The Battle Master didn’t hesitate for a moment to question why that bastard had done what he did. There had been three fruits, two now lay crushed, so the third must undoubtedly be in the hands of the Battle Ancestor. And Grem needed it. That alone decided everything.

  If the Battle Ancestor hadn’t been crippled in battle, Grem wouldn’t have had a chance. Hell, even ten of him wouldn’t have stood a chance, not even managing to draw a single drop of blood from their opponent. But now… As he launched his attack, he knew the odds of winning weren’t small.

  The Battle Ancestor, completely absorbed in his attempts to heal, truly missed Grem’s attack, allowing the latter’s dagger to stab under his collarbone and slice almost all the way through, nicking the aorta. He was sitting on the ground, leaning his back against a rock, and due to this posture, the Battle Master had to attack from the side. If he had the chance to strike from behind… Grem would have killed him with a single blow.

  Despite the lightning-fast assault, the Battle Ancestor managed to strike back. He had no weapon in his hand, but as Grem stopped after his attack, he felt hot blood trickling down his stomach. He looked down. Not good. That bastard had pierced through his defenses, ribs, and diaphragm with a bare finger and even damaged his liver. The pain followed his gaze. Grem hissed as he felt fragments of his ribs embed themselves into his internal organs.

  The Battle Ancestor wasn’t moving, despite the dagger still lodged under his collarbone, pulsing with each beat of his heart. He was a sight to behold… His left arm was nearly torn off at the shoulder, a hole that had already begun to heal gaped in his stomach, and both his legs were shattered so completely that they resembled a mess of flesh, bones, and armor more than actual limbs. Grem thought that he must have killed the monster right when it had been chewing on the Battle Ancestor’s body.

  The Battle Master followed the bloody trail stretching from the Battle Ancestor’s feet for several dozen meters to the side. To the massive corpse of the monster, nicknamed “Stag” because of the giant antlers on its head. Though now, that head had been blown apart from the inside… So the monster really had been chewing on him when it died.

  Grem pulled out a vial containing a few fourth-class healing pills and groaned as he remembered Valm’s warning about any kind of alchemy in his body being strictly forbidden. Damn it, he wasn’t even sure now if the Gray Olama fruit was with this barely alive bastard. After all, the left hand with the storage ring was missing… The Battle Master clamped down on the hole in his ribs with his aura as best as he could. Internal bleeding was bad too, but even so, he could hold out for a few days.

  “Do you have healing pills?” The Battle Ancestor spoke for the first time. “By the way, not a bad attack… for a Battle Master.”

  Grem had to strain his ears to make out what he was saying, his voice was so weak, his bloodied lips barely moving.

  “It would’ve been a good one if it had actually killed you!”

  “Pills…” the Battle Ancestor repeated.

  “I have a few…” Grem spun the vial in his hand.

  It was pure mockery. They both knew that neither of them was going to give the other any pills. After Grem’s treacherous attack, he had become an enemy to the dying Battle Ancestor. And saving him, only to then die himself? The Battle Master wasn’t stupid enough to make that mistake.

  “Do I know you? Did I ever wrong you somehow?”

  “Those two fruits… Why did you crush them?”

  “Felt like it…” A thin trickle of blood dripped from his mouth and clung to his red beard. “And all this… just over some damn fruit?”

  “Yeah. Where’s the third one?”

  The Battle Ancestor didn’t answer, but his glance and the direction toward the monster’s body spoke volumes.

  “The Stag ate it? Shit…”

  The Battle Ancestor stretched a bloody grin across his face.

  “You don’t actually think my friends will just let my death go unanswered, do you? You’d be better off giving me those damn pills. Then I’d kill you quickly and painlessly…”

  In some ways, he had a point. Judging by the aura traces left at the scene, it wouldn’t be difficult for the Battle Ancestor’s allies to reconstruct what had happened. And erasing his presence here wasn’t an option for Grem. And Battle Ancestor always had other Battle Ancestor as friends. Well, if Grem had been afraid of revenge, he wouldn’t have started this fight. The Battle Master grinned.

  “Screw your threats, bastard! Whether your friends find me or not is unknown. But I will definitely finish you off like a slaughtered pig… that’s for sure!”

  “Well, come on then, pup! Let’s see who dies first!”

  Grem cursed in his mind with the filthiest words he knew. This dying bastard might still give him trouble… But he couldn’t waste any more time. First, the Gray Olama fruit, wherever it was, was slowly losing its properties. And second, the Battle Ancestor’s friends really could show up. If not now, then later. And the only way for Grem to survive would be to become a Battle Ancestor himself before they arrived.

  The Battle Master pulled out bandages and tightly wrapped them around his lower ribcage to stabilize his broken ribs and free up at least a fraction of his aura. Even a fraction of a percent could be useful in battle. And he needed a strategy. A direct approach was out of the question. He couldn’t attack from the right. But that bastard was expecting an attack from the left, where his arm had been torn off… Grem gripped his dagger tighter and lunged forward like lightning.

