Arden, Vera, and Savish stepped out from the bushes and closed in on the dead lizard, the lesser thagomizard, as the Status called it.

  “Poisonous blood, huh?” Savish said. “That's pretty niche. But use it right and it will go far.”

  “It was smart using your blood as a coating for your weapon,” Vera said.

  “It's not the first time I've done so,” Sya said, thinking back to the spawns of Life she fought against while Arden was dealing with his doppelganger.

  She looked at the dead thagomizard and frowned, which was not lost on Arden. If there was one person in the world that he was good at reading, it would be his sister.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don't think it was my blood that killed it. I think it bled out.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Remember the last thing I poisoned?” She asked. “Those things died in seconds. This one took much longer.”

  “It could be a matter of affinity and resistance,” Arden offered.

  “I think Arden’s onto something,” Savish said, kneeling down next to the head of the Celestial with her knives in hand. “Most reptilian Celestials have some manner of poison resistence.”

  Savish didn't hesitate to cut into the monster's face. She worked her knives with the elegance and experience of a steakhouse owner.

  “Looking for the core?” Arden asked. “I have a better way of finding it.”

  Savish said nothing as she continued to cut into the thagomizard's head. She continued for a few more seconds before she pulled her knife out of the monster’s skull with a round piece of purple meat on the end of the blade.

  “Venom sac,” she said. “This lizard no doubt had some toxin tolerance.”

  She handed the sac to Sya.

  “Keep it. Every part of a Celestial is useful for something. A skilled smith would most likely be able to use that to make a weapon that applied poison.”

  “I’m not paying for that one,” Arden said.

  Sya accepted the venom sac and put it in her inventory.

  “Do you think the lizard leather will make good armor?” She asked.

  “Maybe?” Savish said. “I know about meat, not the skin. I'd take it anyway. It might work.”

  “Damn,” Arden said as Sya added the rest of the corpse to her inventory.

  ‘I wanted to get some biomass.’

  Arden walked to where his sister severed the lizard's tail. Kneeling down, he picked up the tail and gave it a few swings. After doing so, he realized Vera was looking at him.

  “What?”

  She smiled.

  “Nothing. It's just that you look cute when you're jealous.”

  Arden blushed for a moment before it fell from his face and he anxiously overthought her words.

  “Please tell me you're not going to try to make me jealous of other guys by flirting with them.”

  “Of course not. That's a jealousy no one wants to see. I meant jealous in the sense that Sya was able to take the lead for the hunt, and claimed its body as a reward. You look forlorn that you weren't given a scrap.”

  Arden raised the thagomizard's thagomizer.

  “I have this, don't I?”

  “Not anymore,” Vera said with a smirk, as it was ripped from his hand by a cheerful Sya.

  Arden sighed and knelt down to the ground, speaking loudly to his sister with an annoyed tone.

  “I’m going to devour the few milliliters of blood you left for me. Is that alright?”

  “Yeah, go for it.”

  Arden clicked his tongue and dismissed one of his gauntlets, and tendrils extended from his hand to absorb the blood shed by the thagomizard. He choked back tears, knowing that there was barely any point in doing so. He felt it was a net loss, as he believed that he spent more energy kneeling than he got in return for devouring the blood of the Celestial.

  “This isn't enough to get me hungry…”

  *****

  They found the next monster shortly after the first. This Celestial was not another thagomizard, or even a reptile. This one was a large deer whose antlers flowed through the air like bizarre ribbons that ended in jagged points.

  “This one’s mine,” Arden said, lowering the cowl of his armor.

  He snuck through the foliage, not making a sound thanks to the Headstone aspect of his armor. His weapon of choice was the celestinite straight sword provided to him by the armory. He was more comfortable with his Bone Talons, but he wouldn’t be able to use his ability while wearing them. And the whole reason they were out here was to get experience with their abilities that they couldn’t use on each other.

