6 – Hunting Trip

The giant, slavering maw of a twenty-foot mass of fur and teeth slipped and slid against her [Prismatic Barrier], and Vivi admitted she was hyperventilating slightly. Black claws the length of her forearm scraped against the invisible shield, sending rainbow sparks flying. She smelled rotting flesh, felt the hot air of the beast’s roars on her face. Snow crunched as its enormous paws pushed into the ground, giving it leverage to push against her.

Maybe making video games too realistic would be a bad thing, actually. Because while she was definitely engaged, this was more terrifying than exciting. It was certainly cool, and interesting, and unique…but yeah, she had mixed feelings on this experience.

“[Earthen Anchor].”

Vines burst from the ground, whipping out to grab the rampaging Frostmaw Titan. The hulking beast slammed into the ground with a thud that threw up snow all around them, briefly obscuring her vision, and Vivi took several steps back to create space. The monster struggled against the restraints, but the spell was far too powerful for it to break through.

She looked around. Two other Frostmaw Titans were secured to the ground in the same way. She had saved them for later.

Another had been killed gorily. She winced at the viscera and jerked her head away. She wasn’t squeamish, but neither was she inured to piles of exploded flesh and bone. Blowing a monster up with a super-charged fireball, it turned out, was rather messy. Again, there were downsides to realism. The smells especially.

She’d had her fun with a ‘flashy’ spell on the first of the Titans. These other three she wanted to harvest. Hence minimal damage, which, unfortunately, meant no spectacle.

“[Sanguine Vitaphage],” she incanted, pointing her staff at the nearest monster.

Its thrashing stopped, and a low, whining noise involuntarily escaped the back of its throat. Red streams of energy siphoned out of the mountain of white fur, soon gushing in billowing clouds to gather and condense into a red ball hovering six feet above the beast. The Titan’s vitality was sucked dry in seconds. She supposed her ridiculous stats were to thank. Even weak spells were strong when cast by her.

A fist-sized red ball—too shiny and metallic to resemble blood, though the same color—hovered above the dead beast. She flicked her wrist, and the orb went sailing away to disappear into the snow.

Pure vitality was a great catalyst for further blood magic, but she had no need for it, and it couldn’t be stored for later. Her goal had been this, anyway: the bear had died without a scratch. Perfect for gathering monster parts.

“[Loot].”

To her satisfaction, that functionality was still present. She hadn’t been looking forward to skinning and butchering a monster by hand. Well, by magic. Which would’ve been better, but not by a lot.

A screen appeared with a list of available loot.

***

Deceased [Frostmaw Titan]

Loot:

Frostmaw Fangs (x2)

Titan Bear Claws (x8)

Primal Ice Core

Pristine Frostmaw Titan Pelt {[Skinning]}

Meat (x38) {[Butchering]}

Arctic Essence Gland {[Alchemical Harvesting]}

***

Each of the items could be inspected in turn. She wasn’t sure whether it was a good haul. She recognized most of the loot as items from Seven Cataclysms, but who knew how valuable they were nowadays?

Half of the loot was only available for harvest because of her crafting skills. Since she had no-lifed Seven Cataclysms, she had maxed out most basic crafting-type skills, especially the ones relevant to her class and the ones best for making money.

While the world was shockingly realistic, the videogame-like features were still in full effect: she dragged the loot into her inventory and, just like that, was the owner of a new collection of items deposited into spatial storage.

The unexpected part was how the hulking mass of the Frostmaw Titan was suddenly lying there, de-skinned and missing several body parts.

Internally, Vivi made a horrified face. Her body didn’t though. There was a mismatch between her mind and the body she was in. One she appreciated. Heroes of legend wouldn’t go around acting squeamish about skinning a monster. Those thoughts could remain in her head alone.

She killed and looted the next three beasts, then hastily retreated.

The smell was just awful.

Hunting was an efficient process when she could teleport around, [Detect Presence], kill monsters in seconds, and return to town with a handful more [Blinks].

An hour later, she was standing in front of the guild receptionist’s desk. Danny looked up at her with a wince, not faring much better with her hangover. She plastered on another smile.

“How can I help?”

“You mentioned having resources appraised?”

“Ready to have that done?” She nodded. “Let me go check with Nazriel.”

She walked around the receptionist desk and disappeared through a door labeled ‘Guild Appraising — Approval Required’. A minute later she returned.

“He’s free. First door on the left.” She smiled at her, and Vivi nodded her thanks.

Walking through and turning left, she knocked on the available door and was met with a “Come in.” The Guild Appraising Room—or whatever the official term was—featured walls covered with unlabeled cubbies, shelves, and other storage units, all covered or otherwise obscured to hide their contents. In the back left was another door, probably leading into an office.

The man standing behind the table in the center of the room wasn’t, technically, a man: he was a demon, but Vivi doubted she’d get used to replacing that word properly. Males were men, females were women. Going around calling people ‘demon males’ or ‘elven females’ would just feel weird.

His white hair was short and neatly styled, with two oni-style horns—straight and pointing up—jutting from the front of his skull. In demon culture, because Vivi was nerdy enough to have read Seven Cataclysm’s lore, that marked him as being of low birth. Curling horns like hers were the mark of high-blooded demons. Not that every curled-horn demon was of nobility, or vice versa; it was a historical indicator, and thus only trended that way.

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His eyes were, like all demons, red, and his skin was white as snow, paler than any human’s could reasonably be. He adjusted a pair of thin silver-framed spectacles as she walked in, and his posture was ramrod straight.

“Good afternoon, miss. My name is Nazriel. I was told you were seeking an appraisal?”

Vivi nodded, not sure how this process was supposed to go. She was happy to let him take the lead. “Vivi,” she replied.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” After a second in which Vivi didn’t respond, he continued smoothly, “Shall we begin?” He gestured at the empty table, and even if she was in a half-foreign fantasy world, she knew what he was asking.

She hesitated before opening her loot screen. She wasn’t sure whether locals had access to game screens. They certainly had classes and levels, but she hadn’t seen anyone interacting with screens…but she hadn’t been around many people and certainly not in circumstances where they would need to use one.

It wasn’t like she could fetch the items some other way. So, mentally shrugging, she opened her loot tab and began extracting loot. Nazriel didn’t seem to find that odd, so she tentatively assumed adventurers had access to an inventory in the same way she did.