  No matter how fast he was, the Battle Ancestor was faster. The dagger’s blade was caught between two fingers, and his grotesquely twisted arm struck Grem’s forearm with his elbow, shattering the bones. The Battle Master went tumbling across the ground.

  “You’ve lost… with just one arm…” the Battle Ancestor rasped.

  “Really?” Grem cut him off.

  In the Battle Master’s left hand, a thin steel wire glinted. The Battle Ancestor managed to glance at the hilt of the dagger, which had been embedded in his body near the aorta for quite some time. And the other end of that wire was now tightly wound around the hilt. Grem yanked with all his strength. The blade easily sliced through the aorta and, tearing through everything in its path, flew straight into Grem’s hands.

  “Clever bastard…” the Battle Ancestor wheezed with his last breath.

  “Aha. Everyone complains before they die…” The Battle Master looked at his forearm and grimaced. “Given your condition, you have about three minutes left. Got anything to say?”

  The Battle Ancestor wanted to, really wanted to. He had spent hundreds of years developing his strength, certain of it. And all for what? To die in a stinking pit at the hands of a worthless Battle Master? He stared at the thick streams of blood that his heart was pumping out and wanted to say it all—in vivid detail and with curses. But he had just enough strength left to take one more breath.

  “You dead already, you wretch?”

  Still not believing that the Battle Ancestor’s heart had stopped, Grem asked again.

  “Dead, indeed…” The Battle Master fell to his knees.

  And once again, he thanked Valm. For the fifth-class daggers he had gifted him. With his old fourth-class weapons, killing that bastard would have been unlikely. As best as he could, the Battle Master splinted his right arm. After returning the daggers to their sheaths, he pondered for a moment before stowing the Battle Ancestor’s body away in his storage. He couldn’t leave it here. As they say—no body, no problem. But right now, the most important thing was to find the left hand with that bastard’s storage.

  “Curse you all…” he groaned, slicing open the belly of the massive monster.

  The stench was nauseating… Grem dug through the creature’s guts for nearly an hour without stopping before he finally found the Battle Ancestor’s shattered, acid-burned hand, still bearing a ring on its index finger. Activating the storage, he pulled out a strange glass casket. Inside it was the Grey Olama fruit! It had all been worth it… Grem grinned predatorily and rushed upward, heading for the caves that would lead him to the second level. He didn’t forget to grab the sixth-class core that belonged to the antlered beast.

  Running was hard. Inside, it felt like a fire was burning, and the pain in his right arm pulsed with every step. Grem only gritted his teeth. No pills… Especially now, when his goal was so close! Four more days, five at most, and he would be at the Citadel. And there was Lord Valm. Lord Valm would definitely figure something out to make everything right! The Battle Master pushed himself forward.

  On the second level, they tried to attack him. The same bastards he had left alive on his way down. But even wounded, Grem was a high-tier Battle Master, so a few random warriors…

  “He’s injured!” one of the attackers shouted, spotting the blood-soaked bandages on Grem’s body.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “And you’re dead!”

  The head of the middle-aged idiot who had been the first to rush at him with a sword fell to the ground and rolled, gathering dust in its gaping mouth, from which blood poured. The others, who hadn’t even seen the moment of the strike but had gotten a good look at the fountains of blood from their headless comrade, turned and ran. Grem didn’t chase them. He had more important things to do.

  It took him nearly two days to climb from the third level of the dungeon to the surface. Running while injured, constantly going uphill… it was hellishly difficult and painful. Only the thought of his goal kept him on his feet. And it was close—very close—when Grem leaped onto his well-rested mount and raced toward the Citadel at full speed. Three days. The beast had to endure this mad sprint.

  The Battle Master miscalculated. Not the time required to cover the distance, but the endurance of his mount. The creature collapsed dead on the road just as Grem saw the lights of the Citadel. He tumbled several meters, rolling head over heels, and groaned as a wave of pain seared him from within. Despite the dizziness, Grem got to his feet and walked. Then ran.

  The lights at the Citadel’s gates danced wildly with each step, but they were still like a beacon to him. Grem growled. He felt worse than ever before. His body, as if wrapped in fire, was trembling with cold for some reason. The Battle Master’s fist pounded against the gate.

  The third-class monsters were already noticeably different from the first two. Most of all in the way that Valm could almost physically feel the creature’s desire to kill with every fiber of his being. It was like being plunged into a cold, stinking well with a lid slammed shut over your head… No light in that darkness. Just the stench, the cold, and the sticky fear creeping down your spine.

  “You really think you can affect me with such a pathetic thirst for blood?”