  Arden looked at the walking venison in front of him as he slowly approached it from behind. There was sure to be a lot of biomass on this thing. He knew that it would only yield a single bit for his progression, but he didn’t really care about that. The biomass that he would accrue for use was the real prize here.

  His ability description told him that he would be able to use absorbed biomass for his own benefit. Ignoring the fact that he was out of biomass for the moment, what would he be able to do with it? The description was vague. Arden hoped that it meant that he would be able to use it in a variety of different ways.

  So far, he had only used it for healing. There had to be more. If there wasn’t, the description would have told him that he would only be able to use it for healing. He needed to learn what else his power was capable of. And to do that, he needed more biomass. Arden sized up the Celestial.

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  ‘Deers typically run away from people,’ he thought. ‘This is a Celestial, so it will definitely fight. However, it will probably be at least as fast as a normal deer. Crippling it takes priority.’

  Arden was less than two meters from it when it finally noticed him just as he rushed in with his sword. His sword arced through hair, aiming to sever the leg just as Sya had done with the lesser thagomizard’s tail.

  Reality was disappointing.

  Centimeters before his sword cut into the creature’s flesh, it came to a stop, tangled in the ribbon antlers of the Celestial. Before Arden could try to withdraw his sword or cut through the ribbons, he was knocked back by a kick from the deer’s back hooves, knocking his sword from his grasp.

  Savish frowned from her spot in the undergrowth alongside Vera and Sya.

  “That one’s much stronger than the lesser thagomizard,” she observed.

  “Is it a main sequence?” Sya asked, worried for her brother’s safety.

  “No. It’s close though. Another day or two and it will be.”

  She glanced between the deer and Vera.

  “Do you want me out there?”

  “Not yet,” Vera said. “Arden’s not out yet. His soul was on fire for a while. It’ll take more than a kick from a deer to put him in danger.”

  Arden was on his back and gasped for air. The kick didn’t injure much thanks to the defense afforded to him by the Stoneflesh Shroud, but it did knock the wind out of him. There would likely be a bruise if he didn’t heal it, but he could manage.

  He rolled to his right just as the ribbon antlers smashed into the ground where he just was. Summoning his Bone Talons, he changed strategies. The antlers needed to go first.

  He threw himself back to his feet as the ribbons flew towards him again, their sharp points aimed right at his throat. He realized that thanks to their flexibility and flowing nature, trying to cut through them would be a challenge.

  “It wouldn’t be training if it was easy,” Arden said as the ribbons raced towards him.

  The antlers were fast but not unavoidable. He was going to use that against the deer creature.

  Arden twisted to the side just as four of the ribbons flew by, grazing him with their sharp ends, managing to cut through his armor. He ignored the damage done to his armor. It would recover in the soul cluster.

  He grabbed hold of the elastic antlers and pulled them taut. He held them down under his left arm as his right gauntlet came down on the antlers, cutting into them. White blood flowed from the antlers as Arden continued to cut through them.

  The deer made a pained noise and tried to withdraw the ribbons. But Arden refused to let go. With them already cut a bit, the antlers were torn in half from the pair of them pulling the antlers.

  Arden had no doubt that he would have fallen after the tug-of-war a few weeks ago, but he has since then trained his balance, so he stayed on his feet and threw the severed antlers that began to stiffen to the ground with a laugh. In seconds, the soft antlers stiffened until they were rigid as bone, like a strange variant of rigor mortis.

  The smile fell from his face when the deer huffed and started stamping its foot on the ground like a bull preparing to charge. Its remaining antlers retracted and hardened, forming a knot of gnarled, sharp antlers. More worrying than the imminent bull rush was glowing at the end of its severed antlers.

  They were regrowing.

  “No you don’t!”

  He tried to grab the antlers that were thrown to the ground after dismissing one of his gauntlets. He needed to devour them before they had a chance to regrow. He learned with Yaan before that regeneration would not affect devoured extremities unless a higher power got involved.

