Deep brown eyes stared at her with obvious malevolence. It was a monster that weighed over a thousand pounds, with a particularly aggressive mean streak. These rank three iron tusked boars always ran solo, except for in the mating season, and even a stone bear would have trouble killing it.

Aila had heard about wild boars while in her hospital bed. She often listened to the television, and on one occasion, there was a show about wild pigs and boars. She knew these big buggers were vicious, and a real problem. Some movies even had feral pigs as the villain where they consumed human flesh as they were omnivorous.

As she expected, the monster charged without a care, as it only saw her as a meal. She dodged easily, and as she had consumed another beast core, her physical speed had increased significantly. The boar hit a large oak tree, which rattled and shook from the impact. The boar was stopped cold, and stunned for a few seconds. Aila had already learned not to wait.

"The fools always wait to attack, and watch it remove itself from the trap, or the wall. Wait for the beast to recover? Hell no, I'm not going to make that mistake!" She rushed in, slashed the rear leg of the huge boar, and severed it cleanly from the body. The boar cried out in agony, wobbled on three legs to turn around, but when it tried to charge, it couldn't run at her.

"Just in case all that green energy in your body will regenerate your leg, I'm going to kill you now." Her eyes glowed red, and for the first time since this boar had come into this part of the forest, it felt a large measure of fear.

Aila wasn't wrong about the limb of a spirit beast regenerating, but it would take weeks to do so. Her determination to end the battle had her move in to the boar's side, turn, and swing the ax down onto the beast's neck.

"Hm." Aila walked around the boar as it bled to death, and was unwilling to further damage the skin. "I think I need a cart now."

 

* * *

 

"So glad I'm close to home." Aila put the boar down from off her shoulders, and grimaced a little. It didn't strain her shoulders, but it did push her head down while she walked. That made her neck stiff.

Aila picked up her sharpest knife, and turned the boar onto it's side.

"Pork belly, liver, heart, kidneys. Yeah. A lot of meat and fat to fry it in." She licked her lips. With a soft hum, she began to work at gutting the boar. She burned the intestines as she had no clue about how to clean them.

"Maybe I should ask Rirn if he knows how to clean the intestines so I can use them. Or fry them. I read a few books where they ate the stomach as well. Wait, isn't haggis made from a sheep's stomach?" She put a slab of the boar's belly into the frying pan, and slowly cooked some fat out of it.

"That smells so good! Hm, I probably should cut the slab up next time." She sprinkled a little salt over the fat.  She pursed her lips, but the scent of the fat cooking made her stomach growl. She put the liver in the pan, and finally found the core after she cut the heart out.

"Oh. The berry." She put it in her mouth and swallowed it. She immediately rolled her eyes as each time she saw a beast core, she was overwhelmed by the desire to eat it.

"Bloody hell! Why can't I stop eating these things!"

 

* * *

 

With her ax, Aila cut down a few more trees around her home, and reduced the risk of one falling in on her. She cleanly sliced them into shorter logs, but due to her ability to lift them so easily, she had to keep in mind their overall length. She stopped and looked at her ax.

"Odd. The green energy turns them into dust. That binds them together. Like that stone I turned to dust this morning. Can I use it to shape the wood into planks?" Aila pursed her lips, and began to fine tune her control.

At first, every piece of wood she touched turned into dust. Though this gave her a large boost of elemental energy, it wasn't the result she wanted.

"What about a cutting beam? Using the green energy, only absorb what is in line with my finger. Can I do that?" It wasn't until her fourth try, and mounting frustration, that she was able to make the image within her mind work.

"Point the finger, and ah! I hollowed it out! Bloody hell!" She pointed at the wood in anger, then her face twitched as the wood turned into ash instead of dust.

"Okay, calm down. Breathe in and out. In and out. Slow. There. Now, think saw blade." Aila realized that her image was like a vacuum, so her finger sucked in the elements. It made a round hollow the entire length.

This time, she made a wavy edge as she sliced the log in half. This was what she wanted, but she was still a little bit irritated.

"How am I going to be able to make a cart like this!" She grumbled and stood up.

"Grr." She turned to her left. There, a bear walked into the area around her home, and looked at the boar near her door. Aila grinned.

"Stupid bear. Just what I needed to work off some frustration."

 

* * *

 

"Hi, Rirn." Rirn smiled when he heard the voice, but his eyes nearly bugged out of his head when he saw what she brought along with her.

"Stone bear! Iron Tusked Boar!" He stuttered, and held onto the stall counter while he took several deep breaths to calm himself.

"Hey, don't pass out on me there, Rirn! It would only have been the boar if that stupid bear didn't think he should own the boar instead of me!" She growled a little. "That stupid bear came out of nowhere too! I had to beat him up a bit so that I could work off my temper." Rirn looked at the deformed head and sighed.

