Chapter 232: Chapter 233 – Mind Pearls

Peter leaves the inn and is standing on the wall. With a glare out over the plains around the waypoint, he takes a step onto the nearby hill and shakes his head. “Who’s trying to mess with my kingdom? Yubjubs don’t just show up. Meh, the sages and scryers can look into it.”

With a sigh, Peter walks off into the distance. As he moves through the hills and forests, he counts the various monsters in the area. Though this only confirms the fact that their presence is unnatural. Even if they are multidimensional horrors that doesn’t explain them only being along the road.

Still not his problem though, and he makes it to the city and turns around. Along the way he only counted about 35 of the beasts and all of them quite young, each having less than 50 yubs a piece. Just another marker that this isn’t natural. A true herd of yubjubs would have at least two mature members.

Not that he will have Rosha and her party fight them all, even if they are quite young. Plus a few had wandered a bit off the path, so had to be culled, regardless. It would leave enough for the three to get an excellent series of fights in though so no harm no foul.

A shake of his head and Peter steps down from the city’s wall to next to the first out of place yubjub. All the yubs turn towards him and hiss. Peter rolls his eyes and takes out his bow. No need to waste actual magic on this. His bow has the right enchants on it to deal with this kind of nonsense.

He fires one arrow off, and it covers the distance to the closest yub in a slow and lazy fashion. The yub jumps away to avoid the arrow and easily dodges. Then the arrow pierces it through the eye and sinks all the way into its body. Moments later a storm of arrows spews out, tearing the yub’s body to pieces.

These many arrows fly out and pierce the other yubs. This time though, instead of sinking in like a pebble into a lake, these arrows shred the flesh. No calm disappearance, just pure violence. The yubs don’t stand a chance as their bodies seem to melt away. This isn’t the end, though. Once the arrows finish with the yubs all but one of them fades away. The last arrow, which was the original one Peter had shot is now half gone, stuck floating in the air.

What Peter sees isn’t such a mundane scene, though. Instead, he can see beyond the surface level of what is happening to the levels below. The arrow isn’t stuck, but instead the front half is burrowing into the cross-dimensional hole through which the yubjub’s trunk had connected to the yub.

While the arrow’s rear seems to be stationary, that is very much not the truth for the front half. Through an impossibly long tunnel smaller than a hair it flies with magical certainty. On the other side of the tunnel, Peter can see the yubjub trying to pull its trunk away. Shame that part of the magic in Peter’s arrow is keeping the tunnel open.

Then the arrow is through and the back half shots into the hole, no longer needed to keep it open. On the other side, the arrow flies out through the trunk, piercing into the center of the yubjub’s blank forehead. Its fortyish trunks all flail about with blood splattering off the ragged ends. Though this could be seen as more of a dying gasp.

Peter stands back and shakes his head. While he can see it, he is unable to loot the body. The yubs aren’t worth anything either, so today and tomorrow is going to be a wash. At least with the swarm cats he could extract the mind pearls. Though that reminds him he needs to tell the group about them. The System won’t look too highly upon him stealth ninjaing the loot of their kills. He stretches and walks off to the next yubjub that needs his personal touch.

Next morning the party wakes up and gathers around a table for breakfast. Peter joins them and sets a small semi-transparent ball that seems to be made of a pink gel. “So since we won’t be fighting swarm cats, I can divvy out the loot. This here is the only thing of worth on a swarm cat besides the simple value of the meat. Though that doesn’t have much value and is only used as feed for the more carnivorous livestock.”

“Anyway, this is a mind pearl and I am sure with a name like that you probably have a guess on where it forms. You’re wrong, but you had a guess, so that is better than nothing. These pearls of brain matter form at the base of the spine, right where the back legs begin. The pearl helps all the swarm cats work better together. Not all swarms need a thing like this. A good example is that most insect swarms aren’t even a special monster but just a lot of some specific insect.”

“Cats on the other hand need all the help they can get on working together, especially with how dense the swarm cat is. While these pearls have a few different uses the most common one is the potion of instinctive teamwork. Very popular with armies as it can let an entire army work together like never before. It isn’t telepathy or anything, but just enhancing the parts of you focused on cues in the environment.”

“Now these pearls aren’t worth hundreds of gold or anything. At least not here. We are the local leader in all things swarm related. Anyway, I plan to turn them into one of my contacts in the city to sell them. Do you want to wait to see what they sell for, or do you want to sell it to me directly?”