When I stepped out of that ring for the final time, I felt like I’d been beaten into the ground by a roving gang of baseball bat–wielding munchkins.

Which wasn’t far from the truth.

I’d tangled with six waves of Grass Hounds, each more vicious and numerous than the last. By the end, they’d come at me from all sides in a swarm of teeth and fangs and venom. Didn’t matter. I was Batman, the Terminator, and Iron Man all rolled into one. The deranged Pokémon rejects bounced off me like a bunch of malformed toddlers. Eventually, I was the only one left standing. Inside, outside, all around the fairy ring, the bodies of the slain Grass Hounds dotted the landscape.

And, as they died, I’d sucked up their Essence like a vacuum, healing my wounds in the process, which made it possible for me to continue to fight. To kill. To win.

When the bounty noticed finally appeared again, alerting me that I’d cleared the fairy ring, my Grass Hound body count ended at a grand total of twenty-eight monsters. At 63 Essence a pop, plus the 250 Essence Reward from the Bounty, that netted me 2,014 Raw Essence—enough to earn a new level and bump me up to Novice, Gold Rank. Not half bad. I knew those level increases would come slower and slower the more I advanced; that was the way all RPGs worked, and my real-life experiences had mimicked that reality as well.

When I’d joined the Marine Corps, I’d been in good shape, but none of it was from training. As a kid, the only “training” I ever got was running from the cops who crashed the keggers my dumb hillbilly friends would throw a couple times a month. That or dodging the flip-flops my mama hurled at my head when the cops inevitably tracked me down after the keggers.

Before the Marine Corps, I was a wiry kid, just on the other side of scrawny. By the time I got out of boot camp, I hardly even looked like the same person. Drill Instructor Screw Y’all had ground my dick into the dirt, and I’d packed on muscle and endurance in record time as a result. But those were early gains. Quick and easy. Going from five pull-ups to twenty—the PFT max—had taken me three months and a little sweat equity. Going from twenty pulls-up to twenty-five had taken me two years of consistent training. This was no different.

For now, I didn’t give a shit. I was just loving life and enjoying the easy victories anywhere I could get ’em.

Speaking of easy gains, I’d also made out like a bandit when I’d raided the fallen bodies strewn out across the ground. According to Arturo, these things were beasts of the Faewylds, and like all of their kin, they were greedy little treasure bandits. Which squared with my limited interactions with Renholm. That was also part of the reason we’d come here. Vigils depended on high-quality equipment to keep them alive just as much as their abilities, and some shoddy armor pilfered off a dead adventurer wasn’t going to cut it. Especially not against something as nasty as an Elder Changeling.

Raiding a fairy ring was a surefire way to get gear or, barring that, the coin to buy some—assuming you survived the process.

For my trouble, I picked up a bagful of silver and gold doubloons, these marked with the portrait of a woman on one side and a double-headed dragon on the other. Different from the Rjuhella coin I’d taken off the Crave Ghoul corpses. When I asked Arturo about it, he launched into a lengthy and mind-numbingly dull explanation about ancient history, coinage, and minting practices. The coins that had come from the Grass Hounds were Kelkadian crowns, the gold standard—no pun intended—across much of the continent, and the woman plaster across the front was the High Queen Palander, Guardian of the Passes.

She governed all off Kelkadia, including Ironmoor, and was the most powerful member of the Holy Triad Alliance, composed of the Virtaruns to the west and the Ordu Dynasty to the north.

One silver Kelkadian crown would get me three hots and a cot for a day, while a golden crown would set me up for a month or buy me a decent breastplate. Two golden crowns would get me a horse complete with tack—saddle, stirrups, bridle, the whole nine yards. By contrast, it was twenty Rjuhella silver marks to one silver Kelkadian crown, which explained why Maggie had all but laughed in my face when I’d slapped down a couple of Rjuhella silvers and a handful of worn coppers. I’d probably looked like a moron, trying to pay for room and board with the equivalent of a pocketful of pennies and Monopoly money.

