Year 1, Summer, First Month, Fourth Week.

In the morning, after Karl’s parents left to work he went to Chief’s hut to find out what happened to beasts and materials. Before leaving to rest, Master Al instructed him to tell the Chief to extract the beast’s blood and mix it with some crushed herbs before it coagulated.

Karl’s body hurt everywhere, so he took his time to get to the Chief’s home.

When he arrived, Karl found Diana having breakfast. It was unusual for Diana to still be having breakfast at this time, but he guessed she was tired from the fighting.

She happily greeted him and explained what happened to the materials. Chief Omero took advantage of the overall excitement and coordinated the villagers to process the beasts. They had taken two liters of blood before skinning and separating the meat from the beasts. Diana also told him about the two brownish crystals they found inside the beasts.

After hearing about the crystals, Karl’s eyes brightened. He told to Diana that beasts form a core with an elemental crystal inside. However, since the beasts were weak and couldn’t use elemental magic the crystals would probably be low grade.

Previously, Master Al had taught Karl that elemental crystals gave beasts some useful traits. Earth crystals would give them sturdy bodies, water crystals would make them flexible, wind crystals would make them faster, and fire crystals give them more energy.

Diana finished her breakfast and brought Karl to grandma Marlen’s hut to look at the crystals. The beasts were processed in Marlen’s place because she was the only one with some experience dealing with meat.

Diana explained that grandma Marlen was from a post village and had worked under a butcher before moving to Caiset. So, Chief Omero organized for her to supervise the villagers preparing beasts.

Arriving at grandma Marlen’s hut, Karl noticed a newly build shed with rustic tables and knives. Seeing Karl’s curious expression, Marlen explained:

“Good morning kids... Or maybe I should address you as adults from now... After what you have done, you sure deserve it... Feew... Let’s forget it, it’s difficult for me since I was one of the elders that looked after you when you’re babies.” Karl blushed a little remembering how sweet grandma Marlen was to him.

“We got a lot of meat from the beasts. I would say around 120 Kg. I told Chief that if you agree we should cook the meat for everyone in the village today. It might go bad if with don’t eat it soon. Although it’ll only serve a small portion to each villager we’ll benefit a lot from it... You know this meat has magic properties and even if it’s from the weakest beast, it can be dangerous to eat it in large quantities. I remember stories about villagers dying from consuming large portions of magic meat. It does wonders for health and body development, but one needs to build up some resistance before taking large quantities.”

Karl noded while in his mind Master Al added:

‘-- Indeed, forcing an unprepared body to digest and integrate the magic properties from magic meat will cause backslash --’.

Grandma Marlen signaled for Karl to come closer. His eyes opened wide and shined when he saw the two brown crystals on top of the table. He moved forward and grabbed it.

‘-- This is a LQ earth crystal. The beast that you slew was a LT earth beast. Because of the elemental influence, its body is stronger than the other beasts of the same tier --’

Karl repeated Master AI’s words, satiating their curiosity.

‘-- Like crafting, you have to use the right materials and methods to get the best benefits from this resource. For LQ meat, it is enough to pay attention to the cooking method. To preserve its earth properties and make it digestible, you should prepare it on top of a heated stone. The earth meat is usually hard, so is better to cut it only after cooking it in the stone. The bones can be stewed with vegetables, preferably roots --’

Karl explained the earth’s properties and preparation methods to grandma Marlen. She was very surprised by what he knew.

‘Oh my... that’s very expensive knowledge... probably only noble chefs know about it ... This boy is truly something...’

Karl remembered the magic digestive and absorbing effects of the burdock, so he asked grandma Marlen to add it while cooking.

Despite not knowing how Karl got this kind of information, Marlen trusted him and didn’t ask further. Karl took the materials and left with Diana.

Magic Inventory 

.........

“Captain, help!...”

Lew brushed off the blood and sweat from his forehead, clenching his teeth he looked sorrowfully at his last guard being cut in half by the salamander’s tail.

His efforts to control the fleeing beasts’ situation end up with him fighting against a second rank MT fire beast. However, he didn’t have any hope of defeating it. The best course of action was to run from it.

Unfortunately, their mounts couldn’t stay still in the presence of the salamander and tried to run as soon as they felt the beast’s power. The commotion attracted the salamander’s attention, and the fleeing mounts ended up killed by fireballs.

The first two fire blasts took 12 of his guards. As they tried to get some distance from the beast, he lost another four.

Size-wise, the salamander wasn’t that terrifying, it was only about the size of their mount. The scary part lay in the beast’s ability to use fire magic. The salamander could throw fireballs strong enough to burn a house with a spiting effort. The beast’s tail was a plus. When fighting the tail would become a fire whip, as if it wasn’t deadly enough.

As a Guard Captain, Lew was strong enough to defeat single-handed against any LT beast. But the difference between a LT and MT beast could be as high as the sky.

