A small, green puddle was currently skidding on the floor, having noticed something it took interest in.

That something, or rather someone, was me, who just stepped over the corner of the tunnel in the sewers.

The supposedly green, or, in this case, brownish with green tinge from all the waste and filth it has absorbed blob, was a slime.

{It’s a typical slime with no abilities out of ordinary. Usually you would need to destroy its core, but in your case just be careful to touch it briefly and immediately yank the soul out while making sure not to let your hand through its surface. The best way at your level is to lead it with your arm during the contact slowly enough not to let the slime wrap itself around you. Unfortunately you have virtually no acid resistance, but if you do it well, you will only get red, itching hand that will be good after an hour or so.} – Natria gives me a dose of basic info about my enemy.

I wait for the round thing to get close and stretch out my arm, doing my best to follow what Natria told me.

When the blob touched my hand, I started making slow steps backwards and grimaced from stinging pain all over my palm.

I felt the spirit of the slime with my new sense.

The spirit was all black, and the soul underneath I didn’t notice in the rat was similarly round and plain, almost blending with the shell. The Origin inside was small, slightly bigger than the rat’s, all black and gray with one doughnut shape rotating around it.

Why did I make an analogy to food? It’s tasty, but…

It’s tasty.

I feel it.

I want it.

I pull it out almost unconsciously, seeing the soul and spirit collapse and immediately track it down as it flows towards my spirit. I see it passing through my spirit and then getting disassembled by the tentacles, and when it passes through my eye I feel the delightful taste filling my being.

As I indulge in the feeling, I vaguely notice the parts of slime’s Origin getting rebuilt into incomplete ring around my Origin.

A few seconds later, all too soon, the taste goes away, and I notice I am standing on the ground with my arm outstretched. I feel something wet on my chin and wipe it out with my wrist, noticing with mixed feelings it is my saliva.

I take a deep breath and look down at the remains of the slime.

I see a tiny, shining stone the size of the nail on my pinky at most in a pool of greenish goo.

After I carefully pick it up it takes me a few seconds to realize what it is.

‘It’s a mana stone, right? You didn’t tell me to take one from the rat?’

{That’s because rats like that are not proper monsters because they don’t use mana. And since mana stone is formed from the mana of the monster when it dies, the answer is obvious, no?}

‘Oh well, alright, never mind that.’ – I realized the stupidity of my own question. – ‘Anyway, do you know what to do with it? I mean, I can sell it or something, but I never got to know what it is used for.’

{Hm, well, I don’t know what is it used for here, but the most basic uses of this thing are to refine it into your own power, though it is extremely inefficient, and use it in some tools or weapons as a source of energy. There are a few other uses, but they are not available to you so I’ll skip them for now. If you’re asking what to do with it, then you can either save it to sell or use later, or alternatively absorb it, but for you it is rather useless.}

‘Useless? How so? You just said I can refine it into my own power?’ – I ask, puzzled.

{Oh, it’s just that the boost in strength you gain from mana stone is so small comparing to absorbing Origin it is almost negligible and you can find many better uses for these mana stones. Not to mention you have yet to form a Mana Core, so you can’t even do that now.}

‘Oh, okay. I guess I’ll store them for now. I might be able to get some money with that.’

I put the stone into one of the pockets in my vest and resume the walk through the sewers, looking for more slimes, rats and possibly other things.

{Assuming the method for that is known, Laura should have used hundreds, if not thousands of such stones up to this point. And while she is definitely powerful, well, she is not even close to the hundreds of monsters the cores came from, right? A good approximate for power gained from mana stone is less than a hundredth of the monster’s mana pool, decreasing even more with increase in strength, though it depends on way too many factors to list them all. But with all that it’s usually true that you need well over a hundred monsters of your strength to get twice as strong, and I mean twice as large mana pool in your Origin, not fighting strength.}

I listen to her intently, but notice something that puzzles me.

‘Wait, then, why is that we absorb so little from the cores? And I get so much more from the Origin?’

{Well, once you think about it, it’s pretty obvious. You see, in the Origin reside all the pool of mana monster had, while what creates mana stone is merely what flows out to keep the body running and integrates with it. Most people are unaware of this, but, as long as the body is capable of adapting to mana, it essentially keeps it alive, and this small amount of mana is what creates the mana stone. So, absorbing the Origin, you essentially absorb the strength of the monster, but refining mana core merely gives you what meager amount of power keeps the monster running.}

‘Hm, alright. And for reference, how much energy do I absorb with the Origin?’

