I squeezed the skull of the fallen beast, ending it’s life by putting more pressure onto it’s head. The Wood Wolf could only let out a whine as it disappeared into black mist, leaving behind a gleaming green core brimming with seventh circle energy. A little younger and smaller than the core of the mutated WereRabbit I had killed but it still served as proof that I had gotten stronger. 

I felt exhilarated. The pounding of my heart never seemed to stop, still drumming wildly against my ears after the intense fight with the wood wolf. 

I took a deep breath in. Waited until five and then let it all out, slowly, calming myself and guiding myself into serenity. By the fifth breath, I was all calmed down. This relaxation technique might be one of the best ways in which I used my [Question] core skill.

“[Storage],” I guided my hand into the swirling mass of empty space, and took out two pouches of cold water. Gotta love [Storage] and dimensional physics. I popped open the cap of the first pouch and threw it all over myself, head first like I was taking a shower. Reason being, the sun was starting to set and taking a bath in any sources of water would either mean getting mauled by the night monsters that drank form them or simply getting mauled to death by that nocturnal alligator-deer atrocity. 

After no more water fell from the first pouch, I simply threw it back inside my [Storage] and looked myself over. The battle with the wood wolf was intense enough to leave me with short-lived injuries, a couple nicks and tears along my skin - mostly around my arm due to trying to block it’s vine whip attack - but the good thing about being seventh circle was that I could feel my skin healing itself. A weird sensation but pretty cool nonetheless.

 With a sigh, I looked over the horizon as the round sun set into the beyond, turning semi-circle, casting it’s final golden-yellow glow over the world. Then, I took a long chug out of my second pouch of water and relished the cool icy sensation moisturizing my tongue and lungs.

“Haa. .”

I exhaled with satisfaction after the cool drink and threw the second pouch into my [Storage] as well. Now that I think about it, how many pouches of water do I still have?

“Status.”

“Huh.” I didn’t know that just by killing one Wood Wolf, I would be gaining around 5 pounds of raw meat. To think I went through hell and back just to gain 1 pound of raw meat back then. I’m running low on my spears as well. I’ll have to go back to the outer edges of the woods again. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find better quality wood this time. Should I wander a little further inside this time?

“Nah,” I reprimanded myself. “If the monsters outside are this strong, I’ll bet the ones inside could kill me in under a second.” Well, at least at the stage I was in right now. 

“Wait.” I scrolled down again, clicking on the new piece of information that had popped on my Inventory menu. “Wood Wolf’s Vines?” 

Ding!

Huh. If the vines are actually as strong as they say, couldn’t I technically make a whip with these? Hm? What was that? Did I know how to make a whip? Why would I need to know how to make a whip, when I had the almighty g**gle living within my head. 

“In fact, why stop there?” I told myself. “I could use it to make ropes, fortify my spears, or many other things. I should probably use tomorrow’s [Question] to ask the most efficient way to make use of this wolf’s vines.” 

A cold breeze blew past my skin, bringing me out of my planning. I pushed the status screen to the side and heard it collapse into the background. With my eyes clear of the screen, I could see that the sun had finally gone to bed. 

In it’s stead, I watched with fascination at the unpolluted, undirtied night sky of a magical world - a mysterious blanket of darkness that would have covered the whole world blind, if not for the many stars sprinkled across it’s all-encompassing sheets. I could see the other celestial objects in the night - our wide moon hovering to it’s high throne, the other planets within this system of clusters. Then, I realized that I could feel them, the. . .astral energy emitting from them, a soft beckoning, a yearning for me to return home as my mind felt like it was diving through marshmallows and clouds. 

I couldn’t think. Just kept floating amongst the clouds. A flicker of energy, this one more pure and celestial than the ones inside the monster cores, licked the skin of my body, teasing me, tempting me like a seductress and yet this temptress, I knew. Or at least, I think I did. Can’t think. The astral, celestial energy and I played a sort of game, or a mischievous dance where if I pushed towards it, it pulled back and when it pushed forward, I pulled back. 

Of course, I could only be teased so long before I started to be frustrated. But then, the astral energy calmed me down by kissing me softly on my lips, promising me that it would come again and that it would feel much better than tonight. 

It withdrew its caress and I suddenly felt cold, empty and. . .dry? I looked around and my body was no longer swimming amongst the clouds, only swimming in my own drool. 

I wiped myself and thought out loudly, “What on earth?” It was still night, still the same place I had killed the Wood Wolf and there wasn’t any injury on my body that I could see. . .or feel. What was that? 

