-I'm thinking about what you said a few days ago. We can't sell these Ani Bananas if they are considered rare wild fruits. A target on our backs saying attack us because we have good stuff to steal wouldn't be pleasant.-

[Yes. At least they will never rot in your Soul Dimensional Storage if warm and cold objects retain their temperature.]

"Can you catch the Ani Bananas, place them in the cart as I told you before?" Vincent asked.

Tula nodded. She held the pelt with firm determination to catch the dropped fruits. She wanted to hide her drooling lips at the same time. It seemed she wanted to snack on a few when no one was watching. She had the same thoughts as Lupa, who was eating one.

"You can start Lupa. Throw twenty and take a few minutes break. Then repeat the process with a whistle every time." Vincent said.

*Whistle

*Thud

Lupa started dropping the Ani Bananas one after the other with a few seconds interval between each one. She decided to drop them carefully as if each one was a priceless treasure.

The sly wolf girl wanted each one to get collected and stored in mint condition. That way, they could be eaten instead of getting discarded from unwanted blunders.

[This is starting to feel like a management sim game. You collect followers, and they follow the player's orders.]

-So you are the player, and I'm the NPC since I have to dig the graves and follow my own orders while you only watch.-

[Then give me a body, and I will gladly help, humph.]

"Shall we go? " Vincent ignored Kazumi's last words while saying this to Ester. She quickly nodded and followed him.

Hours passed while Vincent dug a two person gravesite for Kass and the old woman to spend their eternity together. In the meantime, Ester made the old woman presentable.

"Phew... now that's a workout if I say so myself." Vincent wiped his sweat and sat on the edge of the grave. He turned his gaze on Ester and noticed how she donned a sad expression on her face.

[Could she be thinking of her mother?]

-I think you might be right.-

Vincent flexed his tired arms and approached Ester. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder and said, "Are you reminiscing about your parents?"

*Sniff

"Ye..." Ester wiped her welling tears. She tried to hide her sadness, but it was too visible not to notice.

"Let's go and retrieve your heirloom short sword. It's going to get a bit messy. So I will need a new set of clothes later." Vincent turned around and headed towards the corpse of the Demonic Beast.

Ester turned and saw Vincent leaving to retrieve the only memento left to remember her parents by. She raised the small grey bag and held it tightly.

'He cares about how I feel... I want to ask him about that thing, but... I'm not too embarrassed to do so.' Ester thought while deciding to follow him.

"Overheat." Vincent gazed down at the dead Nok Ape Demonic Beast.

He extended his fingers while the new stage one mutation green blood wiggled like a living substance, covering his hands and forearms with a tick mutated blood gauntlet.

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[Overheat activated.]

[Mutation starting to alter the host...]

[Mutation process finished.]

[Race altered to mutated human for its duration.]

Vincent kicked Demonic Beast. It had fallen face flat on the ground, so he wanted to roll the mass of rocks on its back.

[Nice kick! An incision in the middle from its throat to its stomach should suffice to find what we need. Your new claws should do the trick instead of using the rusty, worn axe.]

Vincent turned his head back, facing Ester, and gave her a viewership warning with a hoarse voice, "You don't have to look. It's going to be a gory scene."

'Why don't monsters drop loot like games instead of personally removing them by hand. It's disgusting.' Vincent thought while gulping to muster his courage not to puke.

At least he couldn't feel with his hands, allowing him to imagine the pair of hands in front of his eyes weren't his. He was only the person that controlled their actions and nothing else. Such thoughts allowed him to regain his composure and start the gory looting.

Ester noticed something different around Vincent. There were two more trails of steam created by his ability. She focused on his mutated skin, but it wasn't skin anymore. It became thick like a gauntlet.

Ester remembered how something similar happened when he fought against the Great Grey Wolf. A small resemblance to Overload.

There was a shining green crack on the back of his hands. A steam trail exited from the shining linear crack, similar to the pair of steam escaping from the sides of his mouth.

Vincent soon clawed the hard skin open, ripping the Demonic Beast flesh while the little remaining blood sprayed on his clothes and a bit on Ester's as well.

*Clang

The claws found something as the sound of two colliding objects lightly rang. Vincent decided the sound came from the blade or the magical core, not the horn.

Vincent shoved his mutated blood gauntlet inside the Demonic Beast's chest. He couldn't feel any sense of touch, so he kept moving this hand until it found resistance. Shortly, he closed his grip and pulled out his hand.