{Hm, it depends on many things, but a good approximate is ten times what you can get from mana stone after counting all the losses and other uses. And in addition to that, obviously, you gain something much more precious, bloodlines. So absorbing these things, while might help you a bit, is in my opinion more of a waste, because you might as well kill eleven instead of ten monsters and use the eleven stones for something different, even for food.}

‘Alright, I will keep that in mind.’ – I say, thinking what can be one such stone worth.

{Oh, that reminded me. Your body was not adapted to mana before. That transformation that made you so much better also made your body compatible with mana, and due to that and the fact your body will evolve along with the bloodlines you will need much more food. We don’t want you malnourished again, so I am guessing eating three times what you were eating before will be barely enough.}

‘Huh?’ – I manage to say.

That much? I get that I was malnourished before, eating at best three meager meals a day and sometimes even stealing due to hunger, just like what got me essentially killed, but three times that is still very much for a child, isn’t it?

{Oh, don’t worry, girl. You are still small, and I am guessing you will need twice that of an adult man when you reach growth period, probably in around a year or two.}

‘What!?’ – I shout in my mind, conflicted in my heart due to the fact I have been eating much less than a kid my age should have and Natria suddenly announced I would need an amount hard to even compare in close future. – ‘Why is it that much?’

{Hm, there are three reasons, actually. First is obviously your growth, two is your evolution, let’s say, and I mean the fact your body constantly changes its composition, and third is the fact you will obviously be moving around much more if you want to get many monsters killed. Not to mention an amount of nutrients your body needs to grow, in case it hasn’t dawned on you yet, your life from now on will revolve mostly around killing monsters and everything connected to it, you know?}

‘Oh well.’ – I sigh. – ‘Can’t deny it.’

Hm, that talk about food made me realize how hungry I am.

{You can eat that rat, can’t you? I didn’t ask till now, but I noticed your thoughts were that of disappointment and pity when you put it in the pocket.}

‘Huh?’ – I ask, dumbfounded. – ‘Isn’t it common sense that meat is toxic? Oh, mhm, right. Sorry ‘bout that. Anyway, it’s just that meat from monsters needs to be purified before it can be eaten because it will bring many detrimental effects if eaten just like that.’

{Oh, right, I forgot about that. You mean residual mana in the meat? Well, that’s not a problem as long as you don’t mind eating a raw rat.}

‘Hm? What do you mean? But I just said it is toxic, eh?’

{I meant to say that I can make it easily edible and even make it better and easier to eat. In this spirit form I retain a bit of my power, so, while I am currently too weak to fight anyone stronger, clearing the residual mana in the meat and removing some toxins is well within my capabilities.}

‘Umm, clearing residual mana?’

{Oh, well, I’m not gonna explain how it works for now, just know that everything that operates at least partially on mana has mana permanently infused into their whole bodies, and even if they are not proper monsters they get it from the surroundings. And this mana, if meat is eaten and decomposed in the stomach, is let loose. In case of a rat it will at most cause stomach ache, but if the monster has high amount of this mana comparing to resistance of the person eating it, it can even kill. Clearing residual mana means using a spell that removes this mana or makes it harmless.}

‘Oh, alright! Can you do it now?’ – I ask enthusiastically, gulping my saliva and bringing the rat out of the pocket, though having a scene of a person eating a dragon or something and dying from that in pain in my mind.

{Hm? You don’t mind eating a raw rat?} – She asks with mild surprise.

‘I… have eaten much worse.’ – I admit reluctantly, thinking about a few unpleasant memories from back when I was starving on the streets, looking for anything remotely edible.

{Oh, well.} – She responds in a strange tone.

I feel something appearing in my soul for a brief moment, but it disappeared so fast I didn’t even notice what it was, but ignored it, assuming it was something Natria did.

Then I see a tiny, complicated, green magic circle appear above the rat. After it shined for a few seconds it disappeared, though there was no visible change to the rat in my hand apart from some dark, suspiciously looking stuff that floated down of it. The corpse sunk slightly, maybe?

‘Is it done?’ – I ask, not certain if there was supposed to be something more going on.

I am slightly disappointed by the lack of anything flashier that comes to mind when it comes to typical magic, though I am still excited to see magic from up close for the first time.

{Yup, all done. While I was at it, I also cleaned it up and slightly altered the rat so that you can easily remove the inedible parts, including fur. Just be careful not to spill the blood, it has probably mostly flowed to the lower part.} – She answers me firmly, though for some reason her voice sounds a bit weak.

