A bright golden shard of energy appeared in front of him.

Max stretched his arm out, manipulating the shard, shooting it out further in front of him.

The blade stretched out like a zooming bullet and cut through the group of mules.

The energy blade sliced through the monsters at the perfect angle at the perfect opportunity, damaging them all.

Max lifted up his fist like he was doing an uppercut and so did the energy blade, ripping through the flesh of the forest mules like a deadly sickle.

The energy blade dissipated with that final stroke, but Max had done enough damage. The forest mules were dead on the ground.

The creatures were clearly copper-level monsters. A B-rank ability against them was like using a rocket launcher against a bunny rabbit. It was effective, but absolutely overkill as well.

Max and Casey stepped towards the fallen forest mules as they glowed silver and left behind a few coins and their monster cores.

Max picked up two of the copper cores and tossed them to Casey.

He then picked two up himself and placed them inside his pouch. He watched as the small bag gobbled up the two large copper stones with ease.

“Alright,” said Max. “We just need to find another four monsters and then we’re done.”

Casey looked down to the coins on the ground. “Let’s divide the coins up equally too.”

“Sure,” said Max, looking down to the ground. “They didn’t drop much. In total, it’s about twenty copper coins. So we’ll each get ten.”

Casey scooped up the coins and then handed Max his share. He let the coins fall into his pouch. So far Sakura was pretty much paying for everything he did, so he was glad to be collecting some Zestiris currency for himself.

“Let’s get back to the hunt,” said Max. “I don’t think we’ll have to travel nearly as much to find a second set of monsters.”

Max was proved right fairly quickly. They only had to travel another five minutes into the forest to find another set of mules.

They quickly got to work with their strategy and finished off the set of mules with ease.

“Hurray,” cheered Casey. “We completed the assignment!”

Max dropped the two copper monster cores into his pouch with satisfaction. He looked down at the coin drops with disappointment.

“Huh?” he said. “They didn’t leave as much.”

This time there were only sixteen copper coins on the ground.

“The money drop is always a bit random from what I understand,” said Casey, crouching down and picking up the coins. When she was done, she handed Max his share of the loot.

“I guess we should head back then,” said Max.

“Yeah, totally,” said Casey, turning and marching off.

“Wait, where are you going?” asked Max.

“I’m heading back,” said Casey. “We headed in this direction, didn’t we?”