After Luin finished her third bowl of stew, we left the inn and headed towards the crafting district, following Obaah’s directions. Poor Luin seemed distraught at the sounds coming from the many forges as we walked towards the tailor’s section. I created a set of earmuffs out of the air for her after a few tries to help her block out the sounds, and she was immediately thankful after trying to attack the mysterious person behind her who had touched her ears.

After stopping in a few shops, I began to regret consuming all of the cores last night. I needed a whole lot of funds to begin crafting. Needles alone were fifty silver each. The bolts of cloth and thread, depending on the type, ranged anywhere from a few silver to fistfuls of gold.

Going into one of the shops that sold the Spatial bags and chests showed me my inspiration for making those funds out of thin air was not going to happen. The bags with a level three or four size rune barely covered the cost of the materials used to make them, and that was for the bags made from what the merchant called snow silk.

The shopkeeper all but laughed in my face when I asked him if he would be willing to take me on part-time to teach me. He finally laughed in my face when I asked him if he’d sell the rune he was using for the size six chests and bags he had behind the counter.

Leaving the shop, we headed back towards The Guild. I would need to put off my leveling of my Systems and earn as much coin as we could for a while If I wanted to try my hand at crafting. Maybe I could farm the ingredients myself? That Monster Butchering class sounded really good right about now, and it dawned on me why it was so popular.

Would the system give me the leather if it knew I wanted it? I’d have to experiment some but first I needed to know what to hunt for the leather I could use to make bags. Maybe the teacher of the class could point me to the suitable monsters.

I was glad we had time before the next class on butchering when we finally reached The Guild. I handed Draf one of the tokens and told me where to go, and we waited. It wasn’t hard finding the butcher tables outside in the back. There were already a few younger people than I was waiting around the tables.

As the bells tolled in the distance, a tall and skinny scaled lizard man came outside and introduced himself as Vosk. He was a Level 57 Ranger and taught the class almost daily. The man somehow pulled an insanely large dog-like creature from his bag and placed it on the bench in front of himself.

“I will take you through the basics of butchering your prey. You will harvest their skins and claws using the same method for almost every creature or monster with fur and flesh. Those with scales or chiton use other methods,” Vosk hissed out.

The man showed us what I vaguely remembered in survival classes back at the academy on how to properly prepare animals if the need arose. When he was finished skinning the beast, he showed us the organs as he removed them. Vosk pointed to the ones that could be eaten and those to avoid. With the gut cleaned, he began to butcher the meat and explain ways of preserving the flesh if they couldn’t afford a Void bag, but chuckled and said if they could afford the class, then they better have a damn bag already.

When he was finished, all that remained were bone and sinew on the table. He then explained what the bones could be used for, and the ligaments could also be sold to the bowers for bowstrings. Almost every part of the animal could be used and sold if they took their time.

Finished, he began to remove smaller versions of the same dog-like creature putting two of them on each bench and told us to slowly copy what he had done. I removed the dagger, Kiszo had given me and began to cut into the flesh, mimicking Vosk’s actions as best as I could remember.

My table partner seemed lost as he just stared down at the body. I didn’t know his issue, but Vosk came over and began to criticize the young man for wasting his father's valuable coin to put him in the class. I learned rather quickly he was the son of a traveling merchant who wanted him to learn some type of trade, as he was a shit merchant. I also found it odd that Vosk knew so much about the kid.

I finished pulling the skin off the carcass and went about removing the still warm organs from the beast. The valuable ones got rinsed off and put into my bag, while the foul ones went into a metal bucket on the floor. Vosk gave me a nod as I finished with the task before he moved on to begin yelling at some other worthless noble kid.

I chuckled when Luin inquisitively poked her head into the foul bucket of organs and then began to gag. She reminded me of a cat trying to cough up a hairball. Her tongue flew from her mouth like a party streamer each time she gagged.

I began to butcher the meat, placing it inside my bag as well. I would give it to Obaah if she wanted it later tonight. After about thirty minutes, I was finished. I didn’t take the bones, sinew, or gut. I wasn’t going to sell it so I offered it to the merchant’s son, who was still trying to get through the organs.

Vosk seeing I was finished, came over and slapped my back. “Very good. You’ve done this before, I assume?”

“Yes, I wanted a refresher on it and I also wanted to pick your brain,” I said. No way I was going to tell him I had done this a hundred times in a virtual reality capsule back on my planet. That would give my interloper status away.

“Pick away! No one ever asks me anything anymore.”

Stolen story; please report.

“I want to make Spatial bags and with the price of things in town, well it's expensive. I wanted to know what I could hunt around here at Bone Rank that has the best leather?”

Vosk seemed to think it over as he tapped his chin with one of his clawed fingers. “I would suggest the Mongacuda. They are vicious bastards but are easy to fight and take down. Show me your map.”

I pulled my magic map up, and he placed his hand in a blank area far to the west of Mythtide. “The males travel alone in the fields around here. If you see the females without the horns, steer clear away. They will protect their young, and other females will attack. It’s a day’s travel there, and another back so I would prepare camping gear if you’re going to go.

