Chapter 38: Chapter 38 - A Sad Thing
It stumbled forward on its oversized paws, head low, ears flattened, its golden eyes wet. It pressed itself against her, burrowing into her fur, purring low and broken.
The mother stirred weakly, golden gaze dragging open as her paw twitched toward the cub. A deep, rattling growl vibrated from her chest, softened by a low purr. The sounds rose and fell in steady rhythm—communication I couldn’t parse, but unmistakably meant for her child.
The cub whined, pushing its face into her muzzle, as if refusing to understand.
Her eyes never left it. Not me. Not the battlefield. Only her cub.
Her breaths slowed, the sounds slowly dwindling to nothing, then stopping altogether. Her body sagged.
The cub nudged her once. Twice. Again, harder, as if trying to wake her. Whimpers cracked through the clearing, raw and fragile, tears streaking down its dark fur.
I looked away.
The sight pressed too close, an ache buried somewhere I couldn’t name. If found myself questioning yet again,
Why do I feel this way?
It was a question that often came up, that I never had the answer to.
My boots shifted in the churned dirt as I moved away from them, crossing the clearing over to the corpses of the other Shadestalkers.
Crisis-Class cores...each one ten times as potent as a Tremor-Class.
My vision panned over to the three corpses spread out around me.
Three of them...Seems I’ll be well into the Silver Rank before I even leave the Core.
And yet I couldn’t smile. Not with the sounds of a child mourning their parent just behind me.
I crouched beside one of the corpses, axe in hand.
The blade carved through their flesh, though it was noticeably more difficult than carving the flesh of tremor class beasts. Like the weapon had dulled.
No, it hasn’t dulled. Its just...not sharp enough. A silver rank weapon, and a gold rank beast...the toughness of the meat and hide are a mismatch.
One. Two. Three.
Each core was a pulsing, yet perfectly spherical crystal large enough to cover my palm entirely. Emptying some of the hyena meat from my inventory, I placed the cores there.
I stood over the third carcass, wiping the blood from my forearms, when movement pricked my senses.
The cub.
It padded closer, small body trembling, muzzle drenched red. Something gleamed in its jaws. When it dropped it at my feet, I froze.
Another core.
But different. Where the others pulsed crimson, this one swirled darker, veins of black threading through the glow. Energy throbbed heavier, denser.
I didn’t need to wonder. I knew.
The mother’s.
Is it so dark because of the way she channeled mana near the end..?
The cub nudged it forward, towards me, then sat back, golden eyes locked on mine.
Repayment.
I stared down at the core, breath caught between disbelief and understanding I didn’t want to accept.
My gaze rose to meet the cub’s again. It still stared at me with those golden eyes. They weren’t wide and curious anymore. They were narrowed. Focused. Determined. But there was also something else. Something I couldn’t put a finger on. Like hunger, but not for food.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
Because in its eyes, I saw myself.
I realized it was the first time I was seeing myself. I looked...different to what I had expected. Blonde hair, tan skin, sharp features, but slightly gaunt, and eyes that burned a bloody crimson. And it was when I saw those eyes that I realized just how similar they were to the Cub’s.
Not in color, but in state.
My own eyes held that very same hunger in them.
What am I hungry for?
The answer was a simple one:
Strength.
I looked at the cub for what it was. A child, alone, stranded in a place that could kill it in hours, but craving, above all else, strength.
We weren’t so different from each other.
I didn’t understand why my arm moved. It just did. Hand reaching forward slowly, and landing atop the cub’s head. Its warm fur trembled beneath my touch, ears twitching in response. A faint sound rumbled low in its chest as it leaned in, rubbing its face into my hand.
I froze, breath held, watching. Feeling. Being.
My hand rested there longer than I was willing to admit, fingers curling slightly against its soft, shifting mane of darkness.
The cub’s purr faded into silence. It pulled back, head tilting as though weighing me. Then it padded past, back to the still form of its mother. It nuzzled her once, twice, before collapsing against her side.
