Spoils of War

By the time I woke up, the sun was already firmly embedded up in the sky. It was already noon, and I had unknowingly overslept. In actuality, I probably would have slept longer, if it hadn’t been for the gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. Although I’ve gotten used to it lately, all the same, it was still an incredibly irritating sensation.

After a quick breakfast, I packed up my supplies, checked on the state of the egg, and did a few morning exercises to warm myself up. I moved my body around, much in the same way kids moved during radio calisthenics. Primarily, this was done in order to wake myself up from my half asleep state, but it was also a way to confirm my body’s current condition.

With only 15 minutes of light movement, I was already working up a sweat. On the other hand though, I could feel that my body was moving a lot smoother than before. A lot of the smaller wounds on my body had closed, while the muscle ache from yesterday had decreased. Checking my status window, I confirmed that a few of my abnormal status effects have disappeared, primarily [Dehydration] and [Starvation].

One thing I can praise this body of mine with is over how quickly it can recover from the brink of death. Compared to my condition 2 days ago, I was like a different man entirely.

The biggest relief out of all this though was probably my left wrist. It still wasn’t completely healed, but just the mere fact that I could slightly wiggle my numb fingers around, was already a big weight off my shoulders.

After my morning exercise, I brusquely wiped my body clean using a wet towel I found within the house, before I quickly grabbed my gear, equipped my sword, and proceeded to head out.

But as I approached the front door, an abrupt sound made my steps falter and my breathe halt.

“...”

I stood perfectly still for a second, my face contorted in half disbelief, and half fear. I forcibly slowed by breathing as my facial expression quickly contorted into one of seriousness. I perked my ears up, and concentrated. At first, amidst the familiar silence, there was nothing, but as time slowly passed, the noise came once again.

It was a soft sound, one that was almost impossible to make out. It was only because of my enhanced hearing that I could hear the almost deafly quiet noise that suddenly entered my ears. The sound originated from outside the door, and was something akin to whistling.

...No, that wasn’t quite right. It was chirping. A faint, soft, almost melodic chirping. One that seemed strangely nostalgic.

With careful, practiced movements, I quietly approached the door. I moved the furniture that I had used as a makeshift barricade as silently as possible, before I took a discreet glance out the front door window.

Out on the pathway, amidst the overgrown weeds, and slightly cracked pavement, was a small bird. It was probably only about as big as a child’s fist, and its ruffled feathers were colored a light shade of coffee brown. It looked harmless enough, and under normal circumstances, wouldn’t have stood out all that much, but, upon seeing this bird, for the first time, I realized something.

Ever since I escaped from the school dungeon, this was probably the first time I’ve ever run across anything alive, outside of plants and insects. The manticore was probably the major cause for this odd phenomenon. Be it monster, human, or animal, in the past, anything with even a semblance of sentience was probably scared off or killed by the Manticore.

Now that this region’s territory tyrant was dead, it was inevitable for those creatures to return. This solitary bird was a sign of this. A premonition of sorts. At first, it would be little, harmless animals like this, but eventually… soon, larger, more dangerous things would come.

This bird only served to further cement the feeling of urgency that had long since started budding within my heart.

Letting out a loose sigh, I quickly moved away the rest of the furniture before I opened the door and stepped out into the outside world. A salty breeze swept past me while the comfortable heat of the morning sunlight cascaded down my face.

I took in a deep breathe, my mind momentarily spacing out for a second, before its usual sharpness returned. I glanced warily at my surroundings, before I tilted my head down to stare at the small bird that stood oblivious, less than a meter away from me.

This bird was strange, I noted. Normally, any regular bird would have long since flown away by the time I got even half this close to it. This brown colored bird that resembled a sparrow was different. It was unafraid, in fact, it even went as far as to stare at me with its beady black eyes. It chirped once, seemingly acknowledging my presence, before it quickly turned away and continued pecking at the pavement below.

Seeing this display of nonchalance, I unconsciously squinted my eyes. The bird’s reactions were indeed strange. Staring at it closely, I discovered that not only was it behaving weirdly, even its appearance was weird.

