Sela came through the front gate with a wide-open smile, carrying in her hands a good-sized chest with metal handles, ornate designs, and runic inscriptions to prevent thieves from accessing its contents. Closely following her was her group of troglodytes who were also carrying their own chests, some chests so large that it took several of them to carry.

Kella was already there with a suspicious look on her face. She heard of what Van did and that they were now technically under the same banner. But she did lose an arm and almost her master, plus many of the goblins she helped train.

So it was clear that she wasn’t going to warm up to them anytime soon.

“Master! I have come bearing gifts!” she said joyfully “This is only a small portion of the treasures hidden in the cavern.” she said, panting a little and putting down the heavy chest in front of him. “At first I thought to look at the storage room for some goods, and then our mother's rooms for treasure. But then it occurred to me that the high mother wouldn’t be that open with her wealth. So with some searching around in her room, I was able to find a hidden corridor to a huge treasure trove!” she said excitedly.

“Unfortunately… I can’t seem to open this chest, nor a few other ones…” looking a bit sad at being unable to provide to her new master what she worked so hard to bring back.

“No problem, this seems like it’s just a simple lock rune. She probably wasn’t expecting someone with actual knowledge to know how to break these. Probably just wanted to make sure simple thieves or peeping toms couldn’t get their hands on it.” Van said, taking a closer look.

“Peeping toms?” Sela asked, looking confused. She gave a glance to Kella who shrugged in return.

Van did his best to ignore the byplay as he focused on the chest in front of him. As he said before, it wasn’t that hard. With a simple spell, he overrode and short-circuited the runic matrix by applying pressure and excess energy to three points on the chest. Causing the mechanism that kept the lid close to lose effect. Allowing him to open it.

Once he did so he tilted his head a bit in confusion. “They're... eggs?” he said, looking at the strange mostly gray but multicolored eggs in front of him. Of which there seemed to be three in total.

Kella gasped from behind him when she moved to get a closer look. “Are those Alchemic Vita eggs!” she exclaimed in disbelief.

Van turned to address her. “Vita eggs?” he asked in a tone implying he wanted her to explain further.

“Alchemic Vita eggs are worth their weight in gold if not more!” she began to explain. “They’re essentially eggs made from alchemy. And while I’m not one hundred percent sure of the particulars. It supposedly is possible to create any type of monster or monster-kin you want with this egg. Just drop… say… a drop of wyvern blood on the egg. The egg will then take the proper amount of time and mana and from that drop give you the wyvern! One that is completely loyal to the owner of the egg, which in this case would be you, once you are properly connected to it.” she said.

Van’s eyes widened a bit. If what she said was true, this really could be an amazing game changer. It made him think, what else could be in the rest of the treasure chests that Sela brought him. And so gave the order for her and her group to bring in the rest.

With some more finagling around, he was able to open to rest. And what he saw truly blew his mind.

There were chests laden with gold and silver, even a few with some weapons, armor, and accessories filled to the brim with enchantments. But what truly took his breath away was when he opened up three very large chests and took a look inside.

Each of the largest chests was filled to the brim, with mana cores… there had to be hundreds of them… probably worth a few thousand ranks worth if not more…

“I’m rich… I’m freaking rich!” Van couldn’t help but think as all those around him also couldn’t help but stop and stare in awe at the sheer amount of wealth before them.

But then something came to mind and he turned to ask Kella a question that suddenly was nagging him. “Why did that troll leader of theirs, their… High mother?” using a term that Sela just used. “Not use all these mana cores? If she had used these cores to rank up and become an arch troll… there would have been no chance of victory for us… since I’m pretty sure she was just a high troll… So why didn’t she use this great amount of wealth?”

Kella thought about that for a moment before replying. “While I can’t say the reason as to why, since I am no mind reader. I can surmise why she never ranked up, even with all this mana in front of her…”

Van looked interested and gave a look that showed he wanted her to continue, to which she obliged.

“Well… as you know… there is a big difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin, correct? Goblins are smaller and weaker than a hobgoblin, but a regular goblin can rank up faster than a hobgoblin. That is to say, if you instead of making them work for it, decided to just feed them their way up towards the ranks, you will find that it doesn't take that much mana cores in comparison to what a hobgoblin would require.” she said, doing her best to explain, but realizing she probably wasn’t and decided to change tracks.

