Cyrus found his second beast ten minutes later.
It was some kind of wolf, except it had six legs and crystals growing out of its spine. The system labeled it as a Crystal Wolf—still F-rank. It was drinking from a small stream when he spotted it.
The wolf's head came up before he could get close, its nose twitching as it caught his scent.
Shit.
Cyrus didn't have time to think. The wolf turned toward him and snarled, the crystals on its back starting to glow. He grabbed the first thing he could reach—a heavy rock half-buried in the dirt—and threw it.
Pure instinct. No plan.
The rock hit the wolf square in the face.
The wolf yelped and stumbled back, shaking its head. That split second of confusion was all Cyrus needed. He rushed in with his branch and swung hard at its ribs. The impact jarred his arms, but the wolf went down with a pained whine.
It tried to get back up, crystals flaring bright. Cyrus didn't give it the chance. Three more hits and it stopped moving.
[Crystal Wolf Defeated. Experience Gained: 50 XP]
[LOOT ACQUIRED]
Then the notifications started flooding in, and Cyrus had to blink several times to make sure he was reading them right.
[F-Rank Beast Core x52]
[Crystal Wolf Pelt x73]
[Beast Meat x134]
[Minor Mana Potion x31]
[Agility Enhancement Stone x15]
Items materialized in cascading flashes of light. Beast cores appeared in piles around the corpse. Pelts stacked themselves neatly. Potions clinked together as they hit the ground. Enhancement stones—small blue crystals used for training—scattered everywhere.
Fifty-two cores from one wolf. The trial only required five.
Cyrus stood there staring at the mountain of loot, then started laughing. It was absurd. Completely absurd. This shouldn't be possible.
He started grabbing what he could, shoving cores into his backpack and pockets. He tied the potions to his belt with strips of torn pelt. Enhancement stones went wherever he could fit them. But there was too much. Way too much. He filled every available space and still had dozens of cores left on the ground.
"This is a problem," he muttered, looking at the wealth he was forced to leave behind.
But what choice did he have? He kept the cores and potions, leaving most of the pelts and meat. Maybe he could come back for them later.
The third beast was another Stone Boar. It charged the moment it spotted him, and Cyrus barely managed to dodge, the tusks passing close enough to tear his shirt. He scrambled up a tree—something he never would've been able to do before—and dropped down on the boar's back when it circled underneath.
His branch cracked against its skull. The boar bucked and threw him off, but he'd done enough damage. It staggered, and he finished it with two more hits.
More loot. Another forty-something cores. More materials he couldn't carry.
The fourth was a giant insect with blade-like arms that nearly took his head off. Cyrus killed it by pure luck—he'd slipped on some wet leaves while dodging, the bug's strike passing over him, and he'd managed to stab up with a sharp rock and hit something vital.
Sixty-seven cores from that one.
By his tenth kill, Cyrus had filled his backpack, both pockets, and his shirt. He even had cores stuffed down his pants. Potions dangled from his belt like charms. He'd found a few technique manuals in the loot—basic stuff—and learned them immediately just to free up space.
[Stone Skin] – A defensive technique that hardened his flesh.
[Swift Step] – A footwork method for quick bursts of movement.
[Serpent Strike] – A precision attack pattern for close combat.
The knowledge slid into his head easily, settling into his muscle memory like he'd practiced for weeks. They were basic, the kind of things first-year candidates would be happy to have, but they were life-savers. [Stone Skin] had already saved him twice when he couldn't dodge in time.
But the loot problem was getting worse. He was walking away from hundreds of cores because he had nowhere to put them. It felt wrong to leave that much wealth scattered in the dirt.
Cyrus stood in a small clearing and stared at the pile of cores he was about to abandon. There had to be a solution. He'd heard of spatial storage—rings or bags that held more than they should—but those were for the rich.
Still, it wouldn't hurt to look around.
He pushed through some dense undergrowth and nearly fell into a ravine he hadn't seen. His foot caught on a root at the last second, and he windmilled backward, landing hard on his ass.
"Fuck," he gasped, heart pounding.
He sat there catching his breath when he noticed something. Where he'd grabbed the ground to stop his fall, his hand had closed around something metal.
Cyrus pulled it out of the dirt. A ring. Dark metal with strange symbols carved into the band.
[Spatial Ring (Low-Grade)]
[Internal Space: 10 cubic meters]
[Bind with blood to use]
Cyrus stared at it. Then at the ravine. Then back at the ring. He'd literally tripped and found exactly what he needed.
"Okay," he whispered. "That's ridiculous."
He bit his thumb and let a drop of blood fall on the metal. It flared with light, resizing itself to fit his finger. The moment he put it on, he felt the connection—an empty, infinite space waiting to be filled.
He willed his backpack into the ring. It vanished.
Cyrus spent the next twenty minutes running back to his previous kills. Cores by the hundreds went into the ring. Pelts, meat, potions—everything disappeared into the dimensional space until the forest looked normal again.
When he was done, he had three hundred and forty-seven beast cores stored away. He was Level 3 now, and his body felt incredible. No tremor. No pain.
He looked deeper into the forest and grinned.
Two hours later, Cyrus was reconsidering his life.
The creature in front of him was definitely not F-rank. It was the size of a truck, with black scales that absorbed light and red eyes that glowed in the shadows.
[Shadow Drake - E Rank]
A full tier above everything else. Every logical part of his brain screamed at him to run. But he was Level 5 now. He had three techniques. And his spatial ring was only half full.
The drake opened its mouth, and black flames built in its throat.
Cyrus threw himself to the side as fire scorched the earth, melting stone. The drake lunged, faster than anything that big had a right to be. Cyrus used [Swift Step] to blur out of the way, the heat singeing his hair.
He needed a real weapon. His branch had broken two kills ago.
The drake's tail whipped around. Cyrus ducked, noticing a loose, cracked spike on the tail's edge. He had a stupid idea. As the tail came back, Cyrus jumped and grabbed the spike. His weight and the momentum snapped it off. He hit the ground rolling, clutching a bone-shard as long as a sword.
The drake roared. Cyrus activated [Stone Skin] as the beast charged. Claws raked his chest, sending him flying into a tree, but the technique kept his guts inside.
He waited until the last possible second of the next charge, then blurred to the side. While the drake's head was turned, he ran up its side, using the scales as handholds. He made it to the neck, finding the gap where the armor didn't quite connect.
Cyrus raised the drake-spike and drove it down with everything he had.
The drake screamed. It reared up, and Cyrus was thrown to the ground, the wind knocked out of him. Through the haze, he watched the beast thrash. Black blood poured from its neck. Its movements grew weaker. Its legs buckled.
[Shadow Drake Defeated. Experience Gained: 500 XP]
[LEVEL UP! You are now Level 6]
Cyrus lay on his back, staring at the purple sky. Everything hurt. But he'd killed an E-rank. Solo.
[LOOT ACQUIRED]
[E-Rank Beast Core x89]
[Rare: Intermediate Healing Potion x12]
[Rare: Drake Fang Dagger x1]
[Rare: Flame Resistance Cloak (Damaged) x1]
He drank an Intermediate Potion, watching the gashes on his chest seal up. He stored the eighty-nine E-rank cores, dumped his low-grade pelts to make room for drake scales, and equipped his new gear. The dagger was made of a fang that radiated heat. The cloak was black scales sewn into fabric.
He had four hundred cores. He was Level 6. And he still had four hours left.
Cyrus looked deeper into the forest. He could go back now and be a legend, or he could see just how much more he could take.
He started walking.