The First Legendary Beast Master

Karl flew west out of the city, gaining altitude so that he didn't scare anything on the ground.

Not that there was much to see.

After the invasion, the number of monsters in the region had been so high that everyone who could retreat to the safety of a walled city had done so, and they weren't particularly interested in hurrying back home to find out what the damages looked like.

Especially not when the damages were done by something multiple Ranks higher than themselves.

Most of the rural areas were worked by dragonkin here, and while they were strong by the standard of the Golden Dragon Nation, nowhere in the Dragon Isles would call them that with a straight face.

Royal Ranked adults were barely considered tolerable, after all.

Bral was over three hundred kilometres from Birad, and up in the hills, but apparently the hippos didn't mind that they weren't right on the river.

However, the further he flew, the more that Karl realized that the region was incredibly densely populated.

There were a dozen cities with tens of thousands of people in them, and one looked to be close to a hundred thousand as he flew over.

Surely, this region could have dealt with the hippos if they had wanted to.

Their combined population was more than the capital, and Karl could sense that there were dozens of Mythic Dragons in each of the cities.

But they hadn't.

That was somewhat suspicious, as the people of Birad had been clear that the hippos were eating everything that grew in the region where they had arrived, so the locals should have done something to take care of the issue.

Bral should be the furthest west of this cluster of cities, according to the map, but it was not the change in population that told Karl he was in the right spot.

It was the lack of vegetation.

The hippos really had come through and eaten everything, pulling up plants by the roots in many spots and leaving little more than bare dirt.

However, they were no longer next to the city, and he didn't see stragglers, so this must be some sort of herd animal, unlike the hippos that Karl knew from picture books.

Those were portrayed as solitary creatures.

Karl continued to fly high over the region, looking for the source of the damage, but only continued to see more stripped fields, barren former grasslands, and rocky hills.

From this altitude, all he could see was a wave of destruction spreading west from Bral, but no sign of what caused it.

No, there was an edge to the cloud of dust, and he could see trees to the northwest. So, that was where Karl flew next, looking for the actual hippos.

As he got closer to the river, the glow of Mythic Rank souls became clear, and a thousand creatures basking in the water marked the edge of the destruction.

He had found them.

But he had also found the reason that nobody was messing with them. The hippos weren't operating alone, they operated as a herd. With a thousand of them in the same spot, it was suicide to attack them on the ground, and even a flight of dragons might not do much to them, depending on what sort of powers they had.

That was something that he should determine before he went to talk to the others.

Engaging this herd in the open would be a mess, and there had to be a good reason why nobody had tried. Especially when there used to be farms all over these hills before the hippos had passed through.

Starting with the simple things, Karl cast [Meteor] and let the flaming ball of metal crash into the herd from above, while remaining safely above the cloud cover himself, well away from where the spell had originated.

The meteor hurtled toward them, but when it got a hundred metres from the hippos, a shimmering blue barrier formed over the herd.

They had a group water barrier effect that stacked into one impenetrable wall of power.

That was why nobody was hunting them, unless you could overpower a thousand mythic beasts at a time, you couldn't get through their barriers to cause any damage at all.

They might have to just class this as a natural disaster.

Technically, Karl and Cara could go down with [Nullify] and attack the hippos. They would most likely be able to poke holes in the barrier and take out individual group members.

Or...

Karl transformed into Tengu form and flew down a few hundred metres from the herd.

If he could isolate some, it would be easy enough to eliminate them once they were out of the barrier.

His plan was to walk a bit closer until they got curious, and see if he could lure some of them away from the herd without alerting the group.

Then, he noticed something strange. The grass around the river had been pulled up, like the grass everywhere else, but it was already growing back. The closer to the water, and to the herd, the faster that the plant life was regrowing.

Had they pulled up everything trying to get water?

Because from what he could see, now that they had it, the herd had stopped, as had the rampant property damage.

This territory might be hippo territory now, but from what he could tell, there might not be any need for them to keep moving. If their appetite wasn't extreme, then in a few weeks this whole area would be regrown, and they could just stay by the river and feed.

Bringing magical beasts out of their native territory for an attack left many of them in poor conditions, and the Immortal beasts hadn't cared where they had dropped anything, other than the creatures that could only survive in water.

If he had to guess, the plan was to push this herd through a dozen cities before they reached the swamps, where they would be happy.

That would actually be a better spot for them, though the residents of Birad would not be happy if he added a whole herd of hippos to their Crocolisk problem.