I didn’t know what just happened to me but what I did know was that I somehow felt strangely energized, extremely energized like I had just taken a whole bottle of caffeine. Goosebumps had appeared on my skin, the hair on my forearms raised like a cat’s and I swear I could almost see the electricity sparkling between them. Whatever happened to me, I knew I couldn’t sleep tonight anymore, not with this much heat inside my body. 

I was hungry. 

I patted my stomach. It didn’t growl. I concluded that my hunger was derived from something else. I looked down at the inner core of the Wood Wolf and was shocked to see that it had completely disintegrated into fine dust before a sudden gust carried it away from my hands.

“Well, that’s new,” I stared at my hands, dumbfounded. Good thing was that at least now I knew why I was feeling so electrified. “But it shouldn’t be possible to devour an inner core to this extent.” Or was it? 

When I had used the skill [Question], I had only gone so far as to ask what the ‘inner cores’ were and what they did to the consumer’s body. I had just assumed that since I felt so full after ‘devouring’ an inner core despite it still lighting up, it had already been used up entirely. Fuck, was that the reason the WereRabbit got tricked with the ‘dummy’ inner core in the first place? 

My stomach dropped from the realization. How many inner cores had I thrown away like banana peels, thinking that they were useless after eating the banana flesh? 

Shit. 

“[Inventory],” I intoned. Without a moment’s waste, I took out all thirty inner cores, composed entirely of 20 ninth circle and 10 eight circle cores. “[Analysis].” I felt my eyes heat up for a moment before information about all of the inner cores came into my brain. For the next few minutes, I sat completely still in my current position, shifting through the massive amount of information in my head and carefully selected the hints hidden that supported my horrible theory. 

I stopped the analysis and closed my eyes, hiding them behind the palm of my hand. “Fuck me.” I can’t believe I was such a fucking dumbass. God, I wanted to go back to the past and slapped the shit out of the past me for being such a careless idiot. 

I bit my lips in frustration; but the pain was nowhere near the amount of agony my heart was under. Shit. Fuck. And all the other curse words in the world. What I had done was basically the equivalent of burning millions of dollars thinking that they wouldn’t work in a non-US country. 

“Fuuuuck!” The one time I had hoped to be wrong, I stood corrected. I rolled around in pain caused by my own dumb actions. All of the inner cores I had thrown away thinking they were useless turned out to actually still be full of energy, energy enough for me to absorb them at least a second time. The reason why I had felt so full after ‘devouring’ an inner core was because the energy inside an inner core was usually enough to power a car for several days, and that was  still only at the ninth circle. After all, an inner core represented the entire mass of energy a monster had collected its entire life right before it was killed. No mortal body would be able to eat through all the energy inside an inner core in just one sitting. In fact, it was only due to my abnormally strong constitution that I could devour most of the energy inside an inner core that I only needed to do it one more time to eat them dry.

“I wish the earth would just swallow me whole right now,” I laid spread-eagled on the cold, bed of dirt and grass in defeat. I let out a long sigh. Even the stars shied away from me in embarrassment at my dumb actions. 

I missed them already. All the inner cores I had thrown away. My poor children. “I’ll get revenge for you, Gary, Stacy, Thomas, Larry. . .” I proceeded to name all the inner cores I had thrown away, sending them off so that they would be eaten by a more thoughtful person in their next life. 

My mind was heavy with regret. My heart was unfortunately still racing from devouring an entire inner core for the first time. That fact only served to weigh on my mind even more. I wanted to sleep and ignore my problems but the bubbling energy within me forbade me to do so. I was at an impasse where my mind wanted to do nothing but to wallow in pain.

The only good thing that came out of this was that I was able to use the thirty inner cores I still had but since they were of low rank, I would need at least a thousand of them to even think of entering the sixth circle. A hundred seventh circle cores or ten rare mutated seventh circle cores would suffice as well. 

Which brought me to the topic at hand. The voices in my heart whispered to me, wanting to go out and blow shit up to vent my frustration.

 “[Inventory].” 

My heart won the battle. I took out a makeshift spear from the inventory and as I pulled the entire thing out, the first thing I could smell was the slime poison I had rubbed on the entire pointy heart-shaped tip of the spear. The more I held and looked over my humble spear, the more my mind started to join my heart in the need to, well, blow shit up just to take out my frustration and move on, of course. 

I couldn’t take it anymore. My mind and heart had synergized. I really needed to take my frustration out on something. I scanned my surroundings for anything that looked weak, easy to bully and hopefully, struggled a lot. 

Was I really turning into a sadist just because I couldn’t live with my own embarrassing mistakes? Hell yeah. Now where are those goddamn slimes?

Read ahead on my patreon for just 3 dollars - - - - - - -> https://www.patreon.com/Norobo

My Discord------> https://discord.gg/3jQXJ8PgEq