“Why is master always becoming silent and staring absentminded into space like that in the middle of the conversation?” she suddenly asked.

“Ah sorry. I was thinking alone. How rude of me. I am not used to discussing my ideas among peers. I guess I am kind of a loner,” I quickly relayed my train of thought, while keeping secret about Heaven-related stuff.

In the end after hiding away so much there was actually little to be said.

“Would it not cost a lot to make such mithril balls?” she pointed out.

“Most certainly it would. The beauty of a thought experiment lies in the fact that you do not have to pay for imagining things.”

“Huh.”

“Next idea, please.”

Unfortunately my slave was saved as we have just arrived at our destination.

I glanced at the counters, but could not see our designated clerk. No matter, the morning classes were just about to start. I tried searching for her, but forgot her name.

Out of all the guild employees all but one were (wo)manning their stations. That last one was currently sleeping on the third floor, but it could not be our clerk, right?

I asked around and we were directed to where the classes were being held.

Our first classes were the ones dealing with materials harvesting. We could alternatively go for Dungeoneering, but it would be held two more times today. Surprisingly the Dungeoneering course did not contain knowledge regarding building dungeons, but only just about exploring them.

Materials gathering class for beginners was also popular, but not as much. Most of the attendants were so young I would classify them as runts. Sorry, I mean kids.

On Thrope, or rather in generally poor pre-industrial societies child labor was the norm. Adulthood started very early. Same could be seen in war times.

If I estimated dangers of becoming an adventurer correctly, half of them would not be able to survive this career path. I guess making even a few percent more live on was enough for the guild to organize beginners more strictly and educate them for free.

There was also an experienced party among us, but apparently it was due to..

“..being punished for ruining that skin sucks,” complained one of them.

“I told you leaving it for the newbie would get us in trouble,” replied another.

I smirked.

We waited till the church bells rang the blue hour and our teacher’s subsequent entry.

He looked like a retired ranger with uneven grey beard and crystalline blue eyes. He had an aura of sadness, maybe melancholy even.

“There will be no attendance for this class taken unless you are here for penalty classes,” he said and looked at us and then at the penalty students, “ha ha,” he spoke those syllables with little to no emotion.

The experienced party went up and piled their guild cards on the desk.

“Are you not going to present yours as well?”

“Us?” I asked surprised.

We were both astonished as the question was directed at none other than yours truly.

“Yes.”

“We are not here for penalties. It is our first harvesting class.”

“Have you harvested anything before?”

“Only once, but to preemptively answer you, we are yet to turn our herbs in.”

“Okay. Every one, please get back to your seats,” he said and started his lecture, “materials come from several sources. They are:

Animal or monster based; Plants; Minerals; Dungeonic;

The last group will be mostly discussed in the dungeoneering classes. Dungeon materials are either belonging to one of the other groups or their harvest is rather simple.

Harvesting quests are usually of two types. In first the adventurer is responsible for collecting and transporting the materials, while the second type of request centers around escorting either a client or guild employee on their way to the location of harvest and during the process itself. Rarely one may be asked to help with the harvest, but you can refuse if you feel the protection of the client would be thus impaired.

If you are here then obviously you are more interested in the former.”

Then he followed about common perpetual requests, which we already have heard of.

“The distinction between animal and monster is at most quite blurry. Guild recognizes monsters to have flesh soaked in mana so much that it would make a commoner sick after eating it. There are also monsters without flesh or any corporeal body, but no one argues over their categorization.”

“I do not recommend eating monsters. Many are poisonous and even if you can stomach some mana, overdosing monster meat is far too common,” he continued.

I guess then those two bears will go to waste. Though both of us are currently mana wielders, so maybe we do have some ability to digest them?

“Excuse me! Can wizards eat monster meat?” asked Elfin.

I wanted to ask just that, but it was my slave that did so first.

“Yes. They are the exception. Any being that has more than 20 point of mana or has any skill that mentions in its description that digestion of mana is possible can eat some. The amount and quantity of meat makes a huge difference for each individual’s capability.”

“Thank you, sir,” replied my slave politely.

I wonder if Throne collects such data on monster meat?

“I recommend anyone to consider eating unknown monster as the last meal you will ever have. It helps with stomaching the hunger.”

Youths in the class laughed. Others kept being quiet and solemn. Blessed were those who never knew hunger. If the, no, when the Era of Strife truly begins you will probably be ready to kill for a piece of monster meat. I really should collect food supplies, while I still can.

“Nevertheless the meat itself can usually be sold.”

