Chapter 639: Just a pretty face

"That reminds me, I never asked about supplies," Elion said, looking toward Maya. "Did you guys prepare any?"

Maya smiled.

"Yeah, we have everything we might need, but we’re not certain how long it will take before we’re expelled from here. That’s why we should save our supplies whenever we can and make use of whatever food we find along the way. Of course, we’ve got you covered as well, both for food and camping gear."

"Awesome. I brought a bunch of my own stuff as well, so we can share," Elion replied with a smile. "As for how long we have in here, according to the information I have, three months is usually the limit before we’re ousted, though it can be a few days more or less in some cases. By then, roughly a day would have passed in the real world."

"Oh?" Maya raised a brow, her interest clearly caught by his explanation. "And how did you come across such useful information, might I ask?"

Elion shrugged. "The vampires."

"Ah... Then that’s understandable. I almost forgot we have royalty among us," Maya said, performing a small curtsy with her robe. "We are greatly honoured to be in your presence, Your Highness."

The others laughed heartily as Elion grumbled under his breath.

"In any case, seeing as we’ve killed this massive supply of flesh, we should make use of it before it goes bad. Speaking of which, what grade is this monster?"

He had already checked with his appraisal skill, but he wanted to hear from Maya.

The strongest beast he had fought before this was the A-grade Frostbound Colossus in the dungeon in Grimholt, but that had been on the easy floors, and the beasts in that dungeon were more or less well documented.

He had never heard of this particular tentacled monster, which possessed mana but hadn’t used a single elemental spell.

The letter classification system was mostly used for the weakest magical beasts and monsters, though most people didn’t care about the distinction between the two, using the terms interchangeably for almost any non-intelligent creature.

Another, entirely separate classification existed for higher-ranked monsters.

To scholars, however, beasts generally referred to creatures untouched by mana, relying on their natural abilities to survive.

Monsters, on the other hand, were creatures touched by mana, capable of wielding it and, in most cases, possessing an elemental affinity.

"That was an SS-rank freshwater octopus beast, if I’m not mistaken," Maya explained, looking toward the corpse. "We were lucky it didn’t seem able to use the water element like most of its kind. Maybe it only recently reached adulthood, because otherwise, that battle would have been much more difficult."

Elion nodded, considering her explanation as Cole stepped forward. The brown-haired young man glanced toward the trees before speaking.

"I noticed a few deep trails and traces of something massive moving around the area. I’m assuming it could leave the water and roam around on land to hunt," he said. "I did think it was odd that we didn’t run into any beasts while surveying the area. Our friend here must have been the main predator in this caldera."

Elion gave a slight nod, looking at Cole with renewed interest. The guy seemed to have sharp eyes, having noticed something Elion himself had overlooked.

’He must be the team’s scout,’ he thought.

"Well, if that’s the case," Mayumi said, looking toward the lake, "I’m assuming we’ll be setting up camp nearby, since there don’t seem to be any other beasts in the area."

"That’s right." Maya nodded before looking up at the sky, noting the position of the sun. It was already late in the afternoon, leaving them little time to explore before nightfall.

"First of all, we need to find out where in the legacy world we are. We have a few rough maps of some regions, but we can’t rely on them entirely, since a lot of time has passed; that means a lot may have changed," she explained. "For today, or perhaps the next few days, depending on how things go, this will be our base of operations. We’ll probably need to move away once the corpse starts to rot, though."

"What, because of the smell?" Yaana asked, glancing toward the massive body still floating in the lake. Her nose wrinkled slightly at the thought.

"Yes and no. The smell will be unpleasant, sure, but it’ll also attract hungry beasts," Maya replied. "So we’ll need to leave sooner rather than later."

"Agreed," Elion said.

"I should probably say this ahead of time," Maya added, looking around at the others with an oddly stern expression, "but if we run into any other groups of entrants, don’t provoke them or cause any trouble unless they provoke us first."

They all nodded in understanding, and with that settled, the group split up to get to work.

Cole, Uta, and Mayumi headed into the forest to scout the area properly, while Nora and Yaana were put in charge of setting up camp among the trees near the lake.

Elion, meanwhile, worked with Maya to extract the monster’s core and harvest some of its flesh.

The whole thing turned out to be a messy affair, and since Maya refused to touch any of it with her bare hands, Elion ended up handling most of the dirty work.

She used water blades to slice off the tentacles and cut them into smaller chunks, while he collected and cleaned the pieces.

By the time they were done, he was covered in enough blood and slime that he simply dived into the lake, taking a casual swim to clean himself up.

The water was rather refreshing, and he stayed in for a little while before returning to the bank. Once he was out, he stored most of the harvested flesh in his storage space, where it would remain fresh until he took it out again.

Maya was rather shocked that he had enough room to fit all those massive chunks of flesh, but she didn’t ask about it. She simply assumed he was rich enough to afford a large storage ring.

By then, almost half the monster was gone, mostly its tentacles, while the grotesque, bulbous head remained floating in the water. It was slowly beginning to sink, though neither of them had much reason to bother with it anymore.

"Wow! This thing is huge!" Elion exclaimed, turning the core they had extracted on the ground. It was larger than a person’s head, its green surface shining like a gemstone, with a faint glow coming from its centre.

"It should sell for quite a lot because of its size," Maya said, examining it beside him. "But it’s still only an SS-grade core with no elemental mana, so it’s not too impressive either."

"Even so, this is good for a first haul, no?" Yaana asked as she walked over, with Nora following closely behind.

It seemed the two had finished their task, and Maya nodded as she turned toward them.

"Well, it’s not bad for our first haul," she agreed. While she and Yaana exchanged a few words, Elion found himself exchanging glances with Nora.

[Don’t even think about it.]

The system’s voice echoed in his head, immediately drawing his attention.

’Hey, who do you take me for!? You think I would go after every woman for no reason!? I’m just curious about why she seems so fixated on me. What’s even stranger is that she doesn’t even let it show on her face...’

[Trust me, that face is not as innocent as it looks. She’s simply waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike]

’Since when were you an expert on women? Elion asked. ’You said you couldn’t help me with my sword training, but you can give advice when it comes to women? How does that work?’