William knew the only reason the inferno hadn't consumed the entire region was the interference of the forest itself—or rather, the powerful monsters lurking in the deeper zones.
High-level elemental beasts would have suppressed the flames to protect their territory, preventing the fire from expanding into a kingdom-wide catastrophe.
But for William, the fire had already served its purpose. As the oppressive heat finally ebbed, he stepped outside the shimmering perimeter of his protective shield.
The world outside was a tomb. An eerie, utter silence hung over the blackened landscape; the usual symphony of insects and night birds had been silenced by the ash. William was no lover of wanton destruction, but in this life, survival required a certain level of ruthlessness. He had no other path.
"Time to reap the loot," he muttered, his voice cracking from the dry, smoky air.
He began to wander the scorched slope, his eyes scanning for the mounds of charred remains. His left hand throbbed with a rhythmic, pulsing pain.
He had fashioned a makeshift bandage from a strip of his white porter's tunic, tying it tight to stem the flow, but he felt the loss of his former self acutely.
In his past life, a wound of this magnitude would have closed in seconds. Now, as a "mud phase" cultivator, he knew it would plague him for a week.
He had planned for this, however, ensuring the injury was on his left hand so his sword arm remained unencumbered.
He reached the first carcass—a mound of blackened, crusty carbon that looked more like a piece of burnt tree bark than a living creature.
The monkey hadn't even had time to scream before the flash-fire turned it into a charcoal shell. William didn't flinch at the sight. He raised his rusty sword and brought the hilt down hard against the carbonised skin.
The shell shattered. Beneath the soot, the brilliant, scarlet fur emerged, pristine and untouched. The fur of a Scarlet Monkey was legendary for its heat resistance; if it could be destroyed by a simple fire, it wouldn't be worth a single copper in the markets.
With surgical precision, William used the tip of his blade to slice along the traditional tanning lines. He peeled back the thick pelt and folded it into his bag, already calculating the logistics.
Three hundred monsters meant three hundred pelts. Even if he had to construct a makeshift sledge and drag the loot back with every ounce of his remaining strength, he would not leave a single scrap behind. In this world, resources were blood.
After securing the fur and snapping off the venomous tail needle, he turned to the main prize. He sliced open the chest cavity and reached into the cooling viscera to retrieve the monster core.
The marble-sized orb pulsed with a sickly light, swirled with threads of vibrant red and murky black. The red represented the creature's raw spirit power, while the black was the residual "malice" or spiritual essence typical of monster-kind.
The moment his fingers closed around the core, something impossible happened.
A strange, violent resonance vibrated through his arm, as if something buried in the deepest, forgotten cellar of his soul had suddenly woken up and started screaming.
"What's wrong?" he hissed, his brow furrowing in genuine alarm.
He had lived a thousand years in his previous life and had handled thousands of high-grade cores, yet he had never felt a sensation like this.
He stood there, a strange tableau in the middle of a graveyard: a notched sword in his right hand, a heavy bag on his back, and the pulsing monster core held in his left, bloodied palm.
Without warning, a surge of localised heat erupted in his chest. It felt as if his blood had turned into molten lead, boiling within his veins. The pressure was so intense that the bandage on his left hand couldn't hold.
The wound he had struggled to close burst open with a wet snap, and a fresh torrent of blood gushed out, saturating the monster core in a splash of vivid redness.
But the bleeding wasn't the end of the anomaly. It was only the trigger.
Sizzle! Sizzle! Crumble!
In the span of a few shallow breaths, the monster core began to emit a sharp, audible sizzling sound as if it had been dropped into acid. Before William's shocked eyes, the solid marble of power began to fracture and crush itself.
The salvaged core turned into a fine, crystalline dust, swirling and mixing with the fresh blood dripping from his palm. Then, a truly bizarre phenomenon occurred.
The blood, now saturated with the red powder, didn't fall to the earth. Instead, it was drawn back toward his hand as if pulled by an invisible, magnetic force.
The liquid metal sensation surged into his flesh; the jagged wound on his palm began to knit together with supernatural speed, while his internal temperature skyrocketed until he felt like he was standing in the heart of a furnace.
"This…" William gasped, his eyes widening as he examined his trembling hands. "My spirit power… it increased. Just like that? How?!!"
At this moment, he felt like a frog sitting at the bottom of a well, staring at a patch of sky he thought he understood.
All the vast, legendary knowledge he had accumulated in his past life as a master felt suddenly insufficient. This wasn't just a slight uptick in energy; he felt a tangible, physical boost in his muscle density and bone strength.
"I need to test it again," he muttered, a predatory glint entering his eyes.
He lunged toward the next monkey carcass. He didn't even bother with the scarlet fur this time; he used his sword to rip through the charred chest cavity in a frantic search for the core. He was desperate to experience that intoxicating surge of power once more.
In the spirit world, there were countless methods to refine monster cores into pills or elixirs, but they were slow, resource-heavy processes that yielded only a fraction of the core's true potential.
What he had just experienced was fundamentally different. It wasn't "refining"—it was total consumption. His body had literally devoured the core, pulling every scrap of spirit power into his meridians to strengthen both his soul and his physical vessel.
This time, he was ready. As he pulled out the second core, he closed his eyes, extending his spiritual senses to capture every microscopic detail of the process. As his blood touched the stone, the reaction repeated.
He felt the energy transfer, the way the power bypassed the usual slow-burn of cultivation and fused directly with his life force.
"This… isn't it like the legendary devouring ability of that damned fox?"
His mind began to connect the dots with terrifying speed. He felt a sickening, yet exhilarating, familiarity with the technique. In his past life, the Nine-Tailed Fox had been his sworn and greatest enemy.
He had spent decades studying the creature, fueled by his master's mantra: To defeat an enemy, you must first become their biographer.
The Nine-Tailed Fox's most feared trait—the reason it stood atop the monster hierarchy and was hunted by humans and beasts alike—was its ability to devour others and transmute their power into its own. It was a "cheat code" in the laws of the universe.
"Damn! I accidentally gained his ability… Damn!"
William was caught in a whirlwind of thrill and terror. If he truly had this ability under his control, his earlier, cautious plans were now obsolete. He didn't need to wait years for his meridians to widen through meditation; he could simply consume his way to godhood. His strength would soar in leaps and bounds.
However, a cold reality checked his excitement. Using the cores this way meant they were destroyed. The one hundred spirit crystals he could have earned per monkey would dwindle to a mere twenty—the price of the fur and the needle alone. He was essentially eating his fortune.