Unfortunately, even after all the effort they put into taking it down, the giant beaver didn’t really have any skills either of them were interested in. Rather than the Grade 22 magical beast they’d been hoping for, the beaver ended up only being Grade 18. On top of which, it was also the first three-way gem split they’d encountered so far. Inside its large body, Taylor found a Grade 8 gem with something to do with bones, a Grade 6 gem that would enhance teeth, and a Grade 4 gem that held a skill which would do something with fur.

  Leo was admittedly curious as to what Taylor would look like covered from head to toe in fur like an actual cat, but it wasn’t worth changing any of their held gems just to test it out.

  Taylor was clearly annoyed that the beaver didn’t hold any gems which she could argue he should swap Rage with, but she tried not to let it show. Instead, the two of them spent the next few hours sitting atop the furry corpse, cultivating the power radiating off the giant beaver. Luckily for Taylor, it seemed Grade 18 was just barely close enough to her current soul rank that she didn’t get another soulache from breathing in the raw power. That said, she did still sit far closer to him on the beaver than was necessary, and Leo didn’t miss how she leaned against him while he meditated.

  She’s probably still worried about me flying off the handle again, he thought to himself in between breaths as he felt her shift slightly against his shoulder. Otherwise…

  Leo didn’t even let his mind go down that path, clearing his head with another large inhale of power-infused air as he focused on his outermost soul layer. While he wouldn’t manage to hit rank 17 from this beast, the next one or two of appropriate Grade should be enough to tip him over.

  Regardless of why Taylor was suddenly acting a bit more like a regular house cat than a feral one living in the wild, Leo enjoyed having her close by. Her warmth and even just her simple presence were reassuring in more ways than one. With every week the two of them spent together, he found himself enjoying her company more and more. If there was at least one good thing to come from the loss of his home plane and all the terrible things that had happened to him, it was that he’d found pretty much the best partner for exploring the planarverse that he could have ever hoped for.

  Leo finished his meditation with a small smile on his face, turning to find Taylor carefully monitoring their surroundings. “No threats?”

  “No. This plane seems to like big, solo magical beasts,” she said, turning to look at him. This close and with her no longer glaring, Leo stared at her for a moment as he realized for the first time that Taylor’s irises weren’t actually completely black like he’d first thought. They had an almost invisible, dark purple ring around the outside he’d never noticed before.

  “What?” Taylor asked, tilting her head as she stared right back at him, entirely unfazed by how close they were. “Something on my face?”

  “Just the usual specks of blood,” Leo said, clearing his throat as he hopped off the giant beaver. More confused than anything by the current thoughts running through his mind, he shook his head. “Come on, no sense waiting around here. Assuming this plane actually has a night, we want to find someplace we can hole up before that happens.”

  “We can’t leave!” Taylor demanded, jumping down and crossing her arms in front of him.

  “Why not?” Leo asked, before following her gaze and realizing what he’d almost forgotten. “Ah, of course… How could I forget?”

  “I’ll get some wood,” Taylor grinned, darting off into the forest.

  And thus, rather than continuing deeper into the plane and working on finding someplace to set up camp, Leo instead found himself grilling slabs of giant beaver over an open flame as Taylor sat beside him, hungrily eying the meat as her mouth watered. Conveniently, the giant pile of wood shavings that the beaver had gnawed off the tree had made starting the fire incredibly simple.

  Simple enough that Taylor had instead run all the way back to the scene of their previous battle and retrieved a few of the spider’s severed legs to go with their meal. Hurray.

  “How did you manage to find your way there and back again?” Leo asked as he flipped a chunk of beaver and tossed a few more spices onto it. While magical beast meat was pretty much cursed to always taste terrible ninety-nine percent of the time, he’d still do whatever he could to alleviate that as much as possible. “We trekked for a good bit since that fight.”

  “I followed our scent,” Taylor said, tapping her nose as her eyes never once left the steaming meat. “Simple enough.”

  “Wow. I knew your nose was good, but that’s pretty impressive,” Leo said, his mind growing curious. “So, now I feel like I have to ask… what do I smell like?”

  “Spices,” Taylor shrugged. “And me.”

  “Wait, seriously?” he asked, gingerly turning the spider legs over and making sure they didn’t accidentally touch the beaver. “You can find me… by smelling the you, on me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Huh… I guess we are around one another pretty much constantly,” Leo muttered, his attention going back to the meat.

  The meat was finished up soon enough, and the two of them dug in. Like always, Leo prepared himself for the horrid taste of gamy, half-spoiled flesh that they always got from cooking magical beasts. But to his equal parts surprise and horror, the meal wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be.

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  The spider legs were actually pretty good.

  …The spider legs were actually really good.

  “This is great!” Taylor exclaimed, looking more excited than he’d ever seen her before as she crunched away at the steaming leg. “It tastes… It tastes awesome! It’s delicious!”

  “I didn’t even put any spices on them…” Leo muttered, staring in shock at the spider leg in his hand he’d taken a small bite out of just to appease his partner. “If it tastes this good all on its own… a little salt and pepper… some butter, some garlic… oh Lords help me, I can’t believe I’m even thinking about this.”