I stood there a long while, hand still tingling with the memory of fur beneath my palm. My axe hung loose in my other hand, blood dripping off the blade’s edge.
The core was silent again. Only the shallow wheeze of the cub’s breaths, the stink of blood and scorched fur, and the faint twitch of muscle in carcasses that hadn’t yet gone still.
Practicality returned first. Always. Three, now four Crisis-rank cores sat heavy in my hands.
I could reach the Silver Rank right now if I chose. But first...I needed to finish my training. I had to figure out what Mastery Points could do before I went and initiated a breakthrough.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
[Daily Quest #1]
Standard Axemanship Practice (2/5)
500 Downward Chops (500/500)
500 Horizontal Slashes (500/500)
500 Downward-Diagonal Slashes (391/500)
500 Upward-Diagonal Slashes (0/500)
500 Tail-End Stabs (0/500)
Mana-Channeled Axemanship Practice (0/5)
5 Downward Chop (0/5)
5 Horizontal Slash (0/5)
5 Downward-Diagonal Slash (0/5)
5 Upward-Diagonal Slash (0/5)
5 Tail-End Stab (0/5)
Resource Directive (1/1) (COMPLETE)
This directive is compulsory for the Host to be able to fulfill the Mana-Channeled Axemanship Practice Requirements. Since the Host lacks mana, it must be outsourced.
Acquire 1 Tremor-Class Beast Core. (1/1)
Hunting Objectives- Road To Platinum(COMPLETE)
The True Objective is an amount of EXP equivalent to 3 Tremor-Class cores every two days. This may be divided as the Host sees fit.
Custom Completion Achievement: 4 Crisis-Class Beast Cores (4/4)
Note: Extra Rewards will be distributed for surpassing the 1500EXP requirement by {38,5000EXP}.
Note: Re-calculation of "Hunting Objectives" is underway.
Time Remaining: 14 hours 32 minutes
Reward: 100 Mastery Points
Failure: Attribute Seal Intensified (–30%)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
There’s still a little less than half left for Standard Practice and the entirety of the Mana-Channeled Practice left to do...
And I still had 14 hours left.
Plenty.
Not to mention, I still had an Inventory full of Hyena meat, and now... I had three colossal crisis rank corpses to add to that. Even if I emptied my inventory of all the meat and packed it back up with Shadestalker meat, I still wouldn’t be able to fully strip through a single one of their corpses.
But that didn’t mean I was going to let Crisis-Class meat go to waste. I was going to finish off my training right here and now.
So I set to work, blade splitting hide from muscle, carving thick cuts of flesh from each fallen Shadestalker. The cub didn’t look up when I passed near, didn’t growl or bare its teeth. Just lay there against its mother.
By the time the meat was stacked high atop one of the other corpses, my forearms slick again, the weight of another decision pressed me.
The mother.
I turned. She still lay where she had fallen, black fur matted with blood, her body already beginning to stiffen. The cub hadn’t moved from her side, chest rising in shallow, uneven breaths as it pressed its face into hers.
Leaving her here---out in the open, blood soaking the dirt, the scent of the dead wafting out...felt...wrong. Wrong in a way I couldn’t measure or explain.
I found myself moving without reason for the second time that day. Dragging her body by the shoulders toward the tree line, into a hollow of splintered roots torn loose in the fight. The earth there was soft, damp with shadow and overturned soil. I pulled branches and leaves over her until the black fur vanished beneath the cover. Crude, clumsy. But enough to hide her from the air and the eyes of scavengers.
The cub only watched, silent, golden eyes tracking every movement until the last of her was gone from sight.
I stood there for a long breath, axe heavy in my hand, unsure why I’d done it at all.
Silence lingered as the cub padded closer to the mound and lay down beside it.
Death...is a sad thing.
I left it there, turning back to the stacked meat.
The quest still waited.