Noah had seen those creatures vividly in his dreams, but Faith and June had only images that depicted them. Yet, when they faced the actual remains of those beings, they began to feel the same dread that had filled Noah since his breakthrough.
There were clear signs of transformations in the remains of those creatures, and even cultivators that weren't experts in that field could notice them. The bones had strange deformities and branches that didn't follow any logic. It was as if something had gone out of control in the middle of the process.
However, there were both human and beasts' features. Noah could spot a human femur in the middle of bones that belonged to a flying creature. He saw an almost intact human skeleton that had a series of spikes growing from its elbows, knees, and temples.
"What are these aberrations?" Faith asked, even if she knew the answer to that question.
She simply felt like saying something to dispel the moody atmosphere that was filling the area.
No one answered, but Noah took the initiative to open the cells to analyze the remains. He quickly destroyed the metal bars blocking his path since the passage of time had affected their structure greatly.
June and Faith remained outside as Noah analyzed the bones. He swept them with his mental energy, smelled them, and even licked them to understand their features.
Nevertheless, he didn't dare to eat them for fear that they could cause a reaction in his body once ingested. He was simply playing it safe in case the substance that had produced the transformation still lingered inside those remains.
Noah was immediately able to spot the presence of the mutagen inside the bones. Such a feature couldn't escape his senses, especially after he had spent the last decade fighting Elite beasts.
However, there seemed to be something else inside them. It was a sort of silent energy that gave him the feeling of matching the mutagen in some ways.
'In theory, these beings should carry the substance that forces the transformation,' Noah thought, 'Which means that some of them had escaped in the wilderness and mixed with the fauna.'
His mind created simulations of possible environments and food chains as Noah added the data discovered in that place.
'We would have noticed these kinds of hybrids though,' His reasoning continued, 'Which means that they are either extinct or have achieved a complete transformation.'
He still remembered the words heard in his dreams. The voice didn't speak about hybrids but mentioned only humans and beasts. It was as if the humans wanted to pick a side instead of creating something in the middle of those worlds.
The complete transformation would explain why he couldn't notice the foreign memories when he ate the Elite beasts, while he could sense that different energy in the bones. It would mean that those creatures had mixed themselves in the fauna and procreated, covering the true nature of the mutagen in the process.
Noah crushed a small part of the bones under him with his individuality to continue his analysis. White dust fell on the dirty cell as his mental waves broke the skeleton, but there was a release of primary energy too.
Noah didn't absorb that energy, but he simply limited himself to feel it with both his instincts and consciousness. He could sense the presence of two kinds of energies, and one of them was the mutagen of the Elite beasts.
As for the other energy, Noah could only sense that it was ancient, almost primordial. He wouldn't consider it powerful, but it was something that his body labeled as dangerous.
'The ancestors' bloodline.' Noah concluded in his mind.
That was the only possible conclusion that he could reach according to what he knew of that world. The Elite humans didn't cause that reaction in his body, and the energy radiated a sort of perfection that couldn't possibly belong to the Flawed humans.
There was only one kind left, and that was the bloodline of the ancestors.
The primary energy soon dispersed in the air, but its two kinds didn't manage to fuse until the end. Yet, they were actively trying to become one even as they vanished.
'At least two ingredients.' Noah thought, 'The mutagen of the Elite beasts and something coming from the ancestors.'
After reaching that conclusion, Noah didn't hesitate to send all his discoveries to the list featuring the researches of the four forces of his world.
Of course, he conveyed only what he was able to justify and labeled as "possible" what he had learnt through his body. Also, he sent mental images of the peculiar skeleton so that every expert could see that such creatures had existed.
It was needless to say that a storm of mental messages reached his inscribed notebook when he sent the picture, but Noah limited himself to repeat his analysis in the other cells. Then, when he had confirmed that all the skeletons carried the same energies and he had added their images to the list, he simply stored everything in his space-ring.
"We will bring the bones when we finish the exploration of the continent." Faith said as she held her inscribed notebook, "We have almost mapped the entirety of the continent. It's pointless to come back now."
The leaders had contacted her and June when they saw that Noah wasn't answering, but her reply was in line with the intentions of the group. They had just reached the part of the continent that contained actual rests of the previous civilization. They couldn't go back now after spending more than a decade for that.
Noah started to break the floor of the castle when he was done with his analysis. The terrain under the structure soon appeared in his view, and it had the same lines that he had seen many times in those years.
June and Faith saw what he was doing and followed his example, breaking the floor to reveal the drawing hidden by the castle.
The inscribed lines under that structure were far neater compared to the drawings that they had seen in the past. It seemed that the materials of the castle helped to fend off the effects of the passage of time.
The images uncovered in the process didn't differ too much from the others, but they were clearer and had far more details. The trio could see how there were even colors together with some lines, which gave to the drawings a completely new vibe.
Some of the drawings though focused on the vials, and crowds worshipped them according to those images.
Noah and the others listed the new series of drawings in the specific section inside the special notebook and stored the most intact materials of the castle for future study.
Then, they made sure that there was nothing valuable inside that ruined building before exiting and resuming their exploration.