Teacher looked out of the window and beckoned to someone in the guild’s courtyard.

“To use meat you need to bleed the dead animal or monster. The blood itself is also an ingredient to be collected in some cases. Keep that in mind.“

A man walked in with a small cage. He put it on the table and left without a word.

The cage was covered with a piece of dirty cloth and shook from time to time.

The old ranger uncovered it theatrically with a ‘whoosh’.

A gray critter immediately jumped towards him, but was stopped by the sturdy metal bars.

“We finally meet, horned isekai rabbit!” I spoke quietly to myself.

“Ain’t this jackrabbit truly lovely, students?”

This jackrabbit then tried to bite his finger of.

It had a single, thick horn on the forehead and gleaming red eyes. It was estimated to be around level 4 according to the Throne.

“Jackrabbits are among the weakest monsters or among the middle stratum of animal kingdom if you classify them as such. Their mana content is low enough to be safe to be eaten by most adults, but it would make a kid quite sick, often terminally so. Now who would like to fight this jackrabbit?”

Almost half of the classroom jumped up immediately. I was silent, but Elfin joined this tomfoolery. It is not like you will get experience points nor would the materials be given to you for free. Most likely the jackrabbit would dash out of the classroom the moment it is released.

“How do you want to fight that monster, my darling?”

“I would..,”she spoke and made a pause, “set it on fire!”

“We are in a wooden classroom and it would ruin rabbit’s materials. Though the meat might cook itself nicely. Consider yourself scolded, young lady. I hope teacher does not pick us. If he picks anyone at all.”

“Awww..”

She lowered her head and I stroked her ear. It was very springy.

“Now who of you is certain of catching the jackrabbit once I release it and will kill it without damaging the harvestable materials like fur? Who is ready to pay the guild back for ruining it?”

The hands fell one by one until there was none in the air. Fools, every one of them.

“It is not that easy. Please raise hands, those of you who kept them down earlier.”

There were fewer than the last time. Among them was mine.

I quickly realized I had chosen wrong hand as I could no longer bully those long ears. I switched them, but that turned out to be a mistake – I have attracted attention to myself and thus had to answer the next question.

“What would you do to get its fur, horn and meat?’

“I would probably leave that to teacher,” I answered honestly, which brought a salvo of laughter from the audience.

I continued with:

“Otherwise I would ask a mage to cast some kind of paralysis or sleep spell, while it was still in the cage. Without a mage ready at hand, I would immobilize it with thick sticks and pick area where to stab it. Preferably mouth, eye or anywhere the fur is not valuable. I would not release it as I had never fought a jackrabbit and I can only assume it is rather fast and agile creature.”

I mean it had agility of almost two humans combined at DEX equal to 18! Though my own was at 23, I could not guarantee a clean hit. It would be at best a clumsy fight.

“That is the best answer I have heard in a while.”

See. I was right. It was an old trick of all great mentors.

Afterwards he just nonchalantly stabbed it with a long dagger through the eye. The precision and suddenness of the attack took everyone including the rabbit by surprise. Poor creature collapsed and the old man stabbed the other eye.

“Always make sure your prey is dead before approaching!”

It did not even twitch after the first stab, but good point nonetheless.

He took it out of the cage and explained how to bleed different kinds of bodies. The no longer feisty jackrabbit was hanging down from a hook on a stick embedded into the table.

The blood collected in the grooves of the table. Old hunter then took a large vial and put it in front of the table in a small alcove. A protrusion was pushed and the vial filled up quickly.

“In the wilderness it is enough to use a branch and a bucket or hole for the blood.“

He went on and on how the smell of blood would attract predators and how important is it to bury any parts you will not use.

Soon following that explanation the internal organs were removed.

“Normally in the wilderness I would discard internal organs, due to their low value, but in the city they can be sold for some spare change as a tamed monster’s feed among other uses.”

He then dumped both the blood and the organs into a bucket.

Finally he started skinning the drained animal.

He spoke of importance of using a sharp knife, but all I could think of was how disgusting it was to skin someone, some-thing.

Couple of newbies were almost green as well. I asked Elfin, but she was okay. Tough lady.

The less cuts and attached meat the more the skin would be worth. With so many different kinds of monster and animal skins the Tanner’s Guild was established in Ythall. Not every tanner could cure every skin, but you could sell it raw and unprocessed to that guild or Adventurer’s guild albeit for slightly lower price. Unless it was something specifically requested for.

