After harvesting the cores together once the beasts were all dead, they divided them as agreed, with Kyle taking twenty-one and Na-Ri begrudgingly taking the remaining nine.
This brought Kyle's total essence cores in hand to thirty-seven, and his bag was nearly filled, with space left for only four more.
Na-Ri already carried over thirty-one, and her own pack still had room for additional storage.
"That does it. Now we can continue moving," Kyle mused, slinging his bag over his shoulder as he walked ahead.
The alluring stranger lingered behind, caught in a faint trance as she watched him lead the way.
For a brief moment, she found herself questioning what exactly felt wrong about him.
It was in his energy; to her eyes it seemed to radiate visibly, which should not have been possible.
'His aura is wild for a weak person like him. He is probably still in Stage One, yet with that aura, he is... I do not really know how to put it,' she thought to herself, trailing behind him with a suspicious flare in her eyes.
It was true that Kyle's was strange, quiet, and even eerily different.
A fluctuation of this kind could mean he was practising Dual Cultivation, which she was already aware of.
That alone was unusual and worth questioning more than once, yet even that should not cause his presence to bleed so violently into the air.
Or perhaps he possessed another technique entirely.
But that was absurd.
In this age, with corruption seeping into the world, a single cultivation method was already dangerous enough to cling to.
A second was enough to throw most people off balance, turning them deviant or ruining their foundation completely.
A third was impossible.
No one had ever achieved that, not even cultivators at Stage Four.
In fact, most cultivators could only hold to a single element, and every skill they learned would stem from it.
Her own case was proof, since she practised the Glacial Availability Technique.
It tethered her to ice alone, but within that narrow domain lay infinite depth.
With time, she could branch into white ice, red ice, dark ice, or even the elusive thread ice: a rare offshoot that allowed filaments of frozen energy so fine they could slice unnoticed through flesh or steel.
Among these, red ice was the deadliest. It was a flame-coloured frost that devoured blood and marrow as it spread, leaving nothing but hollowed shells behind.
But Kyle's aura matched none of this.
It was not a variant, nor was it a shade of anything she recognised. It simply roared out of him as though some unseen force were tearing through the normal boundaries.
'If it isn't Dual Cultivation, and it isn't essence refinement, then what in the world is he carrying inside him?'
The question clawed at her for a while, but she quickly cleared her head and forced her focus back.
Kyle, meanwhile, was praying silently in his head that the market had not been destroyed, as he would have nowhere else to sell this essence cores.
It was not as if he knew every trade centre in this era.
For all he cared, the fool of an adventurer might have met his end long before reaching one, or worse, wandered blindly into some forbidden zone.
Perhaps even into a Trial zone, where escape was near impossible unless it was cleared or some hidden path was uncovered.
Kyle lengthened his stride as he crossed into the strip most referred to as the outer perimeter as It lay between the safe zone and the fallen green zone.
His chest tightened, not at the sight itself, but because the truth had finally caught up with his fear.
'Were all the people in there that weak? Are all hunters exploring this damned zone that weak? What the fuck!?'
His mind reeled as he took in the sight.
The barricades that should have secured the area were torn apart, and the hunters placed there were lying dead...
He could only imagine their numbers.
Some of the beasts were drifting back from that direction, which meant they must have come through other fronts, fought battles along the way, lost part of their ranks, and the rest pressed on into town.
That left others wandering the streets, cutting off anyone who tried to approach.
The beautiful stranger walked up beside him, her chuckle forced and shallow, more a provocation than any genuine amusement.
"So they really are all chickens? What a waste of all the essence cores we gathered. Best start consuming them," Na-Ri murmured, patting Kyle's shoulder.
With a scowl, he shrugged her hand away, muttering curses as he stepped through the gate with care.
Inside, corpses of hunters and beasts were strewn across the ground.
Naturally, once the boss of a zone was killed, forces should have been ready to manage the fallout, including handlers with beast affinities.
Of course, there are limits to what such people can tame.
Even so, the one who had slain the boss was almost certainly the very definition of reckless, unprepared for danger, and utterly unprofessional.
When the beautiful young lady entered and took in the scene, her conclusion was indifferent.
"They are really unprofessional. Both the one who killed the boss and these hunters and raiders."
Kyle knew at once that he himself was the cause of the carnage, though he could not have cared less.
Had he not thrown everything into killing the boss, he would have been the one lying dead, and the creature would only have grown stronger.
Was that not the greater evil?
He felt no guilt for the bodies around him. These people had been his enemies.
They had cast him out when he most needed them, branded him a criminal, driven him into the life of a fugitive, scavenging and starving.
...So why should he care whether they lived or died?
Na-Ri bowed her head in quiet respect to the fallen hunters, while Kyle stepped across the corpses with a flicker of grim disappointment in his eyes, rifling through their packs and pockets for anything of value.
This was what they had made of him.
"Uh? What are you doing? You idiot, are you really searching their..."
Kyle silenced her with a grimace and answered coldly, "How else am I meant to survive? If you cannot stomach it, then find something useful to do."
Na-Ri gave no reply, not for lack of words but because there was nothing she could say.
More or less, Na-Ri could relate to his situation, even if hers had not been as severe.
A trace of pity stirred within her, but she still could not condone what he was doing.
Instead she walked away, sat down on the pavement, and began to contemplate whether she ought to consume the essence cores alone or share them with him.
Her bag contained only a small ration of provisions, barely enough to last three days of travel, and even that much had stretched further only because she was never a heavy eater.
Meanwhile, Kyle uncovered provisions in one of the hunters' packs, collected them into a separate bag, and slung two over his shoulders.
As he turned towards another corpse, intending to search it, something seized his leg.
'Hell...'
His eyes widened as he looked down.