  Valm bared his teeth in a wicked grin and suppressed the subconscious urge to slit the monster’s throat with a single scalpel strike. He hadn’t pinned the beast to a frame and secured its body tightly just for that. Research. That was his true goal. And this research would be completed, one way or another.

  The alchemist paused for a moment. That thirst for blood… How did monsters even generate it? After all, they lacked the same connection that human warriors had between their aura centers and their brains. It was precisely this stimulation of the brain by aura that allowed some members of the human race to display what was known as bloodlust. As for himself, Valm considered himself an exception to the rule. He still hadn’t figured out how his own bloodlust worked.

  “So, pretty boy, what are you going to show me?” Valm smacked his palm against the monster’s bare belly a few times.

  The creature’s skin, reinforced by the mana of its core, had become an impenetrable barrier for the scalpel in the alchemist’s hand. Valm felt his wrist muscles cramping after just a few minutes of effort, and his fingers could no longer hold the tool steadily. The alchemist looked at the ruined blade edge and even whistled.

  “You know, for a moment, I actually got mad… But your will to live, to resist death in such a hopeless situation… Damn, I’m actually impressed by how much interesting stuff you’ll be able to show me before you croak!”

  Valm burst into laughter and went to fetch the surgical bone saw—since a scalpel clearly wouldn’t cut through this bastard. Carefully inspecting the tool, he replaced the blade with a new one to ensure the cleanest possible incision.

  It seemed the sound of the saw in the alchemist’s hands had an effect on the monster. The disc hadn’t even touched its skin when the creature’s eyes filled with blood, and its muscles nearly tore apart from its frenzied struggle to break free.

  “You decided to get serious?”

  Valm carefully examined the metal rods that held the monster securely in place. They seemed sturdy enough. The thin saw blade buzzed as it dug a few centimeters into the creature’s skin, sending a spray of blood behind it. The alchemist noted that cutting the bones of second-class monsters had been easier than slicing through this bastard’s hide.

  “You son of a bitch… Are you mocking me?!”

  Valm set the saw aside and watched as the wound he had just inflicted sealed itself at an impossible speed. This was ridiculous… Neither first- nor second-class monsters regenerated skin damage, probably considering it an inefficient use of mana. But this freak…

  “So, you want to keep your secrets?”

  Valm placed the saw on the tray behind him, catching sight of the wavy distortions in its edge out of the corner of his eye. Just a minute ago, that blade had been new.

  “Heeeh… Listen, at this rate, you’re going to strip my lab of all its tools… Don’t do that!”

  Several bright red tongues of bloodlust, streaked with gray, shot out from the alchemist’s body and tightly wrapped around his right hand. Valm’s grip now firmly held a blood-red dagger. With a swift motion, the alchemist traced the outline of the area on the chest that he needed to expose. His left hand acted immediately after his right. Five sharp claws plunged into the monster’s chest, and with a sharp movement, Valm tore away the flesh along with the muscles from the creature’s body. The monster’s body trembled, spraying blood from its ruptured vessels.

  “That’s how it should have been from the start… Instead of all this ‘I don’t want to, I won’t…’”

  Valm quickly cauterized the thin vessels with red-hot iron and clamped the larger ones shut with steel forceps. Having finished with that, he carefully examined the bones of the ribcage to determine the best way to cut through them.

  And once again, he was wrong in his assumptions. The surgical saw didn’t cut, even after replacing the disc. It only slid over the surface, spraying blood and fat into the air as fine dust. Valm set the tool aside. For the first time, he began to feel tired—even before reaching the core stage of the experiment.

  “Listen here, you freak, you’re really starting to piss me off!”

  The red dagger reappeared in the alchemist’s hand. And now, for the first time, Valm truly appreciated the metamorphosis his body had undergone over the past year. The tools he had once spent a fortune on, the ones that had become useless against the body of a third-class monster, were no longer needed. The incredibly sharp red blade felt like an extension of his own limb—making incisions with extreme precision, while his sharp claws could replace everything else, from delicate tweezers to massive pliers.

  The only thing Valm regretted was that this hadn’t happened earlier. Now, his work had accelerated tremendously.

  The alchemist paused briefly, studying the structure of the brain. In its central part, there was something resembling a small node, something he hadn’t observed in first- and second-class monsters. And it seemed Valm had already figured out its function. After all, distinct connections extended from it to the sac containing the monster’s core. This was where the creature’s bloodlust originated.

  It was easy to confirm by severing the thin veins. The sensation of a deep, dark abyss immediately vanished. So, this area transformed the monsters’ raw mana into that thirst… Interesting, very interesting. Completely unlike humans, whose aura stimulated the entire brain rather than just isolated parts.

