“ Fiendbeasts are seldom seen, almost as much as their less horrific sounding counterparts, the fae beasts. Nonetheless, what they share in common is that most of them are magically toxic to human consumption, perhaps only being viable for alchemic ingredients but the miasma from fiend beasts is hard to handle. Most monsters are edible however, that loin of steak at the local tavern might be a grizzly boar's for example. The few monsters that are inedible are so because they are naturally expected to be poisonous and that also includes plant monsters as well.” -Foreword, Philiarz Warnerskemander’s Bestiary for Adventurers: ‘Exotic Beasties and Where to Find Them.’

Their breaths had already started misting as they came through the threshold. After one landing, they reached the basement. A large room almost as big as the guild hall on the ground floor. In fact, it had pillars holding up the ceiling and both, plus the floor were made of pristine rock like marble. Lux crystals mounted on the ceiling shone with the sterile glare of LEDs.

It did look like an abattoir. There were hooks holding up monster carcasses as men in leather aprons and gloves wielding all manner of wicked looking knives worked on them extracting parts like horns, claws and teeth. Blood and other unnamable substances drained away into gutters that led gods knew where, keeping the rest of the floor free of the fluids otherwise a wet floor would have been a hazard. There was even a section where monster meat was being washed and packed into what passed for shopping bags and cooler boxes around these parts.

‘Yea, some of the meat on our plates is monster alright,’

There was even one abattoir worker extracting the spinneret gland from a spider carcass the side of a small car—a gliding spider from the color of its cephalothorax. It had the appearance of a lynx spider that had one too many growth steroids. The cephalothorax and abdomen were both the colour of a lime green leaf, with streaks of yellow and brown for camouflage. And unlike the mimic’s black widow, it had longer legs, which also had bands of yellow at regular intervals.

‘Damn…nasty,’ he left unspoken, seeing the blue shimmering ichor dripping into barrels. ‘Reminds me of Ice Spiders’

“We’ll have to see the foreman while at it; he supervises the extraction of cores to ensure they don’t get scratches on them,” the receptionist commented.

‘Talkative one aren’t you?’

They passed that area, going further into what looked like a special processing zone for larger monsters where entire teams of workers were mobilized to do the dismantling of the carcasses and skinning. The floor tiling was made of a darker type of the same rock. Some areas here and there looked riddled with pockmarks from some kind of acid or fire.

There they found the foreman bellowing at the workers; and boy did he have a mouth on him; his expletives could’ve made a sailor blush. He looked really old, had a mop of whitish hair and jowls that seemed to quiver with every yell. His beard was trimmed short, a dirty white color and looked like a patch of white lichen. The back of his hands were covered with so many liver spots that people would have thought him one foot in the grave. But the man was spry, he even had well-toned muscles with rune tattoos on them.

Nonetheless, the guild workers looked used to his foul mouth, in fact they were even enjoying it—masochists.

What they were working on was a squirm of enormous orange skinned worms. It reminded Arthur of the sand wurm from back then but their hides were paler and slightly smaller in size like say, a porpoise from head to tail. In this special zone, things were different, there was heat fighting against the cold storage enchantment and a cloying haze like a steambath hung in the air.

It appeared that the creature’s carcasses were to blame for the heat. The workers were soaked to the bone in sweat as they used flensing knives to peel away large swathes of the skin. It thumped to the floor like whale blubber to a cheer from the butchers. Then another team using harpoons dragged the fatty hides away for processing.

“Foreman Fluchmund,”

“Wha’ are ye doin’ here cat scallwag?”

“Foreman, I am a faeles-kin, not a cat…”

“If it mews ‘n caterwauls it's a cat.”

The guild receptionist looked visibly flustered as the duo pulled up behind him.

“Go on lad what can I do for you?” he said, he seemed to have changed his demeanor when he saw the two adventurers in dark garb. He wiped off his hands on his leather apron and switched to his professional façade.

“These adventurers Red and Snow claim to have fought and killed a direhog den mother.”

“Truly?” His clear eyes turned to them like full beam spot lights whilst scratching at his gristly chin with his gnarly calloused fingers. Arthur half expected a flame to be kindled from the action. His lichen-like beard must have been tough like a worn clothes brush from the dry sounds it made, like the one he used to scrub his faded jeans.

‘Get your beard oiled old man!’

“In our Bag of holding. Do you have someplace we can retrieve it? It is a large specimen” Arthur responded.

“Let my men extract a core from one of those beasts then we’ll have space for it; we have our noggin’s to the grindstone today,” the man looked on as the workers continued divesting the creatures off its innards. Two men wearing much thicker garb, a pair of crystal lenses and mitts joined the crew carrying a bizarre tool. A raised platform with wooden wheels was rolled over the behemoth as the workers cleared away from it. Both kitted men and another who held the flensing knife got onto the platform.

