Chapter 250: Skyshot
By the time he happened upon the camp, Kir realized he’d neglected to acquire some rather essential details from the houndkin woman.
Chief amongst them was the identity of her husband.
At that point, dawn had already crept over the horizon, and thus he landed at the remains of a camp that was already abandoned. He knew it was the right one, however, because of the deep tracks that had been left in the mud by the carriage.
Judging by the prints on the ground, they were relying entirely on raptors with the exceptions of horses to draw the carriage.
More concerning, however, was the massive green and white form of a monster. By all appearances, it had been a bear that was overtaken by some sort of mutated foliage. One that used its bones like a skeleton. It lay carved open near the side of the road, its stalks carved up and the body of its massive flower carved open, likely to extract whatever ingredients or mana stones existed in it.
Something beyond his normal senses compelled Kir to dig a bit into the corpse, and his hand came away with a nectar-covered mana crystal, suffused with a slight white glow. Its physical color was hard to distinguish given how thickly the nectar covered it, but given how far he’d traveled, Kir decided that a small snack was in order.
The crystal broke apart like chalk and had about the same amount of flavor, at least from what Kir could guess around the heady, sugary taste of the monster’s nectar.
"Somehow that still weirds me out," Kiryu commented.
"Don’t knock it ’til you try it."
"I am trying it. Through you. You’re like the kid who puts marbles in his mouth, only you actually chew them."
No arguing with him there...