The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Climbing up the walls of the nest didn't bring them significantly further from the large and hungry chick stumbling toward them.

The lack of coordination…was the thing newly hatched?

So close now, Krow could see, even through the dimming illumination of the broken wraithlight, that the feathers on the chick were pale cream, and there was a darker patch on its head – a crest of some sort.

Its eyes reflected oddly in the wraithlight, giving it a dark sheen without pupil or iris. That hungry shine against the fluffy body, it made Krow feel like he was in one of those horror films where the film-makers liked to make viewers afraid of things like children's toys or house plants.

The rope, still in Krow's hands, pressed into his flesh as it tangled around the condorowl's claw. The chick stumbled again, fluffy stubby wings flapping for balance.

Prekk-kah?

It was too cute, but the more logical parts of Krow's mind were already fixating on the rope in his hands, the long and delicate throat of the chick, and the proximity that would allow him to get the upper hand with just. One. Single. Jump.

He landed on the chick's back, between the flailing wings.

Prekk-kah?! Kah! Prekk-kh-gghk!

A call for help? That couldn't happen.

Krow looped the rope around the chick's neck and pulled taut.

Kah!!

Krow slid off the soft-feathered back, letting his weight bear down on the rope even as the chick strained to get free. The dull crack of breaking bone and the sudden slack in the line told him he was successful.

The frantic motions of the chick stilled.

His heart pounded, eyes moving immediately to scour on the sky. The stars in the clear sky shone unhindered.

He stood, a little shaky, using the condorowl carcass as support.

The moment he touched the downy feathers, the notifications popped.

[You've gained two (2) Golden Crest Feather from a monster!]

[You've gained three (3) serpens from a monster!]

Oh yes, that reminded him. Tailfeathers. The quest.

The condorowl chick body didn't disintegrate. It looked like he'd really been promoted to the next level.

The monster carcasses degraded slower after Lvl 5, and he had a Butcher subclass.

Unfortunately it would take too long. He didn't think he had the time. Krow would like to avoid the condorowl parents as much as possible.

"Krow?" The whisper came like a shout.

Krow swallowed, his throat dry. He took out a few Low Heals to drink. The various aches in his body lessened. "Everything's fine. Are you alright?"

"I'm okay."

"I need a few feathers. Keep your eyes on the sky, will you?" He still didn't know how good condorowl hearing might be. The game gave a lot of authorities to players for protecting their territories. Did it give similar leeway to monsters?

Krow didn't want to assume, so he circled the nest, tossing loose feathers into his Inventory, barely looking at the items.

[Ethereal Condorowl Flight Feather]

[Quality: D][Uncommon]

[Ethereal Condorowl Tail Feather]

[Quality: D+][Uncommon]

[Ethereal Condorowl Down]

[Quality: E+][Rare]

He paused. He'd heard people talking, before. The Quality ratings of an item in Redlands were mostly given for usability in Enchanting or Alchemy and other mage-crafting professions, and less for the physical condition of the object.

A quality rating of E meant the item had little use for mage-crafters but it was also in good condition as far as the item goes. A quality rating of F meant the condition of the item was still serviceable but approaching unusable; it was mostly meant for broken or unrepaired things.

And then the Rarity of the item must be taken into account. For instance, an ancient broken item graded F+ Epic can sell for tens of thousands of drax still.

The grade of E+ Rare was notable, because it usually was the designation for quality luxury goods. They were low-grade mage-craft or common artisanal goods, but they were excellent materials for beauty or comfort items.

They sold well.

Krow looked around. The nest was full of the feather fluff. A glance at the starry sky, he started picking feathers faster.

He'd nearly made a full circle of the large nest when he saw something that made him blink in slight shock.

[Ethereal Condorowl Egg]

[Quality: B][Rare]

[Element: Light]

He stifled the urge to laugh in triumph.

A grade B Rare item, with elemental Light. Even as the Master Leatherworker he'd been in Zushkenar, he'd only come across such excellent materials a few times.

His glee was short-lived.

Hooot, came a sound on the wind.

He stiffened – a motion at the corner of his eye caught his attention. Sein had also straightened up from where he was crouched.

Hoot-prekk!

It was distant, but unmistakable.

"Krow?"