Teachings followed on how to butcher the meat, bones, fangs, claws and more unusual things like feathers, odd organs, mana cores etc. We were warned about poisonous parts as well as mana poisoning. The second would occur when the critter had enormous amounts of mana when alive. That mana would mostly leak out upon death. On one hand if you waited for long enough it would be safe to harvest, but the materials would most likely drop in quality a lot. Sufficiently leveling up mana barrier would keep you safe, but it is not like everyone and their grandma could do that. Even among mages it was rare skill to have. 100% of our party having that skill was kind of amazing.

I did not dare to ask if Divinity Barrier would work the same way.

Though I doubt Elfin knew how to use it properly. It seemed to be an inborn ability for her. I whispered to her if she could control hers or not. She denied. One more point to train on.

My own control felt crude, but my second barrier of divinity was much more flexible and powerful. I heard you could also make a holy (mana) barrier, though it seemed to kind of redundant to mix and dilute divinity with mana.

Just in case my divinity was an inner layer, while mana made the outer one. Thus my mana would deplete first and divinity last when facing attacks. I am so smart to have read that in Talakhe’s booklet.

After the bloody part ended the old ranger picked a potted plant from the corner of the class. His explanation and demonstration of harvesting various parts like leaves, juices and saps, flowers, pollen, fruits, bark and roots was much less interesting. Much less revolting also.

Picking minerals and dungeon-based items was only touched upon. I have noted down the tools we still had to purchase.

During lectures I ignored the Throne prompts. They were a plenty of them piled up.

All those were the results of studying. As always the prompts only indicated we acquired the skill, not how much its level increased since then. It might be an oversight of mine, but it was better not to clutter my life with unnecessary information dump.

Adventurers started to leave the classroom, but Elfin was staring absent-minded into space. I thought she was looking at our late teacher, perhaps enamored with his rustic looks, but he left shortly thereafter. I stared at her intensely and still she did not react. I tickled her under her chin.

Finally she looked at me and said:

“Master Lynx, I seem to have learned some new skills. Their naming is somewhat troublesome. Should I hide them?”

“I know. You probably mean Butchering? It sounds nasty, but we should keep it. It is in the adventurer’s basic skillset, so it should be okay to have it displayed. Your harvesting overshoot mine. Must be due to hands-on experience.”

“Muh. Probably. I am also not sure how to use my Mana Barrier skill that we spoke of earlier.”

I ruffled her hair. I wondered briefly if it was okay to do that to an older person than me. It is not like she complained about that though.

“Do not worry. If you have it on your status, it means the Throne System caught you using it sometime in the past. You just need to recall the feeling. Though it could have been subconsciously invoked.”

“Throne System?”

Curse my long tongue!

“Shit. A slip of tongue.”

“What is that Throne System?”

I looked around just in case, but the class was already empty. Soul sight revealed absolutely nothing and nobody in the nearby corridors.

“Okay it is not that big of a secret, but it is considered taboo knowledge for a reason,” I spoke and raised my index finger before her face to emphasize, “I guess it can be shared with you. Do not tell anyone of this. Most information skills are governed by Heavens. The divine artifact that oversees it is called the Throne of Thrope. Thus the whole is called The Throne System”

Yeah, I know that!

The cat was out of the bag, good luck catching it again.

Elfin sighed hard.

“Heavens?” she asked.

“Heavens,” I confirmed

“Heavens!” she exclaimed.

I facepalmed a little bit. I am so tired of this class.

“What Heavens cannot see, mortal with Throne-granted skills will be unaware of, Therefore information about beings from outside of World of Thrope will most often be incomplete and erroneous.’

“My god!’

“Yes?’

“Is my own status also incomplete?”

‘You are a special case. Born on Thrope and only half of your blood is that of an outsider. I am plenty sure your own information is almost perfect.”

“That is a true relief,” she sighed, and continued with, “But my Soul Sight is not showing on my status.”

“I have hidden it with Fake Status. Since mine is of higher level you can no longer see it.”

“You can do that to others?” she further inquired.

“Uh,” I realized my mistake, “you are like, my property, being a slave and all. I mean technically at least. I do want to treat you as a friend and party member,” I figured out a convincing white lie.

“That is very specific condition. No wonder no one speaks about it.”

“Yes, very specific.”

“Could master make me able to see it on my status?”

“Yes, of course.” I said and undid the changes. In fact I was overly cautious. Normal Level 5 fake status was enough to keep it a secret. I decided to finish this awkward topic. “Be sure to hide it again yourself and let us hurry for the next class.”

“What are we going to study next, master Lynx?”

“Dungeoneering.”