Back in the forest, Ellis had just successfully slain the hydra.

Blood freely poured out from its severed necks. Soon, the hole had completely filled up and transformed into a blood pool.

Ellis breathed out a sigh. At the same time, Ena jumped off his shoulder and sprinted to the pool. Without hesitation, she dove right into the viscous blood. He stared at her with a bitter expression.

I did most of the work, but this brat just comes out of nowhere and reaps all the rewards like that? He shook his head. Life truly was unfair.

Despite the way he acted, in truth, he hadn’t actually expected Ena or anybody else to take action. The fight just now had been extremely dangerous. At their current level, whether it was Plush, Wight or even Ena, none of them would have been of much help. In fact, if they really had attempted to help, they would have served to do more harm than good.

It was enough with just him.

After the battle, the original oppressive aura that permeated the surroundings gradually dissipated. Ellis did not notice any of it, but to Wight and the wolves, it was as if the clouds had just parted after a rainy day. They trotted towards the blood pond.

Wight glared at the hydra’s corpse with narrowed eyes. Even though it was just a dead body, she could still feel a heavy aura of danger exuding out from its every pore. Wight once again reaffirmed her weakness. Within this forest, the strength that she had acquired was negligible.

If she continued down this path, then she would always remain as baggage, someone destined to be a burden to her precious master.

While such complicated thoughts flashed through her head, the wolf pack arrived by the blood pool.

A few of the wolves gingerly approached the edge of the pool and sniffed. They stared inquisitively at their crimson faces reflected off the blood’s surface.

In comparison to their reticence, Ena was currently having the time of her life. Her entire body was coated in crimson red. Her jaws twisted into a wide smile. She swam in the pool with pure ecstasy in her eyes. When she saw the hesitant wolves crowding around the edges of the crater, rather than the usual irritation that she felt, today, she was strangely jovial.

In her abnormally happy state of mind, she suddenly had the urge to share the good times with everyone else.

Ena playfully waved her tail. The clueless wolves were suddenly caught off guard as a strong gust of wind swept them off their feet. It pushed them into the pool.

SPLASH!

Ellis looked up. He heard the splashing. He breathed out a tired sigh. “Even the wolves are having fun. Augh, life truly is unfair!”

As the only ‘adult’ in this group, he had responsibilities and obligations that he had to take care of. Unlike those children, he could not just run off and play. There were still a lot of things that he needed to do before he could properly relax.

Ellis walked over to the corpse. It was half submerged within the pool. Due to his previous efforts, the body had been practically drained of all of its blood. This was actually a good thing. He had read about it once online, but it was important to drain blood the moment you killed something. That way, the meat won’t get contaminated.

Ellis had tested this out before, and he did have to admit, the meat really did come out better when it wasn’t contaminated with blood.

It was a good thing that the blood had already been drained, but he still needed to fish the corpse out of the pool. If he left it there, then Ena might accidentally absorb the meat’s essence, similar to what had happened with the first dragon.

After he fully removed the giant corpse from the blood pool, Ellis breathed out a sigh.

Today’s haul was guaranteed to be of high quality.

In addition, he also fished out the three hundred something severed heads and piled them all up in a stack next to the corpse.

Wading in the pool in order to retrieve the heads had left his body sticky and wet from all the blood. Ellis did not know why Ena liked it so much. It probably had to do with the fact that she knew how to absorb the blood into her body. Unfortunately, he did not know how to do that, so the blood pool was useless to him. All it did was leave him wet and sticky. It was an uncomfortable sensation, but his troubles were just beginning.

Ellis still needed to gut the corpse and descale the entire thing. The latter was definitely something that he wasn’t looking forward to doing.

“…”

A hill-sized corpse and a mound of severed necks… staring at the whole thing left him feeling demoralized. Daunting. The sight was too daunting!

“How long will this all take?” Even asking that question sapped away at what little enthusiasm his bitter heart contained.

He quickly looked away. In an attempt to escape reality, he turned back over to the blood pool. “I wonder how those rascals are doing?”

While Ellis was destined to a future of grueling work, those guys were currently living it up and having a jolly good time relaxing in the pool. It made him jealous. Stronger men than him would have killed for far less.

He looked over but what he saw shocked him.

Ena acted as how he had predicted. She was currently enjoying herself and living her best life. She floated along the surface with a content expression on her face. Her tails occasionally wagged behind her.

In comparison, the wolves were in living hell.

Their faces contorted into something ugly. Anguish, fear, and despair. Such emotions were fully conveyed through each crease of their brow and each twitch of their jaws.

Is hydra blood poisonous? Since the hydra could spit out poison, this possibility did not surprise him at all. He closely observed the wolves.

Sure enough, after a few seconds, their complexions suddenly darkened. Black veins appeared all over their body, while gunk like liquid discharged from almost every orifice.

It really is poisonous! Leaving them in there for any longer would be a bad idea!

