SB: Chapter 271 – The Beastkin Are Poor (Patreon)

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The following morning, I checked the spatial pouch. Lots of food and other basic supplies. Any meat in the spatial pouch I pulled out and tossed to the side. I didn’t want that trash since I didn’t trust the beastkin regarding meat.

Basic clothing, tents, and other goods that I already had got tossed out. Then there were several cloth pouches filled with Mana cores. I counted them out and then put them in my spatial pouch. There were 6,282 red Mana cores, 23,482 orange Mana cores, 37 yellow Mana cores, and 1 green Mana core.

Altogether, they were worth about 1.23 platinum at a minimum. I would probably get around 1.5 platinum, since I wasn’t about to grade the size of each individual core right now.

No natural treasures or weapons, which was incredibly frustrating. Legend Iron Claws of the Fox Clan was broke by the standards of the Eldarin continent for a legend. The only thing of value besides the Mana cores was a single book.

I opened it up and it was written in Eldarin. I let out a sigh of relief, since it was a legacy skill book, that also doubled as a sort of a diary describing training methods interspersed with her feelings. Even in writing a diary, the beastkin were annoying, no need for all the extra nonsense. A skill book should be about the skills, a historical account should focus on history.

The legacy was for the Tier 4 skill Fire Impact. It wasn’t even a Tier 5 skill. The more I learned, the more I wanted to cry. It wasn’t even an entire combat method. Just one Tier 4 skill the legend had centered her entire combat ability around. In comparison I had over 10 Tier 4 skills and a Tier 5 skill.

While I didn’t know about this skill myself, the supporting skills were nothing special. I wanted to cry at this. My sword was more powerful than a legendary beastkin. Well not really, but it felt like it. Just a lot of stats and not enough skills to back it up.

The College would probably pay some gold for the book due to its provenance. But its actual value was complete and utter trash compared to more modern spell skills and the refined teaching methods of the College. It was at best a novelty that would be archived away.

The spatial pouch had a value of around 10 platinum, which made it the most valuable thing I had gained from fighting the legend. I also didn’t hold out hope for alchemical skill extraction either, since her skill foundation was so poor.

Even worse was that my chest armor had a big burnt hole in the center of it. I was planning to replace my armor, but I had hoped to sell this set or reuse it. Now I would be lucky to get half of what I wanted out of it due to the extreme damage left behind.

She should have taken the offer of a truce and gone off on her own instead of fighting me to the death. I didn’t know her background and I probably never would. I also didn’t care. The beastkin started this fight with me, so they had to be willing to accept the consequences.

It was also a shame about that old beastkin and his grandson, but if I hadn’t killed them, I would have been surrounded and killed. If the legend’s team had been with her, I would have had no chance either.

The fact she was a weaker legend was probably why she was sent out in pursuit. That would make sense, since stronger individuals would delegate. It wasn’t like I had killed a lot of beastkin intentionally and run away.

Even just an hour slower, and I would be dead. Ozy had also helped keep Boris’ stamina up. It had still been a huge rush to put as much distance as possible between us and the beastkin. The fact they hadn’t caught up sooner was the most impressive part. We had enough of a head start and they probably didn’t have potions or the spell skills necessary to offset stamina consumption, just higher stats.

It might seem a bit excessive to rethink everything through after I had already escaped, but it was necessary to consider serious fights like this from every angle and if I had missed something important. This fight and confrontation was a rush, so I was doing it after everything had ended.

My experience in running from demons and beastkin in the past helped me get a better idea of how fast beastkin could be. Now this experience would give me a better idea about the stat difference the next time I fought a legend.

Realistically the best option would be for a mutual strike, taking a blow to deliver a blow to their soul. But if I made that too obvious, then the legend wouldn’t commit. Combat was a tricky thing, since each battle with a thinking opponent was truly unique.

Now we just needed to descend as deep as possible, likely the 14th or 15th layer, and then I would lock onto the dungeon exit near the College with Compass Of Desire. Then it would just be a race through the lower layers of the dungeon until we got there.

