The next day:

Constantine emptied the last shovel of leaves over the twigs covering the pit. He watched as they landed. Squinting, he circled the area, searching for any imperfections that might reveal the pit’s presence. At last, satisfied, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and nodded, a smile of accomplishment spreading across his face.

He paused, struck by an urgent realization. 'Leaving a pit like this is asking for an accident to happen,' he thought. People frequented the forest for firewood, foraging, and even hunting. He wasn't its only visitor. 'I'll mark it later. Something obvious to humans but inconspicuous to beasts.'

Suddenly, he grinned, 'That can wait. Now is time for some fun.' He had been working for half a day; he deserved to reward himself and indulge his desire to experiment.

Rubbing his fingers impatiently, he plopped himself onto the ground, crossing his legs. Reaching into his pocket, he wrapped his fingers around a small, hard ball, its warmth tingling his skin. He bit his lip, eyes narrowing as he forced himself to focus. 'Implant, record the first liquid mana stability experiment.'

His fingers curled tighter around the small, glass-like ball. He pumped his mana into it, feeling the ball begin to soften and melt under his grip. Liquid heat seeped into his skin, eliciting a gasp of pleasure that cascaded through his body. Bracing himself for the sensation, he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and harnessed the liquid mana surging within him. He directed it into his free hand.

His heart pounded with the euphoria of overflowing mana. He struggled to guide the blazing liquid, wrestling it like a living snake. His fingers burned and throbbed as the mana flowed into them. When he opened his eyes, his irises widened at the sight of a small orb of opaque, pale light hovering above his shining palm, shrinking and pulsing slowly.

"It is true," he whispered in silent wonder. It hadn’t been in vain; the path he had chosen might truly work. The liquid mana maintained its shape and form outside his body. He released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Questions surged into his mind like a ravenous river. 'How did the bats transform it into spheres of fire? How did the rabbits turn it into arcs of electricity? And the wolves into shadows?' He hungered for more knowledge.

Through his experiments with cores, he had already confirmed that mana wasn’t very reactive with the mundane world. The secret to bending it and transforming it into flames likely lay in supernatural world.

Leaping to his feet, he clapped his hands, a new priority forming in his mind. 'If I can find a way to shape and morph it, with some cores at hand, I’ll have a powerful tool to surprise potential attackers.'

Focusing on known examples, he visualized monsters spitting fire, shooting lightning from their horns, and vanishing into shadows. The hearsay of mystical artifacts—flying swords, rings capable of storing entire warehouses' worth of goods—resounded in his ears.

The manual didn’t speak of them or how they worked. As a common mortal, he could only rely on inaccurate and lacking information. Yet, he knew there was always a grain of truth amidst myths. 'There is a way to control this mana. The only question is how.' He couldn’t dream of acquiring a treasure like a spiritual artifact, but he could obtain monster parts. He even owned some already.

'Maybe that’s how the cultivators discovered it too,' he mused. It was always the nature of humans to observe their environment.

Chuckling to himself, he grabbed his bow. 'I have only rabbit horns. If I want to determine how it works, I need more examples. For that, I need proper bait.' He ventured deeper into the forest.

As he walked, he noticed something unusual. No birds chirped. No insects buzzed. The forest was utterly silent, except for the rustling of leaves beneath his shoes. Slightly unnerved, he scanned his surroundings and listened intently. There was nothing—at least nothing he could see.

He walked a bit further, eyes constantly shifting. His steps faltered, torn by a dilemma. On one hand, he wanted to turn back. On the other hand, he felt an urgent need for more cores.

A twig cracked to his left. He turned, raising his bow. A man stood in the distance, an axe over his shoulder. His plague-scarred face immediately identified him as someone Constantine knew. 'He is the one I met when I arrived.'

"Scared of me? Hope ya didn’t shat your pants," the man laughed boomingly, Constantine's eyes never leaving the axe he held. Laughing, the man strode away, heading in the opposite direction. Constantine shook his head and ventured deeper, the trees growing wider and taller.

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As he walked, he thought something off about the man but couldn’t pinpoint what it was. The forest seemed to come back to life, birds chirping in the distance and insects buzzing in the shrubs.

Only when he reached deeper into the forest, did he realize what it was. 'The axe. It’s as if he went to chop some wood, yet he was returning empty-handed. That's weird.' He shook his head, feeling that perhaps his past experiences had made him paranoid.

Leaves rustling, his breath silent, he continued moving, an arrow nocked in his bow. He searched for prey. Suddenly, his irises widened, his entire body tensing as he spotted four dark objects lying on the ground further away.