The struggling wolves desperately swam towards the shore. Unfortunately, their attempts were in vain. Ena quickly noticed the commotion. She stared at wolves for a while, before she let out an exaggerated scoff.

‘I gave you something good, but you can’t even appreciate it, you ungrateful bastards!’ was what her eyes were conveying.

Green light suddenly gathered around the little fox’s body. The light spread throughout the entire blood pool. The black veins receded and color returned to their complexion. The wolves had recovered, but their expressions remained twisted in anguish.

A few minutes passed. It did not take long before their faces once again distorted in pain. When that happened, Ena simply healed them again. The wolves would immediately get better, but their state of mind was rapidly crumbling.

Naturally, such a scene repeated itself over and over again.

Whenever they tried to escape the pool, Ena would personally drag them back in. She truly did want to share all her good graces, what a magnanimous little girl.

Thus, in the company of Ena’s devilish smile, the wolves were forced to endure hellish torture.

Seeing all this, Ellis decided to just quietly keep his head down and do the things he needed to do.

****

In a blink of an eye, ten days passed.

The blood pool finally ran dry. Ena and the wolves had absorbed all of it.

Ena walked out of the hole with a satisfied expression on her face. The corners of her mouth were slightly raised, while her fur looked clean and airy. For some reason, there was not a single splotch of red anywhere on her body. She looked no different from an aristocratic lady’s pampered pet.

In comparison, Wight and the wolves were soaked head to toe in blood. Their eyes looked desolate, while their legs shivered uncontrollably. They were not in any real physical pain, but the mental torture that they had just experienced was enough to break any normal person’s mind.

Their current condition all stemmed from one individual. Ena, the tiny, smiling sadist. From this day forth, the little fox was forever etched into their hearts as the devil incarnate.

Then, there was Ellis. It took ten days and ten sleepless nights of nonstop working before he finally descaled the entire carcass. Naturally, after such a long period of grinding, Ellis was certifiably an expert in descaling, especially when it came to dragon necks.

Right now, he stood before three piles of scales.

The first pile consisted of entirely black scales. This was the largest pile, both in terms of quantity and size. In fact, a single black scale was almost twice as big as his entire chest. The second pile consisted of pale purple scales. These scales were slightly elastic. They originally covered the creature’s underbelly and neck. There were also quite a few of these.

The last pile could not really be considered a pile. It consisted only of a single scale. It was a dark black and slightly elastic scale. Ellis found this beauty near the center of its chest, right where the necks originally diverged.

“Is it something like a reverse scale?” He did not know much, but according to all the books and novels that he had read, reverse scales were precious.

When Ena first saw the scale, she immediately wanted it. Luckily, he stopped her just in time. Although he did not know the specifics, this thing looked valuable. He wasn’t about to hand it over to a greedy fox who spent the entire ten days doing nothing but relax and torture others.

The ‘third scale’ was smaller than all the others. It was only slightly smaller than a page from a notebook. It was pretty thin too, less than a sixth of the thickness of a chopping board. He hid the scale between the pages of the unknown book that he had gotten from the lagoon.

Afterward, he had Ena store the rest of the scales into her pouch. Despite the amount, the pouch showed no outward signs of strain or duress. It was like a bottomless abyss.

After looking back at the now naked corpse, Ellis thought about what to do with it.

“I should probably take the meat too, right?”

Ellis hadn’t eaten a single thing since the battle. He had been preoccupied with his task. Ten days without food was enough to starve a man to death. To Ellis, it just made him really, really hungry.

Hydra meat definitely tasted good. After all, it was meat from the SSS+ class ingredient known as the dragon. Luckily, the meat was undamaged. It was a far cry from the first dragon. Back then, Ena had absorbed the meat’s essence or something along those lines. The end result was a mummified corpse that could not be eaten.

Thankfully, he had prevented that outcome. Meat was meant to be eaten, not absorbed.

Ellis deboned and sectioned off the meat. The flank, the chuck, the round, the ribeye… soon, a mountain of blood-pink assorted meats stood before him.

“As expected, there’s a lot of neck meat.” More than half the total meat consisted solely of neck meat.

Aside from that, Ellis decided to also bring along the hydra’s bones. The wolves quite enjoyed gnawing on bones. In fact, their affection for it far outstripped their affection for dragon scales and came close to their affection for meat.

After he sorted out the meat and the bones, all that was left were the organs. Ellis did not really care for these. Aside from the heart, which was more muscle than organ, he discarded the rest of the hydra.

That night, Ellis and company enjoyed the wonders of hydra meat. They even tested out the creation of a new type of dragon spice. No, rather than call it new, this new spice was more of an upgraded version of the old spice.

Well, it wasn’t like he was complaining. Hydra meat tasted even better when slathered with hydra spice. The spice had a slight kick to it, sort of like hot sauce.

Eating it raw… wasn’t it like spicy barbeque flavored potato chips?

He let out a quiet sigh. “Dragons really are amazing creatures…”