With the confirmation of my capability of protecting everyone, we headed out of the exit. The floors were no longer covered in ice instead they went back to the regular dungeon I was used to for the past thirty floors.

“Wait…”

Rick stopped in his tracks, a blank look on his face. He bagan walking around the room, fidgeting his hands. His left hand scratched his head, slowing down per each step he took.

“How does the assessment work?” Rick cried, clutching his head.

“You’re right, how will it work?” said Rona.

“I’m guessing it’s based on the items we are carrying in this bag. In addition, when occupying a dungeon, the portal opened in a black triangle shape regardless of the rank.”

I pointed at the bag on my back. Rick nodded continuously. Doubts of his understanding soon appeared, does he really understand what I’m trying to say?

“If so, then why didn’t they inform us?” Cynthia asked, crossing her arms.

“I don’t know, the people at the academy think differently. Whether it’s a good thing or not, it’s not for any of us to decide.”

“Taetel! Shouldn’t we have persevered with the monster body?”

“That’s a thing? Are you serious Keller?”

Arakawa stared at Rick in shock, eyebrows furrowed. Rick also tilted his head until his eyes widened.

“Hahaha, of course you can! It’s the first thing you learn when becoming an adventurer.”

“Is that so?”

As they conversed, I placed the bag down. I opened it, running my hands inside the bag. Clunks of unrefined mana stones coming into contact caused me to remove my hand and start with the external pockets. The khaki bag made it easy to locate items.

Here is the mortar and pestle. Here is the mana stone.

Let’s continue…

I’m sure it’s here somewhere. I need to keep searching for it.

There we go.

A dagger, the only difference between this and a regular dagger was the gem engraved on the handle.

“Hey, Rick! Catch!”

“Wha—o-oh! Come on, Taetel! Couldn’t you give it to me instead of throwing it? What if it broke?”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done about it.”

“What do you mean? You literally threw it!” he said, pointing his finger at me.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Eh.”

“Eh—? You said eh? You fu…”

Rick's words trailed off as he took a deep breath, glancing at me before his attention went back to Arakawa.

So that’s what gets him angry. Well, it’s understandable. Throwing a precious weapon is indeed foolish. Also since Rick knows the value of it, he was more justified to be angry.

“So? Weren’t you going to explain something to Arakawa?”

“Y-yeah! That’s right,” he said, coughing to change the topic. “But firstly we have to find a monster to test it on.”

“Then wait here until I lured them here.”

“Do you need someone to accompany you?” asked Leon.

“Nah, it’s fine.”

I strolled through the area, putting my hand on my pocket. There I took out my bag of dust, a pinch of the dust was more than enough. I let it fall on the ground, sprinkling them at different rates to mask the trap.

Soon a slithering object launched at me. I immediately caught it, choking it by the neck. The snake monster attempted to bite my hand. I slammed my foot on the snake’s face, preventing its fangs from poisoning me. It struggled, thrashing around, hissing at me.

“I got the test subject!”

“Can you not say that, Taetel? It sounds like we’re about to perform experiments on it.”

I raised my hand, showing Rick the snake. We waited for the rest of them to show up. Once they did, Rick took out the dagger.

“The big question is how do you preserve the body when they disappear when killed?” said Rick, shouting to be more dramatic.

“The simple solution is to use this special dagger to torture it,” I said, interrupting his explanation.

“W-what?”

“Don’t listen to him! He’s joking!”

“Yeah.”

“Haah, don’t scare me like that,” said Cynthia, sighing.

“Okay, so this dagger is enhanced with spiritual magic. Using this we can attack the core of the monster directly.”

“Can you see this gem?” asked Rick, pointing at the gemstone. When he nodded from the group he continued, “This gem stores the body of the thing you kill, it only works with monsters that drop unrefined and regular mana stones upon death. So no funny business!”

Rick stopped, and looked around. He touched the walls surrounding us.

Since I was going to show an example regardless of the explanation, I took the dagger from Rick when he let his guard down.

Now with a dagger in my left hand and the snake monster on the other, I held the weapon close to the monster gaining the attention of the group.

“For example, if we do this—“

I sliced the monster’s tail, blood gushing out of the monster as it loudly hissed. The monster dropped to the ground, twitching on the floor. I threw the tail on the other side of the area, right where the boss was killed.

“Taetel, how did you get the dagger?”

The coldness of the location caused the tail to lose its warmth, the blood stopped flowing as much as before.

It should be good then.

My sword was then turned against the ground, I let the sword fall down, ending the monster's death. It soon disappeared, the same unrefined mana stone being present.

I proceeded to walk to the boss room, searching the room. I quickly found what I was looking for. I showed them the snake’s tail.

“This happens because the part is no longer connected to the monster. To understand it better, let’s say my arm was cut off. When the injury is healed, the arm is technically not a part of me anymore since I can’t use it. It’s the same thing with monsters.”

“One way to obtain their body parts of basically torturing them.”

This is if you don’t have the dagger, but because it's easy to obtain people would rather take that method. I rarely heard anyone using this technique.

“Right…”