Level 1 Fallen

To my surprise, despite not being able to harvest the blood from the Ruby Salamander, I still received a six star evaluation. Looking at the list of options, I finally chose to take the medium-grade butchery kit, as the rewards hadn't changed since the first floor, aside from swapping the skill book for the encyclopedia.

Once I made my choice, I collected the kit and bade farewell to the two diligently working in the third trial. Out of curiosity, I examined the kit as I walked, finding that it contained five knives of various shapes and sizes, a collapsible basin, a collapsible funnel, a thick hook, and even a line of hose. There was also a cloth to use to clean the blades, and a whetstone to sharpen them. The total value of the kit was appraised at one gold, which was surprising.

Before the next trial, I was given the chance to read another book, this one detailing slightly more advanced techniques. Given the fact that the Ruby Salamander was already a level ten monster, whatever I had to face in the next trial would no longer be found in my encyclopedia. With that in mind, I read through this new book to supplement my knowledge, happy to see my Butchery experience rising slowly in the process.

Sure enough, the next monster I had to dismantle was a level thirteen Snow Crab, just over a meter wide. Like before, I ordered my shadows to get to work, but handed them the kit that I had received as my previous reward.

Like this, I began to gradually advance through the trials, earning between four and six stars in each test. Every trial increased the level of the monster by three or four, with another study room present before each set of ten levels. Additionally, I was able to acquire more encyclopedias, specifically the second, third, and fourth volumes.

The only downside was that the books didn't stack with one another. Each one used their own slot in my inventory, which was… annoying. After all, I only had thirty-five inventory slots by default, and could only get more by buying more bags.

It'd be great if I could find a skill or something that gave me more inventory slots. I thought to myself as I continued through the trials, only stopping after I reached the eleventh trial. This one seemed like it was going to be where I had to stop for now… According to the fourth volume of my encyclopedia, this was a level thirty-seven Glacial Spider. Most of its corpse was rather worthless, except for two items. These were the Ice Venom Sac and the Frost Silk Pouch. However, both of these items would begin to dissolve if exposed to the air at room temperature.

In other words, I wouldn't even be able to get a two-star rating in this trial until I could upgrade my Butchery to Dismantle. Looking at my skill now, I had upgraded it to level thirteen throughout the previous trials. Additionally, counting the time that I had spent reading, I had been in the dungeon for roughly four hours.

With that in mind, I chose to forfeit the round and leave the dungeon. At the same time, I sent a message to Diane, letting her know my decision and asking her to let me know when she was out of the dungeon herself. I soon received a response that she would be a while longer, as she wanted to spend as much time in the dungeon as she could while she was online.

I didn't blame her, as a crafting skill would be provided with the necessary materials that they needed to craft, so she had plenty of chances to train and experiment, whereas I simply needed to grind more experience.

Thus, after leaving the dungeon, I made my way out of the city. Since I needed bodies… well, I would just have to collect them myself, wouldn't I?

First, I reset the enchantment on my arm, that way it would have the updated level of Butchery. Since we were in the desert, with no shade to draw from, my shadows would be even weaker than normal, but I didn't mind. After all, they weren't here to fight.

At the same time, I didn't bring out my bike, because I wasn't going to be moving that far from the city. Also, I didn't want to drive off too far and end up getting lost. Instead, I set out with my five shadows behind me, and began using my Martial Intent-X to kill any creature that I came across with precise strikes, doing my best to preserve as much of the corpses as possible.

From there, I ordered my team of shadow butchers to get to work dismantling the corpses out in the open. I didn't plan to take the parts with me, but the dismantled bodies served as excellent bait to lure in more monsters. With a grin, I kept killing whenever more were lured over, ordering my shadows to move from corpse to corpse every time they finished disassembly. At the same time, I made sure to study their progress whenever I could, wanting to raise my skill level even the slightest bit faster.

Even so, it took another full two hours of grinding monsters, forming a pile of viscera, before I received the notification that my skill had evolved into Dismantle. When that message came, I let out a relieved sigh. To test it out, I looked over at one of the monsters that my butchery team had yet to disassemble.

This was a giant scorpion, roughly three meters in length, not counting its tail. I walked over to the creature and placed my hand on it. "Disassembly." I muttered, and the monster disappeared. Instead, I saw an item appear in my inventory named Ruby Scorpion Knight.

Following the butcher's instructions, I selected the item as if it were a bag, and a new interface appeared in front of me, listing various items. Set of Ruby Scorpion Knight Meat (low quality), Set of Ruby Scorpion Knight Plate (medium quality), Ruby Scorpion Knight Heart, Ruby Scorpion Knight Hemolymph (27.6 liters), and so on. Thankfully, even the blood, or hemolymph as it was identified, was properly stored without needing a container.

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When I wanted to remove the hemolymph from my inventory, I was given a slider asking how much I wanted to remove. Curious, I selected 0.6 liters, and watched as a puddle of viscous red liquid splashed onto the sand in front of me.

