After a day and a night, Rui Feng had recovered enough to fight. The others had long since finished resting, and that morning we set off again.
"What should we do with the Desolate Beast Core?" I asked. Between our absorption and its natural dissipation, there was little vitality left inside it, but it should still be worth something as an ordinary core.
"Desolate Beast Cores are valuable collectibles even without vitality. We could definitely get a good price for it in the Imperial City." Rui Xin was already calculating how much she could make. "We should sell it at a trading post the Si Nan Family can't control, so the Lineage can't find an excuse to confiscate it." Mo Xiao Hong offered her advice, too. But Rui Feng immediately rejected their idea, without even furrowing his brow. "Not happening. A Desolate Beast Core without vitality has no practical use. Carrying it would only add weight. Besides, Liu Ye killed the beast, so it's not up to you to decide."
They all turned to me in unison, waiting for my decision. I guess I'd built up a little authority without even realizing it.
"Let's do what Rui Feng says. Sure, the Desolate Beast Core looks pretty without its vitality, but what good is that? It's not like we can eat it."
The moment I said that, they all froze like statues.
"...Liu Ye, hearing you say 'what good is being pretty?' somehow feels like you're making fun of us."
"Uh..."
Now that I thought about it, they'd already seen my face. No wonder everyone who'd spoken to me lately had made a point of standing somewhere lower than me. They'd been trying to look at my face under the hood. This was probably going to be a problem. To avoid triggering some stupid plot where a rich, spoiled young master took a fancy to me and tried to bring me home as a concubine, I'd been careful, careful, and then even more careful. I wasn't like those baka transformation protagonists who had no idea how beautiful they were. If I could help it, I wanted to keep a low profile... even though nothing I'd done lately had been low-profile.
But there was something bothering me even more right now: the "Blood Core" inside me.
There was no concept of a dantian or qi sea in this world, and "inner vision" wasn't a thing either, so I couldn't see what the Blood Core inside me looked like. Going by feel, it was about half the size of a ping-pong ball, and most of the Blood Energy from the Desolate Beast's body had flowed into it. Was this Blood Core a blessing or a curse? Was it a sign that I was getting stronger, or some kind of illness? Only time would tell.
Maybe because we had the previous Desolate Beast to compare it to, the trip to the second survey point went incredibly smoothly. We only ran into two groups of monsters along the way, and dealt with them both without a hitch. The landscape around us was now completely different from the forest we'd passed through earlier. There were hardly any tall trees left, only increasingly sparse shrubs and exposed rock. Looking out across the gray-white rocky land, I saw dark green shrubs scattered here and there, like a starry sky in negative. On Earth, this landscape would be a world-class scenic spot.
The only flaw was that the path started climbing halfway through, and the slope was pretty steep. My constitution had improved beyond recognition, but I still instinctively hated uphill roads.
"Good. We've made it through this stretch without a hitch. We've reached the second survey point," Rui Feng said. I'd worried at first whether his body could hold up, but the ferocity with which he pummeled monsters had shown me I'd been worrying for nothing.
The second site was called "Black Rock." It wasn't a cool girl with a heavy cannon and flaming eyes, but an actual enormous black boulder. The rock stood upright like a stone tablet. Its material was similar to obsidian, with a beauty that was both weighty and refined. It stood out against the gray-white bare rock around it.
As before, Si Nanlong held the compass and conducted the survey while we guarded the perimeter. After what had happened last time, everyone was on edge, not daring to make a sound.
"Done. Nothing unusual," Si Nanlong said when he'd finished the survey. "By the way, a group of Horned Sheep is approaching from the east. Should we avoid them or fight?"
"Let's avoid them. No point wasting time on minor threats."
"Okay. From now on, I'll keep a wide-range detection field active and try to avoid pointless fights."
I couldn't help asking Rui Xin, "If we can avoid them, why didn't we do that from the beginning?"
