I woke up many hours later and checked on the air hole outside our side tunnel. I could make out the bright blue sky above us with no sign or noises from the Fyrbees. I shook Luin awake, and we headed up to the surface with a couple of my tunnels. Making sure the bees weren’t anywhere in the distance we began heading to the west.

It took almost the entire morning to skirt the massive forest to our left before we crested a large hill and stopped to take in the stunning view. As far as I could see, Plains spread out in all directions in front of us. I created a Viewing Screen and scanned the distance slowly. I could make out a few herds of what I believed were the Mongacuda in the distance along a winding river that cut through the plains from the north to the south.

The solo males were scattered throughout the fields and seemed to have their territories, as no two males were anywhere near one another. I picked the closest one out, and we began heading toward its location.

Vosk didn’t lie about them being easy to take down. What he forgot to mention was the damn size of the creatures. They were easily five meters tall with their massive antlers. The creature was almost comically slow. It had a head that closely resembled a moose with jaws like a sleek, predatory fish. The antlers were easily three meters wide and a meter tall at some points. Each antler was in the shape of a winding branch coming off its head, and there were five such antlers on this creature. If the beast swung them around, it would impale and kill almost anything.

The Mongacuda’s body was fat like a rodent or a beaver and had long muscular legs to hold its bulk up. Its tail was long and about a meter wide, almost like an actual beaver. I was curious what it had been used for. Two of my Ice Lances took it down as it slowly charged us.

I was a bit upset when it fell dead. It turned into blue sand and only dropped an Azure Core. No leather or antlers. Was there a way to turn it off? I pulled up my Full Status and focused on the ‘+’ next to the Auto Loot Trait.

[ Auto Loot ]

Allows the user to automatically harvest carried items, cores, and crafting ingredients used by the user’s vocational skills. Has a slight chance to drop armor, weapons, and accessories.

Off / { On }

So the Trait would work for what I wanted it to do. The catch is I would need to learn the skills first. I was glad to see I could turn the Trait off but wasn’t looking forward to harvesting everything manually. Maybe I’ll harvest four or five of them. That would give me more leather than I could use in a year to make bags.

I mentally turned off the Trait, and we began to head towards the next Mongacuda in the distance.

When the next bull died, it didn’t shatter into the glowing sand. It just lay, its glassy eyes staring at me where it fell over. I shuddered a bit but I got to work. It took me almost an hour to remove the horns, hide, and the organs finishing up by butchering the meat. I discarded all of the organs, not wanting them, and left the bones as well.

I found the Rank D Azure Core near the heart during the process. I cleaned it up and stored it with the rest. We spent the rest of the evening finding, killing, and harvesting each male Mongacuda we came across. I was amazed at how easily the massive hides and antlers went into the backpack every time.

After the sixth kill, the sun in the sky started to head towards the horizon. I debated with myself if we should head back or stay another day. I knew I wasn’t anywhere close to my goal. Sure, I had enough hide to make plenty of bags. But, I had nowhere near enough extras to sell to buy my outfitting tools or the forty-five gold I needed to buy the pass into the library.

“How about some dinner, Luin? Let's camp out here. I’m going to need a whole lot more cores.”

“Sounds good,” she said, becoming excited at the prospect of shoveling her face again.

I raised a large stone pillar and then hollowed out the center. We laid out beds inside, and I removed a few of the still-hot meat on sticks. Luin happily received her share as she smacked her lips in anticipation. I sat down at the entrance to our stone shelter and watched the sun continue to sink into the horizon.

The oily meat tasted terrific, and soon my three sticks were clean. I thought about the large amount of Mongacuda meat in my bag, but looking around the nearest trees were a good walk away. No fire, so no cooking. I would have to remember to put some wood into my bag next time for campfires.

After Luin’s meal, she went into the stone shelter and crawled into her bag. Moments later, I could barely hear her slow snoring. I wish I could just pass out that quick. I looked around and couldn’t see any creatures in the waning light. With nothing else to do, I did some meditating.

I began going through my memories from the last few days when a memory I knew I hadn’t lived through forced its way to the front of my mind. I was running through streets I didn’t recognize towards some unforeseen location. Shouts and screams rang out all around me and were silenced when a colossal explosion ahead of me made my ears ring. I felt dread and the familiar feeling of the Speed Aura kicking into gear.

All of a sudden, I was picking myself up off of the street. I felt a scream tear from my throat as my destination came into view. The entire building was in ruins and collapsed in on itself. I heard a tiny scream for help near the edge of the rubble across from the destroyed building.

A small boy was impaled on some wood and was crying for me to save his sister. I turned around but couldn’t find anyone who could be his sister. I turned back to the male, and I could see the blood pooling beneath him. The kid meant something to me. I didn’t know why though. I did the only thing I could think of and slit my wrist and held it out to him while asking if he wished to live.

I awoke to Luin slapping my face, her clawed hands scratching my cheek. I put my hand up to my face but didn’t feel the blood. I felt tears falling from my eyes. Why had I been crying? Luin was looking at me with concern.

