Chương 8: Chapter 7: Beneath the Hide

I'd never butchered anything bigger than a chicken. I guess there was a first time for everything. I grabbed one of the beast's hind legs and pulled. Nothing. I shifted my footing and leaned back with all my weight. The body scraped a few centimeters across the grass before refusing to move any farther.

"... Right." For a brief moment, I'd forgotten the thing probably weighed five or six times as much as I did. I let go and looked around the yard. Processing it here wasn't going to work. I'd be kneeling in the dirt for hours, with nowhere to set anything down, no easy access to water, and no practical way to lift it. The garage was the obvious choice. Running water. Electricity. Shade. Strong ceiling beams. It had everything I needed. I headed around the house and rolled the garage door open.

The familiar smell of cardboard, old wood and machine oil drifted out to meet me. The electric car still occupied most of the space. It would have to come out first. Before climbing in, I searched the shelves. Rolls of plastic floor protection. The camping table. A large storage tote. Freezer bags. Good. I'd need all of it. My eyes kept moving. Somewhere around here... There. A rolled-up tow strap sat on the second shelf, right where I'd left it. I picked it up before getting into the driver's seat.

My thumb hovered over the start button. I'd crossed the barrier myself a couple of times now. So had everything I was carrying. But this was different. It was by far the largest thing I'd ever tried taking through. Would an entire car really be able to pass through? I had no idea. I pressed the brake and pushed the button. The dashboard lit up. Ready. I slowly drove out of the garage and around the house. As the front bumper reached the invisible barrier, I instinctively held my breath. Nothing.

The car rolled through without the slightest resistance. Only the familiar water-like ripples spreading across the invisible barrier betrayed its presence. I stopped a couple of meters from the beast. Perfect. I wrapped one end of the tow strap around its hind legs before securing the other to the car's tow hook. I stepped back, following the length of the strap with my eyes. This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. No twists. No obvious mistakes.

I gave it one last tug. It held.

"This is either going to work..." I looked at the strap, then at my small electric 4x4.

"... or I'm about to find out just how stupid this idea really is." I climbed back into the driver's seat and gently pressed the accelerator. The strap slowly drew taut. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the body jerked forward. Grass flattened beneath nearly half a ton of dead weight as the beast finally slid behind me. A dark trail of blood marked every meter it traveled. I couldn't help smiling.

"I'll take it." A few minutes later, the beast lay in front of the open garage. Progress, at last. Unfortunately, things were only going to get harder from here. By the time I was done preparing, the garage looked a lot less like a workshop. Old plastic sheets left over from repainting the house covered as much of the floor as I could manage. They wouldn't save the walls, but at least they might spare the concrete. A large black trash bin waited nearby. My biggest plastic storage tote sat beside the camping table.

The garden hose already snaked across the floor. Knife. Paper towels. Freezer bags. Good enough. I wheeled the step ladder beneath one of the exposed ceiling beams and climbed up with a ratchet strap. I looped the strap over the beam. Back down. And now around both legs. I took a breath and began ratcheting. Click. Nothing. Click. The strap tightened. Click. The body shifted. Click. The hindquarters slowly lifted from the plastic sheet.

"... Impressive." Another few clicks brought them almost half a meter into the air. It wasn't much. But it was more than enough. I wasn't questioning the engineering behind ratchet straps ever again. My phone came out next. How to butcher a bear Loading... I sighed. Loading...

"Come on..." The page finally appeared. The text at least. Half the pictures refused to load. Good enough. I skimmed the instructions while standing beside the carcass. Make shallow cuts. Avoid puncturing the hide. Separate the skin from the muscle with long strokes. Sounded simple enough. It wasn't. Within minutes my forearms were burning. The hide clung stubbornly to the muscle beneath it, forcing me to work the blade a few centimeters at a time. The article stopped being useful almost immediately.

The shoulders weren't shaped quite the same. The neck was far thicker than the guide suggested. Every few cuts, I'd find something that didn't quite match the article. Not dramatically. Just enough that every few minutes I found myself muttering,"... Close enough." Eventually I stopped looking at the phone altogether. Experience was proving more useful than the article. Or maybe less useless. My knife slid beneath another section of hide. Then stopped. Scrape. I frowned. Bone? No...

The sound hadn't been quite right. I peeled the thick fur back a little farther. Something pale caught the light. I cleared away a little more flesh. Buried beneath the thick fur was a rough crystal about the size of my palm, embedded in the front of the sternum as though it had always been there. In fact, it probably had. Its uneven surface carried the faintest bluish hue, subtle enough that I almost blamed the garage lighting. I stared. That's...... a monster core. The thought came uninvited.

I'd read enough fantasy novels to recognize the idea immediately. Crystals hidden inside magical beasts. Rewards for the heroes. Proof that magic existed. When I was younger, I'd imagined finding one more times than I could count. Back then, it had sounded exciting. Now... I felt cold. This wasn't good. Because if monster cores existed... What else did? Dragons? Magic? Or even worse? I blinked. My hand stopped. I looked down. At some point, I'd finished peeling away the rest of the hide.

It lay in a heavy pile beside my feet. I couldn't remember doing it. My eyes lingered on the crystal for another moment before I forced myself to look away. It wasn't going anywhere. But the rest of the beast wasn't going to process itself. I let out a slow breath. I could panic later. Right now... I had work to do. The rest of the day blurred into a rhythm of repetitive work. Separate the muscles. Trim away what I didn't trust. Cut everything into pieces small enough to handle. Bag them. Label them.

Into the freezer. Repeat. My shoulders ached, my fingers had started cramping, and the garage looked like the aftermath of a butcher's shop. The plastic sheets had spared the concrete well enough, even if the walls hadn't been as lucky. For now, every usable piece of meat was packed away inside the chest freezer. I spent a few minutes spraying the worst of the blood toward the garage door. It wasn't clean—not even close—but at least it wouldn't dry into the concrete before I could deal with it properly.

The rest could wait. Right now, I smelled like a slaughterhouse. I needed a shower.