I’m a murderer. Well, I already was a murderer when I killed Bryant and his guards, but now I’m even more of a murderer. Stupid path of slaughter. I’ll just pretend those silhouettes were a pack of suspiciously human-looking species of monkey! That’s what they were. Totally. They weren’t humans. Just monkeys. Maybe spirit beasts. Mhm.

Anyways! On the bright side, I managed to finally gain complete control of my body! It only took 176 tries on my own. Well, I say it only took 176 tries, but that’s when I stopped counting. My bones of focus wore off even though I had over 700 hours of them, and I’m not quite sure how many—oh, look, an acorn! …I should consume another focus bone. My body used bones of strength quite naturally during the path, but it didn’t use any bones of focus.

That was a horrible experience. I never want to do that again, but I suspect I’ll have to. Durandal did say that I had to follow the path to become stronger, and to be fair, I did get stronger after this path ended. I know what steps to take for the most efficient actions, but I still don’t like fighting so dangerously. My ass don’t defend. I still firmly believe getting hurt is the worst thing you can do in a fight! Defense and evasion are definitely the most important aspects to winning.

Okay, now that I consumed a focus bone, it’s time to dismember the corpses that I obtained during those hundreds of fights. Maybe. My body stopped picking them up and only took out the cores after a while. Someone’s going to have a field day when they find dozens of ferocious beasts’ bodies lying around. …All those penises I could’ve sold. The pelts are organs are valuable too! Do you know how many years my family could’ve lived off of with five gold!? …Neither do I because I was too young to understand, but still. It’s a lot.

Somewhere along the way, I ended up out of the two-headed dog, one-eyed snake, eight-legged horned monkey, and acid-spitting bird territory by following the path. Recently, I’ve been killing massive beasts. Massive, massive beasts. Like I’ve killed more moonlight wolves, but they were the size of fat bears. Shadow panthers are also here again, but they’re all patterned with green stripes and brown splotches. But there’s no scavenger crows, or I haven’t heard them because I can’t hear sounds while I’m on the path of slaughter. So, I think it’s safe to say I advanced to an area comprised of spirit beasts. Which means their cores are that much more valuable!

I consumed a moonlight wolf core and took out one of the two-headed dog corpses. Haste! It’s time to dismantle everything and clear some space in my interspacial ring. I feel like a hoarder. Squirrels are normally hoarders, but that doesn’t mean I have to fall into the stereotype! Dismantle! Dismantle! Dismantle! Dismantle! Dis… huh? It didn’t work? I thought it was supposed to recharge from beast blood. …Was I scammed?

Barbeque! Clean! Mini-map! Barrier! Why isn’t anything working!? Stupid fraudulent sellers! I’ll destroy that town, just you wait! But first, I’ll send a hateful message to Liana for selling me broken goods and then dismantle all of this crap by hand. So much blood and gore and intestines and gross smells. Oh wells. And I can’t even have a feast since barbeque isn’t working. My life is tragic.

Take out the core, carve some runes, seat aside the hide and pelts. Throw the meat in a pile to act as bait for more beasts and pray nothing too dangerous comes out to kill me. I wonder how normal mercenaries do this work. It can’t be that all of them have interspacial rings that let them carry things around, right? That thing costs 10,000 gold after all. You could buy a mansion in the capital for that much! Maybe they just don’t hunt as many as I do in one go. Yeah, that must be it.

Ding!

Oh, Liana responded? Let’s see, how do I, oh, there we go. Her hand writing’s super neat!

Dear Lucia Fluffytail,

I’ve sent out people to apprehend the salesmen of the magical tools, but if they really were scammers, then the possibility of finding them will be low. But, with all due respect, I don’t think anyone would sell a fake ring for a single gold. Perhaps it’s been a while since you’ve used magical tools and forgot to tell your apprentice the rules? I’ve sent you them, so you can easily copy and send them to your apprentice.

1. Every tool can only be used a certain number of times per day.

2. Breaking rule 1 in any way will decrease the durability of the item: this includes sending your own mana into it, replenishing it with beast cores.

3. All magical tools share the same mana around you. If multiple tools are used in the same vicinity, the mana will be used up. This is also why beast cores are necessary for magical warfare.

4. If the array inside of the tool is tampered with, the tool may explode. Be wary.

Sincerely,

Liana Noctis

Hm. Maybe I don’t have to destroy wilderness town. At least the rules are helpful; why didn’t Snow tell me about them? And it seems like Liana still thinks I’m a fourth circle magician. I’m never going to correct that misunderstanding. Anyways, there’s only like four dozen more beasts to dismember…

Three dozen…

Two dozen…

One dozen…

Half a… Oh god. It’s the ferocious monkeys that suspiciously look like humans. Do I…, do I dismantle them too? They’re a rare breed of spirit beasts, right…? I’ve dismantled all the beasts so far, it would be waste to dispose of these. After all, they aren’t human. Yeah. If I don’t dismantle them, then that’s admitting they were humans and not beasts. I’m not a murderer. They’re already half torn apart anyway. You can do this, Lucia! Sing a song—sing a happy song. A nice cheerful tune to distract yourself as you check their brains for beast cores.

“Food is great. Food is tasty.

I like my bread, nice and pasty.

Porridge is bland. Peppers are sweet.

But my favorite food is a cut of meat!”

All done! And there were no beast cores, but that’s perfectly normal! Not all spirit beasts have beast cores! These ferocious monkeys were not humans, not humans at all!

“Oh my god.”

Eh!? Who!? Someone snuck up on me? I must’ve been too distracted by the dismantling process. It’s a shirtless human and a wolf-headed man…? He looks a little familiar….