The Lost Name II

The ruins immersed in darkness took on a peculiar blue-gray hue beneath the light of the gem—the distinctive color of basalt. Among the many peoples of Vonder, only the Min'er People favored using this special igneous rock to build grand structures. The ruins stood silently in the woodland as the Royal Knights passed between rows of basalt pillars, dragging the enormous corpse of a pine bear by a rope threaded through its ribs toward the camp at the center of the ruins.

A pile of corpses had accumulated like a small hill.

The party had encountered these uninvited guests half an hour earlier. Pine bears belonged to a category of savage beasts that Cruz called ferocious animals. They were creatures somewhere between monsters and animals. Unlike monsters, whose magical power dissipated after death and left behind only crystals, their corpses became the best food reserves Brando's group could have asked for.

They had been fairly lucky. After entering Eternal Night Forest, they had barely seen any living animals aside from the occasional small creature that had lost its way. Anlase Forest was not home to any large carnivorous beasts. This group of pine bears must have come from northern Lantorilan, wandered into the forest, and gone mad under the erosion of Dark Magic, attacking Brando's group.

Brando knew that pine bears were actually very mild-mannered carnivores. Normally, they only hunted large herbivores, such as the deer herds on the northern shore of Crystal Lake or a hippopotamus-sized even-toed herbivore called a slave ox. They rarely attacked humans.

The stripped pine-bear pelts were rolled up and tossed aside. Peya had taken on the task voluntarily. For a huntress like her, it was second nature. Peya used a skinning knife to cut an opening along the spine, then turned the body over.