The police station was right next to the metro circuit near his house, making it convenient for Euri to visit the officer in charge of his case. The young officer recognized him almost immediately.
But the conversation that followed was not pleasant.
"You do understand that you're the only living link we have in this case, right? If we let you withdraw yourself from it, those three murderers are never getting convicted. That shaky video on your cheap camera won't survive the legal jargon any capable defense attorney can pull out. Without you, all we have is secondary evidence."
Euri shook his head and raised a finger to interrupt the officer's disgruntled tirade.
"First of all, even with my involvement, I highly doubt you're going to be able to catch them. The further this drags out, the higher the chances are that they come for me and my family. I don't want to be the victim of your incompetence."
The rage surfacing in the officer's eyes wasn't enough to deter Euri.
"Where was your enthusiasm in the last fifty hours? If you're not going to put your heart and soul behind catching those criminals, how can you even hold that morally superior ground to lecture me? I'm not breaking the law by withdrawing my name!"
The officer laughed at his face in anger.
"Not directly, but you've already given your account of the incident once. The report cannot be erased without a court order. You have to appear in the court and explain yourself even if you want to withdraw."
Euri wasn't certain how much of that answer was true. But he didn't have the money to contact a reliable lawyer to ask for advice. Feeling troubled, he could only leave the station.
After returning home without a hitch, he immediately logged into the game. As expected, the sacred ground core was back to its full power. He immediately turned on the hunting mode, and an hour later, the results were in.
Two creatures had been caught by the tentacles, unsurprisingly. But this time, they were a little different. Until now, the creatures that had tried to invade the sacred ground could be considered ordinary.
But the two massive centipedes rolling on the ground under the tentacles were anything except ordinary. They were almost as large as the dog!
[ Giant Centipede ]
[ Rank-0 Lifeform ]
[ Physique: 0.6 ]
[ Special Attribute: Growth ]
Both centipedes also had the same stats, which was also a first for him. He had gotten creatures with the same affix before, or of the same species, but never together, and certainly not clones of each other.
Euri chose to let one cultivate, but instead of rushing over towards the gas well, it shot towards Dread Spider, clearly intending to land a blow. Euri had no chance to interrupt at first because his head felt like it was going to split apart as a series of memories stormed through his mind.
These centipedes were almost impossible to tame, he realized. In that memory sequence, he had spent a whole month getting slashed and bitten by them without managing to teach them anything substantial.
After recovering, he saw that the spider was still alive. As per his older instructions, the dog and the rats were trying to fight the centipede. Combined with Dread Spider's aura ability, the centipede was repeatedly getting distracted, its all-out attacks always ending in failures.
But one mistake was all it would take to break the balance. So Euri instructed the four familiars to guide the centipede towards the ambrosia pool. He couldn't keep such violent creatures in the grove!
Soon, the centipede was tricked into landing in the pool, and Euri immediately chose to use its body as a raw ingredient. The beast core, a shiny black piece of rock, fell outside the pool, rejected.
Euri considered his options. He could keep this core for another day's ambrosia production. But there was no telling when he could actually use it. Unless Scavenger Rat discovered more food in the grove, even the current round of production wouldn't get started.
The other two options were to either sacrifice the beast core to the gas well, or consume the core himself to see if he had the luck of a lottery winner. Some statistics did say one in a hundred consumed cores of the same type was bound to awaken some ability in the human body.
"Wait, back when the ambrosia pool accepted those fruits as common foodstuffs, it accepted all the fruits and divided them into 3 units. Could it be that if the ingredients are of the same type, only then the pool accepts multiple units?"
Euri recalled the acceptance notifications of the beast cores and beast bodies he had given to the pool until now. All of those messages included how many units were being accepted!
Excited, Euri dragged over the second centipede using the same tactics. This time, Brawler Rat almost got killed. Had Scout Dog not braved a bite from the centipede, the rat would be dead for sure.
The moment the second centipede landed on the pool, Euri's fingers went into overdrive.
[ Detected raw ingredients. Assessing...]
[ Select Ingredients: Beast Body/Beast Core ]
Sure enough, both options were open for choosing, even though he had already deposited the previous centipede's body into the pool.
Without hesitation, Euri chose both options, and then brought the previous centipede's beast core back into the pool. This time, there was no rejection. The pool simply assessed it as another unit of raw ingredient.
Now, the pool had 2 units of beast core and 2 units of beast body. As soon as some common foodstuffs could be found, the final ingredient slot would be filled, and ambrosia production would start!
"What a strange set of requirements! The same beast's body and core aren't compatible by themselves, but if there are two beasts with the same stats, they'll be accepted if I mix them up! Is this a bug in the algorithm? Or is there some deeper meaning here that I'm not getting?"
Nevertheless, this was a good development for him. So he sent Scavenger Rat to look for more food like yesterday, and let the other three familiars return to their cultivation in peace. The rat gave the well an unwilling look before disappearing under the shrubs.
Both Scout Dog and Brawler Rat were injured. Sol-Wa herself climbed out to check up on them once they reached the pool. Seeing no extra message criticizing him for endangering them, Euri felt oddly relieved.
Dinner that night was peaceful. Before taking their usual dose of Black Foam, his father said, "That problem you ran into... Has it been solved? Anything you want me to know?"
"It's fine. They're already working on it. I just need to meet the other party and have a good chat. There will be no more problems after that."