56 Chameleon Porcupine

'Lucas Ranger is dead.' Nero sighed in his mind.

'Well, it's not like he even existed in the first place.' Nova went along, speaking in a saddened tone.

'No corpse for the Assembly, all they'll find is a sad and lonely ring. Anyway, we're close to the beast now, might as well use mana now.'

The fake alias Nero had registered by would now be pronounced as dead: the ring had lost connection to its host for a long time.

With great agility, Nero hopped from one branch to another, slowing down as he felt his mana sense tingle. Ahead of him, likewise on a tree branch, was a thick-furred green beast whose fur quickly began to take colour and shape similar to the of the branch it crept on.

The round long eyes were the only give away of its stealth.

'Well obviously, it can detect others as I detected it, it wouldn't have suddenly hidden unless it knew I was coming towards it. Its fur is really quite interesting, I bet its worth a ton.'

Nero quickly devised a way to kill the monkey without damaging its fur, he knew it was a Rank 2 beast and would not be able to counter Adept mana.

After moving in closer, instead of continuing in the same direction, he curved around the location of the beast and circled back to the point he started all the while leaving behind a trace of his aura. It wasn't completely undetectable by the creature but it chose to underestimate its prey, continuing to hide in sight.

Then, with explosive mental power, Nero relayed a signal to the refined Adept mana left around the furry.

Mana Domino! Because of Nero's intent, To Dominate, he could, with relative control, affect unrefined mana in the surroundings the way he wanted. Now, all of his mana started to clump unrefined mana in its core form together, acting as a condenser that formed more Adept, but unrefined, mana. The complete formation was a ring which began to collapse into itself with great speed.

It cut straight through the branches and trees in its way all while decreasing in size, sadly for the furry who was the middle point of the ring.

Just as the sharp ring converged completely and the furred monster tried to take off of the branch, the ring reshaped itself and formed a large collar-like shape around the body of the furred creature who was mid-process into taking off, leaving it without balance.

Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click www.webnovel.com for visiting.

The fur of the falling beast greatly changed its colour as the collar around it continued to collapse, causing internal organs an inevitable demise.

The previously green fur had now turned to a glowing blood red, exuding a sense of pressure onto the unrefined mana ring, however sadly unable to counter it.

The fur had remained undamaged but the insides of the beast were a carnal mess of blood and gore, beastly blood sprayed out from the previously clear golden eyes.

In a sense, it was a clean kill. Only a little blood escaped from the body and the outside was completely intact. As soon as Nero felt the pressure from the beast evaporate, he immediately ordered for the Adept mana to be dispersed.

The Coil-shaped unrefined mana also dispersed seeing as it now had no container around it, leaving behind a 3 feet tall, porcupine-like creature with extraordinary claw-shaped hooks as limbs (which were now unfortunately crushed) and fur that quickly grew white with the dispersing of mana.

'How do I obtain the fur? Nova, skin it for me.'

'Acknowledged.'

In an instant, a thin red-tinted translucent barrier formed around Nero's body as well as a sharp wavy orange blade around his left hand.

Flipping the body belly side up, Nova, with extreme precision, began to splice the unfurred skin of the creature. She, instead of making an incision around the body, only made a deep cut into the unfurred belly side.

Then, with the same precision as before, Nova cut out a hole from the belly side and removed the skin and flesh, exposing the rotten mess inside the creature. Crushed intestines juiced up in fleshy blood greeted her sight.

Deep within, there lay a small glowing red crystal naturally diminishing into misty essence. It was the Beast core.

Nova quickly plunged her mana covered hand in, removed the finger-sized Core and stored it inside the cooling jar.

'Seems like that last desperate struggle really pushed it.' Nero quickly analysed. The core was quite small, indicating that it had been used up quite a bit by the creature at its last breath.

'I'll take charge from here, you're not able to use mana after all.' Because Nova was not the unloaded consciousness, it could not control mana, that was all always up to Nero.

Like when preparing for skinning, Nero formed the protective sheet and the blade and gave the mana the command to stay bonded (be a part of his body, like another on top of his skin) to his skin (which was far more complex than it seemed), letting Nova successfully utilise mana.

Sadly, Nero could not simultaneously control mana while Nova had control. Whenever Nero asked Nova to freeze his facial features, it wasn't that he was handing command over for a long time, Nova momentarily took control over his facial muscles and sent commanded them to stay tensed in the way they were for as long as necessary, pretty much like what Nero did with mana.

'I'll take out the crushed skeletons and organs in clumps with mana, that'll leave just the fur inside. It's a good thing hair take years to decay completely because I'll be here for a while.'

What Nero was doing was gruesome, to the word's fullest extent.

He was SCOOPING out the INSIDES of the beast with mana, LITERALLY LIKE ICE CREAM.

'Blood and gore do not affect me, I still lack the most basic human thoughts. Well, it should be more normalised here, right? Beast killings are common here so I doubt this world's humanity has developed to find disgust in flesh. Ugh, this reminds of Queen Maria... what a devolved crazy bitch.'

To Nero, Queen Maria was nothing more than an insane lust-driven person who evolved... just backwards.

A little while later, Nero was off again, leaving behind a small mound with red-dyed bones poking out.

Not more than half an hour later, a lone figure veiled in deep blue came across the decaying mess.

'This is where the spell scroll picked up mana signals from. Strange, why can't I detect anything?' Taking a closer glance at the small pit, the figure immediately put himself on alert, it was obvious the figure was a veteran in the hunting field.

'A butcher! I have to be careful, such a crazed person could hide in plain sight with ease. The <Detection> scroll only has 2 uses left for today and I don't have inscription ink on me. Forget it, I'll just continue into the forest and hope I avoid the mage.'

Under the veil, the figure's pupils lit up with a thick orange as it swiftly pulled out a tattered but well-maintained wand. Next, it bent down on one knee and grafted an inscription onto both of his knees one by one while muttering under his breath. Each inscription took half a minute of precise movements from his hand and a long chant of magical words.

After finishing the inscription, he gave out one last chant: "GERDUM!"