If needed, Lew could use some of his father’s techniques, which would give him the confidence to fend against most of the MT beasts. For survival reasons, he would prefer to keep those a secret for as long as he could.

To make the situation worse, the salamander was a fire beast. Which meant that it could use the most deadly pure element.

The fire element is known to be extreme. With attacking power higher than the other elements, but providing little to none in defense.

‘If dad was here, he could fight it! But I'm not him...’

Lew’s father was one of the best fighters from Serion. He held a position in the Royal Guards. He got the Captain position for Lew five years ago, hoping that he would succeed on it and move up the ladder.

If Lew performed well in the Eastern Border, he could get into the Kingdom Army and even into the Royal Army. Unfortunately, Lew met with a challenge he couldn’t overcome.

‘I have to use it... but I need to be smart. If I try to kill the salamander with it, I’m might be done for...  But if I use it to run, maybe I can escape...’

The beast seemed to notice that he was the only enemy left and began moving to attack. Lew took a large crystal from his pouch and close his eyes trying to concentrate.

Bursts of energy started to escape from the pulsating crystal.

A dim white glow began to appear around Lew’s body. In less than ten seconds, his eyes opened. The previously black eyes were now shining white.

‘It’s not enough... I need more...’

Lew increased his grip strength and broke the crystal. The energy inside it burst in a dome of light. Lew clenched his teeth and the exploding energy was absorbed into his body. The whole process took less than 20 seconds. He finished just in time to dodge the fire tail.

Lew’s movements were clearly faster than before. But instead of fighting the beast, he turned around and ran from it.

Soon, a fireball flew towards him. The human-sized ball of fire would explode as soon as it met a target, making it difficult to escape from the damage. Although Lew was faster than before, the fireball was still faster.

Fortunately, instead of trying to outrun the attack, he tried to dodge it by changing his direction. The fire calamity missed him by less than five meters, releasing the fire blast inferno as soon as it touched the ground.

The blast traveled through the air, causing a heat distortion around. Once it found Lew, the heat was fairly bearable, but the sudden impact was enough to throw him off balance.

Lew quickly transferred energy to his legs. He managed to keep standing while stumbling for a couple of seconds before recovering his running pace. The amount of energy flowing through his body was enough to resist at least one fireball attack, but this power wasn’t naturally his, and he wasn’t used to using it.

Lew didn’t even know how much it would last. So, his priority was to run as much as he could before the energy disappeared. Fortunately, he only had to dodge two fireballs before escaping the beast’s grasp.

‘thanks to the Origin! It probably lost interest in me.... ‘

However, Lew’s relieved smile turned into a desperate expression.

‘Damn... I don’t have a squad anymore... That beast destroyed too many villages and it’ll keep destroying... Hurricane City Lord will try to pin it all on me. I tried to warn the Wind Lord, but he didn’t take any measures. I’m done... I can’t go back to Hurricane City...’

.........

In the afternoon, grandma Marlen and other elders started a fire at the central square. Instead of only going by her experience, she adapted her cooking methods to Karl’s suggestions.

She asked for the help of some strong teens to gather rocks and place them above the fire, forming a stone table. 

Once the stones were heated, she placed the large pieces of beasts’ meat on top of it. The sizzling sound of the meat touching the stone made their mouths water. 

The hyena’s meat was very hard and would take a lot of work to slice it. Fortunately, Karl’s modified knife was sharp enough to cut through the joints. Also, Karl told Marlen that they shouldn’t cut it too much before grilling it.

After some time, Marlen noticed that the meat was losing up from the stone and the borders were started to change colors. She instructed the helpers to turn the meat over.

Once again the sizzling sound invaded their ears. But something else made them salivate even more. The turned side that had been grilling against the stone looked very tender. One of the helpers couldn’t help himself and poke the meat. The sight of the stick going through a layer of meat, causing it to form shreds made some villagers drool.

To break their daze, grandma Marlen moved and added some flavor herbs and burdock leaves on top of the meat. But the appetizing smell made the situation worse. Marlen could only sight and smile understandably. The villagers usually starved, on top of it, they never ate meat before.

With some difficulty, Marlen was able to get the villagers’ attention and instructed them to start several fires. While the meat finished grilling, she wanted to start preparing the broth.

The villagers didn’t have the equipment to cook large amounts of food, so they had to cook in several small pots.

Soon the water in the clay pots was boiling and they started to put sliced roots in. Previously, Karl explained that the roots would be ideal to absorb and enhance the earth’s attributes. Besides the burdock’s roots that Karl collected, the villagers only planted taro and yam for roots.

To finish the broth, they only needed to add the beasts’ bones into the boiling pots. Initially, they thought that taking the bones out would be very difficult because of the toughness of the meat. But once it was grilled in the stone, the bones were easily taken.

Marlen tried to be fair, dividing the bones equally between pots. But she took notice of the pots with more bones. Later, the broth on these pots would be given to the team. As an elder, she couldn’t be greedy nor digest too much magic energy anyway.