Cleo came through the very next day by sniffing out the rotting remnants of a large meal. The carcasses of a family of otters had been brutally ripped apart and partially consumed. Hector may have gained the title of hunter in Stein, but it was short for 'treasure hunter' and not a hunter of animals. Still, he felt pretty certain in his deduction that the animal responsible for the massacre of the otters was after the cores and had zero interest in the meat.

The real question: "Cleo? I get that the beast we're looking for wanted just the cores. But why hasn't anything else come along to finish the meal? This is level five meat."

"That is a little disturbing," she said. Cleo raised her nose to the air and sniffed some more. "I think there is something else in the area." The two of them moved through the reedy area at the edge of a pond until they located what Cleo's nose had identified from a distance.

"A black bear?" The beast was about the size of a large dog. Certainly not a fearsome grizzly. Something had torn apart the level six bear to remove its core.

Cleo reached out slowly and threaded her arm through his. Her next words were soft and calm – too calm by far, in the way that indicated someone was sharing extremely distressing news. "You need to fly us away from here right now, Hector. No questions."

He took a moment to check her expression before complying.

That momentary delay almost proved fatal. Something barreled through the grass towards them. Hector didn't have time to secure Cleo before flying away. So he didn't fly. He used a cable to lift Cleo into the air and flared his aura to defend.

The incoming beast hit Hector at thigh level and tumbled him so fast the world blurred. His perception of his surroundings firmed up again just in time for him catch the dropped Cleo with another cable. He laid her over top of a branch up above and then flared his aura again just in time to defend against the returning animal.

An aura-wrapped tusk penetrated his defenses to plunge through skin. It bounced off his enhanced skull, which no doubt saved his life. Hector shot energy from his one hand to slide sideways across the swampy ground, then rolled over onto all fours and fired energy from both palms to rise to his feet. Another blast from the heels and he rose like a rocket into the sky.

Below, he got his first clear look at his attacker. A wild boar squealed in anger, then charged the trunk of the tree whose branch held Cleo. Hector retrieved his companion with a cable just as the tree's connection to the ground shattered into kindling. The two of them flew higher than the tree tops before Hector stopped climbing for height. His heart was hammering in his chest. The clearest thought in his head was that if Cleo, the sensory savant, ever told him to flee again, he would obey without hesitation.

Cleo took a few moments to calm her breathing before she flung her hand downward in a distasteful gesture. "There's your level eight beast. Now I encourage you to forget all about it. In fact, I'll refund half your money if we can go home right now."

"I don't plan on fighting that thing. I'm going to poison it."

"And how does that work? It looks like it mostly eats the cores you cosmic energy users form when you die. Are you going to pour your cyanide potion over a core and hope enough sticks? And where would you even get a core?"

Once Cleo's outburst ended, Hector smiled and shot them towards a familiar slope. "I think it's time we reclaim our camping gear."

"Garudas above, Hector, this is stupid. It's just the two of us here and if you die I'm stranded on a world exclusively populated by savage Xian."

"I don't plan on taking unnecessary risks, Cleo." He lowered them to the ground near their tent, which had been ransacked by animals. "I have two cyanide elixirs. If necessary, I'll use them both." He didn't think he would need poison for the snake. If he accounted for the beast's aura, he should be able to handle things with only the tools nature and cultivation had given him.

The first step was finding the snake. It wasn't in any of the trees nearest the tent, but Cleo reluctantly pointed to its current location after an hour of searching. Then he brought it down to the ground by ripping a few branches off the tree with well placed lashes of his cables.

The massive snake hissed at him and made to run off, apparently not interested in a meal at the moment. That was fine with Hector. He lifted one of the branches from the ground and brought it down across the snake just below the base of its skull. The snake flared its aura wildly, but Hector was using the branch to transmit the pinning pressure, so his cables weren't dislodged.

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Hector stood over top of the snake head, wary of the thrashing tail, and punched down towards the back of the head. He planned to crush its skull for a quick kill. As his fist neared, a wild thread of the snake's domain wrapped around his arm and pulled his punch to the side.

It was the first time he ever witnessed an animal using a domain, so Hector was stunned for a moment. His surprise lasted just long enough for the beast to bite. Hector flared his aura, which did next to nothing. Rows of rear-oriented teeth sank into his palm and the back of his hand, ensuring he would do significant damage if he tried to pull his hand free. Meanwhile, the tail stopped its wild thrashing and rolled forward to begin wrapping up Hector's torso.

