Feng just stared dumbly at his quest update window for several minutes…

“Hey Feng? You alright?”

“Huh? Wha? … Yeah. Peachy. I’m good… You know what screw thinking about this. It’s time to reap the rewards for our hard-fought battle. Let’s loot everything not nailed down!”

Roth looked taken aback by Feng’s answer but shrugged and rolled with it.

“Sounds good to me. So how are we doing this?”

Feng looked puzzled as the two looked to him for instructions despite being the most junior of the trio.

“Wait, shouldn’t I be taking instructions for you two?”

Roth tilted his head questioningly and jerked a thumb back at Rania as he spoke.

“Yeah, who are you kidding Feng. We are veterans. We know by now to defer to the smart one in the team and trust me this loli granny is not it for sure.”

“HEY! I’m not a granny!”

Watching the two start squabbling like kids again, Feng couldn’t help but agree with Roth’s wise decision…

“Right… So if you two are done, I was thinking that it’ll be most efficient for you guys to look for any helpful documents and treasure or valuables since Rania have already explored around and you two can easily clean up any left-over opposition as a team. I’ll start cleaning up here and looting the bodies and collecting the most valuable items to bring back.”

“Got it!”

“Ehh… Can’t I work with you instead Feng?”

“Ahaha… That’ll be nice but I’m afraid Roth needs your help more.”

Rania’s white cat ears drooped noticeably as she turned around sadly and Feng felt a surge of pity and was nearly overwhelmed with the need to cheer the adorable cat-girl up but steeled himself.

‘Can’t give in... Need them to be away to… do what is necessary.’

Keeping an eye on Roth and Rania as they searched the nearby rooms, Feng simply went around the room picking up all the equipment from the Redcloaks and sorting them by item types. Looting the six Bloodcloak Elites first, he gathered up a pile of their khopeshes, helmets, chainmail armors and even their cloaks which were of a higher quality. Unfortunately, the corpse of the scepter-wielding Redcloak completely vanished along with his scepter after his summoning of Rahab…

‘Too bad… That could have been some high-quality loot and that cheapskate angel was wearing only simple cloth tunic and pants… Maybe I should observe them just in case they are magical…’

Bloody White Tunic

Type: Body

Defense: 1

Durability: 49/50

Description: A simple white tunic previously worn by the fallen angel Rahab. It seems exceedingly durable but is otherwise unremarkable. Leather Sandals

Type: Feet

Defense: 1

Durability: 49/50

Description: A pair of leather sandals previously worn by the fallen angel Rahab. It seems exceedingly durable but is otherwise unremarkable.

‘… What the hell. What kind of boss drops such shitty loot…’

Annoyed with the lousy loot from Rahab, Feng moved on to retrieving and cleaning all the knives scattered throughout the room and covered less than a quarter of the massive room before he noticed that the others have moved further away to investigate other rooms.

‘… Better get started then. This is necessary. He’s not human anyway. I need to know more about them especially with this war shoved upon me…’

---

Letting the fallen angel’s legs drop on the ground, Feng closed the door to the small side-room which the others had checked through. The room was devoid of furnishing besides some simple mats and appeared to be a rest room of sorts.

Closing the door, Feng turned back to the headless corpse and grimaced at what he intended to do next.

‘Lord. Forgive me… Wait, this is just a game anyway. Just a game.’

With most of the blood drained from the neck, dissecting the corpse was less messy than Feng had expected but each stab and cut he made opening up the corpse turned his stomach.

‘First check for mana stones and if the skeletal structure and internal organs are similar…’

Feng looked away from the corpse and closed his eyes as he gingerly pressed his hands in and rummaged about, feeling out for any aberrant mana stones or divergence from the human body.

‘Just imagine this is a lizard corpse. Just feel for the presence of… wait. That feeling?’

Having his eyes closed and focused on his senses, Feng felt the usual mix of mana, chi and aura flowing through his body but also faint traces of red aura at his fingertips… and a huge amount of energy emitting from… three different sources?

One was very near him… The fallen’s heart! As for the other two… Of course! They have to be its wings.

Carefully opening a flap and gently retrieving the fallen’s organ, Feng’s excitement overpowered the disgust of holding on to the bloody slimy-feeling organ.

Grasping the heart with one hand and touching the pair of shorn off wings with the other, Feng closed his eyes and cast his senses over them.

The wings were immediately registered as HUGE sources of pure red Aura, with each individual feather storing a dense amount of Aura that outshone the lizard monster core he absorbed before.