"We're leaving now." He hefted the meter-high Egg into his Inventory and clambered his way to Sein's side.

"I found slug pearls!" Sein gave him a handful of rough rocks the size of fingerbones, enthusiastic even as his eyes strayed periodically to the open skies.

What.

There was a small pile of similar stones near the boy, as well as a neat pile of feathers.

Krow gave a brief laugh. Sein hadn't been idle.

"I told you to watch the skies." He admonished the boy half-heartedly.

"I can do two things at the same time," Sein protested, with a massive grin.

Krow huffed and scooped the stones into his inventory. He bundled the feathers with a dry vine plucked from one of the nest's branches.

[Bundle of Feathers] was placed in a separate inventory slot from Krow's haul.

The boy's eyes lit up when he saw the items disappear into thin air. "I'd love to have an expanded storage item, but uncle says I have to earn it."

"There are places you get acquire one without buying," Krow absently said as he boosted the boy over a branch and to the other side of the nest wall.

Sein swung on a branch and then dropped to the ledge. "Really? I'll trade you the information for half the slug pearls."

"That information is mine to use, brat. Can you even hold a weapon yet?" Krow declined playfully. "Also, you think I'm going to trust the eyes of a ten-year old? Even if –"

"I'm twelve!"

"Even if you have dryad eyes," continued Krow while ignoring the interruption. "Those 'slug pearls' could be rocks for all I know."

They weren't.

He'd already checked the Inventory – thirty six of the forty-eight that the boy gathered were indeed labeled slug pearls. The rest were river stones.

As expected of a child from a smuggler caravan, Sein had a good eye for tradable goods.

Slug pearls were ugly things when unpolished, the result of various animals eating certain species of snails whole, then being unable to digest the nacre. Depending on the species of animal, a slug pearl could be studded with different kinds of undigested refuse.

In Amvard spotted bearcats, which lived near copper mines, for example, the slug pearls were in shades of yellow and pink to red and orange, with flecks of copper. In the silver-crested lizards that lived in the eastern edge of the Qormantine desert, the slug pearls were studded with the special iridescent desert moonstone that the Mafmet use in their machinery.

The rarest slug pearls were called Ocean Horns – from a type of spiky conch eaten by the cloudray. Cloudrays were a flying mount that looked like a manta ray; they were generally seen wild in the coasts bounding the Silver Sea.

Ocean Horns were the conch shells completely made out of nacre and an unknown fiber from something in the Cloudrays' diet. They washed up on beaches from time to time. Archaeologists decided that the people who used to inhabit Mer City used them as signs of achievement.

Or they would later, as the Mer City Gate hadn't been discovered yet. Krow had no idea who did it – one of the guilds maybe. There were no merpeople, but the city architecture was studded with statues of mermaids and mermen.

It was a gamer theory that merpeople used to exist.

That wasn't Krow's area of expertise though.

He glanced at his Inventory again.

As for the river stones – they were gastroliths, probably. Krow read somewhere that some species of birds ate rocks to aid their digestion. He supposed that in the game, the ethereal condorowl was one of them.

An insignificant piece of trivia brought to life, which proved the depth of worldbuilding Norge and his team poured into Redlands.

Slug pearl or river stone though, they were both condorowl excrement. Krow took a moment to regret that he didn't buy Healer's Wash potions; those were basically alchemical disinfectants.

Hoot-prekk!

That was closer than before.

"Krow…" Sein huddled closer as they looked for paths down the mountain peak.

The area was open. Too open. Trees were sparse and scraggly, most of the jutting rocks had been ground down by years of wind and erosion, there was little cover.

"Can you see the timberline?" Krow's wraithlight had dimmed, he had just enough light to see about two meters clearly in the dark. He had to trust the kid's dryad eyes to see further. "Any cover?"

Sein shook his head.

Hoot-prekk! Hoot-kh-prekk!

The silence that answered that urgent-sounding call only made Krow and Sein scrabble down the mountain faster.

"I see it!" Sein hissed. He was peering downward, tugging Krow's sleeve in sudden excitement.

Krow stared at the massive shadow that silently landed on a rock ledge above them, his only warning the barely-heard whisper of wind against feathers.. "Kid, so do I."

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