Chương 15: Bountiful Harvest

Nero dug the dagger around the rat's stomach and, first of all, detached its skin from the body. Then he went straight for its liver, carving through its stomach and meat. Inserting his hand into the warm flesh, he pulled out the larger-than-normal rat liver. It was black and still twitching. He felt his stomach roll at even the thought of consuming this disgusting-looking thing. Still, he set it aside. He cut open the thing's heart as a large, almost baseball-sized round gem's dim green glow shone through.

The core was at least double the size of the normal ones and looked distinctly toxic, like most cores he'd harvested from the mutated rats. Nero picked it up with a leaf, examining it.

"It looks like a D-grade core rather than an E-grade." E-grades were the ones he usually got—marble-sized, the kind you could hold a handful of in one fist. The D-grades surpassed those and tended to be much larger and heavier with mana. He eyed the gem-like core more closely for defects.

"It has a minimal amount of fire mana. Beyond that, it's mostly poison. Guess the beast exhausted most of its fire mana just fighting me." Nero shrugged. Although he would've liked to get a gem brimming with mana, that was unrealistic. Dungeon spawns were creatures of magic; there was a reason even the weakest of them had mana cores. They used it for every bodily function.

"Well, unless you have the ability to one-shot them like the Silverine Knights." He said, putting the core inside the bag with the other poisonous ones.

"I think it'll go for one silver mark." He reconsidered the statement.

"Maybe two, if I can find the right buyer." Besides the core, Nero was most interested in the liver and gonads. He harvested them, and after cleaning them up, he lit a small fire inside the chamber itself and set them up to sear, munching on chicken jerky while he waited.

"It's so peaceful here now," he said to himself, making sure not to look at the mountain of skulls behind him.

"To think I've conquered an E-rank dungeon on my own." Nero felt like it was all some dream. But here he was—he'd killed the many rats, the poisonous ones, and even the rat king.

"Or should I say rat elder." He laughed, spending several more minutes lost in thought before the meat was finally ready. The gonads and liver had cooked through properly. He sprinkled in some salt for flavor.

"Not like it'll taste good, though." He shook his head before eating it anyway. The first bite nearly made him vomit. It tasted of rusted metal and acid. He didn't take another bite of that piece, instead switching to the liver. He threw the rest away.

"Ugh." He shivered at the awful taste, grabbing his water pouch and taking several gulps, then eating some flavored jerky to wash the metallic taste from his tongue.

"What a horrendous taste. Good thing I don't have to eat it all." Normally, if he weren't part of the genetic constellation, he would have had to. But being part of the star law—its genetic constellation—and having access to the system interface brought more than a few benefits. The first of which was system extraction: once you killed a dungeon spawn and ate even part of it, even a small morsel, the system would extract the rest of the genes from its body and allocate them to you automatically.

"Though, that has a downside too." According to what he'd heard, at least.

"Apparently it's easy to steal genes from someone else's hunt using that same feature." And in hindsight, this wasn't all that difficult to pull off. All you'd have to do was get a small chunk of both gonads and liver from a beast someone else had hunted, eat it first, and confirm the following prompt. [Basic Requirement for auto gene extraction met, proceed?] Yes/No Yes. Nero confirmed.

[Prehistoric Gene Acquired 1x] [Prehistoric Gene Acquired 1x] [Primitive Gene Acquired 20x]"Whoa," he jumped up immediately, "that many?!" Twenty genes, and Prehistoric genes, from one boss. He knew little about the kind of loot one could obtain from a dungeon boss beyond the body parts he was used to harvesting. But he'd read about it in a guidebook, and Serie had only described it as substantial.

"But these," he stared back at the screen, unable to look away, "these are way more than substantial." Just then, another panel opened up. This one bore a deep, glossy pink hue. It looked important, and reading what was written on it made Nero freeze. [Acquired Primitive Talent Gene "Decaying Aura"] Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. After several minutes, Nero finally returned to reality.

He took a deep breath to calm his racing nerves, which wanted him to scream out in joy. He tentatively reopened the status window and checked what kinds of genes he'd gotten. According to the guidebook, the system didn't provide explanations for talent genes—it would be better to test them out later.

"First, I'd need to raise my strength!" The status screen opened as he checked his gene variety. He'd obtained roughly ten more speed genes, five constitution, and five... dexterity genes.

"No strength gene, huh," he felt a pang of disappointment, "but hey, constitution and dexterity genes pair well with speed too." In fact, speed could already boost the force of his strikes indirectly, and paired with more dexterity, his strikes would only grow deadlier. Nero lay back down on the chamber floor, basking in the euphoria of having acquired so many attribute genes and even a talent gene.

"Now the only things I'm missing are a beast soul and a beast core." A beast soul, as he understood it, was essentially a more complete version of a talent gene. While a talent gene granted access to a single ability from the monster it came from, a beast soul—as the name suggested—was a literal piece of the beast's soul.