“Let's put it another way. When you decided to rank up Gwen, it took you, twenty-six or seven mana cores of rank ten? That's two hundred and seventy ranks worth of mana cores. And if you tried to rank her up to an arch harpy, it would almost be three or four times that. Plus whatever other conditions you will have to meet to make it work, or you could try to brute force your way, which would cost even more mana cores. So already we are talking about mana cores in the ranks of well over a thousand at that point.”

“Then there are… well… this is a horrible measurement that some asshole came up with, but bear with me. ‘Tiers’, so to speak…”

“For example, goblins would rank somewhere around one to three tiers. Hobgoblins would rank around two to four, and troglodytes would rank around three to… four point five… or something like that. This is because troglodytes have their extra durable skin that makes it hard for people to hurt them. And-” Kella quickly shook her head.

“Sorry, I’m getting a bit sidetracked. The point I'm trying to make is the higher the tier or state of evolution you are, the more mana cores it will take. Turning a regular goblin into a high goblin is going to cost a lot fewer cores than turning a hobgoblin into a high hobgoblin. The same with a troglodyte, but since a troll is a higher ‘tier’ of monster it would cost more mana cores. And a hobgoblin and a troglodyte would on average cost the same amount of mana cores because, relatively, they are on the same level of power. Even though troglodytes are still on their first evolution and hobgoblins are on their second.” she finished, looking somewhat mentally exhausted.

“Sorry, an expert on how these work would probably have done a better job of telling you how this works. I hope I was able to at least give you the proper image of how it’s supposed to work,” she said.

Van nodded. “Thank you, I was able to understand what you meant,” he said kindly, knowing that Kella really did her best and scholarly knowledge wasn't really her forte. “But I wonder… What tier are humans and vampires at?” he asked.

“Ugh. don’t even get me started on that. The person who made the tier list does not count the ‘races’, only monster-kin races. It used to be that that person put vampires and ghouls as monster-kin before it was taken down because there was no proof that we were.”

Kella saw Van’s confusion and began to further explain. “The ‘races’ like humans and elves and us. We can’t just devour cores like monster-kin races can. Not to mention, we actually take a lot more mana in the long run than monster-kin races. We also don’t get convenient power boosts like they do. Such as naming a monster-kin could rank them up, or feeding them the right amount of materials or food to get a unique evolution, or a number of other things.”

“We, of the ‘races’ are too different. Monster-kin are fairly easy to tame and are happy to serve, ‘races’ you can only enslave with extremely dark magic and force them to serve. And-... well… the rest is complicated… but suffice to say, there is a big difference between a monster-kin and a normal person.” Kella finally finished.

“I see…” was all Van could say as his eyes were opened to a broader world and its rules. He then turned back to the open chests. “Well… you certainly gave me much to think about, but for now let's get to counting all of these and see what we got,” he said, getting to work and having the rest around him help out.

After about an hour they came to a staggering total of two thousand four hundred and twenty-six. Van swallowed his saliva once all the cores were in a big pile in front of him and the number was finally said out loud. It was truly a mind-boggling number, even he, with access to his father's wealth, couldn't get his hands on such a number.

“Sela…” Van said, drawing Sela’s eyes from the pile in front of her. “Were there more chests in the hidden vault… or was this it…” he asked, almost a little scared of how she would reply.

Sela looked at him for a while as she recalled everything she saw down there. “I took all the most expensive-looking chests I could find. There are still plenty more regular-looking chests, plus the chests in the common storage room…” she said, thinking about all the chests still left behind and wondering what else could be in them.

“Do you think if you go now you can make it back before nightfall?” he asked, knowing that she was probably following his line of thinking.

She thought about it for a while then slowly shook her head sadly. “Our main home is actually fairly far from the cavern we found you in. if we leave now we will come back sometime during the night. But if we leave first thing tomorrow morning we can probably make it back before nightfall. Not that it really matters to us, we prefer the dark anyway.”

Van realized she had a point. “Hmm… alright, go take a rest and get something to eat, after that you can go whenever you want. But if you are going to stay, make sure to help out around here a bit.”

“Yes, master. Anything else?” Sela asked.

“No, your dismissed,” he said, letting her go do her own thing. He then asked Kella and the goblins to bring the mana cores to the magic circle and put the rest of the stuff they found somewhere private and under guard if they can help it.

With that he made his way towards the magic circle, only to slowly come to a halt as something slightly foul and sweet entered his nose. Off in the distance he saw something, he pretended couldn’t be real. But probably was.

