[Analyse Shadowcat (Low-Grade Stage 1 Spiritual Beast)? Cost: 0.1 years of lifespan.]
The cost was laughably low.
’Yes.’
A wave of data flowed into his mind.
[Shadowcat: A predator infused with trace amounts of shadow and wind aspect Qi. Valued for its pelt and its beast core.]
Shadow Pelt: Can be crafted into leather armour with minor stealth properties.
Quality: Common Tier (Low-Grade)
Value: Three low-grade spirit stones.
Beast Core: Contains the creature’s essence. Can be used as a material in alchemy.
Quality: Common Tier (Low-Grade)
Value: One low-grade spirit stone.
Rhys’s eyes lit up. This changed everything. A common problem cultivators faced after a successful hunt was collecting valuable materials from the monsters.
Not every cultivator wanted to waste their time learning about millions of monsters and their valuable parts. This system feature helped Rhys understand not only the valuable parts but also their value.
This way, he would never miss harvesting precious materials. Now, looking around the forest, he felt like he was inside a treasure trove.
But...
’How can I skin it? And if I skin it, how can I carry the parts?’
He was in a dilemma. It seemed he would have to resort to primitive methods.
He looked down at his hands and sighed.
A short while later, Rhys stared again at the now mangled, lifeless body of the Shadowcat and the materials he had successfully collected. Most of the valuable materials had been destroyed by his carelessness.
He had no butchering skills. If he had, the skinning process would have been much more efficient.
Lifestyle skills like butchering weren’t something one could learn from skill scrolls. One had to train until they naturally acquired the skill.
His System couldn’t help him with that. He had to train like everyone else. Also, despite having mastered ’Spark Fist’ to perfection, the knowledge was merely theoretical.
His foundation was hollow, psychologically, of course. That’s why his killing blow ruined the monster’s head in a single strike, damaging its beast core.
’This is overkill,’ he thought, a sigh escaping his lips.
His strength was monstrous, but it was also crude, like using a siege cannon to hunt a rabbit. The result was effective, but messy and inefficient.
What he possessed was raw power, but he lacked the finesse and the tools required for long-term survival, let alone prosperity.
He had to change his plans a bit.
He needed a proper knife for butchering, pouches for herbs, clothes that didn’t look like they belonged to a beggar, and most importantly, a storage artefact.
The Whisperwood was a treasure trove, but he was like a diver who’d found a sunken galleon full of gold with no way to bring it to the surface.
To get those things, he needed money. Spirit stones. And to get spirit stones, he needed to sell the beast’s valuable parts. It was a frustrating cycle.
His mind drifted back to his childhood, to the stories he’d overheard from his clan elders. Stories of his father, the great Kaelen Ashton.
Kaelen wasn’t just a powerful cultivator, he was a brilliant entrepreneur.
He had built a small empire, a chain of high-end restaurants and auction houses that spanned sixteen of the most prosperous towns in the Azure Province.
After his death, control of that empire had fallen to his family, the Ashton Clan. But his uncles, lacking his father’s vision and strength, had fumbled.
The Thorne family, ever the opportunistic vultures, had moved in, using financial pressure and intimidation to seize control of the most profitable ventures, including the auction houses.
A cold, calculating glint appeared in Rhys’s pitch-black eyes. Before, the thought of his father’s legacy was a distant, melancholy thing.
He had no power to reclaim it, no right to even think about it, and above all, no desire to claim it.
But now... now things were different.
He needed a place where he could sell all his loot efficiently. He had to build an empire of his own so he wouldn’t have to fear facing the world alone.
Rhys didn’t want to be like the solo cultivators he had read about in novels. This world was a brutal place.
It never lacked talent. A talent with enough strength might deter some trouble, but if that talent was a lone wolf, many would also try to tamper with him before he could grow.
A dead talent was useless, after all.
That’s why for his future, he had to build a force of his own, one that would not catch the eyes of interested parties in the initial stages.
Reclaiming his father’s business empire would be the first step in his grander plans.
After all, it was world-breaking in a backwater province like Azure, but in other provinces beyond the Whisperwood, it was just another small fish in the ocean.
Also, he was more than happy to damage the Ashton family. He would never forget how they had cast out a defenseless teenager without mercy.
If he had never awakened the System, Rhys couldn’t imagine the fate that awaited him. After all, hiding to live a long life wasn’t effective.
He learned that by suffering the aftermath of a fight for which he never knew the reasons.
"A family that outcasts its members seems more like a cult than a family," he mumbled.
Rhys then thought about the members cast out before him. They might not have been as lucky as him. Some might have survived, but many might have died.
He now had a perfect justification to inflict damage on the cruel Ashton family. Rhys vigorously nodded his head in righteousness.
He would become a judge now and punish the criminals.
[...more like stealing to me.]
"Cough." Like a deflated balloon, his righteousness disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. It seemed his System couldn’t understand street justice.
He couldn’t blame it; it was just an artificial intelligence, after all.
Rhys rubbed his palms together.
"The Ashtons cast me out. The Thrones stole my father’s life’s work from a family that no longer claims me. Therefore, anything I take from them isn’t stealing.
It’s... reclaiming a lost inheritance. Maybe I should ask for a small service fee for their mismanagement, right, System?"
[If Host thinks so...]
"Hm... that will make me look like a leecher. How about we write off the small service fee?"
[I would advise against that, Host. Every bit of money is money. Also, they enjoyed our profits for free until now.]
The flimsy excuses he and the System had for their future stealing would make the people from both families cough blood in anger. If you want to steal, steal. Why justify it?
But first, he needed a disguise. Walking into a town as a known exile was suicide. What if someone from the family wanted him dead?