The gilded bell at the top of the gate had finally rung signaling the end of the monster break with no monsters breaking through the line, it was a rather close call though as some of the faster tier 5 monsters almost made it through.

They would have if it wasn't for the plethora of summoners between them and the gate, and each fought back and stalled it until it was grouped up on by stronger summons that managed to take them down after a few summoners being killed by acting as a wall to prevent the monsters from going through.

The moment the break ended was visible as rows and rows of humans flopped to the ground to rest, they had long ago run out of energy and were only keeping upright through willpower. The dirt had never felt better, even if it was stained with the blood of the fallen and the beasts they fought.

My clothes were matted with blood, guts, and dirt and were in all sorts of disarray, some of my throwing knives were lost during the fight and remain in some of the bodies within the giant field of corpses. I could care less about them, they were only good for distraction at this point, but I replaced the lost ones with the last of my knives in storage.

After having recovered a bit, I summon out Emett and have him follow the example of other summoners. They are organizing the bodies in accordance to either monster or summoner, the valuable bodies tier 3 and up are stored or piled up for the association to collect. The human bodies were a more somber matter as most were ravaged and in pieces from all sorts of brutal attacks from vicious monsters.

Alexis was still resting from the exhausting ordeal, it seemed she wasn't as experienced with long periods of fighting. She had already returned Holly as soon as the bell had rung and any remaining monsters ran away as their desire to maul humanity was suddenly not nearly as prevalent.

I worked alongside Emett and began sorting through the piles of flesh, storing some of the more valuable ones left lying around in my little remaining space. With the amount of bodies in my storage, I had about 3 cubic meters left to store any worthwhile bodies to sell later on.

The prices would be much lower than normal due to the sudden influx of bodies on the market, but I would still make quite a bot of money today. I would keep the bodies until the market regulated again after a few days, but I can make more money by selling them and freeing up space for more monster bodies in the future.

Mira would be especially happy that I had gone above and beyond her request for powerful poison with the amount remaining in the stinger of the giant manticore. I would allow her to extract the venom, but I would keep the hard carapace for some sort of equipment when I had the money to commission a tier 5 equipment. I would be keeping half the venom to apply to my weapons when in a pinch.

Even when the material for the project is provided, it is still extremely expensive, a few thousand credits at least. This could be an invaluable piece later on with the defensive properties of such a sturdy chitinous limb, or maybe a spear with the stinger being the tip combined with another sturdy material for the staff section.

We cleared up our section fairly quickly and began to branch into other sections being worked by my fellow summoners. They nodded to me in appreciation for my efforts but remained silent in respect for the dead who had sacrificed themselves for our continued existence.

I had long ago given up worrying about keeping clean or touching questionable bits of I don't know, my hands were colored in all sorts of blood and bile amongst other things and I imagine they didn't smell much better than they looked.

As time passed, more and more people got up and worked together to take care of the destroyed field full of masses of dead. The groups of bodies pasted together to act as barriers were picked up whole by larger summons and placed in a separate pile to untangle the bodies and put them in their appropriate place.

The weaker monsters were placed in a huge pile meant to be shipped off to be processed into food and future rations for the poor to eat a lot cheaply. It wasn't a perfect system, but realistically it took care of two problems at once and everyone was happier for it. We couldn't afford to not be practical in such a dangerous period of our lives, as long as it wasn't human, most people would eat it.

About two hours later most of the bodies had been sorted and taken care of, and everyone was beginning to head back to their houses to sleep or a restaurant to eat something after the exhausting day.

Alexis and I stayed together enough to exchange info to meet up sometime soon to discuss our partnership, I had a feeling we would be seeing each other quite a bit. There wasn't much discussion between us, but I feel like I already knew her better than if we had spent a year talking to each other, being in life-threatening situations will do that to somebody.

After we parted ways, I was headed home immediately and didn't forget to message Mira that I was safe and would see her soon. I tiredly walked over to our larger apartment in the middle sector, which luckily didn't have any damage to it since no monsters escaped. People were piling in from the bunkers, and aside from being a little sweaty and tired they seemed fine for the most part.

An occasional person would be weeping at the loss of a loved one fighting during the break, but it didn't seem to last long as the risk of death came with a territory. One more name added to the list of deceased hardly made a difference to the mountain of bodies already killed during this era.

We couldn't afford to mourn for long, there was lots to do and little time to dally around with the current situation to deal with. There would be lots of production during the coming days from all of the monster bodies, and plenty of funerals would be held to commemorate the one who fell in the line of duty.

I just thought to myself that I was lucky I wasn't added to the list, I couldn't begin to imagine Mira's reaction to the news, but I couldn't give up on this dangerous path I had already ventured on.