There was a streak of dull green that ran from the top of its head down to its tail feathers. This caught my attention, mostly because even with my limited knowledge on birds, never once have I seen a single green striped bird on this island. What’s more, while the green might have tripped off my suspicions, there was one, definite thing that completely confirmed my doubts.

When the bird stretched and ruffled its feathers, I was surprised to see that it had two pairs of wings. Hidden by its larger set, the sparrow had a smaller pair of wings that was about only half the size of the large pair. I was positive that there was not a single species of bird that had more than 1 pair of wings.

Seeing this, my first thought was that this creature was something that came from the other world. I mulled this thought around for a while before I eventually dismissed it. Despite the out of place green stripe, and its second pair of wings, the overall structure and appearance of the bird was something I recognized. This sparrow was a common sight around this time of year.

The resemblance was so similar that it completely blew away all thoughts I had of this creature being an otherworlder. If it weren’t for the effects of [Extreme Burnout], then I would have long since used [identify] on this brown sparrow.

I stared at it for a few more seconds, before I let out a defeated sigh, and continued on my way. While the idea that other life forms on earth were evolving to adapt to this new world entered my thoughts, my mind was too preoccupied with my current concerns to place any immediate importance into the matter.

As I walked in the general direction of the school, I reaffirmed my plans.

Today, I had two immediate goals. One, I wanted to check and collect the drops from the manticore. Two, I wanted to go to Cielle’s house and meet back up with the others. The deadline for my return was three days, and taking into account the amount of time that has passed since I confronted the manticore, at least three days have already passed. Of course, the time I was unconscious was a major wrench in those estimations. Whether I slept for only a single day or more was a mystery to the current me.

Either way, this just made me meeting back up with the others all the more important. In fact, rendezvousing with the others was my main objective. The manticore loot was secondary.

Due to my slow pace, and overt caution, what should have taken only a mere 30 minutes, took me a 2 and a half hours to reach my destination. In front of my eyes was the familiar school. Although its presence incited a form of bittersweet nostalgia within my heart, its appearance was anything but familiar.

The majority of the school was destroyed. In fact, it was difficult to even call what I was looking at a building. The main and east buildings were completely demolished. While the east building lay like an ancient ruin, the main building sunk inward into the ground, almost as if a sinkhole had suddenly appeared beneath its foundation.

The old school building faired slightly better. At least it still resembled an actual building, although half of said building was in complete ruin.

Taking everything in, I could not help but draw a sharp breathe. In a sense it was incredible. Just the mere sight of it all was a true testament to the Manticore’s monstrous strength, and [Intermediate Draconic Boost’s] real power.

After I checked the surroundings for any monsters or additional threats, I made my way through the haphazard piles of debris and junk lying around, and entered the old school building through a hole in the wall. I did a quick once over of the place, before I immediately made my way to the underground floor.

The basement was just as how I had left it, with the sole exception of the hunkering pile of meat that lay deathly still in the middle of the room.

The manticore’s limbs were curled inwards, while its eyes, or eye, were closed shut, almost as if it had been sleeping. Its fur was somewhat flat, and lacked the original vigor and luster it had when it was alive. Its jaw slackened while its tongue fell loose besides its mouth. The hole in its head was caked in dry blood, and reddish pinkish chunks were present within that blood.

Although I was well aware that it was long dead, a feeling of instinctual caution still ran through my mind, causing me to shiver slightly.

I knew it was dead. I was certain it was dead, but still, I could not help but want to confirm it with my own body. I wanted to double check just to be sure.

I subconsciously used [identify], but as expected, that did not work. As I quietly chided myself, I cautiously walked over to the manticore’s dead body. I placed an empty palm onto its slackened cheek, before I immediately pulled back. A surprised expression was etched onto my face. I paused for a second, before I timidly moved my hand back over onto its face. After a couple of seconds, I once again retracted my hand. I was unable to hide the persistent surprise on my face..

Although it was dead, although it should have been dead for at least three days by now, the corpse was still warm. I cautiously stared at the manticore, before I once again timidly touched its cheek. Seeing no reaction, I began lightly slapping the manticore’s face, increasing the strength and the speed of my slap with each subsequent swing.

