13

I rushed back to where the battle had been. Collecting as much as I could. I'd gotten a jump on the others since I'd started collecting right away. The police had gotten here by now, and they were working on sorting out the scene. Many of the human bodies had been covered, and were now hidden from view. 

That seemed to allow people that were helping clean up the monster corpses to relax. What surprised me was how few police officers were actually there. There were three total in the area that I could see. Just one ambulance for the bodies. I kind of regretted not looking at my phone before I left to collect more monster parts. 

I ignored the others, and continued collecting monster parts myself. No one was stopping me, and the somber air around us kind of discouraged any talking. I made a mental note to look at my phone as soon as I got back to my apartment. I needed to know how far spread this thing was. I decided not to make another trip by the time I finished filling my packs. 

By the time I got back to the apartment there wouldn't be much left to gather. I took advantage of the weight of all the monster parts I'd gathered. That weight nearly tripled how much of a reward I got for sprinting back to the apartment. All I had to do was manage five steps of my top speed at a time. Plus I was getting close to getting a point in stamina as well so stopping wasn't an option. 

I was well past my limit by the time I got back to the apartment, but I was sitting on three speed points, and one stamina point. I'd gained a lot of good materials for some low level weapons, and I was completely exhausted. I sat down on the bed, and looked at the large haul of monster parts I'd managed to collect. The mana cores, and carapaces would make a large number of arrows. My bow was riddled with cracks. 

These bone bows were cheap, and they didn't last very long so they couldn't handle very much use. They broke easily, and could only be fired one to two hundred times. Once they snapped they were pretty much useless. My crafting skill wasn't high enough level to repair them either according to the system. I could repair the arrows, but not the bow. 

The bow was a more complex structure then the arrows so it made sense to a degree. I picked up the carapace, and looked through the crafting options casually. I decided it would be a good idea to make four or five bows with the material I had on hand as well as a few quivers, and a good number of arrows. I figured it would be a good idea to sell them in a package deal. I wouldn't feel comfortable selling them for very much because of the cheap materials. 

I figured a bow, quiver, and arrows would be worth about two hundred bucks. I put my crafting skill to work. These bows required beast cores to craft them unlike my bone bows, and some of the black cord. The bow looked like an oversized insect leg with a black string. The fact that it required a beast core to make it meant it would have higher durability then the bone bow. 

The poison arrows didn't break as often as the bone arrows. I moved on to making the quivers. I made sure to make a matching quiver for each bow. Then I moved on to the arrows. Once I was done I was out of carapace, and have half a dozen beast cores left over. 

I still had a good amount of black cord left. Several vials of poison, and a good amount of insect meat. I stuffed it all into the freezer, and wondered if it would taste alright. I knew the meat wasn't poisonous. I didn't know how I knew, but I just knew. 

The meat was grey in color, and looked a lot like regular animal meat. I imagined that this kind of meat would become an important part of our food resources. Farming would become much harder now that this was happening globally. I scrolled through social media to find out that these cracks had happened all over the place. One had opened up near smokey point as well. 

Then there were a few others opened up in the county that we knew of but I knew that not all of them had been noticed. They closed up once they spit out whatever they had in them. A few dungeons had also popped up in the state. Three of them had been found in the state, but the closest to me was down in Puyallup. The closest one that had been found anyway. 

That was a four to five hour drive. A lot of people had died, and cracks were still opening across the globe. They would open, and spit out dozens of creatures then they would close. Leaving little to no evidence that they'd been there. The creatures didn't look like any creature I'd ever seen on earth. 

Nearly all of them were hybrids of multiple different animals or severe perversions of them. Like the dogs that had been unleashed in Smokey point. They were literally covered in eyes, and their mouths extended back into the torso a good ways. Meaning most of their body would open into a massive maw, and they took massive bites out of the people nearby. There was one good thing though. 

Most of them were actually pretty weak. Just like the insects. I didn't think it would stay that way. If they leveled up like us then they would grow stronger as time went on. I made a post for the first time since all of this had begun. 

I didn't think anyone would pay me any mind so I flipped it to anonymous. I didn't want them to come after me if I was wrong, but I also couldn't say nothing. Even if my voice didn't go very far it would be a good plan to put the idea out there. Someone would see it, and even if they ignored it the idea would be planted. I read through the post a few times to make sure I didn't sound like a crack head or conspiracy theorist before posting it.