To ensure our survival, one of us had to become stronger as we could only truly rely on ourselves to survive during dangerous moments where everyone is doing their best just to stay alive, they would be too occupied with their own imminent danger to be able to try and save others.

The shower felt heavenly, and I stored my armor in the small portion left within my storage space. It was cake with mud and had red splattered in various places all over, and would be difficult to get out any time soon.

The warm water felt heavenly and you could see the water flowing off of my body turn this reddish-brown color as all of the nastiness was washed from me. I scrubbed vigorously with my nails to get anything caked on free of my body. My hair was especially difficult to clean, but with about half a bottle of shampoo and three separate washes, it was free from any debris or gunk.

When done cleaning myself, I set about to clean all of my gear used today. I would maintain them properly tomorrow, but for now, I would wash off the bloodstains and other things marring their surface.

My armor was, of course, the first thing to be washed off, and upon inspection, I saw no major damage to it, it seems that it held up quite well under the few attacks that I endured. My sword was likewise freed from blood and aside from a few small nicks from regular use, it was completely fine.

Summons were the next to be washed off, with Emett not really requiring a wash considering he was made from mud and rock, and Jotun being a bit too big to fit in my shower. His scales were fairly clean with their slippery properties making it harder to stain the surface, so it wouldn't be a big deal. It would get addressed the next time we went into the wilderness and found a pool to swim in.

Jareth was capable of cleaning himself with a bit of instruction and seemed to really enjoy the ralaxing spray of warm water and scented soaps. Brutus was a different story however, and I had to wash him myself while enduring his complaining thoughts through our bonds. A soon as I was done washing the last bit of soapy fur, Brutus immediately began shaking like a dog and threw water everywhere, including on myself who was now extremely wet.

With that done and suitable tier 3 cores that were gained from today's event being fed to my summons, my job was finally done caring for them. I threw on some clean and comfortable civilian clothes and walked into the dining room to see Mira there.

She couldn't seem to restrain herself any longer as she threw herself at me and mumbled into my chest, "I'm glad you're safe Thomas, now you need to tell me all about the monster break, I need to know everything that you did."

I had no choice but to tell her just about everything that went on while covering up some of the more dangerous moments as minor inconveniences rather than life-threatening moments. My reason for "lying" to her was two-fold, not only did I want to seem strong in Mira's eyes, but having her worry over my safety even more, would only make her feel worse.

I needed to gain more summons quickly to plug up some of my weaknesses in my line-up and would be looking out for any of my trips into the monster plane. I would also need to directly up my survival chances by choosing lower tier monsters so that I could get them to evolve more.

It would be hard to discern which monsters had potential to get all the way to tier 5, and would be even more difficult to choose monsters that wouldn't be able to get there, but served other important purposes making them worthy of bonding with.

Speaking of new summons, I brought out jotun in our living room and she couldn't seem to help herself as my dragon-kin became the newest target of her affection and crushing hugs. It was practically tradition to let Mira fawn over my newest summon until I eventually took mercy on them and unsummoned them at their behest. They tolerated her because they knew she was important to me, but they weren't enthusiastic at getting played around with someone other than me.

I saved the best part for last and seemed to have truly shocked her as I mentioned the way I had managed to procure the manticore stinger, and then brought it out from my storage. She squealed in delight over something that most people would either be grossed out by or not care about aside from its' obvious value.

"Tommy, you've got to let me have some of the venom, it's perfect for the potion I'm currently working on making." - Mira

"You can have half the venom as long as I get a vial or two of whatever potion you're making from it." - Me

With our mutual ascent to the arrangements for the stinger, I had Mira bring out some strong empty glass vials, and milked the stinger until 6 small vials had been filled with the toxic green looking substance. I handed half to Mira, and we both stuck them in our storage for later use, and so the vials wouldn't break and accidentally poison us.

We spent the rest of the night indoors as Mira cooked and we just stayed together enjoying each other's company while eating. It wasn't till around 10 that we had to break up our lovely moment as Mira began to yawn and I felt the urge to do so as well. I wished her goodnight and went off to my own room.

I stripped to my underwear and flopped into bed. I couldn't help but feel like I needed to do something before I slept. The feeling continued for another few minutes before I realized that I had yet to solidly arranged to meet up with Alexis.

I brought my arm out to use my watch and sent Alexis a message telling her to meet up with me for lunch at 11. I also informed her that we would go to the core exchange, to not only sell off the monster cores that we earned today but to redeem our merit points from today at the lotteries available within the same store.

With that sent I began to drift off, I didn't even wait for a response and set my alarm for the appropriate time. I just assumed we would go to the association to sell off bodies and then figure out what to do after when we actually met up. No point in planning too far ahead tomorrow.

With that thought, I finally let myself fall asleep and let both my mind and body rest from the stressful day today.