  Valm still returned to training the next day. But all the remaining time he spent in the laboratory, dissecting monster after monster. By the time he reached the tenth, he had even forgotten—or simply hadn’t considered it necessary—to test his poisonous compounds on their bodies. Eventually, he resumed that aspect of his experiments, though he already sensed its futility. The first and second classes had shown complete resistance…

  Valm lost track of the days and weeks he spent working alone in the Citadel. He had grown accustomed to it, and it suited him just fine. The rapid pace of research, the silence, no outside distractions—all of it contributed to the fact that the pages of the third volume of the Encyclopedia were filling up at an incredible rate.

  Until the day his bracelet let out a loud beep.

  The startled alchemist didn’t immediately realize what the sound was… And when he did—

  Without even taking off his blue suit, now heavily stained with monster blood, he dashed out of the laboratory and ran to the gates.

  “Master! Open the gates! Your one and only, most beloved, absolutely amazing, stunning apprentice has returned from her mission!”

  Qian’s ringing voice echoed over the Citadel.

  As soon as a crack appeared in the gate, the girl lunged forward, attempting to embrace her teacher. But upon noticing his blood-soaked suit in time, she abruptly halted, ending up in a low bow with her long ears flopping comically.

  “Master, I…” She lifted her head without straightening her back. “What a fabulous manicure you have…”

  Her eyes were right at the level of Valm’s fingers. And although he wore medical gloves, they had long been pierced by the claws at his fingertips.

  “Interesting, interesting… So, which poor soul did you eviscerate this time to get yourself such a treasure? Definitely not werewolves, and not any of the bloodsuckers either… This was something serious.”

  “Ahem! You’re mistaken, my dear apprentice! This is merely a minor side effect from a potion I’m currently developing. It will pass soon enough!”

  “Oh, so it’s just because of a potion? Here I was thinking about illegal experiments on beastfolk…”

  “Shut up, you fool! One of you in the Citadel is more than enough for me!”

  Qian straightened up, peering into Valm’s eyes.

  “You want to experiment on me, Master?! You can’t just say things like that right away! At least give me a carrot first!”

  The alchemist let out a guttural growl at her shamelessness.

  “Enough, rabbit-ears! Get inside already, stop loitering at the gate!”

  Giggling softly, Qian stepped forward, allowing her teacher to shut the heavy doors behind her.

  “So, how did your journey go this time? It seems to me you stayed out longer than the period I allowed. If I’m not mistaken—and I’m not—you were gone for a whole three months longer!”

  Qian twirled on one foot, showing off her nearly new fourth-class women’s armor.

  “Damn it! You robbed humans again, didn’t you, rabbit?!”

  “How could you even think such a thing, Master?! These armor pieces were custom-made just for me! Do you know any human girls with a figure like mine? With such a slim waist and such big br…”

  “And where did you get the money? The potion you sold to Pak wouldn’t have been nearly enough!”

  Qian had no answer to that.

  “You totally robbed them!” Valm was now certain of his guess.

  “Master! It wasn’t me who started it! They attacked me first, and then… And then their heads went crack-crack, and that was it… What, was I not supposed to collect compensation for my deep, painful, bloody wounds… my emotional wounds…” she added under Valm’s stern gaze.

  “Fine. But remember, if they come looking for revenge, then—”

  “—then it’s my problem! They won’t come, Master, I promise!”

  The alchemist shook his head and walked into the courtyard. Qian quietly followed, keeping in step with him. Suddenly, he stopped again, nearly causing her to bump into his back.

  “And the ingredients? Did you gather everything from the list I gave you?”

  “Of course! Just take a look!”

  Qian darted ahead and began piling up heaps of various herbs, crates of berries, fruits, mushrooms, sacks of seeds, and more in the middle of the courtyard.

  “Wait… You didn’t rob any alchemical gardens, did you?”

  The sheer amount of ingredients she had gathered was staggering. It would be enough for her to brew potions non-stop for several years. There was no way she had collected all this on her own in such a short time!

  “I’m no fool, Master! They gave it all to me, under contract!”

  “What?!”

  He couldn’t believe his ears. This little fox had managed to make contracts with alchemists?!

  “And you know, Master, those alchemists are so poor… Some of them even still owe me. They promised to pay up next time I visit.”

  Valm didn’t want to hear any more. The schemes she had pulled on her victims scared him… Though, come to think of it, wasn’t he one of those victims himself? The alchemist shook his head and sighed heavily. This was probably his fate.

  “Master, where’s Grem? I brought him a gift…”

  Oh, so that’s how it was. She brought a gift for the guard, but not for her beloved and only teacher? Fine, rabbit…

  Though her question did have merit. Grer’s long absence troubled him as well.

  “He went off on business. He’ll return… when he returns. And as for you… Tomorrow morning, you’re starting a new potion-making course.”

  “Got it!”

  With that, Valm hurried back to the laboratory, where another monster was bleeding out, stretched on the frame. Their numbers in the third-class were quickly dwindling. As was the completion of yet another volume of his work.