According to the padre, the Rjuhella were traveling people who’d been scattered to the winds in a great diaspora after the Hundred Years’ War to bring down something called the Sapphire City. Essentially, they were refugees, and from the way Arturo talked about them, it seemed like everyone and their brother hated them, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I’d seen firsthand how people treated displaced refugees, and it was almost always with suspicion and contempt—rarely with empathy. They were easy scapegoats for just about every societal woe around.

Human nature was more or less the same, no matter the world or universe it seemed.

But those weren’t my problems. I’d learned that during my time overseas. You couldn’t fix everything, and dicking around with local politics was an easy way to wind up dead. My problem was surviving the monster sniffing around Ironmoor, and for that I needed money. The haul I’d taken off the Grass Hounds would leave me sitting pretty for a few months. And with a payday like that, I was also starting to see why some wayward adventurer might try their hand at monster slaying, even if they weren’t really equipped for the job. Hunger, desperation, and money could make people do crazy things and take some even crazier risks.

The fat coin purse wasn’t the only win, either. I also scored fifteen Glamor Affinity Scales of various quality.

>>

Glamor Affinity Scale

Type: Refined Glamor Affinity

Class: Novice

Ability: Consume

Primary Effects:

When consumed directly, Refined Glamor Affinity minutely enhances the user’s Arcana Regeneration Rate, sharpens the user’s innate senses, and unlocks the ability Pierce Veil. When activated, Pierce Veil allows the user to see through low-level fae glamors and illusionary conjurations and gives the user a 15% resistance against psionic and mental magics used against them. Channel Refined Glamor Affinity into a metaphysical focal point, imbuing the item with unique benefits for a limited duration. Note: The strength and duration of the effect is directly proportional to the quality of the Scale consumed.

>>

The majority of the Scales were Novice Class—the lowest quality possible—but I’d also lucked out and scored three Disciple Class Scales and one Adept Scale. I was sorely regretting the fact that I hadn’t harvested the stupid Grass Hounds sooner because the ability to resist their Glamor of the Grass curse would’ve saved me a lot of headaches. Even though all the monsters were dead, and the curse had lifted, I would swear up and down that I could still taste the bottoms of Arturo’s boots, which was absolutely disgusting.

Though, I supposed, it was equally possible that I was experiencing two days without toothpaste or mouthwash. I’d have to do a little poking around my Soul Vault to see if there wasn’t a solution to that particular problem. I could endure some serious bullshit, but life without toothpaste was asking a lot even for me.

I didn’t earn any new armor, but I did pick up some more quality fabrication ingredients—[1 x Raw Silver Ore, Fabrication Ingredient], [4 x Raw Iron Ore, Fabrication Ingredient], [2 x Mortka Horn (Disciple), Fabrication Ingredient], [3 x Reinforced Mortka Bone (Disciple), Fabrication Ingredient], [12 x Grass Hound Leather, Fabrication Ingredient]—and three Grass Hound Transformation Tokens. And, to top it off, I picked up a shiny new flanged mace that had some real skull-crushing potential.

>>

Sturdy Flanged Mace

Type: Steel, Blunt Weapon

Class: Disciple

This mace is finely crafted from a high-quality steel coated in silver, perfect for an infantry line officer or a noble of lesser station. Unlike the regular mace, the flanged mace has two rows of spiked protrusions, perfectly designed to penetrate even the thickest plate armor or—failing that—dent the armor inward, dealing devastating damage to the body beneath. Though slower and more cumbersome than a sword, the flanged mace is a deadly weapon against the right foe.

>>

Looting the bodies was the fun part, but of course, Arturo found a way to make even that miserable.

“Don’t forget to take the gallbladders,” the padre said.

He was hunched over one of the dead Grass Hounds, a single edged skinning knife in one hand. He’d stripped away his cassock to prevent getting blood and guts all over the garment. Beneath, he wore a set of dark linen pants and a loose sleeveless shirt that might have been white in a former life—now it was an assortment of frayed edges and yellow stains, some old some new. Without the cassock in place, I could see that Arturo was built like a brick shithouse. True, he had some fat riding along his gut, but the guy had a gorilla chest and bowling balls for shoulders. His skin was also covered with more faded white scars, some thin, others long and nasty.