“Oh, I heard Destiny’s Edge brought in a special order today; are those the lava wurms?” the receptionist enquired.

“Aye, never seen one up close whelp?”

The receptionist shook their head as the group of four watched on. With a practiced hand, the flenser made a clean incision like a surgeon would with a scalpel where the spine of the lava wurm would be. His companion used his tool, Arthur realized, a retractor but big enough to need a burly man to pry the cut open. Finally, when a gap was large enough, the man with the mitts plunged his hands into the guts of the creature and pulled out an orange orb big enough to fit in his palms. The crew raised another cheer; it was like a bomb had been defused.

They sat in the foreman’s office while the workers outside worked on the direhog den mother. The guild receptionist was keeping them company. Compared to dissecting a lava wurm, their kill wouldn’t be as dangerous. They learnt that the orange orbs like the ones they had already gotten from the smaller specimens of direhogs, were crystallizations of the lava worm’s mana and a lava wurm was a monster with the Pyr affinity.

One of the extracted cores was sitting in a cushioned chest with indents to ensure the thing wouldn’t roll around. Unlike their dull purple cores however, this one was as radiant as a lava lamp as the mana roiled around its crystallized containment. It was mesmerizing, the mana in the orb sung a song of fire; it radiated warmth even while extracted from the dead corpse of its owner.

“How highly would you rate a lava wurm in terms of threat level?” Arthur asked the guild receptionist.

“A gold rank threat I would think, it requires a party of three to five gold rankers to take it down without casualties or injury depending on their strengths and party composition.” The beastkin receptionist commented.

“How much would a typical mana core go for?”

“Sometimes mana cores are so valuable they have to be auctioned,” the receptionist said excitedly. “Those are rare cores, like a hydra’s, a fire drake or a lesser leviathan.”

“For a lava wurm, I would estimate somewhere between fifty to a hundred gold coins or even more depending on its maturity. For the six slain by Destiny’s Edge I’d estimate around 300 gold as minimum payment.”

“And the direhog den mother?” Nora asked.

“Er, I wouldn’t know; Ter aspected mana cores are exceedingly rare to find because the monster’s they are extracted from are hard to hunt…I mean they’re mostly underground creatures. So you might get a good price even though your threat was a peak Steel rank threat. How did you dispatch it just being the two of you?”

“Confidential…” Nora answered coldly.

‘Wow girl, you didn’t have to go and skin the cat.’ Oops that racist, speciest.’ Arthur winced. He decided to throw the fellow a bone before his ears drooped from Nora’s scathing response.

“The mana cores, a special order you said? —”

Nodding earnestly, the beastkin’s ears perked up.

‘Good’

“Who is the requestor?”

“Oh, that’s common knowledge around these parts…apologies I forget you just arrived—”

“No harm done…”

“The requestor is mostly Lord Lalilab; he’s a well-known high level [Alchemist] and his wife sits on the merchant council as his proxy. Master Lalilab is always busy with his alchemical experiments. He’s invented a lot of potions used in a hospital they co-own with the church’s healers’ department.” He rattled out whilst counting on his fingers.

“Word on the street is, Lord Lalilab has been trying to extract essence from mana cores as a substitute for mana crystals which are expensive to both find and mine. He hopes that once he finds a way to extract aspected mana from monster cores, enchantments will become less expensive to request.

Did you know that the ice enchantments were made with mana from a frost wyvern core? The very same request was taken by Destiny’s Edge… that party has been on a winning streak—”

“Mmh, interesting,”

“He’s been trying to replicate the same effect with monster cores with the opposite effect now; I am rooting for him; who knows what new inventions his discovery will bring?”

‘He seems like an interesting man; I am also looking forward to seeing how he’ll extract a safer form of Pyr…I might just pay him a visit myself.’

“Is he seen favorably by the town’s people?”

“Are you kidding? Out of the five families, the Silyvres, the Shadowmantles, the Flasksunders and the Phylandirs; the Lalilabs are the most loved family,”

“Is that so? That is good to know—”

“It’s ready—” the foreman chose that moment to enter, carrying a golf-ball sized orb the color of amethyst in his mitts as if it was a precious pearl. Even he agreed that the abattoir took some special kind of delicacy to handle such expensive materials. The den mother’s mana core gave the feeling of stability like the ground beneath one’s feet. Arthur thought it was all in his head or mana cores were peculiars for sure. Arthur took it in his hands, gently, like an egg… There was a pouch of gold coins riding on the orb.