"Phew... now that's daunting. Controlling what you don't feel is annoyingly hard for intricate things. " Vincent said as he felt disturbed, disgusted, and challenging to maneuver his hands. He lowered his gaze at his hand to see what random object he pulled out. It was like a gory gacha game. Blood drizzled from the object resting on his hands. It wasn't the blade but something else.

Vincent opened his palm. He could see a brownish jewel-like gem covered in blood, a little larger than the Air or Fire Magical Cores he possessed.

[Name] Pure Earth Core

[Condition] Undamaged

[Grade] Small stage ten

"Ester, do you know about Magical Core purity?" Vincent showed the bloody core in his hand.

Ester approached and lowered her gaze. She felt a bit disgusted by the viscera covering it. Anyone would mistake for a vital organ if it wasn't reflective and hard-edged.

"I never heard about purity when anyone mentioned a Magical Core other than the ten grades of small, medium, and large quality. Besides crafting equipment or specific items like a pen, my parents never mentioned anything about the core's quality." Ester took out a small rag from her small grey Bag Of Holding and took the core to clean with a slightly contorted face with disgust.

"Anything involving magical cores fetches money. Familiar breeders or Magical Beast hunters such as adventurers are the usual jobs."

"However, a Demonic Beast core is the hardest to acquire and gives more money than the two other jobs combined. It seems this is why the core is pricey."

"It grows from pure mana and forms a better version of a Magical Core. Demonic Beasts are hard to find since everyone wants to kill them for money and glory. Also, they are hard to kill, thus increasing the price even further."

Ester cleaned the Pure Earth Core while she finished explaining. She raised it at the sun and became bewildered by the beauty of the glistening brown core.

"So... are there Demonic Beast hunters?" Vincent curiously asked with a hoarse voice since Ester didn't mention it as a job.

"There isn't. Laws about Demonic Beasts are in place, banning any hunting without a quest, luring, breeding, or capturing a Demonic Beast. If broken, it could mean execution depending on the severity."

"They can't be tamed because of their aggressive crazed nature. Keeping, enslaving, or transporting them is banned for safety reasons. We have recently experienced how dangerous they are, so you can understand the anxieties certain rural villages suffer from."

Ester explained as she finished gazing at the beautiful brown jewel-like core glistening under the few rays of sunlight that passed through the enormous Elder Demonic Ani Banana Tree.

[Ester gave us the answer even though she hasn't realized. Luring, breeding, or capturing a Demonic Beast is mostly for nobles or bandits that want to let the Demonic Beast mature its corruption resulting in a purer high-grade core and more money.]

-You might be right. People stop caring about the consequences if they can make a quick buck or massive profits.-

Vincent and Kazumi arrived at the same conclusion. About how the laws were set to protect the innocent from greed. Both knew from reading too many stories and game settings to consider such a law created for similar circumstances.

However, anyone that didn't know about the pure version of a Magical Core like Ester wouldn't know the hidden reason why the law was set in this way.

This law caused people to fear the Demonic Beasts instead of arranging any manner of unspeakable acts to retrieve a Pure Magical Core.

"So this will fetch a reasonable price for risking our lives. But unfortunately, we can't sell it, or we might get found for killing a Demonic Beast and raise many questions about our powers. We need as little attention as possible on us. " Vincent suggested with a hoarse voice.

Ester nodded with his judgment. An otherworldly person needs to attract little attention, or they would be asking for an early death. She handed the Pure Earth Magical Core to Vincent, and he stored it in his Soul Dimensional Storage.

[1x Small Pure Earth Core (Unkown Quality) gained.]

Vincent repeated the process until he pulled the hiltless heirloom short sword and the rabbit's horn out of the Demonic Beast's body. Then he deactivated Overheat as it wasn't needed anymore.

[Overheat deactivated.]

[Host Race returning to human.]

Vincent noticed the rabbit's horn had a few cracks and dents on it. As for the hiltless blade, Kazumi noticed something peculiar about it. Something that wasn't there before.

[I'm curious about something. Can you inspect the sword for me? I'm picking mana attached to the hiltless short sword. It wasn't like that before.]

[Name] Elsir (Short Sword)

[Condition] Undamaged

[Description] A runed enchanted tempered blade made by Borgin Peachbeard.

[Effect]

*Soul Bound (Ester)

*Magic Synch (Ester)

*Magic Link (Ester)

*Elemental Attunement

Vincent and Kazumi both stared at the Inspection window without blinking for a few seconds. They couldn't believe how such a plain-looking hiltless blade had this many effects.

It said 'runed' in the description, but not even the slightest scratch could be seen by the naked eye. Not only it didn't have any engravings, but it appeared to be brand new. As if it was a finished blade ready to attach a hilt and get sold as a new ordinary short sword.