Chapter 183 - 183. Spoils
Noah flew for half a day before reaching the end of the swamp.
He was back outside the lair of the magical beasts, on one of the trees of Mellow forest.
Rain continued to pour from the sky, it didn't seem like it was going to end soon.
Yet, Noah didn't care about it and simply inspected the two severed arms in front of him.
There was a space-ring on each of them and he took them both before enveloping Doris' remains with black smoke.
Of the hunter, only her storage devices remained.
'She had a slow pace of killing but she had stayed for one week inside the swamp, her gains couldn't have been small.'
Noah didn't want to go back in the lizards' lair but he didn't even want to go back to the Royal city with only forty beasts' corpses.
The rank 4 beasts were alerted by then which meant that he couldn't hunt as freely as before.
Yet, two months spent on forging were way too short for what he was planning to do, he needed more corpses to fill more quotas.
Noah inspected the first space-ring, using his mental energy to wipe Doris' remaining one.
The process was smooth, there were no added protections to the device and, since the previous owner was dead, Doris' imprint was faint and frail.
'That's not bad, she was actually quite prepared.'
The space-ring was fifty cubic meters wide, it was at the same level as Noah's largest one.
Inside, there were many situational potions and pills, they covered most of the possible dangerous situations in which a hunter could end up.
'Oh, this one can be used against poison, this one is very useful for burns, this can even immediately stop the bleeding. Good, good, Doris was indeed a prepared hunter.'
Noah wasn't an expert regarding potions and similar but he had received a general education about them.
The academy couldn't neglect the teaching of such important resources only because a student wasn't talented in alchemy.
Together with those items and ten thousand Credits, there were also items useful for her cultivation.
Noah found another Earth pill and something that made his eyes widen in surprise.
'Beast's quintessence! Doris probably wanted to reach the peak of the third rank of the body with this!'
The Beast's quintessence was the more powerful version of the Beast's essence, a liquid drug that he had obtained a long time ago.
'It makes sense, since this also derives from magical beasts, she must have bought it for a discounted price. Yet, its value is not low, she has probably saved for quite some time in order to buy it.'
Doris had a rank 3 body, like Noah.
However, her situation didn't seem that good.
She was still in that rank after having lived for at least fifty years, her growth was far below the average of other cultivators, especially considering the rich environment of the Royal city.
It couldn't be helped though, spells and techniques were controlled by the noble families, you could only obtain them by paying an overpriced sum or by submitting to the families.
The academy was an exception since it sold those precious resources at a low price, allowing its students to improve steadily.
It was no wonder that it was considered the best place where to train even for those with a noble status, the accessibility to cultivation methods had an enormous value.
Yet, she was in the hunter guild, slowly accumulating the sum needed to improve her centers of power.
As for enrolling in the guards of some noble family, there were hundreds of cultivators on her level in the capital, the competition was harsh.
'Pity she didn't keep her techniques, she must have sold them as soon as she learned them.'
There were no cultivation methods or spells in her space-ring.
It was understandable though.
Diagrams and similar were almost unique in their kind, copying them was hard and required the help of an expert.
Most cultivators would just buy them to learn the described skill and then sell them at a lower price.
Only people that had no immediate need for money would keep them as an insurance for unexpected situations, or to simply hide their powers.
Noah, for example, would never sell the Warp spell, he would rather avoid for another cultivator of the darkness element to appear in the future and be able to use it.
'And I have another weapon that I can't immediately sell, wonderful.'
Doris' knife was in the space-ring.
It was and inscribed weapon so its value wasn't low, yet, Noah could not sell it or it would expose the fact that he had killed her.
'The other one should be the one containing the magical beasts' corpses.'
Noah moved his focus on the other ring.
As he had expected, the device contained twenty or so rank 3 lizards' bodies and was fifty cubic meters wide too.
'With these, I will fill my quota for four months but I can't keep the bodies in this state.'
The lizards had clear knife cuts on their flesh, an expert would recognize the difference between the two hunting methods.
Noah spent an entire day altering the signs left by Doris.
He first used the Blood drain spell to remove the remaining blood for their corpses and then he made additional cuts on their skin, sometimes directly severing the limbs when the trace of the knife was too evident.
Their value lowered like that, yet, when he had finished with each corpse, there was no evident difference between Noah's hunting method and Doris' one.
'This should be enough, now how should I sort things out?'
He liked to keep his space-rings orderly arranged in order to be more reactive in dangerous situations.
In the end, he decided to keep all his personal stuff in one of his new storage devices, putting all his potions, techniques, spells, inscribed weapons, and cultivation resources in it.
Since those items didn't occupy much space in the first place, there were still many cubic meters left for future usage.
The other three rings were assigned for the momentary items like the corpses of magical beasts.
When he finished his ordering, he had two rings on each hand, with a total space of one hundred and eighty cubic meters!