Still, no reaction. Again, I knew it was dead. Even now, the mere fact that there was no window panel floating above its head, was enough to confirm that what lay before was a corpse, and not a monster. Even though I knew this, the heat of its body still lingered on my slightly reddened right hand.

As if as a final confirmation, I searched through the tuff of its mane, and placed my hand on where it's carotid artery should have been located. I touched a giant bulging vein on its neck, and waited for thirty seconds. Time passed painfully slow, but aside from the residue heat, there was no movement. There was no pulse, yet the body, even now, as I was touching it, still felt warm.

Going by my abrupt level increase a few days back, the manticore was dead for at least three days, maybe more. Normally, a body should grow cold after only a few hours of death, let alone for three days. This creature though… the manticore’s corpse, as if to defy normal conventional logic, its body still retained some of its original heat. Its incredible vitality that even transcended death honestly amazed me.

After silently staring at the corpse for a while, I snapped out of my self induced stupor and immediately started looking around for the inevitable dropped loot.

I searched on top, below, and around the corpse. I waded through the sea of sticky dried blood and gooey brain chunks that haphazardly littered the floor as I desperately searched. Being in this room, and looking for dropped items, I recalled the [Gila Matriarch] that had died at the hands of the Dungeon Boss.

In all likelihood, that elite monster probably died within this very room, and there was a possibility that it had dropped a skill book or some other type of item.

I could not help but raise my head as I looked around at all the rubble and piles of concrete mountains around me. I gave the basement a once over, before I inwardly shook my head. It was too great of a task to search through all that. This was especially true with my current condition, where I couldn’t even muster out 1/7th of my original strength. It was regrettable, but in order to conserve strength, I could not do anything too tasking to my body, such as moving around heavy concrete slabs, and digging through piles of rubble.

In the end, I ultimately decided to give up on searching for something that may not even exist in the first place.

More importantly, after searching around near the manticore’s mountain like body for a good 2 minutes, I finally stumbled upon a horde of miscellaneous items.

I performed a quick count, and confirmed the existence of 2 skill books, a weapon, and 2 scroll looking bundles of paper.

Because they were something I hadn’t seen before, the scrolls were what caught my attention the most, so I these were the items I checked first. Although I currently could not use [Identify], since the scrolls were system items, their information panel readily came to life before me with a single thought.

The first scroll was a small, yet thick piece of paper that was only a few inches wide, and a few more inches long. The color of the parchment was pure black, and a thin red piece of cloth held the whole thing together.

Lesser Plundering Scroll

A scroll filled with malicious intent. Pull the string, and indicate the target in order to activate.

When used on a target, it guarantees the drop of a skill book upon the target’s death. Dropped skill book cannot be specified.

Time limit of 1 hour. If time limit is exceeded and target is not dead, then the scroll will lose its effect.

The scroll turned out to be something rather unique. It was a special item of sorts.

The [Lesser Plundering Scroll], confirmed that a skill book would drop upon killing something. Although it did not specify, considering other precedents, this scroll was probably useable on both human and monster.

Honestly speaking, this was a pretty useful item.

Going by my own interpretations, while the first thought to come to mind may be to use this on another human, I felt that its potential was strongest when used on something like a boss class monster like the manticore or the Dungeon boss. If I’m reading into this correctly, then using the scroll, in addition to the original drops, it confirmed that an extra skill book would be added into the loot.

Of course, it might be beneficial to take a gamble and use the scroll on a human with a useful skill, but still, that does not guarantee that the intended skill would drop. In this regard, it might be better to just use it on something you know is going to drop something good.

Either way, the convenience of this scroll was important, and couldn’t be underestimated.

After I placed the black scroll into my backpack, I immediately went to check on the next scroll.

This scroll was a bit more ordinary looking than the last. It was about the size of a regular piece of paper, and it had coarse, yellow white parchment and a thick green cloth holding it in place.

I quickly brought up the scroll’s window panel and read through its contents.

In short, the scroll was something like an alchemy recipe. It was an instruction manual for something called a [Draconic Mixture]. According to the scroll, [Draconic Mixture] was sort of a temporary power boost. It momentarily augments a person's fighting power, and temporarily gives its user a 5% affinity with the draconic race.

