Chapter 148 - Slip up (2/2)

Ray wanted to suddenly go crawl into a hole. He tried his best to avoid an awkward situation and started walking away from the two to carve out the crystals from the beast.

”Wait!” Tuffy called out running after the man. ”We can't just take these things for free, let us help you.”

Ray looked at all the beast's corpses around him. Carving a beast and taking out its core took a while and Ray didn't even know which ones contained a core or not. Even with the help of his clone, it would take some time.

”Fine, but you can only keep ten per cent of the cores you take out.”

Candy and Tuffy's eyes lit up. They were actually offering to help for free and never expected a reward but this was something that they couldn't turn down. With their strength, they would have never been able to hunt down intermediate beasts unless it was already wounded from fighting something else.

The two of them got to work and went looking for Crystal cores as quick as they could. While Ray was busy carving one of the beasts, he was wondering why he was being so kind to them. Ray instinctively usually treated everyone he met as a danger but perhaps because these kids looked so powerless to him, he didn't feel any threat what so ever.

Just like how Human's saw ants. It was something he could deal with any time, so if the ants wanted to help Ray instead of hurting him, he would let them. Then Ray noticed that he kept looking in the direction of Candy.

He thought back to his slip up he had made earlier.

”Amy would have looked like her at that age.”

Once they were done carving out the crystal cores the two kids handed Ray all of the crystals they could find and then Ray threw one of the cores back to them.

Tuffy couldn't stop staring at the shiny crystal core.

”What are you going to do now mister?” Candy asked.

Ray had enough crystals for himself to evolve but he needed more for Noir. The Dragon's roar buff had ended long ago and he could only use the skill once a day.

”If you want, we can lead you to some more hunting areas.” Candy said, ”We grew up around here so we know the area pretty well.”

Although Ray had his dragon eyes skill it would only allow him to see so far and currently, he couldn't see any life around him.

”We have to be careful though,” Tuffy suddenly said, ”We need to make sure we stay out of the Mud Carb's territory.”

”Mud Crab?” Ray said as his interest grew.

”Yeah, it's the strongest thing in this area.”

Ray thought about the kid's suggestion for a little while before agreeing to their proposal. Ray needed to get stronger as quickly as possible and who knows how long it would take him to search the swamp for intermediate creatures.

The three of them then decided to move deeper into the swamp. While the kids wanted to do everything they could to avoid the Mud Crab, Ray had a different idea.