Just give me two

Nio then let out a sound that resembled laughing.

"Are you laughing?" Liam asked, incredulous at the snake's behavior.

"Hahaa! It haS been a while Since I laughed, you are just So weird," the snake then moved his body so that the tail hit the one stumbling around across its face. It fell to the ground with a loud thud. Sending the dust, wood fragments, leaves, and every other possible thing flying.

The one that fell to the ground twitched and shook all over for a while until it stopped. Then its breathing evened out. It seemed that he had knocked this one out.

"You didn't kill it?" Liam asked, confused by Nio's actions.

"No, That one iS yourS, but the other oneS are mine, So don't interfere!" he started out by chucking but then his tone turned serious.

Liam could read the situation and didn't do anything to the other two, but he approached the one on the ground. How was he supposed to kill it? He took out the tooth-knife, that he had fixed with a vine onto his side. He started at it but thought it to be lacking.

"Nio, what did the poison do to this one?"

"I think the amount you uSed was juSt enough to temporarily paralyze him," he said in a matter-of-fact tone while fighting and constantly injuring the two remaining assailants. The injuries were accumulating on them. Before Nio's attacks were scattered as he had to fight with three of them, but now one less, made a pretty big difference as he was getting more and more familiar with their patterns.

"So, how long would that last?"

"It already wore off, that'S why I knocked him out," Nio replied, and his aim paid off as one of the paralyzing needles found its way to an open wound at the beast's side. His movement then also turned sluggish. Nio used that and hit it across its face as well.

Liam only watched on the side. He couldn't do anything. He was frustrated with how weak he was.

Now, only one was left. Nio shot forward and wrapped its body around the beast, who only knew how to struggle for a few minutes until all the air was squeezed out of it. Nio then let the body fall to the ground as he unfurled himself from the corps.

He bit down on it, using his teeth to open a hole inside it.

Liam couldn't understand what was going on. He approached Nio as he was very curious and wanted to know what he was doing.

"Why are you digging inside the corps?" Liam asked as he was pretty close by and could finally see what he was doing.

"The core, I want the core," he then said without thinking like a starved creature, he didn't even stop digging.

"What is it? What is it used for?"

"Hah! Here it is," he said triumphantly, pulling his head out of the corps and totally ignoring Liam's question. He probably didn't even hear it. He dropped the thing in front of Liam, "Here, you hold onto thiS until we get back to the tree," he said and slid away, approaching one of the unconscious ones. He bit into them as savagely as before.

Liam looked down and saw a round object in front of him. It was covered with blood, but he picked it up to find it still warm to the touch. A shudder covered his whole body.

After a moment he felt that this thing contained something. He probed it with his energy for a few minutes and figured that it contained the energy he usually absorbed but it had a different, how do you say it, vibe to it. Like it already belonged to someone. In this case, he knew that the energy contained inside that orb used to belong to the beast that was savagely torn apart in front of him.

He looked around to find Nio already finished with the last corps and coming toward him. Then he dropped the cores in front of him.

Liam picked them up automatically but felt himself falling backward.

A moment later he looked around to find himself in the snake's mouth. The mouth he fell into was open, he could see the outside. He was doubtful but still asked.

"Are you planning to eat me?"

"No, thiS iS juSt faSter. You're too damn Slow," he chuckled.

"You just have to stomp on my pride, right?" Liam grumbled to himself, but of course, Nio still heard him just fine.

"Of courSe, it wouldn't be fun otherwise," if one could see it, then they'd be shocked to see a snake grinning.

It barely took ten minutes, before Liam fell out of Nio's mouth, crashing to the ground.

"Auch! You could have said something before dropping me like this," Liam complained as this was the second time in this night that he had fallen onto his ass like that. He was rubbing his ass as he was getting off the ground.

"Why Should I do that? Now, give me my coreS!" he didn't care and demanded his things back.

"Okay, okay!" Liam scrambled to the leaf pouch he had made earlier and poured the tree cores out into his hand. "Umm, you said one of them was mine, how do you differentiate?" he asked looking at Nio. His large head was frighteningly close to his face.

"I don't! JuSt give me two," he then opened his mouth and waited. Liam didn't hesitate and pushed the two cores inside his mouth. His mouth closed after that and he moved up to the tree to take up his position and nap. It even looked like he had forgotten about his guest.

Liam felt that something had changed with Nio, he wasn't as defensive as he was before. He didn't know what it was but, he decided to sit under the tree as well.

Liam had his back to the tree, his legs crossed he took out the core and started to examine it more with his energy. It didn't help much. After a close examination of the core and finding nothing that really interested him, he started to absorb the energy from the air. After a moment of absorbing the energy he was startled, he could absorb the energy inside the core. He stared at it for a while before continuing the process but he discovered that the energy wasn't pure. He could absorb it into his body but he had to clean it before he could make it part of himself.

He started the process of absorbing and cleaning the energy. It had taken a while to figure out how to do it most efficiently.