The snowboard shot downhill at breakneck speed.
Kent had grown fond of these gentle beasts after weeks of tending them, and his heart was pounding with concern.
“Damn beast!
What the hell are you doing, putting down that… damn thing!” Kent burst into the stable and saw a humanoid figure tearing into the flesh of a horse.
He recognized the animal—it was a young foal he had personally raised and fed.
The creature paid no attention to Kent, mindlessly gnawing through blood-soaked meat.
The other horses huddled together, trembling.
“Small fireball!” Kent silently cast the spell and a glowing orb shot toward the monster, striking its back.
“Argh!” The demon ape screamed in agony, then spun and lunged at Kent with terrifying speed.
The stable had no light sources, so Kent stayed outside from the start.
That was the mage’s way of fighting—keep distance, never charge blindly.
He had no intention of running straight into danger like some game protagonist.
“First-rank magical beast: demon ape.” Kent finally saw the creature clearly.
It stood over two meters tall, bipedal, like a gorilla but far larger.
Its claws were razor-sharp, almost swords.
It knew no magic—only the earth-attribute Stone Skin spell, and even that it could only use a few times.
Its magic resistance was monstrous.
A first-rank mage trying to fight one alone would be doomed; the monster atlas had recorded exactly this.
Kent watched the demon ape charge, then cast another fireball.
This time he aimed straight for the creature’s face—the weak spot.
The demon ape raised both arms to shield itself.
The fur on its arms sizzled and smoked, filling the air with the stench of burning leather.
“Raaaargh!” The demon ape dropped its arms, saw the enemy right in front of it, and roared again.
But it kept charging.
Low-intelligence monsters like this one had the brains of children—yet even they could be clever in their own way.
“Haha, interesting.” Kent watched the demon ape barrel forward and smirked.
The moment the second fireball left his hand, his left foot pushed off the ground.
The snowboard shot backward, keeping him exactly thirty meters away.
A fireball’s effective range was only fifty meters, and in two-meter-deep snow, even a dumb demon ape couldn’t keep up with a sliding board.
The demon ape kept lunging, but every time it reached where Kent should be, the mage was already thirty meters back on his snowboard, firing another orb.
The demon ape’s simple mind kept the same strategy: charge straight at the threat.
It had no patience for tactics.
Kent’s expression remained calm, but his mind raced.
He had read the monster atlas entry.
Demon apes were known for their raw power and single-minded stupidity.
The key to victory was never to let it close the distance.
Every time it charged, he would slip away on the board and keep firing.
Eventually the demon ape would tire and give up—or so he hoped.
He kept the strategy in mind, constantly adjusting his distance while the demon ape roared and slashed at empty air, fur burning and skin sizzling.
The standoff had already lasted over ten minutes, and the demon ape was clearly growing frustrated.
Kent and the demon ape chased each other across the deep snow, their footprints sinking into the white drifts.
Kent had already fired off dozens of fireballs.
The ape’s arms were now charred stumps, yet the creature’s agility was useless here—every step left it sinking into snow up to its knees.
“Raaaah!
Raaaah!
Raaaah!” The ape could not catch him.
It kept being hit, its fury building with every roar.
Suddenly it glowed with earthy yellow light, its body hardening into stone-like ridges.
With a single powerful roll, it charged straight at Kent.
“Stone Skin only makes you heavier, you idiot!” Kent smiled, watching the ape activate the spell.
Then he saw a dark blur rolling toward him.
Kent dropped flat and rolled aside.
“Ow!” He scrambled up, touching his waist.
A thin red line marked his skin—nothing serious, just a shallow cut from the ape’s claws.
The monster’s razor nails had torn through the rags he still wore, leaving him barely covered.
Good thing I dodged fast.
“Raaah!
Raaah!” The ape sniffed its own fingers, then slammed its furry chest with delight and roared again.
Another rolling charge followed, claws flashing like daggers in the snow.
“Damn it!
You think a tiger won’t roar before it pounces?” Kent muttered, already switching spells.
This time he cast a water ball.
The spell in this freezing weather produced a roughly football-sized orb—still powerful enough to be lethal.
“Ice!
Ice!” Kent shouted.
He slammed the massive water ball into the ape’s rolling body.
The creature screeched as the sudden cold turned its thick fur into brittle ice.
It spun helplessly, unable to stand or roll anymore.
“Ha!
You wanted to play?
Come on then!” Kent kept firing water balls, each one freezing the ape’s limbs tighter.
The demon ape was now pinned to the snow, struggling uselessly.
“Ice it completely, then fire it up and finish it!” Kent was about to cast a headshot with wind blades when a calm voice spoke beside him.
“That demon ape is just sitting here for your alchemy materials.”
Kent jumped.
Niu Niu stood at his side, green hair fluttering in the wind, wings folded neatly.
“Exactly,” Kent said, snapping his fingers.
“I almost forgot.” He turned and headed back toward the cave, leaving the frozen ape behind.
The deal was sealed.
“Demon ape… demon ape… Let’s see.
Its blood makes an excellent solution for soaking leather.
Pair the hide with the blood and the resulting armor gains extra defense.
The teeth are perfect natural material for daggers and arrowheads.
Grind the bones into powder, mix them with the blood, and the bile becomes ideal for inscribing earth-attribute arrays.
The claws themselves are ready-made daggers.