Still wanting to test more things out, I extracted all of the blood, and then removed the corpse itself from my inventory. There was a loud crash as the giant body fell onto the sand, seeming completely intact. However, it appeared quite a bit more pale than it had been just moments ago.

Satisfied with my discovery, I dismissed the now-unnecessary butcher team, and began to clear up the rest of the bodies littering the area. Of course, by clearing them up, when I did was move them each into my inventory, throw out the individual pieces, and then move on to the next. This seemed to be the most time-efficient method of leveling my Dismantling skill up, so I wasn't going to waste the bodies.

Granted, it would have been more efficient in terms of the number of bodies needed if I dismantled them by hand, but I was far more interested in quicker results, even if I needed to kill a few more monsters. Something something, instant gratification. It felt nice watching skill levels increase, okay?

Once I was done clearing up all of the bodies from the monsters that I had slain, I used my wand to cast Clean on myself, before heading back towards the city. I was certain that the guards atop the wall had been able to see what I was doing, but that didn't particularly matter. After all, I had no intention of keeping any of the bodies, as they would just clutter up my inventory. Nothing in the immediate vicinity of the city had very valuable components.

With that said, I was surprised to see a team waiting at the gate when I returned. They seemed to take my return as a signal, rushing out in the direction I had come from. I guess that even if I don't want them, the guards will go out of their way to collect the pile of materials.

Shrugging my shoulders, I carried on. It could hardly be seen as robbery, given that they waited until it was clear that I had no desire to bring the materials back. And the entire collection of materials might have amounted to no more than ten gold, at the greatest. That wasn't a terribly small sum of money, but I wouldn't have had the inventory space to bring back more than a small fraction of it, so I couldn't be bothered.

As I was thinking about that, a rabbitfolk guard approached me, holding a spear at her side. "Good evening, player." She said with a warm smile. "I hope you don't mind if we gather up the waste you left behind?"

I shook my head, signalling that it was fine. "It's alright. My inventory was too cluttered to worry about things like that, and I just wanted to train my skills."

The rabbitfolk nodded her head, her ears flopping back and forth. "We figured as much, when we saw you leaving everything scattered about, and how you transitioned from regular butchering to the upgraded Dismantling. If you have excess items you need to sell, feel free to visit the nearby stores."

"I've already sold everything I can bear to part with." I answered calmly, and she chuckled. I knew that I looked like a hoarder with that comment, but that was fine. "Though, I'm quite curious, do you know of any skills or anything that could increase someone's inventory size?"

She blinked, bringing a finger up to her lip as she thought. "An inventory skill… I'm afraid I don't know about anything like that. Maybe if you could find a skill related to the space element, it could evolve along those lines? However, those skills are incredibly rare. I'm sure that there are traits that increase inventory size, but those would similarly be too valuable on the market. The only thing that I could suggest would be a Large Backpack!"

I arched a brow, curious what she meant. "We've had some players through here, and they usually wear big backpacks on their backs. I asked one of them once, and they said that it was a Player creation called a Large Backpack. According to him, it's basically a bag of bags! There is the downside that you can't put it directly in your inventory, so it is guaranteed to drop if you die, but apparently a Large Backpack can hold as many as twenty bags!"

My eyes widened when I listened to her words. Even if each bag only had ten slots, that would give me an extra two hundred inventory slots. I wouldn't need to worry about inventory space for a long time.

"Thanks for the advice." I responded with an excited smile. "I'll have to look into getting one of those soon." In other words, I'd ask Diane if she could get one for me, though I'd be providing the funding if at all possible. There was no way that a backpack would be as expensive as a motorcycle, after all.

"Happy to help!" She grinned. "In the meantime, let us know if you plan to go out and train your butchery skills again. We'll have someone ready to transport any waste materials. We can even pay you a portion of their value."

I hesitated for a moment, not entirely sure if I even would be doing this again before we left Broken Sands. First, I would need to see how far I could get in the dungeon with the skill the level that it was. However, aside from that, I didn't have any other pressing business in Broken Sands. I would be ready to leave as soon as Diane finished her own skill training.

With that said, she was training two crafting skills. It would not be a surprise if we stayed here for another week. Thus, I nodded my head. "Sure, if I go out again to practice, I'll be sure to let a guard know."

The rabbitfolk woman thanked me, bidding me farewell as she returned to her post. Looking up at the sky, there were still a few more hours left in the day, so I returned to the dungeon. Because I returned to the beginning, I had to retake the first few trials, and was surprised that my scores in them actually dropped on average. This was because, even though I could properly harvest everything, my Dismantle skill was still low enough level that the harvested materials were genuinely not very high quality.

My hand itched when I realized that, feeling the urge to train the skill even more. If it evolved into a master level skill, I'd like to see the dungeon try to tell me that the materials were still low quality…