Before beginning the process of deconstructing the animal, Samantha sent Silas off in search of a place they could shelter while her arm healed. As they parted ways, she took a moment to remove the tourniquet she had fashioned earlier. Her severed arm had scabbed over completely with her earlier breakthrough, so it would only hinder her going forward. Groaning with tiredness, she mentally prepped herself for the hours of further exhausting work she knew lay ahead.

With a Spirit Beast this size, she had to be strategic about what she collected from its corpse. There was no way she could take all of it with her, even with her enhanced strength, nor did she have the luxury of time. She suspected that once the sun rose, she wouldn’t have long until the fate of this glade’s protectors would be discovered by other denizens of the forest, along with her weakened self if she remained. If her inner clock was correct, she had maybe 7 hours until morning, 8 if she was lucky. That would be cutting things close with both of her arms intact… but with one? She’d just have to find a way to make it work.

Looking over the carcass, she decided she could reasonably hope for 3 things: the pelt, a good cut of meat or two, and the tusks in that exact order. The pelt and meat were the highest priority because they would certainly be consumed by scavengers if she didn’t harvest them immediately. The hide would eventually make fantastic armor, as it had successfully turned aside her spear many times, and the meat could serve as crucial rations while she hunkered down somewhere to heal. Seeing as she wouldn’t be in fighting shape for some undetermined amount of time, this may be her only chance to acquire meat until her arm was regrown. The tusks were the lowest priority primarily because of their sturdiness. Iron Boar tusks were infused with high amounts of metals and minerals, so it was unlikely that the material from the Rank 3 alpha could be damaged by the more common Rank 1 and 2 beasts. In addition, in order to reach the teeth, she would need to break through the tree somehow and then either decapitate the boar or remove the jaw—a difficult task with her bare hand. Her plan set, she stopped wasting time and got to work.

Skinning the beast was exceedingly difficult with only one good arm, she unsurprisingly found. Until she regenerated her first qi point back, and the feeling of general weakness throughout her body faded away, she made nearly no progress in the endeavor. Even with her energy back to somewhat normal levels though, holding the fur taut with her teeth proved a poor substitute for a functioning hand; however, with ingenuity, determination, and liberal use of expletives, she managed it. Admittedly, she had to leave the underbelly alone seeing as she didn’t have the strength to flip the three-quarter ton boar by herself, but she still cut free around 300 pounds of pelt. This also meant she couldn’t retrieve even a remnant of her crafted Primitive Bone Spear, leaving her well and truly weaponless. After placing the fur aside, she got to work on harvesting the backstraps—the choicest cut of meat that she felt she could carry on top of everything else. By the time she had finished her gruesome task, several hours had passed and the faintest hint of sunrise was already beginning to peek over the mountain tops.

She packed her things as quickly as one hand allowed, simultaneously paring down on now-obsolete spirit beast materials that she collected over the months. All other pelts, bones, and pieces of chitin were left behind, leaving only the essentials she had originally brought with her on this trip and the newly acquired Iron Boar Fur and meat. Hoisting the 350 pounds of equipment onto her back, she began following the bond string and sent out, “I’ve finished collecting what I could for now, though we should come back before we leave the area permanently. Did you find anywhere good?”

“Think so! Keep following. You’ll see.” Silas replied.

Samantha sent an affirmative and obliged, continuing towards Silas’s location at a slow but steady pace. Judging by the faintness of the string she felt, he was quite far away, and it made her wonder if after a certain distance they would no longer be able to sense each other. She quickly pushed the thought from her mind, knowing that it was something they could perhaps test later but would not be safe to try now. She did her best to focus on her surroundings and remain attentive, but the bone-deep fatigue that plagued her made it difficult. Her mind wandered to other topics as she marched, and she scolded herself repeatedly as she caught herself dangerously oscillating between alertness, sleepiness, and daydreaming. Whenever her discipline slipped, she thought of things like home, how weird it was to still sometimes feel like her hand existed at the end of her arm, and most often of her reopening of her third eye.

This time, the memory was clearer in her mind, perhaps because of the extended time spent in the spiritual plane. It was odd, she thought, during in this second visit she was not balancing upon a spider’s thread or touching a weave of fate, but swimming in a vast ocean. Was it a different experience because her rank was different, because of the different physical location, or something else entirely? Perhaps the other side had no permanent form and changed from moment to moment, for all she knew. She suspected that the answers would elude her for some time if she was able to find them at all.

Before long, Samantha reached Silas, and he directed her to an old dried up riverbed. Leading her behind a smattering of large, rounded boulders, he pointed out a crack in a stony portion of the river wall about three feet wide.