Soak the eyeballs in a blood-and-bile solution, set them into a hat, and they’ll keep dust out of your eyes.
The sinews can string a magic bow.
The brain is a natural tonic, and the marrow can raise an earth mage’s mana ceiling.
Not bad at all.
It ruined my clothes—someone had better send me a full set of leather armor right away.Just when you’re feeling sleepy, someone brings you a pillow!”
Kent grabbed a wooden bucket and charged straight at the frozen demon ape.
He set to work clumsily, draining the creature’s blood.
Magical-beast blood flowed almost like water—thin, bright red, with a faint earthy-yellow tint.
Legend said a ninth-rank beast’s blood took on the pure color of its dominant element, but this first-rank specimen was ordinary.
Still, the bucket filled more than halfway.
Next came the refining.
Normally the blood had to be purified the moment it left the body, stirred constantly inside a mana furnace to burn away impurities until only pure essence remained.
At the same time the brain, marrow, and eyes had to be harvested quickly or they would lose potency.
Crystal bottles could preserve the blood’s vitality and stop the mana from leaking away, but Kent had none.
He stood there, suddenly stuck.
“Give me the blood,” Niu Niu said.
She didn’t really know the process either, yet seeing Kent flounder, she decided to help.
“Mm.” Kent handed the bucket over.
The tiny girl lifted the heavy wooden barrel as if it weighed nothing; from a distance it looked as though the bucket itself were flying.
“Heh.
Watch the wind blades.” Kent started at the neck, where the skin was wrinkled and easier to pierce.
He worked the hide free in long strips.
It was his first time butchering anything this large, but the ape’s body was already almost bloodless and the flesh beneath was pure snow-white instead of red.
The hide itself was surprisingly thin—barely two millimeters.
The moment each strip came free he carried it back to the cave and tossed it to Niu Niu.
After a long, exhausting struggle he finally finished cleaning the entire carcass.
Bones, meat, and sinews lay in neat piles on the surrounding snow.
The organs he left alone; they had already gone cold, and only warm ones were useful for certain potions.
There was still more to do.
The eyes went straight into the preservative solution he had prepared earlier.
The sinews he simply hung to dry in the shade.
Bone marrow and brain would become tonight’s dinner.
Teeth and claws he set aside for later.
“Ow… I’m dead on my feet.
Now I finally understand why mercenaries always travel in groups.
Still, that magic core is a real treasure—wonder how much it’s worth.” Kent hauled every useful part into the cave, then collapsed onto the straw pile with a loud, satisfied groan.
“Demon apes?
Normal mercenaries don’t even bother with most of this junk.
A trip in and out of the magical beast forest takes months, and these parts are only worth a few hundred gold coins at most.
Sure, they’ll grab lightweight things like the eyes, teeth, and claws, and eat the brain marrow right on the spot.
Didn’t you know?” Niu Niu had finished her work long ago.
Kent had originally assumed she would need to mess around with some crude setup, only to discover she had a proper mana furnace on hand.
The mana furnace looked a bit like an Earth thermos, though shorter, with intricate arrays carved into its surface.
You just slotted in a fire-attribute magic core and let it do the work.
Such a furnace was worth a fortune, crafted mostly from crystal.
Heaven only knew whose misfortune it was that left it here.
“How was I supposed to know?” Kent gave a wry smile.
“Books!
Read those books and you’d know,” Niu Niu replied, pointing at the wooden table where the books were stacked.
Next to them sat a sealed crystal vial containing about two ounces of liquid glowing with an earthy-yellow radiance.
Kent picked it up, inspected it, and asked in confusion, “Just this little bit?”
Niu Niu rolled her eyes.
“What did you expect?
There was only half a bucket to begin with, and we have to save some to soak the demon ape hide and the eyeballs.
This is the refined essence, you know.”
“Time to eat!
Ah, finally a fresh meal after months—nothing beats doing it yourself.
Say, Niu Niu, where did this demon ape even come from?” Kent asked, fishing a chunk of meat out of the iron pot while Niu Niu went back to reading.
“It’s not like they never wander down.
These creatures have legs, and food gets scarce in the winter.
At most, though, you’ll only ever see second- or third-rank beasts up here,” Niu Niu answered casually.
“Niu Niu, since our Resh Duchy is so close to the imperial capital’s direct territories, why is it so desolate here?” Kent pressed on.
“Ugh!
This is a mountainous region, a mountain region!
Go read your book and stop bugging me,” she snapped back impatiently.
“Sigh, should I stay or go?
With my status as a mage, I should be fine, right?
It’s not like some low-level knight is going to mess with me.” Kent had gained a decent grasp of the world’s power hierarchy and knew mages basically belonged to the privileged class.
I wonder if nobles actually have that legendary droit du seigneur?
Kent mused happily to himself, tossing another piece of demon ape meat into his mouth.
Kent slept like a log.
While the pile of dried hay couldn’t compare to a high-end mattress from Earth, it was soft enough.
The one thing he still couldn’t get used to, however, was using the bathroom.
Back in town, he had noticed that people either used grass, stones, wood chips, or sometimes nothing at all—a habit that thoroughly disgusted him.
With no other options, Kent had resorted to using large, dried leaves, which worked sort of like rough toilet paper.
Once he became a mage, though, things got much easier: a simple water ball spell kept everything clean and sanitary.