After inspecting the core for a while, Victor was about to put it down and focus on examining the rest of the monster's body. However, at that moment, he stopped as he looked at the core again. His eyes squinted as he put it closer to his eyes.
"That's energy that's emitting light, I suppose." He muttered. The light in the core was rather strong, or at least stronger than Victor's core. That naturally made him think.
"Can I absorb the energy within the core?"
The answer would be to naturally try, however, before doing that, he decided to wait a little. He wanted to see if the core was losing energy as the time was passing or not. That information would also reveal to him if his core was constantly using energy in some form or not.
'Well, a few minutes should be more than enough to determine if that's the case.' He thought to himself as he put the core down.
Meanwhile, he went back to the fishing rod and checked if he caught anything. Sadly, it didn't seem like the bait was working much. Even though it had caught something a few hours ago.
'Maybe I should just go down and hunt underwater… That could be more efficient. But, I have to wait till my shoulder heals.'
Victor didn't know how long that would take but he at least was certain it would be less than normal as his Runic Energy would boost the recovery speed by a considerable margin.
After that, he checked the pot and pulled it out of the fire. 'The salt separated, I finally have fresh water to drink.'
When he was done with that, he finally inspected the core. After a closer look, he concluded.
"It seems it's not leaking energy, more or less."
'That means most likely, unless I actively try to use Runic Energy, it won't be used on its own. Noted.'
After that, Victor finally came to the crucial part. Closing his eyes, Victor held the core tightly as he tried to apply the same method with the core as he would do with the world around him. He didn't know if the energy within the core was worth absorbing or not but he was willing to experiment.
'Even if it turns out to be a disaster. It's something worth learning, I suppose.' He thought to himself as he exhaled a small breath.
At first, nothing weird happened and the core didn't seem to listen to his will. However, that didn't last long as a few seconds later, something changed. Out of nowhere, he felt a mysterious energy flow through his hand and straight into his body. The energy felt different from the one in the air.
It was stronger and came in considerably bigger doses than the one in the atmosphere. So much so Victor felt his core react to it in a different manner, greedily absorbing all that energy like a starved beast.
In a matter of seconds, Victor felt almost 1/4th of his core getting filled with energy. He was naturally shocked by such an outcome.
'What is happening?' He asked himself, almost losing focus for a second. He had never experienced anything like this before in his life. But, he didn't feel anything bad so he didn't stop at all.
A while later, the mysterious energy stopped flowing which made Victor open his eyes again and stare at the core. In his hand, all he could see was a colorless rock. All the runes had disappeared along with the energy in the rock itself.
Then, his eyes looked down at his body. 'I feel considerably stronger…'
Blinking in shock, he didn't have the words to describe the change he felt. Just a few minutes were more than enough to boost his power this much. It was almost ridiculous how efficient that was.
'Not only absorbing cores is better… No, this is the way to do it!'
At first, he thought absorbing the air around him was the way to go. But, the surprise came at the most unexpected time in the most unexpected ways.
Then, his eyes shifted to his shoulder injury. Even though it was still looking very bad, the bleeding had completely stopped and he could even start feeling some itchiness and numbness there, meaning that the healing process had started.
"This is insane…" He muttered. "No, this is quite ridiculous."
Running his hand through his hair, he put the core down. "Killing that monster was worth it. No, killing monsters in general is very worth it."
He knew that if a simple bird like this one had such an effect, stronger monsters were bound to give him more benefits which also meant that there was a reason for him to go out of his ways and hunt monsters.
"It's a very good rewar-"
As he was about to say something, his eyes suddenly widened as he felt a sharp electric current run through his head. Tilting it down, he clenched his teeth as he held his face. His eyes tried to squint, only to widen again as he saw something weird.
For a few seconds, Victor's vision blurred and he saw a very vague image of a blue sky and white clouds. He was moving through those clouds peacefully with some kind of black dots flying all around him. Then, suddenly, those dots scattered and a second later, he started falling.
Before he could even understand what just happened, his vision blurred again and he came back to being normal. The electric shock was still making his head throb, but the weird feeling vanished completely.
"... What the fuck was that?" He muttered in disbelief. "What did I just see?"
As he shook his head, he recalled the image. 'Blue sky? Other… Flying things? That's…'
Quickly, he connected the dots and realized. "Was that a vision? From wh-"
He didn't even need to ask the last question as his eyes wandered to the Albatross monstrosity lying there.
"Was that its memory? Or some fragments of it?" He asked himself as he blinked, trying to get rid of all the blurriness in his eyes. "Could that be… Because I absorbed its core?"
The only possible explanation for what he just experienced was naturally the core he had in front of him. Since it belonged to the monster, and he had consumed it, it triggered some sort of memory in it that was delivered to Victor's head.
"Interesting… Very interesting."
'So, absorbing other creature's cores gives you a fragment of their memory? This is something I didn't expect. But, at the same time, this makes a lot of sense.'
For an odd reason, Victor liked this concept. Even though it was very vague, and perhaps useless for the most part, this could be a key way to reveal many things he would want to know in the future.
Consuming cores of other creatures to know things that only that dead creature knew… It would be quite the game-changer if it wasn't already.
Without realizing it, Victor found himself smiling coldly. "Haha, I might really like my stay here after all. I hate to admit it, but that God might be up to something."
So far, the more Victor discovered about Veritla, the more he grew interested in it. It was already far more enjoyable than Earth and he didn't even leave the small island yet. This was but a small drop and the big pond wasn't that far away.
Looking up, he stared beyond the distant sea. A deep sense of curiosity filled his heart. His eagerness to know what was lying behind that darkness grew, and along with it, his desire to leave grew too.
'Everything comes with its appropriate time. I have to be patient.'
***
*Two Weeks Later*
A//N: Support the book with PS, boys!