Lucas woke up the next morning to the sound of the rooster crowing. His dad had offered to let him watch as he skinned the bear and promised that Lucas could go into the village with him if he was good. He jumped down off of the bed and quickly pulled his pants on. He felt bad that his dad had to whip him yesterday, but ,without being able to use his skills, he grew bored so easily, and the cat had been laying there so completely oblivious. He didn’t have the heart to tell his dad that his pain resistance skill had leveled up some time ago and that the whippings didn’t really hurt anymore. Better to keep that a secret as well, otherwise his dad would be sad that he would have to find some other way to punish him.

Lucas eventually made his way to the kitchen where his mother was preparing breakfast. He saw the large pot that she used to make porridge and let out a small sigh of disappointment. He hated porridge days.

“Don’t you start your moping this early, young man,” said his mother. “I can’t make bacon every morning to fill that bottomless pit you call a stomach.”

“Sorry mum,” replied Lucas. “I just don’t like the way porridge tastes.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that your father managed to find a hive of yellow swarm beelings. They had left the hive unguarded to chase down that bear, and he managed to get a couple of combs,” his mother finished and reached up to the cabinet to pull down a jar full of golden liquid honey.

Lucas almost couldn’t contain his excitement. Honey was just about the only thing in the world that could make porridge a decent breakfast.

“Though I’m not sure if I should give you any this morning,” said his mother. “You did break a valuable family heirloom yesterday.” She paused while turning with the honey and tilted her head as if thinking about a difficult problem.

“I’m sorry mom!” exclaimed Lucas. “I really am. I promise, I wasn’t trying to break it. I’ll never fight in the house again. Swear!”

“I’ll hold you to that, young man,” said his mother. “Now one spoon full and you’ll finish every bite of porridge.” She said as she drizzled a large spoon full of the delicious golden honey into the bowl.

Beeling honey was prized around the world. It had restorative properties, increased vitality, and gave a boost to energy that lasted most of the day. If taken in large quantities it could become addictive, but the residents of Emmit’s Lake knew well how to use the precious resource properly. The beeling honey was one of the exports from this area, since beelings could only survive with a precise mixture of climate, mana concentration, and food sources. All attempts to transplant a beeling hive had resulted in the death of all of the 1 foot tall beelings. The kingdom had even outlawed transportation of beelings in an effort to prevent their population from declining any further and to protect the precious resource.

Lucas finished the porridge without complaint and put his bowl in the sink before heading towards the barn. His father had already put the bear on the special hanger in the barn yesterday and allowed all of the blood to drain into a large basin with runes designed to prevent deterioration or contamination. Lucas didn’t know that, but he did know that if you put a toad in the basin it died but didn’t start smelling like a toad normally did after a couple of weeks. He never found out just how long it took for a toad to start smelling funny in the basin since his dad had found it and he had gotten to level 2 of pain resistance that day. The blood would be bottled and sold along with the hide, bones, and various organs.

Lucas didn’t say anything to his father as he entered the barn. He just walked over to the stool that his father had set out for him and watched. His father was still setting up his tools. There were knives of various shapes and sizes, pry bars, clamps, and some sort of spoon looking thing. Lucas looked closer and saw that it was actually one of his mother’s slotted serving spoons. He hoped that he didn’t get blamed for it coming up missing.

The barn always smelled of old leather and hay. There was a second level hidden in shadow that held various dried goods, extra parts for his father’s traps, and various other interesting things. He wasn’t allowed up there since the trap incident, but Lucas always held out hope that he would be allowed to go up there and explore again one day. On the bottom level there were a few stalls that his father used to keep live animals that he captured and sold to the traveling merchants that came through this area a few times a year. All but the mule’s stall was empty at the moment, otherwise Lucas wouldn’t be allowed in the barn at all. That was the rule after he accidentally opened one of the stalls with a juvenile ryth lizard, an animal similar to a crocodile in shape and size but with a scorpion tail and completely land based. It shot acid out of a gland on its tail and Lucas’ father swore that it would have eaten him whole had he not been there. Lucas was pretty sure he and his pet could have taken the lizard if given the chance.

After Lucas had been sitting for a few moments, a black shadow separated from the wall on the other side of the barn and headed towards Lucas. Stan glanced up from where he was setting up his tools and reached into a pouch at his belt. The void cat stopped its lazy walk towards Lucas and stared intently at the pouch.

“Alright, Midnight, com’ere,” his father said in a sickly-sweet tone of voice. “You know you want the treat. Com’ere.”

The void cat just stared at Stan and refused to move.