"The monsters along the first stretch were relatively weak, and there were a lot of them. Even if we knew where they were and avoided one group, we'd definitely run into another. So detecting their locations wouldn't have been useful. But from here on, the monsters will be much stronger, and there'll be fewer of them. Avoiding fights whenever possible is the best strategy."
"Yoshi, got it."
"What does 'yoshi' mean?"
"...Never mind."
A ferocious beast raced forward. Its body was shaped like a lion's, and it was clad in gleaming white bone armor. Sharp teeth filled its snarling jaws. This beast was none other than a Bone Armor Lion! It charged like a cannonball, roaring as it pounced toward the woman ahead. Her slender frame looked utterly defenseless against its claws, and yet—
"Quiet!"
Si Nan Yuan punched. The instant her fist reached the Bone Armor Lion, a wave of force burst out. The beast took the blow like a sledgehammer to the face, its features caving in as it was sent flying!
"That straggler's taken care of. You can carry on."
Si Nan Ying and Elder Hong stood side by side. Fifty meters in front of them was a huge, pale yellow screen of light. On the other side stood four or five Bone Armor Lions. They bared their claws and teeth, raking and scratching at the screen and even firing bone darts, but couldn't make a dent in it.
"Are you ready?" Elder Hong asked.
"Mm!"
Elder Hong waved a hand, opening a small gap in the screen. A Bone Armor Lion eagerly squeezed through and charged at them!
"Feel your ability. Become one with it!"
"Yes!" Si Nan Ying raised her hand. A bubble emerged from her palm and shot toward the Bone Armor Lion. With a sharp pop, it blew away a chunk of the bone armor on the beast's head. That was all it did.
"Not enough power. Again!"
Si Nan Ying hurriedly fired another one. As Elder Hong watched the tiny bubble drift forward at an unhurried pace, a sense of foreboding crept over him...
"You fool!"
Elder Hong swept out a hand, throwing up a small screen of light in front of them. At the same time, the bubble slammed into the Bone Armor Lion.
Rumble— The bubble exploded with a deafening boom. A tremendous shock wave spread out, sand and dust shot skyward, and even the earth trembled! When the dust settled, the Bone Armor Lion—no, not just the Bone Armor Lion—was gone. Centered on the blast site was a huge crater, fifteen meters in radius and three meters deep! As for the unfortunate beast, not a scrap of it remained...
"Hiss!" Several guards sucked in a sharp breath. Si Nan Yuan shook her head helplessly, while Elder Hong's face had turned ashen.
"...Little Ying, I hope you can explain yourself."
"Um, sorry. I didn't control the power properly..."
"I only agreed to train you because you swore you could control it. You call that control!?"
"But if you judge it by its destructive power, it really is strong..."
"Power you can't control is no different from weakness! That's enough for today. Go think carefully about what you've done!"
"...Sigh."
Si Nan Ying sat down on the ground, listlessly watching the guards clean up the remaining Bone Armor Lions, each showing off their own way of taking down the monsters.
It must be nice to use your ability as much as you wanted...
Why was her ability so hard to control?
That was right: judged by destructive power alone, Si Nan Ying's ability ranked among the best in the entire Si Nan Family. But the truly terrifying part wasn't the damage her bubbles could do. It was how little spiritual energy they consumed! A single attack could destroy a small building. Another ability user might be too exhausted to stand afterward, but when Si Nan Ying fired a bubble capable of leveling a small building, she only felt "a little strained." The efficiency was terrifying.
But by the same token, her ability was extraordinarily difficult to control. If the bubbles' destructive power were divided into levels one through ten, level one could knock someone unconscious, level two could cripple them, and level ten could bring down a fortress-like building. Si Nan Ying was stuck in an awkward position: the bubbles she fired were either level two or lower, or level eight or higher. There was nothing in between. Levels one and two could deal with ordinary people, but against someone with a Physical Enhancement System like the bald man they'd encountered earlier, they'd be at a serious disadvantage. Level eight was far too powerful, with a wide area of effect and devastating force; using it in a fight could easily get her hurt, too. So in the end, Si Nan Ying's ability was... hard to say whether it was strong or weak.
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