But… it was the heart which made a lone tear roll down the side of Feng’s cheeks.

‘This is… no… How can it be...’

Feng grabbed on to the fallen being’s heart with both his hands and struggled to calm his mind to properly feel out the energies within it.

Opening his eyes after long minutes, Feng blinked away the tears clouding up his vision and sniffled.

Trapped beneath the dense light red mana shell formed within the angel’s heart... was the reason for his current state.

A tiny bead of flawless pure white mana laid within the being’s heart and reaching out with his senses to that miniscule yet perfect mana, Feng felt an unbelievable sense of peace and warmth engulfing his entire body and spirit.

“This warmth… I have only ever felt it in His presence… But why? And how?”

Feng muttered as he stared down at the bloody organ within his hands.

*DING*

New Skill Obtained: Mana Sensing

Congratulations through your continual observation, you have learnt to perceive mana in its three different states of Aura, Mana and Chi respectively.

(Passive Skill)

Range: 5 metres

+3 Wisdom

+2 Perception Skill Update: Anatomy

Level: Basic 3

You have learnt the basic working structure of creatures by brutally cutting them up and demonstrating understanding of their physiology.

Creature Types

Reptiles (5%)

- Lizards (100%)

Humanoids (8%)

- Humans (18%)

- Angelic (34%)

+2.5% Critical Hit Chance versus known creature types

+10% Critical Hit Damage versus known creature types

Bonuses are doubled when knowledge of creature type reaches 100%

+2 Intelligence

+4 Perception

The sudden sound and notification window shook Feng out of his muddled thoughts and he stored the heart and wings away in his inventory, mentally shelving away this confusing matter for a proper time.

Staring at the second notification window, Feng was assaulted with yet another complicated feeling.

‘Clearly dissecting the fallen angel gave me bonuses towards understanding human anatomy… does that mean if I dissect more human corpses… The fallen is clearly a monster but… the others. But I could also improve my skill a lot…’

Feng walked back to the large cavern room and stared at the Redcloak corpses littering the area indecisively.

‘… So many. So much skill experience. But they are humans… ‘

Feng stood there for several moments before his face hardened and turned grim as he made up his mind.

‘No, they are just VR programs. Yes just spawned enemies and their whole stupid faction declared war on me. I need all the advantages I can get.’

Dragging more corpses into that room, Feng begun his bloody work and dissected the bodies slowly. Puking more than once as he did so as unexpected blood splatters or the slimy feeling of entrails and organs got to him.

After the first five corpses, his humanoid understanding gains dropped off dramatically and lingered at sixty-eight percent even after cutting up a seventh body. Realizing that this is inefficient and also struggling to continue with the bloody work, Feng decided there has to be a better way…

Idly stretching out his body as he wiped off the blood from his hands, Feng felt pops coming from his spine and joints as he worked out the kinks from crouching over the corpses.

‘Ahhh… That feels good. Wait, the skill description mentioned physiology? I got it!’

Moving on to an eighth corpse, Feng worked his way down from the head to the toes of the body… manipulating and breaking every single joint he could find. After that exercise in remembering all his various locks and weak points of the joints, he moved on to applying increasing amounts of pressure on critical spots of the body.

*Swelchh*

Feng held back a wince as the sternum of his sixteenth Redcloak finally gave way under the force exerted by his palm and shattered, its ribs piercing into the corpse’s lungs with a wet sound.

*DING*

Skill Update: Anatomy

Level: Intermediate 1

You have gained moderate understanding of creatures by brutally cutting them up and experimenting with their physiology.

Creature Types

Reptiles (5%)

- Lizards (100%)

Humanoids (29%)

- Humans (100%)

- Angelic (34%)

+5% Critical Hit Chance versus known creature types

+25% Critical Hit Damage versus known creature types

Bonuses are doubled when knowledge of creature type reaches 100%

+6 Intelligence

+12 Perception New Achievement Obtained: RIP? Rest In Pieces!

Sending your foes to eternal rest is not sufficient for you; instead you brutally carved up and destroyed their corpses not granting them any peace even in death.

+1000 Infamy

+25% Chance to inspire fear in enemies when killing enemies in gory ways

Admin Note: Infamy is not affected by whether people find out your actions or not as it is tracked by the system and used solely for system purposes. Note that, should other entities find out about your actions, it is possible that negative or positive influences due to this stat will occur.

For once, Feng viewed the notification with thankfulness as it signaled the end of his gruesome deeds and he carefully threw mats over the mutilated cadavers before returning to the large central cavern.