"A stone armored bear, with stony plates along its spine for protection, and it gets beat up like it was a thief in a store.  If it was anyone but you, I might call horseshit on that." He chuckled a bit, and wondered what that battle must have looked like. "Did you already take out the cores?" He asked.

"Yeah, I took them out and used them. I didn't gut the wolf that tried to ambush me, and it's on the trail as I didn't have the room for it." Aila thought for a moment. "Rirn, a group of five guys tried to rob me, so I learned this area has a slave dealer. Do they really buy a person that wasn't born or sold into slavery?"

"Some do. A friend of mine, Toral, he doesn't. If someone sells themselves into slavery, in order to pay off debts, he'll buy them, or he'll buy slaves that clans sell when they have the proper documents. He won't buy someone that doesn't have the documents that show they sold themselves so that it doesn't create a market for stealing people" Rirn sighed. "It still happens though. On the surface, unless they are willing to pay a large fine, the kingdom is ready to execute anyone who tries. By the way, what happened to those robbers?" Aila heard his explanation. On the surface. Large fine. In other words, a legal bribe.

"They wanted to sell me into slavery. I think the wolves ate the corpses though. I decapitated three of them in the battle. The other two were killed through a stab to the heart." She watched Rirn's face twitch.

"I'll need to report it so the corpses don't become zombies and come back to attack." Rirn sighed a bit, and waved over a guard.

"What's up, Rirn? Having trouble with a girl?" He snickered.

"She brought the boar and the bear. If I had trouble with her, do you think you could handle it?" He asked directly. The guard's face stiffened. "That isn't why I called you over. Five guys tried to rob her."

"Oh, so it was you they was after."

"Yeah, it was me. Rirn said that the two I didn't decapitate could become zombies. Ask the gate guards where I head into the forest. It's about two hundred feet from there, along the edge, and a hundred feet into the forest." The guard's face twitched again.

"I'll report it, but it's unlikely anyone will go into the forest to handle it. Just be aware, dead bodies often attract dark spirit essence, and accumulate over time. When there is enough, the body will reanimate, and return to where their memories are more plentiful. We'll keep an eye out, and so should you." He rolled his eyes.

"Zombies. Just what I needed."

 

* * *

 

Aila walked over to where the bodies were located. The three decapitated bodies were mauled, but the two that were not beheaded were barely touched.

"Hm. Why were you two not eaten?" She closed her eyes, and to her surprise, the area was blanketed thickly with a dark cloud. She frowned a bit, but the more she looked, the more she hungered.

"Not like the energy at night. You might be different. Why am I so hungry though?" Aila held out her hand, and like the flame elements she had absorbed from the air, the dark colored elements that blanketed this area were gathered and pulled towards her. At first, she felt resistance, but she pulled more forcefully.

'WOOSH!' From her hand a small vortex appeared and began a relentless suction upon the dark colored elements. The other bodies were quickly cleansed, while the two remaining ones took a bit more time. They even started to bounce a bit, like they stubbornly held onto the elements.

After a few minutes, the area turned pristine again, and all the dark elements were sucked up as though by a vacuum pump. Once the area was clean, the bodies had no source to pull upon, which would delay their transformation into a walking corpse.

"This was an unexpected bounty, but I can't have my actions causing problems. Humans are not crops to harvest, and after all the death I've seen, there is no need to feel greedy." Her eyes turned black as she bared her teeth.

"I hate greedy people." The ones who ripped off her parents while she was sick and dying, the looks in their eyes stayed with her, and gave Aila a bottom line.

She took her sword and beheaded the remaining two bodies before she incinerated them.

 

* * *

 

"Report."  A man seated at a desk said without any impatience.

"The person who killed the mercenary thieves stopped at the place she left the bodies. She stooped down near them for a few minutes, and though it didn't look like anything happened, I could see the bodies bounce before they stopped all movement." The guard swallowed. "She beheaded them, held her hand out and turned the bodies to ashes. ." The guard put the report on his desk. The seated man frowned slightly.

"Close to transformation?"

"Most likely tonight." The guard said, and was waved away. The man tapped his desk a few times.

"Sir." A man appeared from a hall to his left.

"Opinions?"

"Zombies close to transformation would rise up to attack if approached so closely. I believe she may have drained away the dark elements. A necro may be able to verify my assumption with more certainty though. However, that ability to use fire elements is quite strong.  I've never heard of a cultivator that had the strength to do that." The man frowned, but nodded.

"Send word to Underground Black. Who are we dealing with? What kind of person can halt the transformation of a zombie, and kill two rank three spirit beasts? Keep the details of burning the bodies quiet." The man said in a low voice, in case his words carried beyond the confines of his office.

"Understood. I'll request assistance right away."