With his bow aimed at them, he approached slowly, keeping his steps as silent as possible. Then, his breath stalled in shock as he finally recognized the scene before him: four large black wolves, motionless, with blood pooling around the gaping holes in their sides.

'Four shadenwolves, all killed, no, slaughtered by something.' Curiosity getting the better of him, he approached closer, the smell of blood overwhelming. He gasped, the sense of wrongness growing stronger as he noticed the perfect state of the carcasses except for the large, round holes seemingly drilled into their flesh. Now that they weren’t bathed in shadows, he saw how beautiful their fur was—dark as midnight, with patterns of lighter black and occasional ruby-red on their backs.

He kneeled beside one, put down his bow, and ran his hand through its surprisingly smooth fur. His frown deepened. 'Cold, they must have been dead for a while. Yet, not long enough to start decaying. Weird.' He knew that something should have already devoured them, attracted by the overwhelming stench of blood. 'Yet, nothing came.'

Examining the holes, he noticed another oddity. 'Torn veins, nerves, and muscles, as if something were torn out. Maybe their cores are gone.' Piercing through the soft fur and the wallow below, he stabbed his dagger into its belly. After a few moments of examination, he confirmed its core was indeed missing.

His thoughts wandered toward the scarred man, wondering if he could have anything to do with this. He shook his head. 'There is a lot of blood here, and he was perfectly clean,’ He glanced at the smooth, circular holes through which the cores were torn out, ‘Also, those injuries definitely couldn’t be caused by an axe.'

He chuckled, feeling his paranoia was getting out of hand, suspecting a villager without any aura of slaughtering four monsters that could likely murder an entire squad of trained soldiers if caught at night without fire.

He paled, his stomach turning into a pit as he realised something. He had been wandering through the forest as if he owned it, forgetting that terrifying things lived within it. Things that could slaughter an entire pack of shadenwolves.

Constantine looked around, scanning for any sign of movement. The forest was eerily quiet, save for the distant rustling of leaves, but there was no sign of any movement. He remained kneeling beside the corpse, his breath steady but his heart pounding. In front of him lay a potential treasure; he couldn’t afford to ignore such an opportunity. Especially since he confirmed they had been there for a while, making it likely their killer had already left.

'They are cold; it must have happened at night. I have been here a lot during daylight and never met any predators. What killed them must also have been nocturnal.' He thought, trying to reinforce his determination not to panic and leave.

'Whoever or whatever it was, seemingly cared only for their cores. Good for me.' Doing some quick calculations, he could almost hear the coin dinging in his mind, a small smile gracing his pale face. Just the damaged furs could be sold for a small fortune. His smile widened even further when he thought of the unique monster parts he could harvest.

Leaning over the closest dead wolf, he couldn’t help but brush his fingers through its fur. It was surprisingly soft, almost silky. 'What is your magic organ? Fur, claws? Something else? Does the concept of magic organs even make sense?' he wondered, his curiosity piqued.

For the thunder-horn rabbits, it was quite obvious; for the firebats, although not as much, it was still clear that their organ lay within their oral cavity. However, no matter how much he examined the shadenwolves, he wasn’t sure. Their power to control shadows, blend with them, and maybe even move through them was too broad.

'Maybe their pelt?' Constantine thought, feeling like it was the best bet. 'Implant, can you help me recollect the night when I faced shadenwolves?'

His vision shifted, the orange light of the flames flickering behind him, the deep shadows dancing around him. The ruby-red wolf's eyes shone in the darkness, the beast snarling at him. It was as if he were there again—only dull and lacking details, the grass blurry, the trees all looking the same.

As long as he didn’t command the implant to record, it could only utilize the memories of his own brain. They were imperfect, subjective, and often missed a lot of details. Only the most vivid parts of them, the parts the brain focused on at the time, remained unfaded. He directed his gaze upon the wolf. Now that he didn’t have to fear it, he focused on the fine details—how its fur seemingly morphed, shifting like living shadows.

'Stop it.' He commanded, the darkness retreating, replaced by the brightly lit forest. He was once again squatting above the dead wolf. Curiously, he ran his fingers through its soft fur. 'It must be its hide, as it emitted shadows, or its eyes, as they glowed, or maybe something connected to them.'

His back straightened, and the hair on the back of his neck sprang up; something rustled on his periphery. He turned around, his eyes searching for the source of the sound.

‘Must have been the wind—’ His gaze moved lower, noticing a hole at the base of a tree. It was dark and submerged in the tree's shadow. He grabbed his bow, aiming at the hole. He couldn’t see inside; the darkness and the distance were too great for his eyes.