“Haha, don’t worry, they’re sturdier than they look. Reason we handle them the way we do is because alchemists and other mage crafter sorts don’t like blemishes on their baubles,” [Foreman] Fluchmund chortled.

“My thanks,” Arthur said. “How much do we owe you for the extraction?”

“Hmm, ordinarily when ye cash the whole thing, it is automatically deducted from your payout; you don’t feel the pinch that way. Seeing as yer want to keep it; I would settle for the rest of the den mother’s spoils. The core is payment enough.”

“Let me consult with my partner,” Arthur suggested.

“By all means, take yer time,” Both the foreman and the receptionist left the office to give them some privacy.

“What do you think?” said Arthur, comparing the Ter mana core in his gloved glands and the Pyr mana core on the foreman’s desk. Interposed in his line of sight, they shone like a miniature sun and a planet. He palmed the den mother’s mana orb and put it in a pouch secured against the inside of the Nightstalker’s wyvern cloak; it had inside pockets.

His companion tap-danced her fingers, drumming on the edge of the seat as she thought. Her exhalations came out wheezing through the respirator valves as she sighed. “Seeing as we need more money; that’s what we started for didn’t we? I say we sell the core—”

“We can buy anything else with the gold instead of letting the core sit gathering dust. Besides, it’s not the one you’re looking for is it? You want the Pyr mana core sitting on the desk.”

“You heard; it's rare.” Arthur sagged against the lounge couch’s back.

“Did you already forget you have one more of that type already?”

“Oh?—”

““The golem crystal”” they spoke over each other.

“Point then; let's sell it. I think I’m going to need more information about mana cores too—”

“Let’s take choice cuts from the direhog as well; the foreman seemed eager to get the meat. In fact, he didn’t seem that disappointed you were not selling the core”

“I think that puts into perspective just how low the utility of Ter is,” Arthur noted, getting up from the seat. “People have yet to discover it but maybe the meat has uses. And get some for Umbra too, and have barbecue…I bet she’ll like it; she’s grown too big for flying squirrels and rats.”

They emerged from the office, finding both the receptionist and the foreman right out the door. Elsewhere, the workers were just starting on another lava wurm carcass. It looked rather interesting to see monster’s being dissected, that is if you had the stomach for it.

“We have made a decision; we shall sell the core,” said Arthur, as he extracted the amethyst orb and handed it to the foreman.

“And if it’s possible, we’d like some cuts of the direhog meat.” Nora added.

“Aye,” the foreman raised his eyebrows. “If that is fine with you…”

Their first pay day; they cashed in the mana core for gold to be paid via promissory note via the Merchant’s Guild as soon as the mana core was auctioned. After consulting with the receptionist while they waited for their dire hog steak; because they damn ordered the best cuts of the thing.

After consulting with the receptionist who was now on his break they got to know that meat from Ter affinity beasts improved one’s constitution and endurance. Was it pseudoscience of old people’s suppositions? Arthur didn’t know but even he could get behind the adage that one was what they ate.

After they’d gotten their meat wrapped up in paper-like leather; for the meat had already been processed so that it got to them bloodless, they went to check the request board for job requests they could take when they had time. The choice pickings were always put up in the morning; unless a request was urgent, rarely were there any new jobs pinned up in the middle of the day.

“That was really something,” Arthur remarked as they trudged down the main street; which was so felicitously named the Street of Beginnings.

“Yes, again tomorrow?”

“So soon? I want to get some practice first. I was clumsy with my sword today.”

“You may not realize it but you have to give yourself credit that you’ve done something at least.”

“Mmh” Arthur grunted as they watched the sun on its descent beyond the western crenellations. “So do we find an alley or something so we can make the warp home?” Arthur queried looking around for somewhere that was out of the way so that they wouldn’t have to show their hand with Nora’s [ Shadow Warp]

The immediate vicinity they’d passed on their way in had the oldest buildings not counting the ones that they lived in on Founder’s street. The guild also had a history and only came around these parts when the settlement was just taking off. An opportunity was seen and from the ground up the pioneers decided to chip in a guild worthy building that the Adventurer’s Guild would come all the way from Kingsfell to take residence in the building. Either way, the Guild was going to come soon but a snail would have gotten there faster if they sat on their laurels and waited for the organization to come to them.

They cast their eyes about, slowing their pace as they looked for somewhere they’d use to slip away; there were alleys yes but the town was still lively as it was still light out.

“I think we’ll have to do it outside,” Nora suggested as they neared the gate.

“Yea, better that way so that people will not go around looking for us in the town.”

“We can just pretend we’re going for a hunt in the forest we dropped in.”

And thus their career as adventurers began this way.