“Cave. Checked opening already. No beasts present. Not sure about further inside.” he informed.

Samantha nodded to him, squeezing her over encumbered body through the space. She speculated that if she had not been specifically looking for it, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the cave entrance, so hopefully this would also be the case for would-be predators. She looked down the passageway and was thankful again for her ability to see in the dark. Curves in the corridor prevented her from viewing too far ahead, but at least she wouldn’t be announcing her presence to anything hiding away in here with bright torchlight.

Silas, being much faster and in better shape than she was at the moment, offered to go in front and scout for danger. Samantha agreed, keeping an eye on their rear and only progressing forward whenever she received a message that the path ahead was safe. They proceeded cautiously like this for several minutes before the tunnel opened up into a large cavern. While it was obvious from the smooth stone walls up to this point that water had formed the passage through erosion over centuries, this cavern was artificial in nature. The walls were too jagged, and in the distance she thought she saw large claw marks in the rock, as if the earth had been carved away.

She and Silas stopped at the opening, carefully observing the space to see if there were any signs of life. Samantha briefly turned her Prey's Perception to 100%, ignoring the pounding in her head that started to throb as she took in everything that she was able. There were no more openings that she could see in the hollow, so this was likely the end of the cave system. If this area was safe, then they only needed to worry about attacks coming in from outside, which was significantly more managable than being pincered between attacks.

She noted that there was a musty quality to the air like old rot, but beyond that she did not sense anything out of the ordinary. Confirming with Silas that he didn't perceive anything odd either, she turned her skill back down to 75% and they progressed further into the cavern. After a few minutes of searching, she found the source of the smell—the decayed corpse of a cultivator.

It wasn’t difficult to tell that he had been from a very wealthy family when he was alive. His pristine robes and pack were a stark contrast to his curled up skeleton, the faintly glowing stitching of the items ensuring that no stain or decay would touch the fabrics. Such things would cost dozens upon dozens of gold pieces, or perhaps a few rank 2 cores for each item if you were trading. She looked around his final resting place and shuddered, a story quickly forming in her mind of what caused the cultivator’s end. All around him were signs of his madness.

Nonsense symbols and fragmented bits of sentences were carved into the stone nearest him or painted in now-flaking blood.

“Return to the mother’s womb… swim in the earth… the trees ate me…?” Samantha read quietly, “poor soul.”

Silas sent a questioning thought in response to her words.

“I don’t know how it is for spirit beasts like you, but there are a lot of risks for humans gaining access to qi and cultivation. When you first breakthrough to Low Copper, your third eye opens because you’re unlocking your spiritual potential, so to speak. With it open, you can have an out of body experience, see into the spiritual plane--it’s a bit different for everyone I hear—but in all cases you risk your mind. Human minds aren’t meant to see beyond the veil like that for an extended period, and some people don’t have the self-control to turn away from the knowledge that can come from it.” Samantha explained, gesturing to the sad scene.

“This cultivator is one of those poor souls. His mind broke when he unlocked his qi, and he died because of it. It’s sad to think of his lost potential. It’s sad to think that this could have easily been me.” she concluded.

“You went back though. To beyond.” Silas queried.

“I did,” Samantha said seriously, “and it was an incredibly risky move. One I wouldn’t have dared if our lives didn’t depend on it. Back in Yivesh, you actually need a permit to attempt to keep your third eye open for a subsequent breakthrough. Can you imagine the damage that an insane, paranoid cultivator could do amid the city?”

“Permit? City?”

“Right… well, you’ll understand once we get back home and you see it for yourself.” She replied bashfully, embarrassed that she forgot Silas had no frame of reference for a lot of what she was talking about.

Silas appeared to accept her answers without further questions, so with the conversation concluded, she quit her procrastination and looked down at the expensive items around the skeleton. She sighed. She didn’t feel good about looting the dead, but surely it was better than leaving the items here where they served no one. Maybe she could even take something back to the family if she was able to locate an identifying crest or sigil on his person.

Feeling less guilty about rifling through the bag then she did about stripping his corpse, she started there. The bag contained two manuals, a journal, a bottle of pills, a pouch of unused beast cores, a handful of dried rations, and some basic survival supplies. All were perfectly preserved by the magic of the pack.

The pill bottle excited her, but she had no way to tell what the medicines did just by looking at them. In a best-case scenario, they were cultivation elixirs that she could use to further advance herself, and in a worst case scenario they could be powerful healing drugs. Not wanting to get her hopes up too high, she began thumbing through the 3 books to see if any had information on the pills. Reading the manual covers first, her heart skipped a beat: “Vital Wellspring Cultivation Technique” and “Sage’s Rumination Combat Art”!

