Beger stood with another man, staring at the carnage before them.
"What do you think, Hakushu?" Beger asked.
The man called Hakushu furrowed his brows, eyes darting across the scene as he carefully examined every detail.
Kevin Carpenberg and the other two stood at a distance, quietly observing.
Kevin recognized the man called Hakushu — he was one of Beger's team members and one of the only two Nen users in the group besides Beger himself.
"There's no doubt about it. This was the work of an unknown beast.
It's powerful, incredibly fast… and its size?
Hard to say for now… maybe six meters? No, wait — it has a long tail.
Yes, eight meters. The total body length is likely around eight meters."
Hakushu spoke as he moved through the scene, analyzing the evidence left behind and drawing conclusions from it.
"So specific?" Kevin raised an eyebrow as he listened from behind.
Under the group's watchful eyes, Hakushu and Beger approached the area that looked more like a pile of corpses than anything else.
Their expressions remained grim and undisturbed by the gruesome sight, focused only on extracting more information from the fragments of bodies and traces around them.
"Four claws… the front claws have a three-in-one-back configuration, like a bird's talons. Each claw hook is about 0.6 meters long — strong enough to easily tear through a human body," Hakushu muttered, inspecting the deep-set footprints.
"The hind legs are different, more like paws — extremely powerful."
The two men exchanged findings as they moved deeper into the fog-laden scene.
Before long, they returned to where Kevin and the others were standing.
"These people aren't ordinary poachers. They're more like some kind of research team. The ones in military gear were likely their guards.
But none of them had identifying marks — clearly, they were hiding something. Damn sneaky bastards," Beger said, his voice full of frustration.
He had encountered these kinds of people many times before. Even if they weren't poachers themselves, they were always tangled up with them somehow.
Then Hakushu spoke: "They were attacked by a monster — a massive creature with a pair of exaggerated wings. It looked like a dragon.
Brutal and highly aggressive. Regular rifle bullets wouldn't be enough to seriously injure it."
As he spoke, Hakushu handed over some biological remains to Kevin.
After nearly a month in the research base, Kevin was well-acquainted with them by now.
And as someone who understood Nen, Hakushu suspected Kevin might be able to offer insight into the biological samples.
Kevin didn't refuse. He took the samples directly.
A clump of blood-stained soil, a blood-speckled leaf, and several shattered scales.
Kevin touched the materials.
That feeling — the craving — emerged instantly.
The blood's pull wasn't especially strong, barely reaching C-grade.
It was the weakest level of craving.
As for the scales, they barely triggered any reaction at all.
Just a small amount of blood causing even a faint craving? Kevin thought for a moment, then asked, "How big was the creature?"
"Body length around eight meters — though the tail is about half of that. Weight, about 3.2 tons. Wingspan, 12 meters," Hakushu said, estimating based on the traces left behind.
Must be his Hatsu ability, Kevin thought. Probably a Nen technique that let him reconstruct details based on environmental clues.
Not exactly a high-level Hatsu, but not everyone was born with overpowered talents.
Kevin snapped himself out of his thoughts.
A monster of that size… and its blood…
Even if the craving was weak, the sheer amount of blood such a massive creature possessed made the implications terrifying.
Not to mention other materials on its body. The scales may not have reached C-grade, but that didn't matter much given the overall potential.
Kevin hadn't spent the past month in the research base doing nothing.
Through studying various biological specimens, he had deepened his understanding of his own Nen ability — especially regarding the vital concept of "materials."
Usually, the parts of a creature that triggered a craving in him were also its most essential — the essence, so to speak. That essence could be bones, internal organs, blood, or other special parts.
Take the Iron-armored Turtle for example. Its shell was the only usable material — and even then, only a few of the hexagonal plates on top and along the sides were worth extracting.
So far, the only creature Kevin had encountered where the entire body qualified as usable material was the Kageyo — but that was due to its small size and simple structure.
If this monster's blood could cause even a faint craving, then its true essence definitely wouldn't disappoint.
It had to be at least B-grade.
Maybe even higher — parts like bones or inner organs might be individually C-grade or better.
Considering its sheer size, harvesting usable materials from it could yield an incredible haul.
But that also highlighted how dangerous it was.
Kevin was blunt: "That monster is extremely strong. I wouldn't stand a chance against it right now.
If I'm not fully prepared to flee from the very start, there's a real risk I'd die."
That was the conclusion he reached.
In general, creatures that produced usable materials varied widely in strength.
For C-grade materials, if one prepared properly — with enough people and firepower — the threat was manageable.
Kevin himself, for example, wouldn't charge into a group of armed men if they were packing serious heat. He'd retreat and look for a more strategic approach.
But with creatures that had B-grade materials, it was a different story.
By Kevin's estimation, such creatures had thousands — if not tens of thousands — of aura points stored internally.
In physical terms, that meant their raw constitution was on another level entirely.
Kevin wanted to track and hunt this thing. But at his current level, it wasn't worth the risk.
Besides, something about this massacre didn't sit right.
Beger seemed to sense it too. He frowned slightly and said, "You'd better not go chasing this thing on your own. There's something wrong with all of this.
Those people who got slaughtered — they were clearly connected to that monster. They came here prepared for something...
But now that it's killed people, all research here needs to be put on hold. We'll have to tighten security around the entire zone."
Beger muttered to himself.
After all, once a monster learns how weak humans really are, they often begin to see us as easy prey — more so than other beasts.
And this one already looked more powerful than most.
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