Yeoman rummaged through a wolf’s head, his fingers digging through the soft squishy bits of what remained of its brain. His fingers struck something hard, and he grasped it before pulling it out. A red light flashed from his wrist.

[Obtained Moonlight Wolf Gene Portion]

[Moonlight Wolf Gene Portion: Collect thirty of these to obtain a Moonlight Wolf Gene (Epic).]

Yeoman stored it in his pouch before moving on. There were dozens of dead wolves around him. It was his third day of following Lucia around, and he had pretty much grown numb to gore. Severed limbs, splattered brains, loose entrails, he had seen them all. The worst part was the smell, but even that wasn’t as bad as the infected. Sometimes, he had to crack a head open because Lucia didn’t slice it, but his metal rods were surprisingly effective at it.

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!

When Yeoman finished gathering up all the cores and corpses, Lucia and Snow had already set up a small camp. Every time Lucia killed something, she’d take a break to let Yeoman harvest the corpses, but the break was mostly for her to fill her belly with what she had just killed. Yeoman cleared his throat, one of the few sounds he could still make with his mouth, and jangled the bag of cores. Lucia held her hand out, and Yeoman tossed it over. He didn’t try to keep any cores for himself; if Snow found out, the bunnykin would kill him in an instant.

“I got the fire started for you,” Snow said. He was sitting down, leaning against a tree while chewing on a piece of grass. “Aren’t you going to thank me? Oh, right. You can’t.”

Yeoman ignored the bunnykin. There were four rocks, arranged in a square, around the fire. Yeoman placed a thin stone slab over the four rocks and dragged the pile of corpses over. He grabbed a scavenger crow, ripped off its feathers, and cut off its wings. He tossed the wings on top of the stone slab before cutting the defeathered crow apart into strips. He wasn’t very accurate, and there were still plenty of meat stuck on the bones, but it didn’t matter. Yeoman tossed aside the bones and placed the strips of crow onto the slab before adding salt to them, shaking the seasoning out of a leather pouch to prevent his fingers from dirtying the supply.

A few hours later, all that remained of the wolves and scavenger crows were a few bones. Lucia had eaten most of the flesh while training, forcing Durandal to feed her while she swung her sword. Yeoman and Snow barely got one scavenger crow each, but Yeoman didn’t mind. When he thought about what everyone else was going through, he considered himself lucky. After three days, he didn’t even know how many of the original hundred were still alive. He hadn’t encountered anybody yet.

“Alright! Onwards!” Lucia stretched her arms towards the sky and twisted her torso from side to side. “I hope we find more wolves. They’re super tasty!”

Lucia led the way, humming while swinging her sword in back and forth motions in front of herself. Blades of red light flew out with every swing, cutting a path open before her. Someone screamed in the distance, and Lucia’s ears perked up. She turned towards the sound and pointed. “That way! My food’s waiting!”

“Lucia,” Durandal said, chasing after her. “The purpose of coming here was to train and get money. We’re not here to fill your stomach.”

“Right, that’s what I said.” Lucia bobbed her head up and down. “That way! My money’s waiting!”

Durandal sighed and rubbed his head. Snow appeared beside him. “Regretting choosing her as your master?” the bunnykin asked. “I don’t blame you. She’s an airhead who’s obsessed with food. I doubt she’ll ever become a high-ranked warrior. Certain personalities are required to reach great heights; I don’t mean to brag, but my personality is one of them.”

It was a shame Yeoman knew the plot of The Godking’s Legacy. Snow was making a lot of sense, but Yeoman knew the whole point of the book was to be nonsensical. When he had first read it, he felt bad for all the characters who acted rationally in such an irrational world. Yeoman shook his head. This wasn’t something he should be thinking about. He had to focus on surviving. Surprisingly, he could keep up with Lucia and her crew when they ran, and he didn’t think they were slowing down on purpose since none of them were particularly considerate people. His physical capabilities were a lot higher than he had expected.

“Dibs!” Lucia’s voice came from up ahead. “I call dibs! Breaking Blade!”

There was a crashing sound, and Yeoman caught up just in time to see a panther fall to the ground, its body split in two. Moments later, a group of underdressed people came running into the area. They were holding crude weapons, and all of them had injuries—cuts on their arms and legs. The leader of the group froze upon seeing Lucia standing over the dead panther. “Isn’t that Lucia?”

