A curious discovery

"Mastery went up... so maybe finishing it off felt easier because of the bone weapon passive ability... Ugh, the Durability dropped down so much it is not even funny, and... huh...? Another set of question marks appeared just like that...?! Is it even possible...?"

The young man thought to himself out loud staring at the dialogue window with his soul artifact's description.

"..."

Viria looked between the three monster corpses at the ground and the hatch and bit his lips.

"Scweeee!"

*thunk*

In the end, he breathed out, and despite the screech of another mole-rabbit, announcing the beast's approach, the young man ended up closing the hatch.

Despite the unthinkably nice welcome that he received, Viria wasn't going to risk losing a potential monster core to anyone else.

In the first place, it was very possible that any monster cores found would be confiscated, and even if he would receive compensation, at his stage nothing could replace the ingredient vital for increasing his cultivation level.

Therefore, instead of using up the rest of his soul artifact's durability, the young man chose to spend it on carving out the corpses that he already had in his possession.

After all, there was also a supply of bones that could be used to repair the prison shiv, so in the end, it would not be a loss.

The only problem was that in neither of his lives did Viria ever carve a dead animal...

"There is always a first time for everything..."

The young man sighed and sat on the ground, and pulled the first corpse towards himself.

Cutting it up was a lot harder than he thought – at one point he even decided to use the rabbit strike because the creature's furry skin was just that hard to pierce.

With only the book knowledge Viria was aware of where the monster core would crystalize if it would appear, so after inserting his hand in the opening he cut, and stirring up the mole-rabbit's entrails with no avail, the young man decided that hutting the corpse would be the best and most efficient way of finding out.

So he grabbed everything he could and pulled it out.

"..."

The smell was honestly awful, and to make things worse, Viria suffered through it without gaining anything.

Clearly, the monster core did not crystalize within that specimen.

"Tsk..."

Viria clicked his tongue and was about to reach out for the second carcass, but stopped and glanced at the one in front of him.

The durability of the shiv was decreasing with each hit, it would really be better to restore it while he got the chance or his soul artifact would break before he could check up the remaining monsters.

With no experience in skinning any creature, Viria just cut off the flesh the best he could to get to the bones.

Pulling it all apart was a real chore that wasted a comparable amount of energy to actually fighting the beast...

"Whew...!"

But all in all, after however long it took, Viria let out a relieved sound while leaning back with a stack of all the bones he recognized as the same that was used to remake his artifact.

"Now then... repair."

The young man breathed out and declared in satisfaction...

[You don't have any – mole-rabbit bone trash – in your possession. Repair impossible.]

"HUH?!"

Just to gasp in disbelief once a dialogue window that he certainly didn't expect popped up in his face.

"Um, excuse me?! Then what in the world are those things here?!"

Viria scoffed at the audacity of the dialogue window and pointed at the neat stack of bones.

[Mole-rabbit bones (material)]

As he did, a helpful dialogue option popped up in front of the pile, clearing up the doubts.

"...huh...? Wait... that's not how things are supposed to work! A person is supposed to only see the description of their own soul artifact and nothing else!"

Viria called out the inconsistency in what he knew and what he saw but received no answer to his question from the cold, uncaring world.

"What is this then?!"

The young man scoffed in anger and pointed at the other corpse that he was yet to dismantle.

[Mole-rabbit (corpse) – Mole-rabbit is a low-low grade monster commonly found between the third and fifth floors of various dungeons. Its deceptively low grade makes it the number one reason for the deaths of the cultivators in their low-low levels. In places with no farm animals, mole-rabbits are the go-to source of meat as their flesh is very nutritious.]

"..."

Not actually expecting anything, Viria was rendered speechless once the dialogue window with the description did pop up.

It wasn't an amazing description and it didn't give any details or hints about the best way to deal with the monster, but it was there!

"...did I always have a built-in appraisal and never realized it or something...?"

The stunned young man straightened his back and asked himself, staring into the distance with a blank expression.

Some pieces of information are harder to take in than others, and a realization like that was only possible because of Viria's memories from another life.

"...anyway, the best thing that this can help me with is identifying what is considered trash or not... Instead of letting something like that get to me, I should focus on restoring the durability of my soul artifact... and that requires me turning those bones from the material into the trash..."

The young man took a deep breath and voiced out his thoughts in an attempt to compose himself.

Surprisingly, that actually worked and he did feel calmer afterward.

He picked up one of the bones from the pile and looked at it.

What was the difference between this one and the ones that were considered trash...?

The first obvious answer was that the latter one came from a roasted mole rabbit, so being exposed to high temperatures seemed like the most likely reason.

The other option was that Viria did try his best to eat them, so he at least left some bitemarks into them.

"..."

One look at the bloodied bones freshly out of the corpse was enough for the young man to cross off the attempt of using his teeth from the list.