Also, there should be a quest for their horns, so you can also bring them back if you have the room in your bag. The blacksmiths use them for hilts as they are incredibly strong, and vibrations don’t pass through them.”

I thanked him and left. A few of the others were still working on their corpses, and Vosk went over to coach them though it. Back at the inn, Obaah gratefully accepted the butcher meat, telling me she could turn some of it into jerky for us. We ate dinner and had another hot bath before bed that night.

Hiroaki had me learn the primary spear forms and strikes the following day. I informed him I wouldn’t be here the next day, as I planned on traveling to hunt the Mongacuda males. He thanked me for letting him have a morning off. I grabbed the quest for the Mongacuda Antlers and was shocked to see they looked to be one part moose, one part fish, and the final part close to that of a beaver.

We went back to the same bag shop from the day before and bought a size four backpack for storing the hides and antlers. I spent almost the rest of our gold on the bag and finished cleaning out our coffers thoroughly on simple camping equipment at the next shop.

We made our way back to the Tallow and Flame for lunch. I informed Obaah we wouldn’t be here tonight and left.

Looking at my map, I realized we would be passing by the Fyrbee’s forest and began planning on hunting them before we continued. An hour and a half later, I raised a bunker in the field outside of the forest and had Luin stay inside a back room I created. I made plenty of small vent holes the bees wouldn’t be able to enter so that the bunker had fresh air.

I tunneled over and created a new pillar twenty meters away from the bunker going above ground. I made a door section slide down and walked out into the field. Looking around, I couldn’t spot any of the bees like the other day. Movement inside the forest drew my attention, and I spotted a single Fyrbee.

The ice lance dropped it, and I waited to see if I drew the attention of others. Nothing. I slowly made my way into the forest and began to look towards the tops of the large trees to find something that looked like a bee’s nest.

Walking around the edge of the forest, I killed a few solitary bees but spotted nothing that could be a nest. I began to walk further into the forest when I began to hear a low hum in the distance. I slowly moved around a few of the large tree trunks before I spotted what I assumed was a nest.

It reminded me of a massive squirrel's nest, a giant ball of sticks and leaves. The Fyrbees entering and exiting the hive were the only confirmation I needed that it was their nest. I prepared a blue Fireball and tossed it, ready to begin running back to the pillar. I was surprised when one of the Fyrbees darted in front of the blue ball, stopping it from hitting the nest. The explosion vaporized the bee, but it was the only casualty.

The low hum then picked up in tone before almost becoming deafening. The bees were coming out of the hive by the hundreds and swarming in every direction at once. The Speed Aura slapped on, and I took off towards the pillar. Looking over my shoulder, I could see a large part of the swarm had spotted me and was now heading in my direction, much slower than me.

I waited for them to spot me inside the pillar before raising the door and then climbing down into the tunnel. I raised a pillar to block off the tunnel and ran to the bunker. I made a small hole to see the pillar and was shocked to see it wasn’t covered with them at all. I could still hear the hum of their buzzing though but couldn’t see any of the damn bees.

I willed the hole to open a bit more so I could look around and spotted them higher in the sky buzzing around. Then all at once, my pillar was engulfed in flames, the gel or oil they spat out engulfing the pillar and the surrounding area.

I watched as the pillar began to crumble under the intensity of the flames. With a loud ‘crack’, the pillar broke apart and the bees shot down into the hole. I was suddenly grateful I had put up a pillar in the tunnel to block it now. I ran down and out of the bunker and could feel the thrum of their wings through the earth. I heard what could only have been their attacks on the pillar blocking the tunnel and decided to get the hell out of there before they demolished it as well. As a precaution, I filled in the tunnel the entire way back to the bunker and grabbed Luin, just as I felt the temperature begin to rise.

I looked up at one of the air vents I had made and watched as some kind of slime dropped down from it and hit the floor before erupting into flames. Had they learned what I had done last time or was this a more intelligent group of them?

I made a smaller tunnel away from the forest and told Luin to follow. I closed the tunnels behind us as we moved further and further away. A few minutes later, I felt the air becoming heavy and angled the tunnel upwards towards the surface.

As soon as the tunnel opened up, fresh air came rushing into the tunnel, then the distant sound of buzzing grew. I closed the tunnel before they had time to enter it, angled it down, and kept pushing us forward. When the ground began to warm up, we backtracked a bit upwards and then kept going in a straight line.

I figured the bees heard the whoosh of air when I opened the tunnel. Or maybe they could hear the vibrations. I didn’t know. When the air began to stagnate again, I angled the tunnel upward. I checked on Luin, and she didn’t seem bothered in the slightest by what was going on. Maybe she didn’t understand what was going on above us.

When my magic map showed we were hundreds of meters away and only a few meters from the surface, I created a small tunnel going straight up to the surface. There wasn’t a pop of air coming into the tunnel this time, but I could hear a slight rush of air filling the tunnel. When the tunnel’s pressure equalized, I listened for the sound of buzzing but couldn’t detect anything.

I created a room down a side tunnel that I created and blocked the entrance off with small pillars. I created a dull light orb and placed it on the ceiling.

We would sleep here for tonight and allow the bees to calm down. My idea of power leveling my Systems and getting enough cores to pay for my crafting was a complete bust.