Dredging up the nerves, he slowly made his way to the magic circle were now was a very large bowl of what could only be described as goblin soup. Gwen was preparing a few large bottles and the magic circle, while Isa was stirring away at the giant bowl filled with her former comrades.

Van felt like he was going to throw up, he was never going to look at Isa the same way again. In one respect, he now respected her more than he even thought he could. The sheer willpower and determination it took to do something like this were impressive. But in another… it was disgusting and he really did not want to see this, or her doing it.

Isa then looked up, saw him, and waved him over.

Swallowing the bile that tried to make its way up his throat, he walked over to greet her.

“Hello, master, did you come to help us create biomass?” Isa asked casually.

“Err-no…” he said at first, but then sighed. “But… I suppose I will…” he said, giving in. He knew that it probably would take them forever for them to go through all the corpses without his help. He also knew it wasn’t like Isa wanted to do this, and by the expression, she showed him when he said he would help, she appreciated it.

“Thanks, Van…” she said, the hard mask-like expression she was wearing as she was stirring her sisters cracking a bit, showing the true pain underneath.

“Ya… let's just get this over with,” he said, not wanting to talk anymore. “What do I have to do?”

Isa then explained that he and Gwen just had to cast a few spells to speed up the process of turning goblins into soup. Afterward, they will pour the soupy contents into the large jars and place them in the magic circle. After that, they will use another spell to finish the process all the way. And then… then they get their biomass which can be used to speed up the process of egg growth.

It was fairly straightforward and took most of the day since there were a lot of corpses to process. Not just goblins but troglodytes as well, which took a bit longer.

Van had become numb to it, at first he had to move away from time to time to catch some fresh air. He could have used a spell to keep the foul stench away, which he did. But he made the excuse anyway, just so he could have some time to himself and reset. So to speak. Before returning to the task at hand.

Near the end of the day, they were finally finished. And in a strange way, Van felt like he matured. But in a way, he never wished he had.

“Van…” Isa called out, making him turn his head to look at her. “Thanks…” her feelings and emotions coming through.

Van felt how genuinely thankful Isa was that he helped share the burden. And in some way, it was the small bit of light out of all this mess. “No problem… he said, somewhat hoarse, which surprised him. He had not said a peep in the past few hours, his throat dry and constricted. He had to clear it a few times before he felt like it was back to normal and then tried again. “No problem.”

Isa smiled gently, she then looked down at her hands and then back at him, hesitantly, she spread them out before him. “Could you…” she asked, uncertainly, and unable to finish her sentence.

It took Van a moment for him to figure out. Though her hands were clean since she made sure not to get them dirty. He understood what she wanted, and cast an extremely thorough clean spell on not just her hands, but her entire body.

Isa shivered and looked at Van with an expression of pure relief. “Thank you…” she said, liquid forming at the rim of her eyes. She wiped them away before they had time to form. “Was there something else you came here for?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

Van blinked until it came to him like a hammer hitting him between the eyes. “Yes! I did!” as if only realizing it now. “Isa, we have enough cores to rank you up. Get in the circle and we can do this in no time,” he said, a little happy to get back to something normal and good.

Isa looked away for a bit, her right arm moving to hold her left. “Are you sure?” she asked.

Van was confused by the question, but then saw her melancholic expression and had an idea of what she was probably thinking right now. “I’m sure… Come on, let's just get this over with. Your sisters would be proud, how many goblins can say they became a high hobgoblin? They would be happy if you become stronger for them…”

Isa looked at Van for a hard moment, but then her expression softened and she nodded. She moved slowly into the magic circle, waiting patiently.

Van then began the ritual, using the newly acquired cores. Watching as Isa’s body took shape before him. Growing a little taller, a little bigger in some places, a little prettier and more slender and soft. And most importantly, much stronger. After the ritual was over, she came out of the circle with an athlete's swagger, the euphoria and power temporarily clouding her mind.

Van smiled, happy to see her happy. But it was dashed when a goblin came screaming for him, pointing towards the gate. Souring his mood. “What now…” he thought, annoyed.

The goblin came running up to him with panic in her eyes. “It’s mistress Lyn and mistress Amie! They are very hurt! You have to come quick!” she yelled with fear in her eyes.

Van paled and he needed no other prompting, he ran as fast as he could to the entrance. Wondering why today was so fucked up. Isa running close behind.