  Arden reached out to them, and just before he touched them, they were snagged by the remaining antlers on the Celestials’ head and thrown into the sky as it stampeded towards Arden who was focused on the antlers.

  ‘Grab them!’ Arden screamed at himself, seeing the deer speed toward him.

  “Shit!” Savish swore, vaulting over the bush towards the deer, hoping to stop it before it got to Arden. She was orange tier and possessed a physical enhancement ability, but it was going to be a close match between her and the bestial Clestial.

  Desperation was Arden’s catalyst for growth.

  Moments before he was impaled on the deer’s remaining antlers, tendrils burst from Arden’s hand at lightning speed at a much greater length than he thought he could achieve. They wrapped around the antlers still arcing through the sky and pulled them back to Arden’s open palm.

  Dawning on him that devouring the antlers would take time that he didn’t have, Arden grit his teeth and performed an attack with the makeshift spear.

  Summoning all of the power from his body starting from his legs, he thrust the hardened antler forward at the charging Celestial at a downward angle, piercing the creature’s skull and exiting through its neck before getting lodged in the ground.

  The inertia of the deer caused it to rip itself deeper on its own antler before it came to a sudden stop, blowing a wave of air past Arden, causing his cloak to billow behind him.

  You have slain red-tier protostar, Streamer Stag.

  Arden breathed a sigh of relief and plopped down on the ground.

  “No way is hell that thing was only a protostar,” he said, sweat pouring off his face.

  The girls cheered as they ran towards him, celebrating his victory over the deer. Savish and Sya both looked relieved, but Vera looked proud.

  He stared at his hand that was able to grab hold of the antler that was sent flying through the air. He did not expect himself to be able to do that.

  “Wondering how you did that?” Vera asked, now in front of him.

  “Yeah. I know I use devour through hand tentacles, but I didn't think they could extend like that.”

  “Thats why we're out here,” Vera said, handing him his sword that the Celestial knocked out of his hands. “Your power as well as Sya’s are difficult to train and experiment with in a training environment. You need things to test them out on. Things that won't be missed.”

  She extended a hand, which Arden graciously took before she pulled him to his feet.

  “Are you okay?” She asked.

  “Just peachy.”

  The group of Starborn gathered around the dead Celestial. Its white blood dripped from where Arden stabbed it with its own appendages, staining the grass.

  “That was a good spear strike,” Sya said, running her finger down the makeshift spear.

  “I was praying it would penetrate,” Arden said.

  “Men do that often.”

  “I’m serious. I was worried that it would shatter against its hide.”

  “Red-tier protostars are just barely above mundane,” Vera said. “It had some moves, but it was still fragile. Most red-tiers are glass cannons. Same goes for us three.”

  All eyes turned to Savish, their resident butcher.

  “The antlers are the most valuable part here,” she said. “The hide is alright too, but it's only slightly better than the hide of a normal deer. Better to just remove the antlers then eat the rest.”

  Arden looked at the three antlers that remained on the streamer stag’s head. These ones were rigid already, as they had been since it began to charge, so they wouldn't be cut as easily as Arden did before.

  “How should I-?”

  Just as Arden began to speak, Savish slashed with her knives cleanly through the base of the antlers in a single swipe.

  “I guess that works,” Arden said and brought his hand to the corpse.

  With a mental command, the tendrils bit down into its flesh and began to absorb the biomass. Blood, bone, all of it would be used to satiate Arden.

  “This is going to take a while,” Arden said, fighting off the volatile feeling of endless hunger inside of him.

  Savish put a hand on Sya’s shoulder.

  “I’ll take the poisoner with me to try and scout out some more Celestials.”

  “Stay safe,” Vera said.

  “I always do, photograph Satellites notwithstanding.”

  With that, Savish brought Sya deeper into the wilds, leaving Arden and Vera behind so Arden could devour the entirety of the streamer stag.