Chapter 581: Scolding Luton

Damien pulled out before it pinned him.

Stepped back.

The beast found its feet and turned.

He read it differently from the Stormhorn. Different weight distribution, different center of gravity, the roll counter coming from the same instinct but applied through a different frame. The plates on its side had a gap structure he had partially mapped through the failed entry, a natural seam that ran from mid-body toward the front leg junction where the armor had to allow for shoulder movement.

That seam was where the next entry was going.

The beast charged again.

This time he did not go sideways. He went forward, inside the charge’s optimal impact point, ducking below the head-level of the approach and driving at the front leg junction with the angle he had identified.

Contact.

The seam gave him better access than the flank had. His essence cut moved with less resistance, the gap in the armor construction providing a natural channel, and the depth he reached was better than anything he had managed in the first exchange.

Three centimeters. Four. Five.

The beast twisted. Not the full roll, the twist, a sharper and faster counter designed to break the entry angle through rotation rather than mass.

He held on this time.

The twist moved him, his body rotating with the beast’s motion, his feet leaving the ground briefly. He kept the entry. Kept the essence cut moving inward.

Six centimeters.

Seven.

The core was not far. He could feel the density change in the tissue, the gradient that meant he was approaching the concentrated source, the warmth of it registering through the skin of his palm before his fingers could reach it.

The beast made a sound. Low, constant, the specific register of something in distress, and drove its body sideways into the nearest tree trunk, using the forest itself as the counter.

Damien saw it coming and tucked his arm rather than fight the impact.

The shoulder he led with hit the bark hard and his arm came free under the pressure of the impact angle, the entry broken, and he was on the ground for a second before he was back on his feet.

His left arm reported the tree encounter with some specificity.

He rolled the shoulder.

Functional. Bruised in a way that would be relevant tomorrow rather than today.

The beast had rebounded off the tree and was turning, one of the front leg plates cracked from the impact of its own counter, the crack running along the seam he had been working. The entry point had widened.

He went straight at it.

No feint. No angle approach. Straight, because the seam was wide enough now and the beast had left the cracked plate facing him when it turned and straight was the fastest path to where he needed to be.

His palm drove into the crack.

The resistance was gone. The crack had opened the seam fully and his entry went deep without the resistance of the previous attempts, his essence cut moving through tissue that had not had time to reinforce, his fingers reaching depth and finding what they had been looking for.

The core.

Dense. Warm. The specific warmth of a Grade Three core that had been building for years.

He closed his hand around it.

Pulled.

The beast stopped.

The particular, total stopping of a creature whose core had left its body, the coordination simply gone, the legs no longer receiving what they needed to continue their function. It came down steadily, no drama, the massive plated body settling onto the forest floor with the finality of something that had finished.

Damien stood beside it.

His left arm had a complaint about the tree encounter that was becoming more vocal as the engagement’s immediate demands released their hold on his attention. He assessed it. Bruised. Possibly something minor in the shoulder joint that would sort itself out. Nothing that required Lin.

He looked at the core in his hand.

Grade Three. A reasonable one. The beast had been middle of the grade rather than the peak the Stormhorn had represented, but middle Grade Three was still a significant contribution.

He looked at Luton.

The slime was sitting at the edge of the clearing where it had deposited the beast, in the same position it had occupied since the moment it had released its cargo onto the forest floor. Its surface was entirely neutral. The particular quality of neutral that Luton produced when it was not committing to an expression.

Damien held up the core.

"This," he said, "is not how you bring someone a meal."

Luton’s surface rippled. Minimally.

"A meal is something that is already dead," he continued, walking to the tree where he had left the growing pile of cores from the night before and adding this one. "You were told to bring back something to eat. Not something to fight before eating."

Luton pulsed once.

He looked at it.

"Don’t."

He crouched beside the beast and began the work of extracting what was useful from it. Not all of it. The armored plates were Grade Three construction and worth taking but not immediately, and the portions of the body that were appropriate for eating required some work to reach through the plating.

He had done this before. The process of getting from a mana beast to something edible was something he had learned in the forest during his exile, through necessity and without instruction, and he had not forgotten any of it. He worked through the plates around the sections he wanted, extracting what he needed, setting it aside.

"Live prey," he said, as he worked. "In what interpretation of the instruction you were given did live prey seem like the appropriate choice."

Luton was beside him now, having drifted over from the edge of the clearing during the butchering process with the specific quality of a creature that was interested in the outcome of this work and was therefore willing to remain proximate to the scolding associated with it.

"You went into the forest," Damien continued, not looking up from what he was doing. "Found a Grade Three creature. Looked at it. Decided this was a good answer to ’bring me something to eat.’ Stored it alive in your Universal Space and brought it here."

He glanced at Luton.

The slime’s surface was doing something that might generously be described as listening attentively.

"I want to understand the logic," he said. "I am genuinely asking."

Luton did not explain the logic. This was partly because Luton did not communicate in language and partly because Luton did not appear to believe an explanation was necessary.

Damien went back to the butchering.

He had found good wood earlier in the morning’s stillness, the dry kind that the forest produced in sections where the root cover kept the ground dry over long periods. He built the fire with the efficiency of someone who had done it many times and had learned which steps could be skipped and which could not. Got it started. Set up what he needed above it.

The clearing began to smell like something other than ancient forest and dried blood.

"The specific concern," he said, setting a cut of meat across the makeshift arrangement above the fire, "is not that you chose a Grade Three. The forest apparently has Grade Threes available, which is useful information. The concern is that you chose a live one. You have the Universal Space. You could have killed it first."

Luton drifted closer to the fire.

He pointed at it.

"You are not getting any until I am done explaining why this was a poor decision."

Luton drifted slightly less close to the fire.

"I was sitting here thinking about the seventh altar. I was in a calm, considered state of mind. I was making reasonable plans. And then I looked up and there was a Grade Three mana beast being deposited in front of me." He turned the cut. "There is no version of that which is relaxing."

The meat was beginning to produce the specific sound and smell of the process going correctly. He had seasoned it with what little he had left of the dried herbs he carried, which were mostly gone after the weeks in the forest, but what remained was enough to make the difference between tolerable and good.

He cut a smaller portion from the remaining raw section and set it aside.

Looked at it.

Looked at Luton.

"You were trying to bring the freshest possible prey," he said. "That is the only interpretation that makes any sense. You wanted it to be fresh because you understood the problem with the corpses in the clearing. You solved the freshness problem by bringing it alive."

He was quiet for a moment.

"That is actually a reasonable chain of logic."

Luton pulsed.

"It is still wrong," he said immediately. "The conclusion of that chain should have been: kill it nearby and then bring it. Not bring it alive. There is a distinction."

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