“You must have a Tier Three Star to enhance it with the lowest grade of Soul Cores,” I informed the men, and heard some of them curse and groan. Obviously they hadn’t gotten all their Stars to the Third Tier. “And you can only enhance to Tier 5 once you have at least one seven-set of Tier 4, of course, so getting a Soul Egg is useless without Soul Cores first. You don’t get the benefits of both.”

More groans behind, but understanding that there were no shortcuts to this system.

“What are you asking of us, Miss Fae?” the Mick asked carefully.

“I want my kills. However, vivic fire is attracted by death, and so a good chunk of the Spiders you killed are likely on fire, too. If they aren’t, you probably have some salvaging you want to do, but we have to be quick, as the scavengers are going to be coming out now that the Spiders have passed.

“If you’re willing to help me get my stuff, I will help you get all the stuff off your kills. I think you’ll agree that having someone who can cut down a Commander-class Tarantula would be good to have along?”

“YES!” “Hell, yes!” “GODDAMN RIGHT!” “Damn right!” rose quickly behind me at that.

“Excellent. We’re going to be back on the surface in a few minutes. The Spiders should be some distance away.

“Master Sam, we are going to impose on you to deliver us to all the carcasses with alacrity, if you can. How fast are you all at looting a carcass?”

“It takes us about a minute to harvest all the valuable parts,” the Mick answered after a moment.

“That with all of you, or just one of you?” I asked back at them.

“We don’t have enough tools for all of us to work on one carcass,” the Mick admitted, and then paused.

“Fuck, most of the tools are in the truck!” Glenn muttered for all of them, and the rest of them groaned again.

“The outsider is ignorant. How important are the tools?” I asked. “More importantly, what’s the value comparison between a Soul Crystal and the parts you want?”

It was Burt who spoke up, “A Soul Remnant is worth twenty times the haul of any Spider, if we were to sell it. But... we have other stuff to buy, and we still have to eat,” he reminded everyone.

“And buy a new truck,” Bjorn muttered softly. “Damn, I just got my seat the way I liked it, too!”

“Good enough. I find myself without spending money at this time, too.” I tapped Noble, who had been getting a lot of attention from these fellows, none of whom were carrying an Implement, although their expressions were more that I was a poseur than anything resembling envy.

The glaive-like Force Blade snapped out, all golden edge, humming to attract their attention as they stared at it in shock.

“This should be able to chop through the legs and the skull to free up the eyes and mandibles. Captain, think up a system to get everything lined up as fast as possible. Our priority will be retrieving the Soul Crystals, whose value to you and I is far greater than a few Spiders. We will salvage from the Spiders until the incidence of scavengers is too high, and then we will get out of there with our prizes.

“Is that good enough for everyone?” There was a general chorus of agreements from behind me. They probably used snips of some kind to chop off the legs. I didn’t know about the eyes, so I asked about them.

“The eyes petrify when they die,” the Mick explained quickly. “You crack the skull and pry ‘em out with chisels and hammers.”

“What do they use them for?” I had to ask. Certainly not ornamental jewelry...

“They grind them into lenses, conduits, and ball bearings for some of the high-end machines,” Red spoke up from behind them. “For that reason, full sets of eight are worth more than incidental eyes. Some Beasts with Earth Affinity love eating the eyes, especially some of the Birds. Used in their gizzards, I think. The spikes in the legs generally get ignored, but are used for stone-cutting tools, especially sculpting sets. Even the bristles can see use as pins and needle-heads.”

“Not arrows or bolts or darts?” I had to ask.

“Welllll... such things might be useful against people, but you could just use metal and be fine,” the Mick spoke up after an awkward moment. “But we can’t drive them with enough force to really hurt a Beast, you know?”

Because not everyone could use Void magick’s TK to really accelerate the things, was left unspoken.

It took me a second to realize that I had automatically been expecting them to carry firearms. They were in fatigues and wearing some light body armor, but they actually didn’t have any firearms on them that I could recall.

This world hadn’t developed firearms, despite developing trucks, which meant automobiles? That was pretty damn strange...

One of the things Aelryinth had done on a lark was design an Optimal Technological Schema. It was basically meant as something where, if you had nothing at all, what could/should you try to develop first to accelerate the technology curve?

By at least having a format, if you were prevented from developing a needed area, such as, oh, electronics, you could try to find alternates to it in some other branch.

Gunpowder and other explosive chemicals were definitely one of the most important trees, but naturally being able to find and refine the needed chemicals, and then understanding the various processes for the evolution of gunpowder, firing systems, and explosives, was another stretch.

