Crouching beside the nearest Jackal, Dan began searching through its remains. After a few moments, his hand touched something hard.
A small crystal emerged from the corpse.
It was roughly the size of a large marble, dark red in color and somewhat warm to the touch.
’So this is a Soul Core, huh.’
It was surprisingly smooth, almost as if it had been polished from the inside. A faint crimson glow pulsed beneath its surface, resembling a tiny heartbeat.
Dan turned it over in his hand, examining it from different angles.
Unlike an ordinary gemstone, the crystal seemed to possess a strange vitality. He could almost feel something lingering within it.
Was this the monster’s essence or perhaps a fragment of its soul?
There was no way to know. Still, considering the fact that those "guys" had specifically called it a Soul Core, the name probably wasn’t arbitrary.
But the important question was how he could use it. From his memory of various stories, this was usually the part where the protagonist swallowed the mysterious crystal whole, gained a massive power-up, and proceeded to become absurdly overpowered.
Giving the supposed Soul Core a weary stare, Dan wondered if he should actually swallow it.
He grimaced.
’Hell no! Absolutely not!
There was a very clear difference between doing something because a fictional protagonist did it and actually putting a monster’s unidentified organ into his mouth. For all he knew, the thing could be poisonous, and it was also possible that something deeply unpleasant could "hatch" inside him.
The thought alone made him shudder.
Dan decided it would be better to find someone who actually knew what these things were before experimenting with them.
Besides, the hunters he’d encountered earlier had been carrying Soul Cores in containers. They obviously weren’t eating them like candy, which reinforced the idea that there was probably a proper method of using them.
’I’ll figure it out later.’
He slipped the Soul Core into a small pouch he’d fashioned from his belongings.
Suddenly, he remembered something else.
’Wait. If every monster contained a Soul Core, then...’
A few minutes later, he was crouched among the corpses, digging through them one by one. The pundent stench was indeed disorienting and hindered his progress slightly but it wasn’t something he couldn’t handle.
By the time he finished, Dan had collected four dark-red Soul Cores.
’Wow. Aren’t I rich?’
He chuckled. It was a ridiculous thought, considering he had absolutely no idea how much these things were worth.
Nonetheless, collecting these little things didn’t hinder his movements for the time being, as long as he didn’t overdo it and let them pile up.
Times like this made Dan regret the lack of an inventory function.
But it couldn’t be helped.
If every MMORPG had a convenient inventory system where players could carry hundreds of items without so much as breaking a sweat, there was no reason for him to expect reality to be equally accommodating.
Additionally, how would the greedy game developers make money if they gave players unlimited inventory space for free?
’They’d probably sell it as part of the premium feature. Inventory Expansion Ticket! Only $9.99!’ Dan snorted, practically hearing the obnoxious advertisement inside his head.
Still, the joke aside, the lack of storage was becoming a genuine problem.
Four Soul Cores weren’t particularly heavy, but he couldn’t exactly carry around everything he found. If he started collecting, monster materials, food, and other useful items, his belongings would quickly become cumbersome.
’Maybe I could create something with [Darkness].’
The thought lingered for a moment before Dan shook his head, reluctantly dismissing it as impractical.
Creating a larger storage container with [Darkness] was certainly possible, but it would consume more of his limited Spirit. And if he had to recreate it every time he needed to access his belongings, the convenience wouldn’t be worth the heavy cost.
’Wait a moment.’
He suddenly came to a surprising realization.
Perhaps he was approaching the problem from the wrong direction. The real issue wasn’t the lack of storage. It was the fact that he had been treating [Darkness] like a normal crafting ability.
But was it?
The skill possessed two distinct aspects: [Dream] and [Nightmare].
Using [Dream], he could "shape" his imagination and manifest it into reality. This was the aspect he had slowly grown familiar with throughout his wandering. However, "shaping" wasn’t limited to simply creating physical objects. It was giving form to something that had previously existed only within his mind.
In that case, what if, instead of shaping an object, he shaped something abstract like space?
An artificial storage separated from the physical world, much like an inventory box in a video game. For example, a room had shape, dimensions, boundaries, an interior, and an entrance. Therefore, it was something that could theoretically be manifested.
His eyes lit up.
’Brilliant! So brilliant! Why didn’t I think about this before?’
Upon reaching this mind-blowing discovery, Darian Lee almost succumbed to the temptation of beginning ability testing and experimentation. But no matter how excited he was, he needed to keep a cool head and think this through. Sadly, what he was trying to accomplish was far beyond his current capabilities. He certainly didn’t have enough power to create an infinite pocket dimension.
His ability to turn "dream" into "reality" was limited, after all. At the very least, when it came to creating and shaping phenomena of this scale.
To overcome that limitation, there was only one solution: raise his Spirit to a level where he could properly experiment with the idea. Which meant hunting more monsters and leveling up.
"What a bother. It’s always one battle after another."
Letting out a defeated sigh, Dan reluctantly resumed his journey.
♦♦♦
The road toward his objective was anything but easy. Every time he emerged from one forest, another seemed to stretch endlessly before him. And each time he ventured into those unfamiliar territories, different kinds of frightening beasts inevitably crossed his path.
Some were strong while others were weak. Dan fled from the former and hunted the latter.
Whenever he encountered a creature that was clearly beyond his current capabilities, he had no choice but to retreat and find another route. Conversely, whenever he encountered something weaker, he would stalk it down, kill it, and absorb the resulting experience.
Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. It was monotonous, but effective. More importantly, this strategy offered a semblance of safety.
Dan wasn’t foolish enough to pick fights with creatures he had no chance of defeating simply because he wanted more experience. One mistake in this wilderness could easily cost him his life.
So, for the time being, he had to settle for the weaker prey.
Fortunately, there was no shortage of it.
As the days passed, Dan gradually became familiar with this peculiar rhythm of survival.
Hunt.
Occasionally, he would encounter something particularly troublesome and be forced to take a detour. Other times, he would stumble across a group of monsters and spend hours observing them from a distance, trying to determine whether they were worth the risk.
It wasn’t exactly an exciting adventure. But Dan couldn’t deny that he was becoming stronger.
A couple of hunts later, what he had been waiting for finally happened.
[You have leveled up: Level 4 → Level 5.]
’Yes!’
He had just finished hunting a group of Green Antelopes.
The creatures were relatively weak compared to some of the monsters he had encountered, but they made for excellent prey.
They were fast, skittish, and surprisingly difficult to catch. However, once he figured out their behavior and movement patterns, hunting them became considerably easier. Not to mention, there had been several of them, and the experience from killing the entire group had finally pushed him over the edge.
But that wasn’t all.
[Spirit +3, two allocatable stats gained.]
[Your darkness grows.]
...At that moment, his Spirit finally crossed into the twenties and brought an unprecedented change.