“Song of Destruction; 1st Poem, 2nd Stanza—Cleave,” I chanted, and a blade not unlike that of the previous spell I used coalesced out of thin air, hovering a palm over my hand. With an effort of will, I separated the manifested magic into two smaller blades, directing both at the monsters’ corpses, one to each.

“What are you doing?”

“Searching for cores,” I explained to Franco; he scoffed.

“If either of those monsters had a core, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Franco was right, and I agreed with him; a third Poem spell wouldn’t have hurt a B-ranked monster that had condensed a core, no matter how badly hurt it was. Yet, the corruption seething within their flesh told me otherwise. Both had one, which should be impossible; they were far weaker than the high orc, which Alessandro had slain back then in the Orcs’ Lair had been, and that monster still hadn’t condensed its. Common sense dictated the basilisk and the cockatrice to be either low or middle, maybe even high, B rank monsters—definitely not peak; monsters condensed cores only when they were on the verge of ascending, just like the lindworm had been. The core we had recovered from that monster was an ovoid, making it one of the best of its rank, as when it became a sphere, a core destabilized, fracturing and freeing great quantities of refined anathema inside a monster’s body, either killing their host or pushing it to the next rank, thus making it impossible to harvest.

“Song of Imprisonment; 1st Poem, 1st Stanza—Bind.”

Having no way to protect their bodies from my magic with them being dead, I summoned the spells directly inside the monsters, taking hold of the clusters of corruption I felt. Harshly, I pulled the cores through the path I opened, unearthing them.

“There is no way that just happened,” whispered Franco, staring at the dull crystals I floated out of the creatures.

Both were of the lowest grade possible—misshapen things sporting rough surfaces and uneven forms, which didn’t even come remotely close to resemble a sphere—but they still were.

“I think we should alert our Guildmasters,” Franco said. “What are the chances of extracting three cores out of three monsters?”

—|—|—

Luisa Pirelli and Andrea Porto sat in front of Giacomo and me inside our guild’s conference room. Placed on the table were the cores the new members of our respective guilds had extracted from two B-ranked monsters inside the Great Forest.

“What do you think?” Luisa asked.

I turned to Giacomo waiting for his answer, knowing full well the question was meant for him and not me. Giacomo didn’t though; he was too absorbed in whatever his mind was plotting to pay attention to the three of us.

Luisa turned to me, staring straight into my eyes with her ice blue ones. Despite her growing frustration at being ignored, I didn’t answer the question. Although I would never admit it to Giacomo, among the two of us, I was the arm and he was the brain; how the guild would conduct itself was his decision to make.

Andrea growled, but otherwise, he too remained in silence. The Mr. Clean look-a-like knew both us very well and didn’t make too much of a fuss. I was glad he finally reached rank A, and also kind of sad he hadn’t shared the good news with Giacomo and me; had I not advanced as well, I wouldn’t have known. Then again, I too hadn’t told him I finally reached rank S.

Luisa tapped her long, tapered fingers over the transparent surface of the table—a clear sign of her growing frustration. She was never very patient, and her looks somehow told that to all she met. Her black and brown hair, for instance, were wild and frazzled, resembling more the fur of a bear than proper hair. She wore them in a bun behind her head—a haircut somewhat reminiscent of the samurais of old—making her seem more masculine than a woman with her looks should. Her features were sharp, dangerous even, and the four vertical scars running along the left side of her face further accentuated that. I found my eyes falling to her full lips and the rightmost of the scars, which crossed them until I noticed she realized I was staring. She smirked.

Giacomo couldn’t choose a better moment to speak up.

“I think the Great Forest is undergoing Resurgence,” he said, quickly getting our attention. “I read the reports on how it began in the Tomb of the Lost. It started much in the same way. Monsters started appearing less frequently, with those that did all having condensed a core.”

“Aren’t you jumping to conclusions too fast?” asked Andrea, voicing what I and even Luisa thought. The revival of a dungeon was no normal event after all.

“I may be,” Giacomo agreed. “Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best is what we should do, however.”

We all nodded. The Great Forest had once been an A-ranked dungeon whose core had four S-rank monsters guarding it—facing it unprepared would be madness.

“Should we inform the government?”

“If it’s indeed Resurgence, we have to stop it before the dungeon revives completely, as none of us would like to see another dungeon outbreak in our city. Before alerting the authorities, we could at least try our hand at it, though,” Luisa said, answering my question. “If we play this right, we could make a fortune. If each and every monster in the dungeon has condensed a core, then…”

Luisa didn’t finish her sentence, but she hadn’t needed to. The four of us didn’t run charities—we run guilds. Any of the present could see the appeal of raiding one such dungeon.

“Even if we don’t tell the government, we should at least ask for help. If even one Furia has reappeared, we won’t stand a chance,” Giacomo warned, lying through his teeth. Giacomo knew of my advancement. The reason why he wanted to keep it secret eluded me, however.

“What do you propose?”

“I want to invite an S-ranker,” he told Luisa. “I was thinking of contacting the Cardinal. He has a history with the Great Forest. He may be willing to lend a hand.”