I immediately feel guilt, surprise and strange warmth.

‘Hey, did you just push yourself just for me to have a better meal?’ – I ask with slight anger.

{Ey, don’t think like that.} – She explains quickly. – {It’s merely that I am currently in spirit form, so even the smallest expense in magic makes me weaker. Did I mention how spirits, ghosts and other things like that work? Their spiritual body and its condition is proportional to how much mana they currently have in comparison to their pool. In exchange they don’t need anything else apart from mana from their surroundings to sustain themselves.}

I stay silent for a while with a slight suspicion in my mind. If her condition is proportional to the mana used, then she should have used most of her mana to even make her voice weaker, no?

‘Well, alright. But don’t push yourself, okay? I would feel really bad if you got yourself permanently damaged or who knows what else while helping me.’ – I say in the end.

{Ohh, how caring~. I almost got my heart beating faster, hehe.} – Natria fires back and giggles, making me blush fiercely and distract myself by starting eating the rat.

I try to pierce the skin on the shoulder with my nails, which comes about surprisingly easily as the skin is almost literally peeled off. I bite into the meager amount of meat underneath, thinking that the spell Natria used probably was very precise to make the rat basically into a sack of meat and bones, but it only made me feel even worse as a precise spell must have costed her more mana.

Eating the raw rat with discomfort, not only due to its not bad, but definitely not pleasant taste, but also slight guilt, I thought about what Natria said before. No matter how hard I tried to deny the fact I will live a life of killing monsters, I realized it was indeed true, even if I choose something completely different as my goal.

Even if I didn’t want to fight, merely the fact that I have that special kind of Origin makes me kind of obligated to do so, since wasting such, as was said, impossibly rare chance would be a fool’s errand. With what Natria told me up to now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out I have much higher potential and more possibilities than even the best of the hunters.

No matter how modest I were, it is a fact that I can’t be compared to humans and just absorbing one rat and one slime made me realize with certainty I have no limits such as humans do, mainly in the meaning of body. It still felt slightly weird thinking about it. That if I absorbed monsters such as dragons I could basically gain their power just by waiting for my body to reform into that of a dragon.

I even start drooling while thinking about eating more souls and forget myself for a while, remembering the addictive taste of the slime soul.

According to everything I got to know from Natria I could, in theory, transform completely into a monster over the course of a few weeks. Not that I want it, but, hypothetically, if I ever wanted or needed that, it would be absolutely possible.

And even without becoming a monster in my looks, I will most likely end up becoming a monster in human flesh, or rather, even better, only human-looking flesh. An example being my nose, which in a few weeks probably will be human’s only from its looks.

Though, I noticed I feel strangely calm about it. I mean, I am not opposed to it, which I somehow expected of myself to feel hesitant about. Maybe it’s just that I subconsciously accept who I am, though I can’t help but think there might be something more to it. Maybe Natria is somehow affecting me?

Not that I would blame her for that.

Honestly, I don’t know how to feel about her. I am aware she might, and probably isn’t telling me the whole truth about the situation, but I don’t feel any discomfort about it.

She barged into my life suddenly without any prior warning along with the change to my body, telling me one shocking fact after another, but I am not particularly opposed to it despite how unusual is that and how much it changed my life.

Before I even realized it, I accepted her being with me and changing my path to hunting monsters to increase my strength. Before that my goal was to eat, survive and get to do something good with Laura’s help. But now, while I’m still somewhat aware of that purpose, I suddenly started thinking differently, pushing it to the side. And while I think that Natria’s existence might have something to do with it, I don’t feel it is bad, I don’t particularly oppose it despite the fact I am conscious I should do it. Probably. Maybe.

Getting back to the topic from a while back, I also realize that my life, no matter what I do, will revolve around fighting from now on. I have thought about joining hunters in the past, but due to my severely insufficient strength I have never considered it seriously. Now though, even if I don’t want it, even if I focused on living happily with Laura and the children, or no matter what else I might choose, my path will still lead outside the walls, with most likely way being the Hunter’s Guild.

Wanting to feed the kids I will choose going out to kill monsters and earn money from that, wanting to live a life alone I will also need to hunt, and wanting to get influence in the city I will go the hunter’s path, because I have nothing else that could earn me a living or position. Well, now that I think about it, maybe apart from my body, but I would rather get killed while fighting monsters than go that way.

So, in short, it’s not wrong to say that accepting the path of a hunter is a must for me for I have nothing else I can do apart from that to live happily.