They continued towards Effie's hut to discuss the distribution of their spoils.
The sight of Effie coming back, with her bag over her shoulder, was nothing new. The slum dwellers knew, that she must have had at least some success on her hunt, so they hoped that she would sell part of her spoils, as unlikely as it was.
Effie was known for her big appetite, and that if anyone wanted to steal what was hers, then those people would inevitably learn to fly.
The hard way of course.
Now inside the building, Effie sat down on a chair close to her makeshift bed, removing her bag and laying it down on the ground.
Effie stretched her shoulders as she settled into her chair, rolling her neck with a satisfied sigh. Her bag, filled with the results of their hunt, sat heavily on the floor between them. Ray took a seat across from her, resting his halberd against the wall, his expression relaxed but expectant.
She wasted no time. Undoing the straps of her bag, she pulled out neatly wrapped parcels of meat and set them aside, followed by a smaller pile containing the shards they had managed to gather.
Everything together was quite a funny sight. A huge mountain of meat, which actually just amounted to at the very most, 30 percent of their haul.
This just made Ray feel, once more, quite envious about that memory. It seemed just way too practical, though, honestly very few could make good use of such a memory. While it was able to store a huge amount of stuff, the weight didn't seem to get reduced.
"Alright," she began, running a hand through her messy hair. "Let's make this quick. You get eighty percent of the shards, I take eighty percent of the meat. Fair?"
Ray didn't even hesitate. "Fair."
Effie smirked. "Good. I was ready to kick you out if you started arguing."
Ray let out a short chuckle, shaking his head. "I wouldn't be dumb enough to try and take your food."
"Damn right." She leaned forward, dividing the shards with swift, precise movements. Her fingers worked with an ease that showed she had done this many times before. Ray watched as she placed the majority in a pile in front of him, keeping the smaller share for herself.
With that done, she moved on to the meat, portioning it with equal efficiency. The cuts were rough but clean, showing her experience in butchering. She handed Ray his share, a decent amount but nowhere near what she had taken for herself.
He didn't mind. In truth, the shards were more useful to him than an excess of meat, and Effie's needs were, by her own admission, far greater than his. The arrangement made sense.
Effie sat back with a satisfied nod. "Done. You're free to take your things and go, or stay and be annoying. Up to you."
Ray smirked, gathering his portion of the loot. "I'll get out of your hair - for now. Still, I don't have a memory to store things, such as your bag, so… can you just keep my parts here? Obviously, without eating them yourself."
Effie let out a short huff of amusement. "Good choice, and… sure, leave it here, but don't annoy me too much. Also, the amount of food, should suffice for a while, the next hunt won't happen till a few days, around 8-10, I'd say."
With that, their first successful hunt together came to a close.
---
Minutes later, Ray could be seen sitting in one of the houses closest to Effie's.
Somehow the two neighboring houses were actually empty. So, to be closer to his temporary food bank, aka Effie, Ray chose this one.
In case of an emergency, probably in the form of a nightmare creature, they could support each other.
The two of them didn't know each other for long yet, but it was always relaxing to be around Effie, for Ray that is.
Right now he was sitting in the room, leaning against one of the walls. They were plastered with many holes, which would definitely need some work, but for now, absorbing the soul shards was more important than anything. In the future, Ay would just ask Effie for some hides or pelts, to fill up the holes, and make his new home a bit more comfortable.
His halberd, [Stormpiercer], was already returned to his soul sea, while he changed his armor, to the relatively newly acquired armor memory. The softer fabric was a refreshing contrast to his otherwise very combat oriented knightly armor.
Now more relaxed, as much as he could be, he began absorbing the shards.
The raptors, the duo had fought, were all of the awakened rank, technically of the weakest dwellers of the dark city, but Effie explained, that because of their packs and weirdly high intelligence, they could even hunt some fallen beasts, though, this was quite rare.
Regardless, all of them were awakened monsters, resulting in quite a few shards. The total haul was around 44, making his share as high as 35 shards. For the time spent, this was a very good revenue. Especially, because Ray was able to still get a bunch fragments from his kills.
Accompanied with his 40 fragments, from the 10 kills, and after absorbing the shards, his counter increased quite a lot. Looking at the specific part of the runes,
Fading Fragments: 520/1000
Ray smiled to himself, upon seeing the number. After nearly a month of continuous fighting and hunting the nightmare creatures around, he had finally crossed the halfway point.
This gave Ray a bit more security. With every single fragment he absorbed, his body grew stronger. He was by no means close to the strength of Effie, but over all, knowing that pure strength wasn't his style, Ray was definitely content with the current progress.
At this point, it was just a matter of time before he would be able to fill the counter, and experience what it was for.
'It must be something incredible, if it comes from a divine Aspect,' reasoned Ray.
With these thoughts in mind, he slowly began to drift away to sleep.
The next days were filled with either training, resting, or joking around with Effie.
Ray also decided to sell some portions of his meat share, because of the incredible amount of it. In exchange for the food, the slum dwellers gave him what he wanted, which was mostly hides and pelts, but also some simple furniture.
The sleepers living outside the castle where just that desperate for food. Many of them had to live outside the castle because they were too weak to hunt the beasts in the ruins, after all.
There were very few people, who like Effie, or now him as well, would decide to live outside on their own volition. Most in their positions would not hesitate to spent their shards to pay the tribute for the castle.
As for Ray's training, he experimented with his Aspect ability. The description for the Ability seemed to encase more than just what he used it as. Even then, no matter how hard he tried, or whatever he did, Ray always felt just short of the grasping the next step.
He even asked Effie to spar a bit with him, hoping that this could bridge this last exact step, but even this never worked out. She was very reluctant at first, but through continuous convincing, he somehow succeeded in making her spar with him.