After I finished healing myself, I rolled back onto my butt and put my hands around my knees. I was tired, I hadn’t checked my Stamina Points yet, but I was pretty sure that they were low, if not almost empty. A run, followed by melee, not good for the old stamina. I’d just put my head on my knees when I felt something touch my shoulder. “Want some water?” I heard Janet say.

I looked up and grabbed the potion bottle and downed it all.

“So what do squirrels have against Chuck? And who’s Chuck?” asked Janet, laughing a little.

I laughed too. “I should have recognized the sound,” I said. “When squirrels get really angry they make that noise. But, it was so loud, I couldn’t figure out what it could be. Crazy right. Attacked by giant squirrels.”

“Is everything going to be that big? Were they monsters or beasts?” asked Tanya.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Imu, were those giant squirrels monsters or beasts?”

The little guy appeared and said, “Monsters.” He didn’t vanish so he must know that more questions are coming and be willing to answer them.

“What’s the difference between a monster and a beast?” I asked.

“Monsters are just basically animals, humanoid or insects or birds, non-sapients that have been mutated during the event,” he said. They are genetically stable and can reproduce with their own kind. Some like Goblins are monstrous sapients, tool users, but not capable of rising above their monstrousness, except in rare cases. They have monster cores.”

“Beasts are animals, humanoids, or insects or birds that are sapient (barely in some cases). They have beast cores which are bigger, made of more valuable materials and are capable of evolving and controlling their evolution.”

“What are monster cores? Beast cores?” I asked.

“Monster or beast cores are where a monster or beast stores its growth and potential. They grow either in the chest cavity next to the heart in monster’s or in the head, in the case of beasts,” it replied.

“What good are monster cores?” I asked, not sure I wanted to think about beast cores. I’m not sure that I’d be down with killing a sapient being to get its core. It seemed a little like shooting the former Governor of Oklahoma in order to get quadruple experience points. The president, well, I wouldn’t mind.

“Monster cores can be directly consumed to gain additional experience points. They can be used in blacksmithing, alchemy, or sacrificed to power spells or abilities,” he said.

“How many points would a monster provide?” I asked.

“It depends on both their rank and their level,” he said. “Bronze (50 points a level), Copper (100 points a level), Iron (200 points a level), Silver (400 points a level), Electrum (600 points a level), Gold (1000 Points a level), Platinum (2000 Points a level), Mithril (4000 Points a level), Orichalcum (8000 Points a level), Adamantine (16000 Points a level), Unobtanium (100000 Points a level).”

“So a Mithril ranked monster’s core could supply me with 4000 experience points,” I asked.

“No,” he said, “a level 201 Mithril ranked monsters core would supply you with at least 804,000 experience points.” And with that he vanished.

“He sure is a grump!” I muttered.

I looked up and shared the information that I just got with the girls. Tanya asked, “Does that mean that the rats from yesterday had cores?”

“I’d say so,” I asked.

“And these four squirrels, do they have cores?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure that they do,” I responded.

“And how many experience points would we get from each of them?” she asked.

“Well,” I said. “The baby squirrels were level eight, so they would be Copper, and the big one was level ten, so it’d be Copper too. So 800 points for each of the baby squirrels and 1000 points for the big one. Plus whatever experience points we got from fighting them.”

“And where would you need to dig to find their cores,” she asked. I noticed that the question had changed a little, from generic to specific with her use of the word you, but I couldn’t figure out a way out of it.

“Probably in the chest, next to the heart,” I said. “Did you check and see how much experience you gained from them?” I asked.

“How long do you think it’d take you to get them out?” she asked. “Janet and I will be meditating to regain our mana and you can take care of that while we finish up. We’ll also check and see if we went up a level or two.” And just like that, I got assigned the task of dissecting the squirrels to remove the cores. ‘Huh,’ I thought, ‘worthy of my mother. They learn it so young!”

I stood up and looked at the corpses of the squirrels that surrounded me. They were pretty bloody, the bolts had done some damage to them all, the fire had left them a little burnt too, plus Janet’s machete and my sword had left big wounds on the ones we’d gotten into melee with. I figured that I’d need to probably drag them out into the clearing and off the loading dock. And then, into the woods later. I wasn’t sure. It was probably a good idea to not leave the bodies around to rot or be eaten by the rats inside, but at the same time I didn’t want to attract any large cats or other predators by leaving food out for them.

I thought about it for awhile, standing there amidst the carnage, trying to figure out the best way to get their cores. I remembered watching a video (I love my new memory) on how to skin a squirrel and the first thing they did was cut off the squirrel’s hands and feet, remove the coat, removed the head, and then cut it open and stripped out its organs. That left them with something similar to a supermarket chicken, meat that might or might not have been an actual living thing. You could always persuade yourself that it was just meat. The question had become did we need the meat? Squirrel was pretty good to eat, according to Derek. But we had the sustenance potions. But we also had squirrels now. Wouldn’t it be better to eat them and save the potions for when we really needed them? It seemed wasteful somehow to not take advantage of their meat what with them just lying there dead.

