Mash closed his eyes and leaned his head back against a nearby tree. Sitting in the snow probably wasn’t the best idea but it didn’t really matter. His clothes were still drenched in blood. A little bit of snow wouldn’t make a difference. He focused inward and checked his status.

Name: Mash Stellumbra Class: Chimeric Vagabond

Level: 102 → 108

Health: 3300 / 3300

Energy: 4400/ 4400

Fortitude: 300 → 308 + 22 → 330

Endurance: 186 → 196 + 14 → 210

Strength: 250 → 255 + 20 → 275

Agility: 252 → 260 + 15 → 275

Intelligence: 221 → + 9 → 230

Wisdom: 110

Charisma: 100

Free Stats: 20 → 80 → 0

Skills: Hunt, Thunder-wood Creation, Inhuman Hibernation, Chimeric Transformation, Thunder-wood Imitation, Chimeric Reconstruction, Vagabond’s Path, Chimeric Domain, Adaptable Monster Core, Chimera’s Constitution, Wooden Body, Mimic’s Avarice, A Touch of Nothingness, Golden Body

Chimeric Domain (Passive): Your eyes just weren’t enough. Sense the changes in the mana around you. Connect to the mana and life in your space and inherently understand the nature of the mana and life. Your presence suffuses the space, weakens the magic and strength of enemies beneath you. They cower beneath your might.

  Current Range: 53 → 57 feet

Golden Body (Passive): Having stolen the techniques of another world, your body evolves beyond its old limitations. However, even this transformation is incomplete. Seek out the next Step and truly make this power your own.

  Trial of the True Body: 8 → 22 / 100

Mash took a few minutes to allocate his stats. He preferred going in groups of ten as he saw them as artificial walls. If he could surpass them, he typically tried to do just that. He considered raising his wisdom or charisma to balance his stats but decided against it. They would raise naturally, and he might get a skill like Luke to naturally equalize it with some of his other stats. That was what he told himself as he further increased his physical abilities.

The permanent bonuses he got from eating the creatures were more significant than he expected. He had mostly eaten small wolves, though he did eat what he could from the largest wolves. Jill had managed to kill the other pack leader without doing too much damage to it. Even still the thing he was most excited to see was how much he had progressed his golden body. It had seemed like something that would take a long time to accomplish, but it seemed like monsters at this level were helping him make a lot of progress. That was good as they planned to spend a few days here. He wasn’t sure if he could complete the trial, but it felt doable.

Something entered his domain causing him to jump to his feet. It had mana, but he was more curious because of the shape that was approaching him. It was distinctly humanoid but definitely not human. Mash’s sudden motion had alerted the others and they stared in the same direction he looked. There was nothing there, well at least nothing they could see. The only reason he could track the person’s movements was because of his domain.

The person was wearing thick robes and traveled swiftly, using the surrounding trees to obscure her approach. The thick robes made it a little hard to tell if the person was human. They were obviously made of wolf fur, and they had even fashioned something like a mask to cover their face. The covering was also magical and obscured him from looking beneath it. It was like the hero’s armor from the tournament. He didn’t really understand what caused the effect, but he didn’t try to pry further with his domain. The person was already in earshot, and he could easily call out to them. He hesitated though and told Priscilla to send messages to the others. Hopefully one of them would say something first. Whoever this person was, they were skilled. Their movements were silent, and they were obviously strong enough to hunt the wolves. The fur on them was enough to prove that much. Another few seconds of silence had passed, and he decided to speak first.

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“Hi, um, adventurer? Look we don’t want any trouble. We just want to hunt monsters.”

Mash was thinking about what else to say and glanced at Red. He was hoping she would have something to add. She seemed to understand, and blessedly continued where he left off.

“We are adventurers. I am Red, and the one who found you is Mash. Who are you, and what do you want?”

Red wasn’t exactly trying to be friendly. Her words cut straight to the main point and sounded more like a demand than a conversation. It made him wince a little at the blunt tone. Although it was understandable that she would be so forward. Almost every problem they had with others occurred when they weren’t completely straightforward.

Mash continued to watch the person in question. They had paused upon the request, and just stood unmoving. It kind of felt like they assumed that he wouldn’t be able to track them if they stayed still. That was pretty dumb, and he was going to point it out. The person moved first, and he paused his comment. They stepped into view; both their hands raised in the air. It was a placating gesture to try and seem harmless. It didn’t affect them in the slightest. They were alert and a simple gesture like that was not enough to get them to relax. Honestly, he doubted that there was anything the person could do to appease their concern. Plus, they were wearing a wolf head mask of some kind. It was connected to a coat that was made entirely of the monster fur. He didn’t see any openings in the mask and wondered if the person could see things.

