and artifacts came into contact, fantastic things happened, and rapid progress was made.

At the same time, because of how fantastic these people's journeys were, there was usually a lot of chaos around them, and wars would easily break out because of them, sometimes leading to great massacres.

What happened in Leopoldine recently was rare, but it had happened a few times in Concordia's history.

That wasn't enough to indicate the presence or involvement of a human-demon hybrid in that situation.

Not only that, human-demon hybrids had an unprecedented thirst for blood. Even though they were part of Emperor demon's bloodline, they couldn't help themselves when they were around powerful beings who could feed them.

They could even control themselves around enemies who were often superior or weaker than them. But against those of a similar level, they felt such a desire to devour such organisms that they could hardly keep allies alive.

According to the common logic of the Sages of Concordia, a hybrid should have devoured Lothur's women if it had anything to do with the recent incident in that area!

For this reason, and because several events in Leopoldine were not entirely beyond the logic of this world, the recent situation there had escaped the attention of several of these Sages.

For these people looking for Lothur, he must have been hiding or looking for Soul Bones to continue strengthening.

In this case, letting the demons roam freely across the continent was a strategy to lure this target so they could capture him!

...

On the border between the Petha Empire and Rablus...

Here was one of the temporary outposts of the coalition group, where a few Sages maintained a position to relay information from their men nearby to other groups like this across the continent.

Communication was an issue in Concordia. Even large organizations using high-level devices and consuming large amounts of crystals couldn't communicate with their people all the time.

To facilitate communication, the coalition against Lothur had divided into two types of groups around the continent as their investigations progressed.

The first was the actual investigators, who were scouring the continent for information or signs of Lothur. The second was outposts like this one in the Petha Empire, where the men in the camp would receive information from their allies nearby and pass it on to other outposts like this one.

This way, if one group found concrete evidence of Lothur's location, they could quickly alert all their allies and move on to the enemy.

After the previous confrontation, the level 22 and 23 Sages realized they needed numbers on their side, as Lothur was tough and would not be easy to kill.

So now they wouldn't act against him without at least a good number of them gathered to deal with Lothur!

To prevent deaths among them and the enemy from getting new bones from powerful demons, the coalition did their best to prepare to destroy him the next time they encountered him.

But even after weeks of searching for him, with more than 40 Sages of different races searching for him in most of the states of this continent, the group still hadn't achieved any great results.

The members who remained in these temporary camps were the ones who felt the delay in finding Lothur the most, and they began to think about a dangerous possibility.

"What if the damned hybrid has already reached the 3rd catastrophe?" One of the three Sages in this small camp asked his two partners, somewhat pessimistic about what they were doing.

"Impossible. This hybrid would have to devour several 1st and 2nd Catastrophe Sages to reach that level. But recently, only nine Sages of those levels died on the continent, and none of them were demons." One of the two commented, his feet on the ground at this frightening possibility.

"But he could have grown stronger by killing small groups of Saints..." The same man who had raised such a possibility commented.

"He would have to kill many small groups of Saints, and it would take him a few months to absorb all that power. So it's not possible that he has already become a Sage of that level." The third agreed with the second but didn't completely rule out the possibility. "That's a concern, though. If he has the freedom to act towards his goals for much longer, this could become possible in the future."

"So what do we do?" The same man who had asked the question questioned, knowing that level 22 and 23 Sages wouldn't stand a chance against level 24.

"We only have the alternative of calling the supreme elders of our forces." The strongest of the three said, thinking of humans with full Spirit Bodies and beings from other races who had already reached level 24.

Cultivation beyond level 23 was tough, and not just because of the disasters that became more deadly, the stronger one became. The world had its limits in terms of spiritual energy, natural laws, and spiritual pressure.

For someone to cross the barrier from level 24 to 25, or from 25 to 26, the difficulty increased exponentially compared to the difficulty of going from level 22 to 23, or from 23 to 24.

The world had its limits, and cultivators suffered from different restrictions that prevented them from progressing to the peak. This became more apparent as one reached higher levels and completed their set of possibilities.

As such, experts of this level were very committed to their seclusion and were not bothered by their juniors unless the world was under threat of destruction!