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Anlesa watched intently as Jen and George carefully removed the corpse from the river.

Jen used her Earth attribute to create a curved slab of rock in her hands, her control of it was limited but she was able to put it in the water and from a distance push the corpse up. George helped by manoeuvring the corpse with two long branches he chopped off some nearby trees. Together they worked to remove the monster from the water and push it far enough away from the riverside that it wouldn’t fall in.

Monsters were toxic, touching the bones or the tar-like substance was enough to get a person sick, and if they were unlucky–kill them outright.

The best and easiest ways to avoid getting hurt–Besides just avoiding touching them all together–were to wear protective equipment, have a lot of mana–more mana inside a person made them more resistant to the monsters’ poisons–, have good control of one's mana–to delay the spread and push it out.

No option was perfect, but people had to learn to fight them.

The black bones in the river contrasted greatly with the flowing crystal blue water, which made it easier to ensure everything was taken out of the river. Even once dead, a monster’s body is extremely difficult to tear apart which meant they weren’t worried about leaving leftover specs in the river.

[So the crop poisoning was caused by a monster corpse… go figure.] (Syrus)

[Seems likely, if the problem persists then there might be another reason why the crops are getting sick, but at the bare minimum removing the corpse should solve one problem.] (Luna)

[But if the poisoning was caused by the monster’s… corpse. Why didn’t anyone recognise it beforehand?] (Lilly)

Luna asked, [Syrus, do you want to do the honours?]

[Nah, you probably know more than me.] (Syrus)

[Okay, so Lilly, what's your current understanding of the physiology of monsters?] (Luna)

[Physiology wise? Mostly their bodies are made up of a toxic substance and the simple fact that they can move baffles many. I never took the opportunity to study more into them, mostly because I was focused on different topics.] (Eva)

[Well, the toxins in monsters do vary slightly. The effects do still lead to pretty much the same thing, death. But there are enough variances that people develop different symptoms from each monster… which is one of the main reasons it's hard to cure those who can’t internally defend against the toxins.] Luna mentally sighed, remembering too many lost lives [This also means monster corpses each affect the environment differently, well, normally if the corpse is left alone it will kill the life around it.]

[If it kills everything, then how does this slow poisoning happen?] (Lilly)

[...I can only guess because it has been diluted?] (Luna)

[Right on the money, having the water flow over the corpse is an easy way to dilute the effect but also ensure it damages a wider area.] (Syrus)

George puffs, “Okay… we need to go back and get a professional to clean up the body.”

Jen replied, “Yes… let’s get back quickly. Anna, are you ready?”

“Yeah…”

[Why isn’t George not burning the body?] (Syrus)

[Why would he?] (Lilly)

[Well it’s a way to decrease the degradation time and impact on the environment. Normally when hunting monsters there are a few steps involved to ensure they don’t damage the environment much after they pass, but there are times when those procedures couldn’t happen, so a quick and easy fix would be to burn the body. Burning isn’t the only way, but it is the easiest.] (Syrus)

[I see…] (Lilly)

[Maybe they don’t know the method? The… church did something similar with light skills…] Luna paused.

[Did they say something like ‘Only we can get rid of the corpses?’] Syrus mocked.

[Sadly… yes…] (Luna)

[Wow, where I lived every power in charge and the churches would laugh if they heard someone say that.] (Syrus)

[Your home had a lot of monsters didn’t it?] (Luna)

[What makes you say that?] (Syrus)

[Just how you talk about it sometimes, I worked in a place that dealt with monsters but even when I was there I only faced monsters a couple of times a year.] (Luna)

[...Well, you're right. There were definitely a lot of monsters.] (Syrus)

Lilly decided to speak and pointed at the monster, “That body is bad right…? Why don’t we burn it?”

George asked, “Pardon Eva?”

“When we have trash we can’t reuse, we burn? Can’t we do the same here?”

“Sadly no… the thing with monsters you can’t get rid of their bodies unless you use the right method. Otherwise, it will just cause more damage to the environment.”

“Oh…” Lilly looked away from the monster and walked closer to Jen. She asked, “Time to go home then?”

“Yes, time to go home, are you three sleepy?”

“Eh, I could go without,” Syrus replied.

The trio started walking home, Jen and George were both still nervous but happy nothing bad happened.

Jen said, “Thanks for the help today.”

Anna replied, “I didn’t do much?”

“Depending on the perspective that could be true or false. Would someone have eventually gone up the river again? Yes, but your smart little brain helped us solve one problem sooner than later and that is always a good thing. So I say that it was very true.”

George added, “Exactly, so good in fact you will be getting some extra special dinner later this month.”

“Really?”

Jen smiled, “Yep, you can count on me to help as well.”

The family returned home after an over an hour-long walk, where they jogged part of the way to get home before it got dark.

Once they got back to the village Anna was sent home while the parents left to go talk to everyone else about the situation.

“Wow…” Lilly jumped onto the bed, [Can’t say I expected that…]

Syrus said, [Same, maybe I got too used to this monster-less environment.]

Lilly asked, [We consumed the poisoned zeki, are we okay from eating that? Just asking now that we know it was caused by a monster.]

Syrus laughed, [Don’t worry. Diluted monster toxins are honestly not that bad, I mean they are bad, but in comparison to the real deal, they are just regular poisons. Not to mention we didn’t consume much.]

“That doesn’t inspire much confidence…” [But I’m going to trust your word.]

[As you should.] (Syrus)

Anna rolled over a couple of times trying to get comfortable.

Luna, who had been silent for a while, spoke again, [We were able to solve the mystery of what was causing the crop problems, but now we just have another one…]

[You mean who was the one that set this up?] (Syrus)

[Yes…] (Luna)

[How do we figure out who did it…?] (Lilly)

[I doubt we can even figure that out…] (Syrus)

[Huh…?] (Lilly)

[What? You thought I had an idea? Sorry to say I don’t, we could smack our souls against each other for hours and come up with thousands of theories for thousands of people. But none of that matters because we have no idea why, who, or even 100% of the how.]

Their success ended up leaving a sour taste in their mouth, knowing the core issue that started this problem was never solved.

Still, Lilly wanted to think of the possibility, [But what if we ever did figure out who did this?]

[Then I’ll punch them in the face.] Replied Syrus who smiled as she thought of that possibility.