They walked in silence to the warehouse. The air was stale and it felt lifeless. The urban scenery, without sound, was oppressive and sterile.

The smuggler's vehicle, an essence-powered wagon, was parked in the middle of the street, in front of the open doors to the warehouse. Robert noticed two human corpses further down the street and another half-buried man, also dead.

The warehouse was stuffed with crates.

Amanda pinched her nose. "What is this foul stench?"

"Rotting monster parts," Noah said as he took a step inside. He pried a crate with a crowbar he picked up along the way. The lid came free with a wet squelch. "Yup, monster parts."

"Is it contraband?" Amanda asked.

"Hard to tell," Noah said with a scaled leg as long as he was tall in his hand. "They might have hunted these very strong monsters by themselves."

"Which they didn't," Amanda stated.

"Definitely," Noah punctuated with a leg jab in the air. “The minions were too weak. And Damien would’ve drained these monsters until they became fossils if he had really hunted them.”

"I can't stay here," Amanda said while pinching her nose. "Sorry."

"The smugglers were sleeping in the apartment building across the street," Noah said. "Could you go and loot the bodies?"

Amanda glared with an imperious scowl, then softened her expression and nodded. She turned around and dashed across the street.

"Robert, put on some gloves and help me sort these parts!" Noah called.

“What will we do with all of this?” Robert asked.

“Despite some parts being past their due date, most if this is usable,” Noah said. “How about we forge some magical items?”

"We what?" Robert sputtered, surprised. “Forge magical items? Can you do that?”

"Sure. Don't tell Amanda, but that's the reason I brought you here. This," Noah said as he lifted a massive carapace shell out of the crate. "Is icing on the cake. we can do so many things with these monster parts. Man, I'm excited! Are you excited, Robert?"

"No," Robert said flatly as he rummaged through another crate full of monster body parts, stale fluids, and gore. "Not at all."

They busied themselves for the next several hours sorting through the crates. Not all of them held monster parts. Some had metals, ores, and damaged equipment. Anything good was taken by the smugglers, though. The objects in the crates were worth only as scrap metal.

"Robert, let's set this gear on the street and try to assemble sets. If we do that, we can estimate how many people they killed," Noah suggested. "And while we do that, we can see if we can find anything we can use to identify the victims."

Another two hours were spent sorting and cataloguing all the damaged equipment they found. Based on that, they estimated that Damien's crew had killed over fifty delvers. Amanda returned with stuff she took from the dead smugglers, only a few usable items among a mountain of garbage. They even got four small storage rings and a dozen bags of holding.

Noah and Amanda rummaged through the spatial containers, removing piles of smelly clothes, spirits, sundries, booze, personal belongings, alcoholic beverages, pornographic materials, drugs, and other knick-knacks. Amanda was thoroughly disgusted at what she saw.

"Doesn't this people know what soap is? Goodness! Do they even bathe?" Amanda complained. "Next criminal group we catch; we keep them alive and force them to craft soap! “She did her best Juliette Contzen impression so far.

"I also got two big spatial rings from Damien. They're unlocked but I didn't look inside," Robert said.

"Let's dump the stuff in them on the wagon's bed," Noah suggested.

Robert looked inside the rings and gagged. His stomach threatened to dump everything he ate on the street. He handed the rings to Noah.

"Merciful goodness!" Noah said.

"What's inside?" Amanda asked. It seemed curiosity surpassed her outrage and she forgot the filth they dug form the spatial bags.

"Two Prime Vestiges," Noah said. "And a lot of gruesome trophies."

Amanda instantly perked. "Two Primes? Seriously? What day is today, the manifest-a-prime day?"

"I believe they were in there for quite some time," Robert said.

Noah took the two balls; one was white and the other was reddish-brown. Amanda reached out to get them.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Hey, watch out!" The white Prime protested.

"I'm delicate! Handle me with care!" The reddish-brown prime whined.

"At least I'm not in that ring anymore, with all those rotting heads!" White sighed with relief.

"Rotting... heads?" Amanda withdrew her hands with a disgusted face.

"Use water to wash them," Robert suggested.

"Good idea!" Amanda waved her hand and a sphere of water surrounded the primes and Noah's hands. The water churned, drawing away all the dirt on them, then she sent it splashing on the street with a flick of her arm. She took the Primes as the leftover water evaporated back into pure essence.

She seemed like a child. Holding a Prime in each hand, she looked at them, spun around, and then lilted.

"White Prime Vestige, what is your pow~er?"

"Take me into your soul, and you will perceive the future trajectories of all weapons you can see!"

"Oh, that's a good talent!" She gushed.

"Thank you, Miss," White replied.

"And what are your affinities?"

"Metal!"

"Good. Metal is a good affinity!"

She stowed White in her ring. She then stared at Brown. "Brown Prime vestige, reveal your talent to me!"

"Whenever you bleed, I shall convert that blood into essence for you!"

Noah whistled. "Now, that's a risky talent. Powerful, but risky."

"And what affinities you hold?" Amanda asked.

"Earth and Blood!" Brown declared! "I'm better than White!"

Robert made a worried face and looked at Noah. Noah turned his head and nodded.