I wasn’t coming back up midway like the previous time if I could help it and I was picking a specific exit point, which might or might not work. I didn’t want to cross the continent again. The last time had been too harrowing with another legend chasing me then.

I couldn’t wait until I was the one doing the chasing and others had to run away. It would be a change of pace and probably really annoying, but at least I would be the chaser and not the chased.

Then I would have to deal with all the annoying things I did to others chasing me. Chasing in either direction was not my idea of a good time. I just pissed off too many people I couldn’t beat in a straight up fight for one reason or another.

“Are we going back?” Boris asked, and I looked at him in surprise.

“Yes. We are headed back to the College through the dungeon. Tired?” I asked.

“Just wondering how much longer you needed me. Almost at the two year mark,” he said.

“Getting close to a year and a half, which gives us around 8 months to get back to the College. We made good time getting back to the dungeon. Any complaints or problems?” I asked him.

“No. The food is good. Thank you,” he said and that was it. A big talker that one. Well I guess I shouldn’t complain, since he had put up with everything so far. Better than someone screaming in my ear or panicking and making the situation worse.

Well Boris was eating an insane amount. But I had made him do a lot of work, carrying that stupidly heavy and expensive sword case. If he had other skills like Cooking it would be perfect or Monster Processing, which would be better than perfect. Collecting monster cores was tedious and messy.

But finding someone as perfect as Boris would be difficult. The truly good porters were a lot more expensive to hire. If Boris had a useful support skill, his cost could easily be 3 to 5 gold per day. A porter was meant to be part of a much larger team.

I also needed to improve my Empowered Monster Processing skill. But that would require going deeper into the dungeon for greater improvements. It was already in Tier 3. If I hired a professional porter for 10 years at 5 gold per day, that would run about 182.5 platinum.

That was a bit too much. Each orange Mana core was worth 50 to 100 copper. If I increased my speed to 2,000 monsters per day, that would only be 10 gold a day at a price of 50 copper. Half the money I earned would be taken by a porter with useful support skills.

But my killing speed could greatly pick up and they could prepare food in the evenings, allowing me to work on other skills. While I had Focused Cooking Skills in Tier 2, it wasn’t a skill I was heavily focusing on. It was something I did for fun and since I wanted decent and warm meals in the dungeon.

But the main thing would be monster processing, since that was a tedious and time consuming job. If I could hire someone to process the cores while I cleared the next chamber, it would be a lot more efficient.

And I couldn’t help but give a wry smile at this thought. Since it was exactly how adventurers died in the dungeon after surviving the earlier parts and getting enough levels. They pushed for more and more money and eventually pushed too far when running into a situation they weren’t able to handle.

But it was remarkably boring with only Boris as company. He wasn’t one for casual conversation. I would have loved to brag about how I defeated the super monster or questions about my new sword to brag just a tiny bit, but zero interest from him.

His stoicism and his lack of curiosity were quite impressive. He really did his job perfectly and without complaint. At least I had repaid his trust by ensuring he didn’t come to harm. The only time he had taken any damage from a monster had been during that escape from the demon on a sled and going past that super ice monster.

He also hadn’t shown any initiative to help or participate in combat in the slightest, which was fine. Now I almost wanted another quest to get Seraphim Skill Tempering. Level up some really annoying skills.

I had no idea how that would be done, besides extracting knowledge directly from Mana, similar to alchemy. But that carried a lot of risks. Alchemical skill extraction made sure it was the knowledge to initially gain the skill and as little foreign Mana as possible. For a single skill to replicate that would be insanely complex.

I still hadn’t come up with a way for Mana Reading to work. I saturated history books with Mana while reading them, trying to use the Mana to discern the words. But Mana gave very little feedback once outside the body.

Perhaps I needed a skill like Bounded Mana Field first. But then I would just be going down a long path of support skills, which was what I didn’t want. I had enough skills to maximize, I didn’t need more just to read books faster.

The College would probably pay an insane amount for such a skill though and had likely done a lot of research. I would have to check once I got back. After centuries I was sure someone had a similar idea and tried to make it work. It would be interesting to see how far I got compared to the professionals at the College and if I managed any kind of insight or breakthrough.

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