She quickly opened to the first page of each and skimmed through, delighted with every word she read. In short, the Vital Wellspring Cultivation Technique was a rare cultivation pattern that focused more on qi pool size than regeneration, but that’s where the Combat Art came in. Sage’s Rumination, if mastered, would allow a cultivator to maintain a permanent state of meditation, essentially allowing them to permanently double whatever natural qi regeneration rate they possessed. This was an incredible find, in Samantha’s opinion, even better than the Vital Wellspring Technique. With a skill like this, she could forgo trying to find a balanced pattern in favor of something that gave the largest qi pool and just let Sage’s Rumination pick up the slack. It’d be similar to using a pattern a rank higher than she actually was!

To add to her fortune, it looks like the pills were indeed cultivation elixirs, and were in fact necessary for learning both the technique and the combat art. Each pill was supposed to be taken at a different stage of her learning and would eventually give a slight permanent increase to the efficiency of her dantian’s qi absorption rate! All this indicated to Samantha that the family that this young man belonged to had developed these manuals themselves instead of purchasing them from an outside source, because it was rare to find perfectly synergized techniques that required the same elixirs. In addition, with all the resources that were apparently invested in this cultivator's journey without promise of success (from the enchanted gear to the beast cores), they either were so rich that such expenditures were commonplace, or this person was high in the family hierarchy. There was no denying that she had really hit the jackpot with this.

She scanned through the journal as well, seeing if she could discover exactly which family she had to thank for her windfall. She didn’t need to look further than a few pages in to discover that this cultivator was originally from House Granvich, one of the three most powerful Noble Houses in Yivesh. Learning this fact, Samantha immediately knew who the individual at her feet was.

A few years back, the scion of House Granvich received his cultivator’s quest at the young age of 14, several years before most. It was believed that having earlier access to the cultivation quest meant that the individual had higher potential for power, and often this was the case. People who started younger got stronger faster, and since most of those who accepted the quest at a young age were part of the nobility (due to the increased safety and success rate), the abundance of resources nearly always ensured that they stood head and shoulders above their peers anyway. So, Eduin Granvich was sent out to their family’s permanent nexus in the wilds—apparently in the Eastern Reaches somewhere since she found him here—with much fanfare and every advantage they could give him while skirting the quest restrictions. It was a scandal when it became evident that he wouldn't return, the Granvich’s losing a significant amount of face in the process since they made such a fuss about him being the future of their House.

Her head was positively swimming with the possibilities and how far ahead she could get with the same resources at her disposal as the wealthiest noble families. It was when she nearly fell over that she realized her head was swimming in more than a metaphorical sense, and she sat down on a nearby rock.

“Need rest.” Silas chided as he looked over her, “Go sleep now.”

“What about you?” Samantha countered, “You’ve been up just as long.”

“Healing earlier… made awake? Refreshed. Not tired, so go sleep now!” He lectured a bit more forcefully.

Samantha thought over everything that she still had to do. She had her Bond Ability points to spend, she needed to properly set up camp, she had to preserve the meat, she wanted to eventually put the skeleton to rest-

“Ow!” Samantha yelped, having been kicked in the leg by her bond. She glared down at him and scowled. He scowled right back, as much as a hare could, anyway. He hopped over to a relatively clear spot on the ground and thumped it a few times with his foot, before looking her in the eye and tilting his head.

“Fine, you’re right.” Samantha relented, pulling out her sleeping roll and tossing it to the ground. There was nothing that was so urgent that it needed to be completed right this second. She could spend the points when her head was clearer, Eduin wasn't going to wander off in the night, and the cave was cold enough that the meat should keep until she awoke, at least. She removed her robes and wiped as much of the blood and grime off of herself as she could with the sparse sections that remained somewhat clean. The robes were completely mundane, and thus had become ragged after months of fighting, cleaning carcasses, and roughly scrubbing them clean again. As distasteful as the idea was, she couldn’t justify wearing it any longer now that a better option had presented itself.

She stumbled over to Eduin’s corpse and took off his enchanted robes, shaking them off thoroughly before sliding the silken material over her skin and tying the sash. The fit was a bit odd because it was tailored for a male physique, but it was infinitely better than the filthy scraps she called clothes previously. She tried not to reflect too much on the fact that her peer had died in these robes and laid down on her bed mat, falling into a dreamless slumber as soon as she closed her eyes.