‘The warning about being found out is ominous… Perhaps it’s better for me to cover up my tracks.’

Instead of retrieving weaponry and armor from corpses, Feng instead stripped the corpses and begun moving them into the side-room, covering up the dissected and broken corpses beneath the “normal” corpses.

*Thud*

As the last corpse he heaved on to the pile slid off and out of the door from the overflowing room, Feng decided it was time to clean up the corpses more thoroughly.

Sitting and meditating for several minutes, slivers of flames begun to peek through his enclosed hands and he took care to stand a distance away before lobbing the flaming ball of mana into the room.

*WHOOSHH*

Leaving the fire to burn itself out, confined as it is to that single room, Feng returned to his work of sorting out the weaponry and armor and was soon greeted by the return of Rania and Roth.

“The place is clear of Redcloaks. We only found two places of interest, an armory and what looks like the room of the Redcloak leader here, the staff-guy judging by the fancier robes and books within that room.”

“Great finds, but aren’t there places such as kitchens, store-rooms or a treasury?”

“There definitely isn’t any treasury, that was the first thing we looked for, but there is a large kitchen and some food storage areas attached to it.”

Roth looked confused by Feng’s question though he took it in stride. Leaving Rania to move all the weapons found so far up to the entrance area, the two men headed off towards the leader’s room first.

---

The room was a large one split into a bedroom and a study. A large wooden bed occupied the bedroom with a single cabinet. In the equally sparsely furnished study, a heavy oaken desk stood alongside some bookshelves.

Riffling through the papers stacked on the table, Feng expected to read reports linking the Church of Light and Redcloaks for incriminating evidence… Unfortunately, it seems like the Redcloaks weren’t fools as commonly depicted in games or shows. The documents were written in either an unknown language or heavily encrypted.

The only usable find was a map indicating various supply points for Redcloaks as well as bases of operations.

It also revealed that this was only the Tyward branch of Redcloaks and while it was a moderately-sized base, judging by the markings on the map there were much large operations in other cities and all across the continent…

There were also several books arranged upon the book shelves but they were mostly religious texts on Ralos except for a single red-bound book which had what looked like spells within them. Feng pocketed everything and after a final check for any hidden compartments, they headed over to the armory.

Feng’s eyes lit up at the sight before him and he cackled gleefully as he saw the stocks of weaponry and armor before him.

‘Going by the normal rates of weaponry… SO MUCH GOLD! And all those knives! I’ll never run out of projectiles again!’

While the weaponry was mostly made up of standard Redcloak equipment, there were also a small stash of higher grade weaponry and armor worn by their elite. Feng immediately swept up all the knives and stashed as many as he could within his inventory alongside the higher grade equipment he had collected already.

Unfortunately, there was simply too many to fit within his inventory but Feng was undeterred and simply piled the weaponry into barrels and crates. Roth sweat-dropped at the sight of Feng packing everything within the armory and helped Feng moved the crates out.

“So we are done here? Maybe we should rest before we head out, it’s night already.”

Roth wiped the sweat off his brow as moving all these containers of equipment out of the stuffy tunnels was actually more tiring than fighting…

“Sure you two go ahead and rest first, I still need to do some more packing and looting.”

Feng muttered distractedly in response to Roth who was starting to question his decision to allow Feng to call the shots as Feng started looting and packing ridiculous things…

“By the way who is the Lord you speak of Feng?”

Rania saw her opportunity to spent time alone with Feng as Roth prepared to leave and asked a question, hoping to engage him in conversation.

“Hmm.. that’s a complicated topic and I think it’s best we save it for the journey back.”

Only for Feng to wave the question off, pre-occupied as he was with maximizing the amount of loot he can bring back. The disappointed cat-girl was dragged off reluctantly to rest by Roth who noticed how tired she was having been embroiled in combat hours before they even got to the scene.

Blinking as they returned to the surface, Roth and Rania stopped and rubbed their eyes. The two veterans pinched themselves in unison only to stare as the impossible amount of unexpected items stacked together into a huge pile with a makeshift sled was not a dream…

“Great, you two are up! I think this is the maximum amount of the most valuable items I can bring back, the most valuable things I have already stored away so we only need to move this back. We can take turns pulling this and the others just need to carry the barrels over there.”

---

AN: Well, the majority voted for me to continue updating while rewriting so that's what I'll be doing. I'll also be periodically dropping announcements of revised chapters. As usual your reviews, ratings and feedback will be greatly appreciated and help drive my motivation to write more!