—–
After finally convincing my mother that this blood was that of the monsters we fought and that I was completely healthy, as she checked my own body multiple times after seeing me covered in blood, the entire group of hunters began to quickly butcher the boar while it was still fresh.
The sun was slowly setting in the horizon, so we had to hurry up before it was to be dark at night, and my mother decided to come help at butchering. She of course knew how to butcher animals as someone that lives in a village composed mostly of hunters, and she was rather good at it.
The kids all came back when they learned that I was back from my hunt, Chris, Eric, and Erika began to help me at butchering too, but they were very clumsy at it, so I had to teach them a lot while we were at it.
“Man, draining blood is going to take a long time…” sighed Gradus.
“Don’t worry about it.” I said.
I touched the entire boar and using Eleanora’s assistance, I drained all the blood out of the corpse of the boar, absorbing it and then converting it into Blood Qi, gaining a great deal of this energy, which quickly began to nourish and enhance my physique, I was getting closer for the Physique to increase in Tier.
“Y-You drained its blood?!” asked Gradus.
“Yes, my spirit gives me the ability to manipulate blood, you’ve seen her doing that already, right? It is her power…” I said. “I often take the blood of what I hunt like this, so feel free to ask me to extract the blood of anything you’ll butcher.”
“S-Sure, we’ll take it into consideration.”
“Indeed…”
“You’re very useful, aren’t you?”
“Blake is really a future Hero or something, I am sure of it. We are witnessing a future hero!”
The Hunters were all surprised by me once more, something I disliked, but that I had to do to get this tasty Blood Qi for myself, also, to hasten the butchering of the entire beast before it were to grow nasty. Blood was often the primary cause of corpses beginning to rot.
“Uwah, the boar is way too big, we’ll never finish butchering this thing!” sighed Erika, she felt tired, even though she didn’t had a living body, most likely because she innately uses large quantities of mana to move her own body constantly, so she also grows tired like other people do when they move a lot, but this exhaustion actually comes from her soul.
But even then, like any other person, she’ll get better and better at resisting exhaustion as she progresses her cultivation and enhancement of mana the same way people’s bodies grow stronger through exercise.
“Indeed, I can’t believe you butcher monsters every day, Blake! This is too much…” said Chris. “I can’t take it anymore… Oof…” Chris sat down over the grass while gasping for air near Erika.
“Aghh… I am beat…” sighed Eric. “Blake, spare us some time to rest…” Eric ended sitting over the grass as well, all three kids looked almost dead of exhaustion.
“Okay, you can rest. I never asked for your help to begin with.” I sighed. “We’ll cook some boar meat later so we can enjoy it together.”
“Ooh! Boar meat!” said Erika, smiling happily. “Been a while since I have eaten some!”
“Oh yeah… I love boar meat… It is so tasty…” said Chris. “I can tell why the Duke is so obsessed with it, it is just the best meat…”
“But is the flavor worth all the effort the hunters have to put?” asked Eric. “Blake already told us they had to kill several demons before reaching the boar to begin with… The forest is getting more and more dangerous, or so says my uncle and auntie…”
“It certainly is not worth it in the long run, anything is more worth it, just raising animal cattle, even…” I sighed. “However, aside from the orders of the Duke, it could be said that hunting wild boars is like a ritual that this village has been doing for years, also if you defeat one you can easily get blessings and grow stronger quickly.”
“T-That’s certainly right…” said Eric. “I suppose…”
I left the kids talking for a while as I used a separate and cleaned spear with Eleanora using her own to cut down the giant boat, we moved around the giant internal organs aside, which can be used for alchemy, apparently, and then we took out the entire pelt, the large tusks, and whatever was left of the head, after that, cutting down the entire thing was an easy process through spear techniques.
SLAAASH!
BOOM!
A large chunk of the wild boar was cut off by Gradus as he had infused his spear with mana and merely unleashed a simple slash into the large carcass. I did the same, and so did Eleanora, until the entire thing was cut down into large chunks, which were cut down into even smaller chunks, like that, until the entire monster was made into chunks of around 40 centimeters, there were many.
The ones that we were not going to eat were mostly all going to the Duke, so I saw that one of the wives of the hunters brought her daughter, and they began to use bird-like spirits that emanated an icy aura, freezing through the chunks and conserving them this way.
Interesting, and then they just have to melt the ice when they reach the kitchen of the duke, isn’t it? how convenient, I guess there are all sorts of spirits in this world.
The large thing left after butchering the creature was a glowing orb of around 50 centimeters sitting over the floor, this was the boar’s Spirit Orb.
“Blake, we have all concluded that you should be the one to keep the Spirit Orb, son. You put most of the work in there, and helped us big time, so you deserve it.” said Gradus.
“Ah… Thank you very much for your kindness.” I said.
—–