Again, the blatant mention of dragons was something I could not ignore, but right now, I was powerless to do anything about it. The draconic flare, this recipe for the Draconic Mixture, the draconic boost skills the manticore and I had… it was a bit unnerving. Usually, dragons were end game monsters… to have it appear within this dingy island…

While I did see a few monsters with wings flying around in the city back when the apocalypse first started, I didn’t think those were necessarily dragons. At most, they might have been wyverns or something similar, but a true and blue dragon should be more powerful. At the very least, it’s probably stronger than this manticore.

We were honestly lucky that we haven’t run into one yet, but at the same time, I felt a heavy sense of foreboding. If this pattern with dragon related objects continued, then it wasn’t going to be long until we run into an actual dragon.

After involuntarily sighing, I read through the recipe and inwardly frowned. The items on this list might be a bit… difficult to find.

As expected, every single ingredient was something otherworldly. The primary ingredient was the blood from a creature with dragonic origin. The stronger the dragon lineage, the stronger the mixture. Next was a series of herbs, and minerals that I’ve never heard of before. They probably originated from the otherworld.

The main ingredient seems to be the dragon blood, but the plants and minerals look to be the hardest parts to find. In the first place, although dragon like creatures were haphazardly running around this island without a care, I had no clue where to even start when it came to the plants and minerals. I sighed inwardly, before I stowed away the scroll.

Next I looked at the skill books.

The first skill book was as expected, [Intermediate Draconic boost].

It was basically a stronger version of [Lesser Draconic Boost], and although I couldn’t verify it right now, I was more than certain it had a pretty high synchronicity rating with my previous skill. While this conclusion brought a sort of giddy anticipation to my heart, it also filled me with a sense of hesitation.

From what I could remember during the fight, my version of [Lesser Draconic Boost] seemed a bit unstable. I don’t know whether it was due to the skill’s original constitution, or because of the ++ factor my constant skill fusions gave it, but currently, my body was unable to handle the strain of using the skill.

After some thought yesterday, I came to the conclusion that in part, my [Extreme Exhaustion] and [Extreme Burnout] status effects were directly related to me overtaxing my body with [Lesser Draconic Boost]. Maybe that breakthrough I had with [Sensory Remapping] also played a role, but without a doubt, the main cause was this new skill of mine.

I was certain that under normal circumstances, with a regular lesser draconic boost, my body was more than capable enough to handle the strain of the skill, but with the changes my equip brought on, the skill I do have, [Lesser Draconic Boost ++], turned a bit unstable, and the strain it placed on its host increased to the point where it was too much for the current me to handle.

If I were to just recklessly upgrade what I currently had by adding in the [Intermediate Draconic Boost], while the skill might turn into something even more powerful, at the same time, the instability would increase. I could picture the scene of my body exploding from the resulting skill’s effects.

Regrettably, after such careful consideration, I decided to stow away the skill book, and use it later, when I was certain I could take the strain, or at least until my body adjusts to my current version of [Lesser Draconic Boost].

Having checked three of the items that the Manticore had dropped, I turned towards the remaining two.

Disappointingly, the second skill book was rather ordinary. It was a simple [Intimidate] skill that, as its name implies, allowed its user to intimidate those around him. While it was something simple, nonetheless, its utility couldn’t be ignored, especially during negotiation type scenarios with opposing human parties.

It was definitely something I wanted to learn, but considering [Extreme Burnout] was still in effect, I held off on learning it just yet. I wanted to wait until at least my [Equip] skill became fully operational, that way, I could benefit off the item bonuses my skill gave.

The last item was a weapon.

It was something rather plain looking, but its sheer size was enough to make one’s breathe falter. The weapon was a simple battle axe. Its handle was about a foot taller than I was, and the blade was as wide as a twin sized bed. Without a doubt, it was a weapon fit for a giant.

A weapon this big could probably do a lot of damage, but the downside to this was it was simply too large for any ordinary person to wield. Even if I did have enough strength to lift and swing a weapon this large around, its sheer size would affect the amount of force I could apply.

Its size was both its advantage and disadvantage.

As I frowned and pondered over the practicality of this weapon, I read its window panel...