The monster bounced back, standing on top of his feet once again.
Elysia wasn't hopeful about its death without any reason. No, it was all within expectation, as the last sonic blast had really brought the monster to its death's door.
The real question was how it was still standing with all this damage.
She could clearly see its face caved in. One of its horns was completely broken, with brown pus flowing out of it. An arm was dangling, barely attached to its shoulder.
Still, it didn't give up... there was a trick up its sleeve. The monster rushed toward them, only to stop a meter away.
Turning around, it aimed its back toward them and flared it open. A large puff of gas and pores exploded from its back, engulfing the area in a sickly green cloud.
Rajeev and Anjali took the full blast. Hugo and Elysia were away, but even they took enough to get disoriented.
Like Anjali had predicted, it really had a hallucinative effect as they began to see things that weren't there. They tried moving right… but instead, they lifted their hand… none of it was making sense.
To clear the pores, Elysia tried using a sonic blast, but instead, she began coughing. It seemed two sonic blasts were her limit for now.
Looking at them, the monster walked. It was eager to feed on its prey. This surprise attack of its had always succeeded; no prey of its had ever walked away alive after getting hit by it.
This one would be no different either.
Limping, it moved toward the mist of pores, when something moved toward it. From the cloud of green mist, a lone hand reached for its throat.
Caught off guard like that, it tried to move away, but luck wasn't on its side this time.
"Cough! Where... do you think you are going..."
A hoarse voice reached its ear… and the monster shivers.
It wasn't because he had understood them… no, it was because the monster could feel the intent behind these words. He could understand what they were supposed to convey.
Feeling its end was coming like that, the monster flared around, trying to escape. There was so much to do... it didn't want to die yet. It tried everything, but alas, it was to no avail.
The monster struggled, but the grip didn't loosen a bit.
The essence concentrated around the hand began to seep into the monster. Soon, it began to suck away the very life inside of the monster and then feed it to his master.
Rajeev moved out of the mist and got close to the monster. The life sucked more and more as the wound around his stomach began to heal. Before it could fully heal, though, something whispered in his ear,
[You have killed a Tainted Primor, Sporehorn.]
Letting the monster go, Rajeev inspected the wound and sighed, "It was already near its deathbed... there wasn't much life to it. Still, I can do with it for now."
Nodding his head, he looked around. The monster was dead, but the mist was still there. He was about to move inside to save them, but stopped as something appeared in front of him.
An orb was floating on top of the monster's corpse.
'What is this...'
Thinking, he moved his hand, and soon it got sucked into his hand. Before he could even think anything, a familiar voice rang in his ear, announcing what it was.
[You have received a Remnant.]
'Remnant?…' After finding the word familiar, he remembered where he had seen it, '...wasn't something like that around in the Desire screen or whatever?'
Thinking, he was about to open his status but stopped, realizing that standing here was like begging to get killed. Not only that, the last two sonic blasts must have gotten the attention of the monster.
Because of all this, it was even more dangerous now.
Thinking, Rajeev moved toward the group and somehow brought them back to their senses—or, at least, tried to. Continuously inhaling the spores had made them highly intoxicated.
After so much work, he could only manage to bring enough senses to get moving.
Looking around, he found a field filled with some really big mushrooms around him. Moving around, he soon found one with a hollowed stem. As he looked inside, he found it big enough to fit all four of them.
So that is exactly what he did. With how disoriented they were, it was really bad to settle them, but in the end, he managed to do that.
As he placed them inside the stem, for some reason, they instantly went to sleep.
It is for the good… Realizing it would be less work for him now, he sighed and moved on to do what he was doing.
Opening the screen, he looked at them,
----------------------------------------------
Name: Rajeev Kumar
Age: 18
Rank: Primor
Desire: Necromancer
Ember:
Remnant: [Sporehorn]
----------------------------------------------
At the very bottom of the list, Rajeev could see a new addition. Without wasting a second, he clicked on the mantras describing \[Sporehorn].
Soon, a new screen appeared beside the main one:
----------------------------------------------
Remnant: [Sporehorn]
Remnant Description: Beautiful once, but got devoured by the rot.
Rank: Primor
Tier: Drifter
Attributes: None
Longing: It wants nothing more than to evolve further.
Blessing: The more it evolves, the further you will grow.
----------------------------------------------
'Huh! What's with tier... There was nothing like this in my desire, right?'
Remembering, Rajeev opened his desire page, and certainly, there wasn't anything like that there. Looking back at its description, he muttered.
'Is it exclusive to Remnant? Must be it.'
Having no guide available to him, he could only hypothesize with the information available to him, and that's what he did instead of wasting his time pondering over it.
He found two new things as well:
[Longing] and [Blessing], but having nothing else to compare it with, he just left them there and moved on to the next problem at hand.
'Is there any use to them...'
As he thought of this, something changed inside of him. New information about Remnant appeared in his mind. As he understood it, a smile appeared all over his face.
So, this is how it is used... thinking, he whispered the name, and something magical happened. An orb appeared in front of him, and soon it began to mold itself into something else.
Seconds passed, and now a monster was standing in front of him... only this time, it wasn't that disgusting to look at.
'So it is like a summons,' he smiled, looking at the same Sporehorn he had killed just a few moments ago.