“C’mon, Midnight,” Stan tried again to coax the void cat towards him with a piece of jerky that the cat loved.

“Dad,” said Lucas, “you know that he doesn’t answer to that name. Come on, Mr. Snugglepuss, I’ll get you some jerky later” Lucas then patted his knee and his void cat, Mr. Snugglepuss, sauntered over with a contemptuous flick of his tail at the man that refused to call him by his proper name. The big man might be the alpha, but Mr. Snugglepuss refused to answer to the name Midnight.

“I don’t even know how you managed to name the blasted thing. I swear, your ma’ just had to try to be funny. I’ll never get her sense of humor,” Stan said. He then tossed the piece of jerky in his hand towards the cat who promptly snagged it out of the air with one bite.

With Mr. Snugglepuss’ head resting comfortably on his lap, Lucas watched as his father made the first cut into the hide. Guided by his high leveled skinning skill there were no missed cuts and the hide came free of the bear in almost pristine condition. The meat was trimmed from the bones with no waste. The important organs went into a chest, big enough to fit Lucas and Mr. Snugglepuss in that would keep them fresh.Finally, the head, which was removed with a large hand saw last night, was placed on a work table, and Stan began to dig through the roof of the mouth into the depths of the skull for the beast core.

“You know why I cut the head off last night and placed it in the room in the back?” asked Stan.

“No, sir,” replied Lucas.

“A beast core needs to be prepared jus’ right,” said his father. “I learned how to prepare the cores from my pa, who learned from his pa. Now, anybody can jus’ cut the core out of a beast and sell it for a lick. But, if you cut the head off and let it set for the night with the moon shinin’ on it and the proper runes in use, the magic remaining in the brain’ll condense,” he said as he finally began to tug on something with the tool in his hand. “And, instead of a regular core, you get,” with a wet squelch and several pinkish grey gobs of brain matter his father pulled a stone the size of a fist from inside the mouth of the horned bear, “a high quality core, or sometimes even a exquisite quality core.”

Lucas looked at the core in his father’s hand. Unlike the ones he had seen in the village last spring on his birthday, this one had a slight glow and shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow. It was smooth instead of rough edged. Lastly, Lucas felt a pull towards the core that he had never felt before. It was almost as if the core was calling for Lucas to take it and use it.

“Feel that, son?” his father asked. “That’s the difference between a regular core and a high-quality core. The essence is clean, don’t take a whole lot of work to prep the core for folks to use it. One day, I’ll teach you the steps that my pa taught me. Even if you don’t become a hunter, you can use our family’s recipe to turn a bit of profit with a lil’ work.”

“Why are cores so important?” asked Lucas as he continued to pet his cat’s head.

“People use ‘em for pretty much all the enchantments that are made, they can be used to power a mill or a forge, they can even be used to increase levels for people who are stuck at a bottleneck,” replied his father. “These things are the reason that men die deep under the ground fightin’ all the monsters and ugliness in the dungeons. Legend has it that the floating city of Elryth is powered by just one legendary core from a lesser wyrm.”

His father placed the core in a box that was set aside for it. As the door to the box shut, there was a brief flare of blue light around the seam as the enchantment activated and then the box was just a normal, if pretty, wooden box. It was then set next to half a dozen of its brethren in a beautifully worked hardwood chest.

“We’re lucky, son,” continued Lucas’ father. “Beast ranges like the one we live near that don’t threaten humanity with waves every couple a’ years are rare. Most people don’t have access to the resources that we do and its only through your grandpa and grandma’s sheer willingness to fight n’ scrape, that we have this homestead n’ our writ. That’s why I was so angry at you for breakin’ that vase of your grandma’s last night. I don’t have too much to remember my ma’ by. The house, the barn, all of our tools, those were from my pa,” he finished looking around the barn with a wistful expression.

Lucas couldn’t have felt more small than he did at that moment. No matter that he didn’t mean to break the vase. Right then he swore to himself that he would never fight with Mr. Snugglepuss in the house again. The whipping didn’t hurt near as bad as the look that filled his father’s face when he talked about Lucas’ grandmother.

“Wasn’t tryin’ to get you down, son,” said his father. “You got punished. You didn’t complain about it none. Way I see it, it’s over n’ done with. Now, let’s go get washed up and have lunch then we can head into the village n’ see if we can’t get into a lil’ trouble.”

Stan stood and stared at the spot where his son had been sitting. The stool was laying on the ground and Lucas and the cat were halfway back to the house before the last syllable left his mouth. Sometimes he worried about the boy, but even with all the headache and trouble the boy caused, he was proud of his son and loved every minute of it