It did mean, however, that I had all the chemical and alchemical basis I needed to introduce firearms into a magical world. I only had to find out if they were actually viable here.

None of the men had anything more substantial than a utility knife on them, probably for survival purposes, not as a weapon.

That didn’t surprise me, honestly. What surprised me was that none of the weapons were magical, which only reinforced how useless they were against the Beasts. If you didn’t have magic, you were just dead... and it better be strong magic, because Novice-level magic took multiple hits to take down most Beasts of the Servant-Class, and unless there were multiple Castings of it stacking, was next to useless against the Warrior-Class.

These men weren’t actually wearing much that was magical at all. I saw some Potions or Elixirs or something on them, probably for Healing, and there were some herbs with whiffs of magical properties in what looked like healing kits of some kind, but really, they had jack.

And here I was waving around a magical Staff, and they were gaping at it like it was something they’d never seen before.

“That thing can cut through a Spider’s hide?” the Mick asked with great interest.

“Like a rotten potato,” I assured him, letting it recede. “Doesn’t do much good if the things are really big, unless, of course, you ladle in a spell along it right to their insides...”

“That sounds very risky to pull off,” short, stocky Big John piped up.

“Well, duh! You don’t go charging up on them with your Glaive raised like an idiot. You use it when they’ve finally gotten to you and you can’t run away. Stick ‘em and fry them on the inside before they turn you into crimson gibbets.”

The big man Bjorn chuckled. “You sound like you have experience at that?” he asked for all of them, rather admiring.

Well, wasn’t that an interesting question. In the Beast Realm, I actually hadn’t fought many Beasts at all, except the big Rats early on, and that Corrupted Bat. I had pumped spells into more than a few Tainted Beasts, and other native creatures of the Dark Realm, however. “Most of my experience is admittedly against Shades and Undead and their servants,” I told them calmly, “so please forgive my inexperience with other creatures. I have killed a few Spiders before, but they were webspinners and ambushers, not wandering predators like these Azurite Tarantulas.” I had also basically Detected them, then lit them up for the Beasts with me to tear apart or cut down, at least until later. Most such Spiders were good at Poison and/or Shadows, with some being good at Cursing, too.

“You... fought with the Undead?” Sam the Driver asked for all of them, all of them going quiet again.

“That vivic flame was basically harnessed to deal with them,” I replied absently. “After all, they are dead, so it will eventually burn them away, and they’ve no more resistance to it than kindling does to fire. But fighting them is very different from fighting monsters, especially a horde of monsters. Given how well you all fight together, I’m sure you’ve a great deal more experience at putting down Beasts than I do.”

“We’ve got almost four years now playing the Hunter game after we left the Marines!” the Mick informed me proudly. “Seen a lot of fighting in that time!”

I just nodded. “You’re all at the high end of Adepts in one Element, which is pretty good. Is there any reason you’ve not gone higher?”

I could hear the instant embarrassed shuffle in their steps, but it was Red who replied firmly, “Money. A person really gets only one chance to break through to Mage. If they miss it, the odds of making it with another try are less than half, and they just go down.

“To max out that one chance, you need a Nebula Vein to help you, and luck.”

I had shit-all of a clue what they were talking about, but I just nodded along wisely. “And those are not cheap.”

“Two hundred grand each, and that’s for the common Elements!” spat the Mick with feeling, while the others groaned and shook their heads. “Twice that or more for the rarer ones!”

“And then the coin-flip,” I nodded, and all they all sighed heavily. “So, you really need the money, I get it. Just let me say this... getting Tier 4 on your Stars can easily double your chances of making Mage.”

I had their utmost attention, so intense the Manafield was popping as they cried out and swore in disbelief at that bit of news.

“So, let’s make damn sure we get all the Soul Crystals, as that’s going to do as much or more for your breakthrough than a Nebula Vein, shall we?”

There was not the slightest bit of resistance to that idea.

“Excellent. I’m heading upwards now.

“When we break the surface, I’m going to start scanning for Soul Crystals and pointing the way to go. I’ll collect them in my Void Pocket and we’ll split them afterwards.

“The rest of you will be on security against the scavengers who’ll be coming in. When we’ve collected all the Soul Crystals there, we’ll start hacking apart Spider corpses and making some pocket money as fast as we can.

“Everyone good with that?” I asked. There was a chorus of agreements from behind.

And then someone cleared their throat.