“And that’s Snow,” another person said.

“Oh, thank the lord,” a woman said and exhaled. “Snow hasn’t killed Lucia yet. She’s not—”

The woman didn’t get to finish her sentence. A beautiful bunnykin had appeared in front of her, planting a dagger in her chest. Snow was like a fairy, dancing while moving his arms, weaving between the crowd of people, leaving blossoms of blood on their clothes as he brushed past. It only took a few seconds for Snow to incapacitate everyone, not enough time for Lucia to react.

“Ah! Snow! What the hell!?” Lucia finally came out of her stupor and pounced on Snow. “Those were people! How many times do I have to tell you guys? Stop. Murdering. People!”

“They weren’t people,” Snow said, not resisting as Lucia shook his body back and forth. “They’re trickster monkeys. You know how scavenger crows fooled you into thinking a child was being killed? Trickster monkeys work the same way. They follow groups at a distance, learn their names, and then pretend to be humans. They’ll conveniently encounter the group they were following, and with the knowledge they gained by stalking their prey, they sow discord between the group by saying wild things.”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Yeoman swallowed. Snow wasn’t a good liar, but he didn’t have to be a good liar to trick Lucia. “Oh!” Lucia said. “I knew that.” She bobbed her head up and down. “That’s why they said you were plotting to kill me.” Her brow furrowed, and she pointed at the people on the ground. “Yo-yo, gather their cores! Uh, I don’t want to eat them though, so you can leave their corpses for the crows.”

Yeoman frowned as he approached the dying people. Snow hadn’t killed them. All he did was puncture their lungs. There must’ve been a lot of pent-up frustration in the bunnykin, and he wanted to relieve it by letting people suffer an excruciating death. Of course, Snow could’ve just been a monster who’d have done that regardless of whether or not he was frustrated.

The leader gasped while clutching his chest. He struggled to speak, wheezing instead of saying coherent words. Yeoman sighed and lifted his metal rod. He had cracked open plenty of wolves’ and panthers’ heads; he had also cracked open plenty of zombies’ heads, but it was his first time cracking open a human’s head. He didn’t want to do it, but he had to survive; Snow was watching him. Yeoman exhaled and swung his metal rod down as hard as he could, hoping to kill the man below him in one strike.

[Obtained Proof of Murder]

[Proof of Murder: 1]

It didn’t feel good. Yeoman took in a deep breath, standing over the dead man. The man wouldn’t have survived the two weeks with the type of chest injury Snow had given him. Yeoman didn’t have to be a doctor to understand that. However, even if he could logically convince himself into believing he was performing a mercy killing, the man’s death still weighed heavily on his conscience. He had killed people before with the berries, but that had been an accident. He had also accidentally killed someone who was pretending to be an infected, but he had done it from behind. He had never seen the light go out of someone’s eyes before, and that sight made him sick.

“What are you waiting for? Dig through the brain,” Snow said. “You’re looking for cores, remember?”

Yeoman turned his head to look at Snow, and the bunnykin smiled in return. Yeoman broke eye contact. He ignored the stares of the dying people around him as he dug through the man’s skull before shaking his head. His fingers were hot and sticky; it felt like he was going to lose his grip on his metal rod. He went to the next person and raised his arm. The man shut his eyes tight. Yeoman slammed the rod down. He ignored the red light that flashed from his wrist and went through the motions of searching for a beast core. Obviously, there wasn’t one.

A few people shook their heads. Some closed their eyes. Others weren’t even conscious. One of them had already died. Yeoman didn’t care. With Snow watching him, Yeoman had to search through all of their brains for an item he knew didn’t exist. When he was done, his body felt like it had run ten miles. He was exhausted, and there seemed to be a fog lingering in his head, preventing him from thinking clearly. He turned to leave the scene of carnage, but Snow stopped him by asking a question, “Why don’t you search their bodies? Trickster monkeys are known for collecting things to pretend to be actual humans.”

“Ah?” Lucia turned around. As usual, she was practicing her sword swings while Yeoman harvested the corpses. “There weren’t any cores? That’s bad luck. Snow! This is why you shouldn’t kill beasts! I bet if I killed them, they’d have cores.”