“Hello, I’m Sarah. I’m a-a-a, not an adventurer. An alchemist! That’s uh what I am.”

Mash noticed a few things instantly. The speaker was female, and probably a human of some kind. Her voice was high-pitched, but that might be due to her obvious fear. The way she spoke made that kind of obvious. The other thing he guessed was that she wasn’t very smart and was most likely lying. It was a poor attempt at a lie too. Her sentence was broken awkwardly, and it sounded like she was trying to correct herself for no reason. He thought that he could’ve done a better job. Probably not, he wasn’t particularly good at lying either.

“Are you human?”

Red oddly didn’t seem to doubt Sarah’s words, and mash could practically see the girl sigh in relief despite the mask. For his part, he was trying to figure out what Red was thinking. There was no chance she believed any of this right. He froze, and passed glances to the others, trying to figure out what was happening. Was Redd playing along? That was reasonable. He guessed that it would help the girl relax.

The girl did seem to relax a lot and started nodding her head. From beneath the cloak of fur, she brought out distinctly human hands and reached the mask’s nose. She grabbed it and yanked the nose upwards. The head came off like a hood, and he realized that was probably the intention. The girl beneath didn’t match with the voice or clothes. She was not old exactly but was a lot older than him. Probably closer to his brother but might even be a year or two older than him. She had short blond hair that was cut down to look more like a boy’s hairstyle. It was probably because of her strange choice of headwear. Despite her strange choices, she was quite pretty. Enough so that he wouldn’t find it hard to believe that she was a member of some noble house or something.

“I-I’m human. I’m not looking for a-a fight. I j-just wanted to b-buy some of the corpses. I have money.”

The more she spoke, the more suspicious she sounded. It was like talking to a bad actor. Mash didn’t want to deal with this. Honestly, all he wanted to do was fight with monsters and spend some time with his friends. He had come here hoping to avoid this exact situation. He let out an involuntary sigh which made the girl jump a little. She was really scared for some reason.

“Why are you so scared?”

Mash wondered if she was being hunted, or maybe some other type of monster. He hoped for the latter a little. Any new monsters would be useful. The girl’s next words were significantly more disappointing.

“N-n-o-o. I mean, I am a little scared…but uh not of the monsters.”

She gave him some very pointed looks, and he knew. She was scared of him. Another sigh escaped his lips, and he decided to just leave the conversation to the others. The fear in her eyes made sense now, and he was even more annoyed by the conversation. Jill took the opportunity and asked a more pointed question.

“How long were you watching us?”

Jill’s sudden question caused the girl to flinch. She swung her head quickly as she tried to find who had spoken. Jill hadn’t been hiding or anything, she was just slightly off to the right of the girl. Mash listened to the conversation but began working on the two wolfs he had set aside for dinner. It would take a while to clean and cut the meat, and he was getting hungry. Well, he was always hungry.

“I-I saw him eat t-the pack leader a-a-live.”

She sounded even more frightened now, and Mash froze mid-motion. He had formed a wooden blade in one of his hands and had made enchantments for sharpness. It was like a butcher’s knife, and he was easily cutting through the wolf’s flesh. He had stopped and glanced at the frightened lady. He briefly debated what to do next, but just continued butchering the monster. Hunger won out against a stranger’s impression of him. He felt Red’s stare bore into the back of his head and ignored it.

“Anything other than the ones he’s working on are free game. Give us what you think it's worth. And don’t worry about Mash, he just gets hungry. Very hungry.”

Jill had taken the lead and started selling the wolf corpses. She was getting rid of everything. Whether this girl was lying or not, she did have gold and was going to stick to her word. They were still within the range of her domain, and he could see her constantly glancing at him. It was pretty obvious. She was extremely worried about his actions.

He couldn’t help but try and remember what he had looked like when he fought with the wolf. His clothes were still covered in blood from the fight. With his poor joke and the proceeding awkwardness, he had forgotten to clean himself up. There was a lot of blood on his body. He had eaten the wolf quite happily, and he might have even grinned during the fight. With a little help from Priscilla, he was able to recreate an image of the moment. He paused once they had finished reconstructing the memory. Yeah, he had been pretty horrific. In fact, he had definitely seemed more like a monster than a human. Sarah might have followed in hopes of finding the remains of a monster. If she was really hear to collect corpses, that would have been a good strategy.

He thought about what someone like this girl would be doing here. It was a high-level area with plenty of monsters. He was sure that other adventurers and people would come by too. People over level 100 didn’t have many options for leveling. If she was here for a while, then she should’ve accrued quite the hoard of monster corpses and the like. He realized what Sarah was. He didn’t let it affect his expression or what he was doing but had Priscilla send the information to the others.

[She’s a corpse scavenger.]