New World

Green moved closer and carefully examined the Flesh-Ball Monster's anatomy.

"Nothing unusual on the surface, but those ears are clearly wrong!" A brief look up close was enough for Green to spot something strange.

Though the ears appeared to grow from the Flesh-Ball Monster's skin, each one had an almost imperceptible scar where it joined the body.

And to Green's eye, the ears showed entirely different signs of growth. Some were badly damaged, while others were tiny, pink, and tender as a newborn's. Each had clearly come from an individual raised in a different environment.

"These ears must have been stolen from outside!"

Green's eyes lit up at the deduction. If the ears had been taken from elsewhere, other creatures must exist in this world. He simply hadn't found any life because he'd been searching the wrong way!

Green picked up the wooden scalpel beside him and slowly drew it along one of the nearly invisible scars.

Hiss!

The wooden scalpel slid across the Flesh-Ball Monster's skin with a hiss, like paper being cut.

With its vitality gone, the flesh-ball's muscles seemed to have rapidly lost their resilience, making it easy to dissect.

He slowly removed two of the monster's ears and placed them in a square tray beside him.

Both looked like human ears, but one was large and the other small. They clearly came from people of different ages.

Looking at the ears in the tray, Green cast a spell. Two red runes appeared in the air and sank into the ears, one apiece.

The two red runes then drifted out and moved toward each other. But the closer they came, the stronger the resistance between them seemed to grow, preventing them from meeting.

"As I thought, they weren't part of the same body. They were stolen from