“That’s not how it—you know what, never mind,” Snow said and shook his head. “You’re right. You can kill the next trickster monkeys we see. Remember, no one knows your name because you aren’t famous. If someone says it, then you know they’re a monkey.”

Yeoman ignored the two beastkin. He rummaged through the corpses, searching for anything of use. After looking through everything they had, he ended up with four scavenger crow gene portions. He cleared his throat, and Lucia stopped swinging. She tilted her head at him. “I thought there weren’t any cores.”

Yeoman pointed at one of the dead men’s pockets. Then he pointed at the cores.

“Oh!” Lucia bobbed her head up and down. “Alright.” She took the cores and frowned. “Hmm. I have no clue which beast these are from, but it shouldn’t matter, right?” She squeezed her hand, and when she opened them again, there was nothing but a layer of dust. “Mm, I think they were scavenger crow cores; I didn’t really feel anything after absorbing them. Oh, you don’t have to give me the scavenger crow cores anymore. Just leave them in the bag.”

Yeoman nodded.

“We’re all done here?” Lucia asked while leaning to the side to see around Yeoman. “You guys haven’t eaten much today, right? You can have the panther!”

Snow made a face. “You always leave the panthers for us.”

“Duh. They taste the worse,” Lucia said and wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know why they’re so sour, but I bet Yo-yo doesn’t mind that, right? Ah, actually, can you still taste things?”

Yeoman held up his thumb and pointer fingers, squeezing them close, leaving a small gap of air between them.

“A little bit?” Lucia nodded. “Mm, a little isn’t too bad. I bet it really sucks to have your tongue cut out, doesn’t it?” She patted him on the back. “Well, just keep your chin up! You’ll be fine.”

Yeoman was a little glad he didn’t have a tongue. If he did, he wouldn’t have known how to respond. Instead, he just nodded. It wasn’t like lacking a tongue was important. The aliens brought people back to life—fixing a tongue shouldn’t be that hard. …He would get his tongue back, right? Yeoman prepared the panther. He wasn’t a butcher, but he didn’t have to be accurate. There was no way he and Snow were going to finish a panther by themselves. While he retrieved a few slabs of meat, he checked his fleshwatch.

[Proof of Murder: 8]

There had been nine people in that group, but he didn’t get credit for one of them. For some reason, Yeoman felt like he was going to get the most Proofs of Murder once again. Like last time, he hadn’t even tried for it, yet the proofs kept coming. Yeoman exhaled through his nose and squatted next to the cooking meat. While waiting, he couldn’t help but think about what to unlock next. Even if he died, he’d still have one thousand three hundred points. Should he obtain orangutan muscles as well? Perhaps extra arms would be helpful, but the thought of walking around with four arms just didn’t appeal to him. He turned his head, catching sight of Snow’s ears. He could get himself a pair of bunny ears as well, but he didn’t see a practical use for them.

Yeoman passed a piece of cooked panther meat to Snow. It didn’t take long for the two of them to finish eating. When they did, Lucia stopped swinging her sword. “Alright, onwards! I still have to finish absorbing panther and wolf cores, and after those, uh, Snow, what’s next?”

“Death vultures, thick-skinned crocodiles, and fat bears,” Snow said and wiped his hands on a leaf. “Fat bears are at the top of the ferocious beast food chain, and they can probably kill weak spirit beasts too. I think you could take one.”

Lucia smacked Snow’s head. “Stop suggesting things that’ll get me killed! We’ll go slow and steady.”

Yeoman’s brow furrowed. At this point in the plot, Lucia should’ve been madly slaughtering beasts to get stronger after being poisoned by Snow. Without that motivation, her progress was slow, especially since Durandal kept forcing her to train. Slow progress shouldn’t have been an issue, but Lucia didn’t know Lan and Gae Bulg were hunting her down. She was already on the losing end when she first encountered them. Would she be captured if she met them now? Yeoman shook his head. There wasn’t any way he could warn Lucia about the incoming danger. Even if he could speak, how was he going to explain where his knowledge came from? Besides, it wasn’t like anything would happen between him and Lan.