"See, Hector? This is what I was talking about!"

He yanked one of the elixir vials from his pocket with his free hand and lifted it towards his face, intending to rip the cork free with his teeth. He paused halfway to his mouth. Maybe using his teeth to open a vial of potent poison wasn't a good idea.

"Cleo, pull the cork free, if you would. Don't breathe in the fumes though."

Muttering imprecations under her breath, Cleo did as requested. Hector leaned over the snake and tried to figure out the best way to pour poison down the throat without getting any of the liquid into the cuts on his arm. There wasn't much room for error.

The body further tightened around him, causing his breath to wheeze out of his lungs. There wasn't much time to play it safe, either. Hector played with his domain, creating a hollow straw structure. Then he pinched the base shut and filled the interior with a quick pour from the vial.

Hector slipped his thin domain straw past his captured hand and into the throat of his opponent. Then he opened the far end wide and compressed from the side closer to him, sending a large squirt of hydrogen cyanide down the beast's throat.

He was ready to repeat the trick as many times as it took. Only a quarter of the elixir volume had been consumed, so he had three more uses with just this vial. Hector would use it all and give up on the level eight boar entirely if he had to at this point.

It took ten seconds for the snake to began twitching. Then another twenty seconds for its body to drop off of him altogether. By the time a minute passed, the beast no longer lived. Hector pried the jaws open with cables and removed his hand. He rinsed his wounds with water, then identified the location of the core using his mental sense. It was the standard base of skull location, nestled right alongside the spinal cord.

Hector hacked away with his knife until he carved a wedge free. There was now a path leading directly to the core. They flew back, Cleo huffing periodically to show her disapproval of the plan. While airborne over the reedy bank of the pond where he was almost gored to death, Hector opened the vial once more and poured the cyanide into the wound. Then he lowered the corpse to the ground, careful to keep it relatively level and avoid unnecessary spillage.

Plans spun around his mind, various methods of drawing the boar's attention to the fresh carcass. He could fly down and make some noise. Or use his cables to whack down tall grasses in the area. It turned out that he'd already done plenty.

The boar charged out and chomped at the upper neck of the snake. It swallowed everything that entered its mouth during the small feast. Then the boar strutted away, leaving the majority of the body untouched. Its proud walk paused a couple of times, resuming slightly slower after every interruption.

And then it toppled over onto its side. The legs pedaled like it was still walking a couple times. Then they went still. Hector lowered them slowly towards the ground. When he got close, he glanced towards Cleo. "Is it faking?"

"No heartbeat," she said.

So Hector claimed the core. Afterwards, he washed it with pond water and scrubbed it using grasses. Canteen water rinsed it and his clothes dried it. The core seemed mostly clean. He didn't know if there was any cyanide residue remaining, but he reasoned that the poison had been diluted through the volume of the beast even before he did his cleaning. Given further time exposed to the air, any remaining cyanide should hopefully evaporate away.

"Please tell me we're done for the day."

Hector smiled at Cleo. "One final stop. I want to make my first payment."

His transit sphere opened upon the darkness of an unlit cavern a few minutes later. Navigating by touch-sense, Hector steadied Cleo with a hand and helped her step out onto solid ground. "Just stay in place a moment," he said as he went towards a lectern with sheets of messenger paper on top. He would need to leave a note for Eva so she knew he'd left the core. Which meant he needed to find his flashlight.

"Hector?"

"It's fine, Cleo. I'll have light in a couple seconds. This is a quick stop."

Her footsteps sounded as she cautiously moved forward through the darkness.

It took longer than usual to get the tiny flashlight from his pocket owing to the many small wounds from the snake causing painful swelling to his hand. When he clicked on the flashlight, he shone it on the paper there and began hunting for the writing implements. It was a quill pen and an ink bottle, which he had very little experience with, so his handwriting may not even be legible. It would have to do.

"Hector?"

He shone the light towards Cleo, who had navigated directly towards the tunnel leading from the cavern back into the house. The path would be boarded shut at the moment since it was only ever open when Eva used it. "Just hang out, Cleo, I won't be long."

"Hector."

"What?"

"I smell tea."

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