"What will this prime's talent do if combined with the puddle of blood tempering?" Robert asked.

"Not much, just what Damien could do with stolen lifeforce but less evil." Noah replied with sarcasm.

Robert flinched. "How much would the Kraven clan pay for this Prime?"

"They're more likely to steal it," Noah replied.

"This one should fetch at least thirty million. It has a solid combo," Amanda joked. Regarding the combo part, not the price.

"Agreed." Noah said, regarding the price, not the "solid" combo joke.

"Do you mind if I hold onto the Primes for you, Robert?" Amanda asked.

"No, I don't mind. And they aren't mine. We both fought Damien," Robert retorted.

Amanda rolled her eyes. She bit her lower lip and shrugged. "I just screamed like a damsel in distress and then poof, I got rescued. Besides, I'm rich. They're yours. Here, I'm donating my share."

Robert laughed. Amanda cringed.

"I will ask my father, okay?"

"No need. You can keep them for me. I'll have more reasons to keep you safe if my nest egg is with you."

That seemed to mollify her.

"Robert," Noah called with the storage rings on his hands. "Did you check underneath the heads?"

"No," Robert replied and shook his head. "And I don't want to if I can avoid it."

"The psycho kept the ID cards along with the heads. I have sixty of them. Amanda, do you mind washing them?"

"Does anyone have a bucket?" Amanda asked.

"I think I saw one inside the warehouse. Wait a moment," Robert said.

Robert took the bucket, Amanda used create water to fill it, and Noah dumped the sixty plastic cards inside. Amanda churned the water to clean the identification cards, then poured the water out to evaporate into essence, leaving the clean cards inside the bucket.

The street was getting covered in filth but it wasn't their problem.

"We should bury the heads now," Noah said. "We don't need them to identify the victims anymore. Amanda, would you—"

"Dig a grave? Sure." She didn't seem happy with the idea but understood the need.

Outside the city, they gathered all the human corpses, including the smugglers and Damien's, and put them in a hole Amanda created by manipulating earth. Noah poured all the liquor they found with the smugglers into the hole. On top of that, they also tossed all the forbidden materials they collected.

Then Noah drew a Fire rune. "Natural Disaster: Firestorm."

The pit became a funeral pyre. Noah's magical fire burned thoroughly and only faint wisps of smoke came out of the pit.

After a long day, the expedition went back to the city to some well-earned rest.

*

*

The next day, they finished sorting the monster parts in the warehouse. Most of it was moved to the liminal void where it wouldn't spoil any further, leaving only four crates with stuff Noah had a use for in the near future. They drove the wagon to the other edge of the city.

"Here's the crown jewel of the Puffbloom Islands," Noah said. "Let me unlock and open the door.

The teacher jumped from the wagon and fiddled with the lock before pulling the doors open. Robert took the wagon inside.

The forge building was another big warehouse very similar to the first one, at the edge of a big hole in the middle of the island. At least in the front. The back was full of workbenches, tools, cranes, and stuff Robert had no idea what purpose they served. At the far end of the workshop, a wall was missing and they could see the hole. Some sort of pantographic contraption allowed a platform to extend into the hole. On one side, it had piles upon piles of metal balls of several sizes.

“So, what makes this workshop unique is that hole,” Noah started to explain. “Sometimes, materials require a hard impact to fuse. This realm is perfect to create perfect impacts with lots and lots of energy.”

Robert stared at the hole and the platform and how it seemed to have a sliding anvil over a hole in the platform. Slowly, he understood. In this realm, things that fall down end up coming from above after a while. If the crafter could predict where a falling object would pass, they could make the falling object strike something they wanted struck.

That’s what the metal balls were for. The crafter would drop one, then arrange the items he wanted to strike, and move the anvil over the hole. The ball would strike right there after falling for twenty-five miles.

“What about the wind?” Robert asked.

Noah shrugged. “Just like the haze and the sun, the wind is also an illusion. Amanda noticed it during her flights. The wind never bothered us or took us off-course. While flying in the haze, we would have no idea whether a sideways wind pushed us away or not. Those large gaps would be impossible to cross. People would need to place floating markers every twenty miles to let people know where to go. Can you guess why they don’t do that? Hint, money is not an issue.”

“Because it would interfere with the puffblooms’ migratory patterns?” Robert risked a guess.

“Exactly. You have no idea how important the puffblooms are to this realm. They reproduce slower than most other monster species. Without the puffblooms, this realm would not exist. See if you can figure out why. Anyway, back to the anvil and the balls.”

Noah showed them how the forge operated. “Sometimes, magical materials don’t want to play together. They just don’t mesh. An impact with a ball that fell for twenty-five miles usually does the trick. Here’s one important tidbit of information. It takes ninety seconds for something to fall down a single loop in this realm. Once you drop the ball, there’s a timer underneath the platform that counts the ninety seconds before impact. If you don’t move the anvil in place before that, it locks and lets the ball pass for another loop.”

“How does one catch the ball after it’s dropped?”

“The anvil is made from a material that absorbs all the impact and heats up. This is also important in the forging process. But enough words. Let’s make something.”