Chapter 41: Corpse disposal

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: Corpse disposal

Jason lay against the cold stone for a long moment, chest still heaving, before the notifications finally settled into view, one after another.

[First Human Kill: Confirmed]

[Target Level: Third Level, Initial Stage. Significantly above Host’s cultivation at time of engagement.]

[Reward: Essence Refinement — 10% of current essence permanently refined, increasing purity and density.]

[Breakthrough Confirmed: Second Level, Initial Stage]

[Bloodline Analysis: Azure Dragon bloodline purity increased following Dragon Egg absorption. Strength, endurance, and essence capacity now exceed standard parameters for current cultivation level.]

He read through it twice, the words settling in slowly, confirming everything he’d already half-suspected while his body had been busy trying not to die.

’So that’s official, then. Whatever the egg did to me, it wasn’t subtle. Even my eeserves are much stronger now.

Jason was behind to figure out a pattern.

The system would reward him for fighting and winning above his level.

It did so for killing the stone golem

And now for Kane.

’But I’d killed a lot of E ranked monsters at the first level so why didn’t it reward me for those?’

Then it hit him. Beasts we’re inferior to humans.

Defeating a beast a level higher wasn’t anything special. Even people with not that much talent like Kane and Reeve could take out D ranks at the Second level.

But defeating a beast two levels higher was considered by the system to be as valuable as defeating a human one level higher

He turned the last reward over in his mind, feeling for the difference it made, a subtle but unmistakable density to his Core that hadn’t been there before, like the essence itself had been polished smoother.

Any technique he’d activate using that refined essence would be far stronger. But that refined essence would take a few hours to recover

---

He lay there a while longer, letting his breathing even out, and found his mind drifting back over the fight itself, replaying the moment Veil had turned the tide.

’I dropped it to nothing then fullly revealed it all at once.

It worked, but it was clumsy.

He turned the idea over more carefully this time, considering what he actually understood about how other cultivators handled the same problem.

’Most people who want to hide their strength manually seal off portions of their essence.

But a such seal always leaks a little, doesn’t it? Anyone paying close enough attention can feel the edges of it, the places where the suppression doesn’t quite sit.’

’Mine isn’t like that. Mine doesn’t leak.’

He tested the theory carefully, drawing his outward reading down not to nothing, but to a specific, deliberate number, holding it steady rather than collapsing it entirely.

[Displayed Cultivation: First Level, Intermediate Stage]

It held. Flawless. No flicker, no seam, nothing for a careful observer to catch.

’I don’t have to choose between hidden and exposed anymore. I can just be whatever level I want people to think I am.’

The implications settled slowly, heavy and useful in equal measure.

’Nobody’s going to suspect that a First Level novice who just learned which end of a spear goes first killed a veteran hunter sitting at the peak of Second Level.

That’s not even a theory anyone would consider plausible enough to investigate.’

He pushed himself upright eventually, joints protesting, and turned his attention to what remained of Kane.

The body lay still where it had fallen, sword still loosely gripped in one hand, expression frozen somewhere between fury and disbelief.

Jason knelt beside it and, with careful, deliberate motions, pulled the sword free and unstrapped the compass from Kane’s wrist, both items settling into his system’s inventory alongside the Stoneborn Spear without complaint.

’No sense leaving evidence behind. And no sense wasting a perfectly good D-Rank sword either.’

Then he drew in a slow breath, funneled a steady stream of Fire essence down through his palm, and let it pour over the corpse in a controlled, sustained torrent.

The flame ate through cloth first, then flesh, then bone, reducing what remained of Kane to fine gray ash in a matter of minutes, nothing left behind that could ever be identified, examined, or traced back to anything resembling a fight.

He watched the last of it crumble and scatter, feeling nothing in particular beyond a distant, exhausted relief.

’Sorry. Not really. You’d have done the same to me, given the chance.’

---

He retrieved his old, discarded spear from where it had landed after waking the first wyrm and turned toward the passage he’d originally come from.

Every step sent a fresh ache through muscles that had been asked for far more than they were built to give, and beneath the ache, a familiar itch had started crawling across his skin, deep and persistent, the same telltale sensation that always preceded his body’s accelerated healing.

’Bloodline’s working overtime today.’

He gave himself a few more minutes before moving properly, letting the worst of the itch settle into something manageable, letting his essence climb back up from the empty reading it had dropped to.

By the time he finally limped his way back through the winding passage toward the sound of distant fighting, most of the visible damage had knitted itself closed, leaving only faint pink lines where deep gashes had been.

---

His team came into view a few minutes later, still mid-fight against a thinning cluster of wyrms, Skyler’s arrows whistling overhead, Cassius laughing his way through another kill like the entire ordeal remained deeply funny to him.

"There he is!" Cassius called, spotting him first. "Was starting to think you’d wandered off to die somewhere dramatic."

"Where the hell did you go?" Skyler demanded, not pausing her draw. "You just vanished."

"Got turned around," Jason said, keeping his voice even, tired enough that the lie came out sounding almost genuine. "Fog’s thick back there, lost track of the group for a while."

Reeve gave him a long, assessing look, gaze flicking briefly to the fresh scrapes still fading along his arms, then let it go without comment, apparently deciding whatever had happened wasn’t worth pressing in the middle of a fight.

"Glad you’re not dead," Reeve said instead. "Get in formation, we’re almost through here."

Jason fell in beside them, spear rising to meet the next wyrm without hesitation, grateful for the excuse to stop talking.

---

They cleared the last of that wave a few minutes later, the passage finally falling quiet, and it was only in that quiet that Jason noticed something had changed.

The tremors.

The distant, rolling shockwaves that had rattled dust loose from the ceiling every few minutes since they’d entered the dungeon had stopped.

Completely.

"Huh," Skyler said, glancing upward. "That’s new."

"Titus’s fight," Reeve said slowly, listening. "Either they’re taking a breather, or-"

Another wave of wyrms broke from the fog ahead, fewer than before, noticeably fewer, their numbers thinned to a fraction of what they’d been facing even an hour earlier.

"Or that," Wen said, already moving to meet them.

The remaining creatures fell quickly, exhaustion clearly setting into their ranks the same way it had settled into the hunters fighting them, and by the time the last one dropped, the whole dungeon had gone strangely, unsettlingly quiet.

"This Gate’s nearly cleared," Reeve said, wiping his blade. "If the tremors stopped, that probably means the boss is finally down, or close enough to it that it stopped putting up real resistance."

Cassius let out a low whistle. "Guess that’s our cue. Almost done, then."

Jason glanced back the way he’d come, toward the chamber he’d left behind, and said nothing at all.