“What’s wrong, Luin?”

“You tell Luin! You were screaming and yelling. Luin couldn’t wake you.”

“I guess I was having a bad dream or something. I’m sorry if I scared you. You can go back to bed.”

She gave me a final look before heading back inside to her sleeping roll. I wiped my eyes clean and stared out into the twilight. One of the planets was visible in the night sky, and I watched it slowly cross the sky for a bit. I tried as hard as I could to remember what kind of dream I had but couldn’t. I went inside the stone shelter and raised the door, so only a slit allowed fresh air in, then went to sleep.

The following day after some cold water and jerky, we began to hunt again. I turned back on my Auto Loot Trait and made short work of the beasts as we came across them. We had come across a herd of them, but I didn’t want to take any chances. There were easily five or six of the massive females guarding the dozens of smaller calves.

Around noon, I had around twenty of the Azure Cores. The time it took between finding them began to grow. Hoping that twenty blue cores were enough, we began to walk back towards Mythtide. We would hunt what we came across on the way back. Maybe I could give the Fyrbees another try.

Hours later, we drew near where I had tried to hunt the bees the day before. I made Luin a shelter much further away behind a small hill and told her I’d be back shortly. Instead of trying to lure them into a group and take them all out at once, I would try hit and run tactics. I put my Speed Aura to half and began to run into the forest.

Less than a minute later, I took out a solo bee and scooped up the green gem, and then continued to run. Looking at my magic map, I could see I was closing in on the hive from the day before. As it came into view, I launched two blue Fireballs at the bottom of the hive with a slight delay on the second one.

The first one was intercepted again, exploding before going near the hive. But the second one struck home, and I watched as the lower portion exploded spectacularly. The buzz became defining as Fyrbees began to crawl out of the hive as the fire consumed the outside of the hive.

I launched two more, a drone committing suicide to stop it from reaching the nest, but the second struck home, ripping the side of the hive off and sending flaming pieces of the bees in all directions. The hum of the bees was deafening now, and just as I launched another Fireball, I was struck in the shoulder by something before I felt my neck and shoulder being licked by fire.

I screamed and snapped my Ice Armor over myself, snuffing out the fire. I wish I could feel the cold from the armor because my neck and shoulder had been burnt pretty bad. I turned around and cut down the bee who had come up from behind me with an Ice Lance.

I looked around and then up. The bees who had survived seemed to be trying to snuff the hive’s flames out. I tossed Fireball after Fireball up at the hive. It came crashing down after the third explosion. Almost all of the bees had been caught up in those last explosions.

As I slowly walked towards the hive, I looked around at the almost hundred bodies of the bees still lying there on the ground. I looked at the Auto Loot Trait quickly and saw it was on So why hadn’t the bees turned into the misty sand yet?

The answer came to me in the form of a two-meter-long fucking bee out of a nightmare. What I assumed was the queen ripped herself out of a massive portion of the nest that was still intact at the base of the tree. She was bright red, with bands of black wrapping around her body. I wasn’t worried about the large stinger on her bum, no. On her face were six massive pincher jaws that looked like they could cleave a tree in two if she bit into it.

Her many-faceted eyes settled on me, and she rocketed up into the sky with her massive transparent crystal wings. She paused her ascent a moment before diving down towards me. I slammed the Speed Aura to the max and took off towards the road.

I looked back and say that the queen was slowly gaining on me. I conjured blue Fireballs tossing them over my shoulder like an idiot hoping that it would slow her down. I heard the explosions moments later with the shockwaves and flames from them licking my unarmored ass. I started to wish that I had finished my Ice Armor.

I looked back to see the queen still chasing me with not a lick of damage on her. I conjured a Fireball and jumped up and spun, launching it directly at her. She zipped out of its path instantly. I landed and then continued to sprint away from her as fast as I could.

The buzzing sound of her wings sounded much closer as I exited the forest’s edge and into the green field. The fight from a couple of days ago flashed in my mind giving me an idea., I quickly turned while snapping the construct into my mind and forced it around the queen.

The queen seemed to sense the magic around her but couldn’t figure out how to dodge as a massive orb of ice surrounded her. Try as she might, flapping her wings madly, gravity took over, and she slammed into the ceiling of the ice orb before it hit the ground and began rolling. The queen was tossed around like a rag doll. I could see a couple of her wings and legs had been broken as the large globe of ice came to a stop.

The queen began to spit out the dark red gel inside the orb towards me. The gel instantly ignited and set the insides on fire. I wasn’t sure if Fyrbees needed oxygen to survive and found out a minute later as the fire inside the ice globe was snuffed out. The queen seemed to have trouble standing before she twitched and fell to the bottom of the globe, where she burst into blue sand. The Azure Core bounced on the side of the globe and slid down before spinning in a few circles before coming to a stop.

I willed the globe to vanish and cursed as the gel that coated the insides fell to the ground and reignited in the air. When the fire went out, I collected the queen’s core and ran back towards the broken and dead hive to collect my prizes.