I must have been standing there too long, ‘cause Janet called out from where she and Tanya were quote, unquote meditating under one of the archery target trees. It looked pretty much like they were just talking to me. “What’s up, Monsoon?”

“I’m trying to decide if I should skin these for meat or just pull the cores? Should we be wasting the meat? Should I burn the bodies? Bury them? Pull the cores and drag them into the woods? Clean them here? Or away from the building? Try and save the skins? Also, I’m kind of wondering what magic I can create to help or skills I can get by doing this? Supposedly a normal squirrel has about .4 kilograms of meat on him, these guys, just going by their size increase, should have about 32 kg apiece, more from the big one. That’s a lot of meat to waste.”

To their credit, neither of them turned green and both of them seemed to be considering it.

“Imu,” I heard Janet ask. “Does food or meat go bad in a person’s inventory?”

She seemed to be listening to something and then she looked back at us, “Nope,” she said. “It one of the reasons that you can’t put something living in your inventory. Nothing living can survive. That includes germs. It acts like a little stasis field. Things hot, stay hot; things cold, stay cold; things living become dead, well if you could get them in. By the way, did you notice that your inventory is growing? Every three levels, you get four more places to put stuff.”

I hadn’t noticed, I quickly checked and sure enough, I had 9 more spaces than the twenty I remembered starting with. I should have noticed that. Just like I should have noticed that I went up five levels. I guess fighting a pack of squirrels that are all higher level than you makes a difference. I quickly added my free points to my stats: one into agility, ten into Intelligence, ten into Wisdom, and four into Constitution. And I made a mental note to distribute or, at least come up with a plan for how to distribute some of my skill points. I looked over the stat sheet and liked what I saw:

Status

Name

Maysoon Alacrity Seebring “Monsoon”, “Chief”

Level (Monk/Mage)

10/10

Class(es)

Monk/Mage

Attribute

Points

0

Skill Points

98

Strength

45

Intelligence

75

Dexterity

35

Wisdom

65

Agility

62

Perception

50

Constitution

50

Charisma

40

Vitality

52

Luck

22

AC

8

Health:

336

Mana:

285

Qi:

285

Stamina

320

“Get your stats distributed?” asked Tanya. I guess she could tell, I must have had my cell phone face on.

“Yep,” I said. “I’m at level 10 now.”

“Oh,” she said. “Janet and I are both at 13. I guess taking two classes versus one makes a difference.”

I smiled, but inside I was crying a little.

“So, what do you want to do with the squirrels,” I asked.

“I vote for saving the meat,” Janet said. “Even if we don’t use it, we’ve got storage for it and I’m thinking that feeding people might be a problem in the future. No supermarkets. Lots of hungry people. I could help. I used to help my dad butcher the deer that he shot.”

“I’m thinking that we ought to do that as well,” said Tanya. “We never can tell when we might need to feed more people. I’m guessing that we’ll probably pick up some people on the road. If you hadn’t been high enough levels to tank those rats and then those squirrels, we could have died. I’m pretty sure that there are a lot of people who are the only survivors of an encounter like ours that we’ll need to help.”

“Ok,” I said. “I’m good with butchering these guys,” I said as I pointed toward the squirrels. “I felt kind of bad about just leaving them to rot.”

“But let's not do it here or by the archery trees,” Janet said. “I don’t want to be stepping on squirrel intestines when I’m looking for my bolts! Hey, another thought. We’re all in the Iron Ranks now, does that change our plans? Are we going to leave tonight after we finish butchering the squirrels?”

‘Man,’ I thought. ‘I just get one question answered and now there’s another one. Adulthood sucks!’

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you guys think? It’s about 11:30.”

“Let’s see how long it takes to butcher these guys and then make our decision,” Tanya said.

“OK,” said Janet. “Sounds good to me.” She turned and looked out over the back area and said, “See the tree on the west side.”

I nodded. It was a single new tree - one of the 12-14 meter trees that had grown almost instantly during the event. It was probably about 30 meters from the trees that we used to practice archery on, about perpendicular to us on the loading dock. It looked like a bald cypress tree in the way that its limbs were arranged, kind of pointing out from the trunk. This one’s limbs started at about 7 feet off the ground and looked sturdy. It had the same kind of wispy leaves that the cypress did, but they were red, almost crimson. I’d never seen a tree like it before. It might explain why the Tulsa mountains were now red.

“That limb,” Janet said, pointing towards the bottom-most limb of the tree, “looks like it would be perfect for hanging the squirrels. You’ve got rope right.”

I nodded and she said, “OK, go ahead and get these squirrels over there and we’ll figure out how to clean them.” And then she walked away.

I grabbed two of the little ones and dragged them over and left them at the foot of the tree and then tossed her the rope I’d stored in my inventory. She took it and slung it over the branch while I headed back for the other two. I had no problem hauling the carcasses, 30 kilos and, the last bigger one, 45 kilos at the same time. My strength was off the hook.

As I got about midway back to the tree, a shadow swept over me, and I fell to the ground, throwing out the squirrel corpses. ‘Again,’ I thought. ‘Not again, please.’