You didn’t earn battle trophies like those flipping through library books—those were the wounds of a seasoned solider who’d survived some hard-fought battles. And based on a couple of those wounds, Arturo had only barely survived.

The priest reached into a split open chest cavity and hauled out a pile of purple and gray guts, flopping them down onto the grass. He rifled through them and pulled free a gray-green sack the size of a small potato.

“The hearts, kidneys, and lungs are all valuable, but the gallbladders are nearly worth their weight in gold—at least to the right buyer.”

“I think I’m gonna barf,” Cal said, peering over my shoulder, hands resting on his knees. “They smell so bad.”

He wasn’t wrong. I had a piece of cloth wrapped around my nose and mouth, but it did all of jack shit to keep the smell from invading my nostrils.

“How can you even tell?” I asked. “You’re a ghost. Can you actually smell things?”

“I might not be able to touch anything,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean the rest of my senses are broken. Though I’m starting to wish I couldn’t smell things—and it’s not just the bodies, buddy. You smell like the inside of my burnt asshole. No offense.”

“That is incredibly offensive,” I replied before plunging my K-Bar into an upturned belly, then slashing down with a hard tug. The blade carved effortlessly through the soft tissue, but I was wholly unprepared when a pocket of gas ruptured, splattering my chest and face with green goop that reeked like an open sewage line.

“You’ve got to watch out for that,” Arturo said, carving out a reddish ball of meat, which I’d come to recognize as a Grass Hound heart. “The longer the body sits, the more putrid gas builds up as the Essence composing its body tries to dissipate back into the Etheric Realm.” He pointed his knife at the body sprawled out in front of me. “That one was probably from an early wave. Baking in the sun for a few hours will do that. Best to harvest them early—or, if that simply isn’t possible, lean back a bit when you open them up.”

“Duly noted.” I reached up and swiped some of the rancid goop from my face. “Though maybe tell me again why we’re doing this? I feel like I already got all the good stuff from their Soul Vaults. This just seems…”

“Gross and undignified?” Call offered.

“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”

“What? Do they not have hunting in your world either?” Art asked, frowning at me.

“Obviously we have hunting,” I said. I didn’t mention how few people actually hunted or that the vast majority of our meat came from slaughterhouses and processing plants—Arturo seemed like he was in a judgmental mood and I didn’t want him shitting all over the people of Earth. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve killed and skinned more than my fair share of deer, but the offal”—I waved at the glistening innards—“is the stuff you dump on the forest floor for the coyotes to pick over. I’ve never dug through it like I was on a scavenger hunt.”

“Well, these are no regular beasts, are they?” the padre said. “Reinforced Mortka meat is one of the few ways that those without the True Gift can enjoy the benefits of Essence. It’s best cooked into stews since the taste can be gamey and off-putting if you’re not used to it, but the benefits are legion to those who consume it. As for the organs, they have a hundred different alchemic uses. They can be brewed and combined with a multitude of different ingredients and reagents to create potions, tinctures, and essential medications. The most common elixirs are used to break fevers or cure infections, but there are others that reinforce the body or the mind.

“Fangfever extract mixed with powdered cronite and distilled Grass Hound gallbladder creates an invisibility drought. Creeping Angelica, Rock Siren Feathers, and Slag Wolf Blood, dissolved in a strong solution of Aqua Fortis, produces an elixir capable of curing Petrification. With the right skills and ingredients, a competent alchemist can brew everything from temporary invulnerability to a good night’s rest.” He hefted another gallbladder, tossing it up then letting it flop in his palm. “Best of all, such potions can be created without magic and can be used by any. Which is why high-powered lords and ladies without the True Gift employ the most talented alchemists and pay hefty premiums for the rarer items such as these.”

“So what I’m hearing is that with enough money, anyone can make themselves into a Vigil?” I said.

“Eh, that’s a little drastic,” the padre replied, “but such potions can level the playing field, at least for a short while, and all through the power of science. But the important part is the money, and you are going to need more if you want to survive what’s to come. So, stop complaining and start carving. We still have ten more corpses to process…”