  “We need to find more spiders,” Taylor decided, shoving the rest of her spider leg into her mouth and beaming at him. “I knew we’d find a monster that tasted good sooner or later!”

  “But did it have to be a spider?” Leo asked, shuddering even as he took another bite out of his steaming spider leg, crunching through it before taking an even larger one. “Damn it, it’s so good! I hate this!”

  “If you don’t want it-”

  Before Taylor could finish that sentence, Leo shoved the rest of his spider leg into his mouth, enjoying the rich flavors and crispiness of the leg even as he shuddered one last time at what he was eating. Unlike Taylor, who seemed to be able to eat literally anything and everything without care, Leo was just a little more picky about what he put in his body.

  Spider was definitely a new one.

  Swallowing, he turned to find Taylor smirking at him, looking far too pleased with herself in his opinion.

  “I feel like you’re trying a lot of new expressions today for the first time,” Leo chuckled, starting to clean up and put his cooking gear away. “Why the smirk? Because after forcing me to eat dozens of truly horrific magical beasts we finally found one that actually tastes good?”

  “Yes,” Taylor said simply, nodding at him. “Really good.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” Leo snorted, focusing on ensuring his gear was secured. Taylor’s ego was already inflated enough from their surprise find. If he admitted to her that the discovery of a new, genuinely delicious magical beast would be front-page news all across the Nexus, he just knew she’d end up forcing him to eat some truly disgusting magical beasts one day.

  Looking around to make sure he got everything, Leo’s eyes fell on the beaver’s corpse one final time. Despite knowing that the plane would continue to simply conjure more beavers just like this one until it was cleansed, it always felt like a waste leaving such a large corpse behind. Even if the meat was pretty much inedible, there were plenty of other parts of the magical beast that could be utilized. The beaver’s fur could be repurposed into blankets and clothing, its spikes could potentially be turned into tools of some sort, and its teeth…

  Its teeth…

  Leo paused what he was doing, slowly placing his spice pouch back on the ground as his mind raced.

  “Leo?” Taylor asked, tilting her head as she looked back and forth between him and the beast corpse he was staring at. “What is it?”

  “You know how I mentioned basic weapons are pretty worthless as gem holders start fighting higher and higher-Grade magical beasts?” he asked, trying to figure out if his idea would work half as well as he was hoping it would. “Well, there’s pretty much only one way around that. By using parts of magical beasts in the construction of weapons.”

  “How? Aren’t most weapons made of metal?”

  “I don’t know all the exact details, but there are techniques. I think a lot of them involve grinding bones of high-Grade beasts down and adding them to the alloy in the forging process. But there are some Cartographers famous for going a step further than that even. I heard one of the Planar Lords has an axe she created from the tooth of a dragon she personally defeated. It’s little more than just one of the dragon’s teeth secured to a stick, but apparently, it radiates so much power that anyone with a soul rank below 40 can’t even get near it without passing out.”

  “So… you want to turn the beaver’s teeth into a new sword?” Taylor surmised, squinting at the giant teeth. “… I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  “Not a sword, no,” Leo muttered as he walked over to them. “They’re incredibly sharp at the tip, but the sides are actually pretty dull. Otherwise I would have sliced my fingers off when I went to grab them. Something else I probably should have thought of before attempting, but with Rage active, the thought didn’t even cross my mind.”

  “Okay, not a sword. Some sort of spear?”

  “No, I have a much stupider idea than that,” Leo said, grinning as he grabbed the hilt of his broken sword from where it had fallen. Half of the blade was still attached, which was more than enough for his purposes.

  Taylor watched curiously as he slowly and methodically cut the beaver’s giant front teeth free from its head. The incisors were even heavier than he’d imagined, which was perfect for what he was thinking. Each one was nearly the length of his arm, and Leo tried holding one in place, shifting his arm about with the weight to see how it would feel.

  “Gauntlets?” Taylor asked, tilting her head in confusion. “You want to make gauntlets out of the teeth?”

  “Yep,” Leo admitted, his grin only growing wider as he decided he liked the way they felt. “If I secure each tooth to my forearm, it extends my reach by almost a foot and a half. Not to mention I can use them as blunt weapons by slashing, or piercing by thrusting. I think it will work!”

  “Your big idea was to take the beast’s teeth… and slap them on your arms?” Taylor asked, looking at him blankly for a moment, before breaking out into her own eager grin. “Awesome! How are you going to secure them?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it,” Leo muttered, thinking back to his old makeshift spear he’d put together all those planes ago. Back then he’d torn strips of his shirt off to tie his knife to a stick, but that wouldn’t work this time. Not only because he didn’t want to ruin his much nicer clothing, but because it would have the same problem as his sword. If he wanted this idea to last at all, he needed magical beast parts to make it work. He could try and create some sort of rope from the tendons of the beaver, but that would probably take some time and was sort of a gross idea. What he needed was something readily available. Something light and like a rope. Something like…

  Leo laughed as he realized they already had access to the perfect material. Tucking the teeth under his arm, he snagged his bag and threw it over his shoulder.

  “Taylor… Any chance you could find that spider we killed one more time?”

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