Acquiring and assimilating one allowed a person to summon an astral manifestation of the beast within themselves, granting access to the beast's full set of abilities, along with a portion of its attributes. Though all of that came for a limited duration. A beast soul couldn't be kept perpetually active—it consumed a huge amount of mana too.

"So basically, they're useless unless you have a mana core." He said to himself.

"Though, it's probably better I focus more on earning money instead, since those are purchasable." Yes—there was an entire open market and auction houses where beast gonads, livers, and beast souls were sold. The beast soul itself usually resided alongside the beast core inside the heart. It was one of the most prized things one could obtain from a dungeon spawn.

"And also why the Red Rats hunt the same type of dungeon over and over." They'd built a reputation for supplying cheap, high-quality rat-type beast souls. The various adventurer sects, especially the smaller ones, were their regular customers. Nero closed his eyes and quieted his racing thoughts, and began assimilating the gens. He imagined the old rat handing over its genes in the form of its scythe.

His stomach began to swirl and twist; he clutched it in pain as the feeling worsened until all he could do was writhe in place.

"Damn it, I hadn't even attempted to assimilate the prehistoric genes. So why—" he groaned, twisting and turning.

"Why is this so bad...!" It took a long time for the chaos in his belly to calm down. Or maybe it hadn't—the pain alone couldn't have warped his vision and sense of time this badly. By the time it subsided, Nero had passed out from exhaustion, sweat covering every inch of him. …. After what felt like a moment but might have been hours, Nero's consciousness returned.

He felt the sweat soaking his body—he was practically bathed in it—heat radiating from every fiber of his muscles despite the winter-like atmosphere and the cold waves emanating from the walls around him. He pushed himself back up onto his feet and took a deep breath, finding the motion strangely uplifting. He stretched his body out and found his arms and legs reacting unnaturally fast to even the faintest thoughts.

"The genes really took effect, huh." He murmured to himself, then chanted, "Status." The same blue hologram opened up in front of him.

Status Name: Nero Race: Human Core Stage: Dormant Base Attributes STR: 14 (+7) DEX: 15 (+8) CON: 19 (+9) SPE: 28 (+19) INT: 9 WIS: 11 CHA: 3 LUCK: 2 (+1) Assimilated Primitive Gene: (44/1000) Unassimilated Genes: Charisma 1x (Prehistoric), Intelligence 1x (Prehistoric) Gene Talent: [Decaying Aura (Primitive)] Beast Soul: N/A Gene Fragments: N/A

"Charisma and Intelligence genes…" The prehistoric genes couldn't be assimilated until he ascended. Naturally, the genes themselves would remain stored as they were until he ascended and could assimilate them, or until he died—in which case they'd simply return to the world. Still, far from assimilation as they were, it was invaluable just to have them.

"Genes like these, if I can get more of them, would open up a lot more doors for me going forward." Basically, the genes displayed on one's status served as a symbol of prestige. They allowed entry into better establishments, high-class schools, and sects. Sects in particular were gated by how many high-ranked genes one possessed. These were the methods through which the wealthy distinguished their children from those of commoners.

For Nero, in particular, it would eventually grant him access to better establishments for weapons, beast souls, and more.

"Though, this amount is far from enough to get into anywhere distinguished." Then again, he barely had the money to buy anything from a distinguished place anyway.

"Either way, it's about time I left this dungeon." He turned to look back at the chamber. Sure enough, the crack that had previously vanished had reappeared. He went over and took apart the scythed limbs of the beast. A large chunk of its body had already melted into mana, but as it turned out, the scythes and the rest of the limbs were made of copious amounts of it, and thus took longer to break down.

"Good for me, though—they'll sell well. But on that note, I'll need to buy a stasis container going forward." Mainly for storing the gene-rich organs for later consumption; he could also store a few to sell at the guild.

"Can't afford the bigger ones to store a lot of them, though." Mainly because of the logistics involved—he couldn't exactly walk around the dungeon fighting with those strapped to his back. And stasis containers were delicate as it was; even his rugged lantern had cracked from the rough treatment it had endured in a mere E-rank dungeon. Buying a dimensional bag wasn't an option either—even the smallest ones cost a full gold crown. Still, a small stasis container was near the top of his priority list.

Rather than cooking and eating these organs on the spot, he'd much rather take them somewhere safer to prepare.

"I can hardly keep doing this in front of the dungeon going forward." He could manage it here, since this dungeon only contained mere rats, but larger creatures from other dungeons wouldn't give him that kind of breathing room. Nero finally chopped off the hard joint of the old rat's other scythe and packed both pieces into his bag, alongside the hide, leg claws, and teeth.

"Phew," he breathed, packing everything up before hoisting the bag onto his shoulder.

"Time to go out and sell them."