VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 7: Definitely not Vegan

Belladonna rounded the counter and headed into the backroom at the insistence of the Butcher, who carried Belladonna’s rabbits along with her.

The majority of the kills were hung by their neck on U shaped hooks, while one of them was unceremoniously thrown onto the chopping block. Plucking a large, blood stained knife from the side, the Butcher wiped it against her apron, as if that grubby thing would make the blade any cleaner, before taking hold of the rabbit’s legs.

"Alright girly, watch carefully. You better no’ be the type that faints at a lil’ blood, had enough of them already.

First, you just gotta cut here, here and here. Then one more behind the neck. Get a nice firm grip and just pull."

Her blade glided across the rabbit’s flesh with absolute precision, finishing with a slash behind its neck before, with one strong tug like it was nothing more than a fur coat, she pulled off the rabbit’s pelt with surprising ease. Next came the removal of the legs, the head and the gutting process.

None of which were especially pretty and could definitely churn some stomachs, but the Butcher was understandably used to it. Belladonna, perhaps helped by her new growing instincts or just by the fact that games had rapidly desensitised her to fake violence, watched on with rapt attention.

The journal that the game dev’s had given her came in extra use, as she jotted down the steps to remember for later. Even drawing a few crude diagrams as the mental commands perfectly reflected her lack of artistic talent. It perhaps wasn’t what they were expecting from her, but even if it was useless for them it was beyond useful to her.

In less than a minute, the rabbit was already completely skinned, its carcass prepared and hung up on a hook next to other fresh meat, leaving just the organs on the chopping block. The edible one’s, such as the heart, liver and kidney, were sorted to the side while the rest were moved into a bucket.

Strangely, the stomach was left on the table, not alongside the edible organs but not yet being disposed of.

"And that’s that. Simple as. Think ye can manage one by yerself?"

Jotting the last of the notes in her journal, Belladonna scoffed to herself.

"Time and money, huh? These would barely take you five minutes to do, yet you were talking like it was going to take hours."

The Butcher let out a hearty laugh before stabbing the knife into the board and plucking the next rabbit from the line.

"Yup. But you were alright with the price you paid. If ye didn’t know how it was done, would you have felt cheated by the price?"

"Well no but..."

"There ye go then. That’s negotiation for ya. Canny expect a fair price if you don’t know all the facts."

The Butcher smirked and poked her in the chest, causing Belladonna to let out a slight chuckle. She had a point. If she didn’t know how little time it took, she would have thought it was a fair price, especially considering what the last guy got.

Companies in real life were definitely guilty of such things as well as massively overcharging for products based on a little amount of work. Places like pawn shops were especially horrible for under paying on your goods.

It was just good business.

Shaking her head softly, Belladonna gestured to the stomach that was left lying on the table.

"So what’s going on with that?"

"Ah, another little secret. The stone muncher’s lucky stomach."

"Stomach? Isn’t it supposed to be lucky feet?"

"What? Gods no! What’s lucky about a foot? What are ye gonna do with that? Nah, the stomach is where the real luck lies.

These little blighters are called stone munchers for a reason. Stomach acid breaks it down, takes all the nutrients out of the earth and refines it. The adult ones use the result as a weapon too, so be careful of that.

But even the young ones still break it down, even if they can’t do anything with it yet. And if you’re lucky..."

She gave Belladonna a crooked toothed grin, slicing the small stomach open and pouring out its contents, which consisted of dozens of stones of various sizes. She picked through the bunch, before picking out a particularly shiny rock the size of a marble.

"Look at that, an iron nugget. Already purified, ready to be melted down. Blacksmiths love these. Don’t always get them, that’s part of the luck. But sometimes... you can even find gems in them!"

She tossed the iron nugget to Belladonna, who caught it in surprise. She rolled it in her fingers, feeling how perfectly smooth the surface was. It was like a musket ball they used to use in ancient guns.

Wait... if this was what it ate... Was she technically holding poop? Gross.

A poop based loot box. Extra gross.

She held the nugget forwards, trying to hand it back to the Butcher while hiding her disgust, but the gruff woman simply held up her hand and shook her head.

"Keep it girly. Since you’re gonna be gutting these, might as well test yer luck on em. Yer a Graceless, so you’ll need all the luck you can get."

The next twenty minutes was spent with Belladonna taking over the butchering duties, under the careful supervision of the professional. While the Butcher herself could do it in a matter of seconds, Belladonna’s hands were unsure.

She cut too shallow or had to tug at the pelt a few times to remove it. Instead of removing parts with one swift cut she had to hack at them like the trunk of a tree.

It was the gutting process that made her especially nervous about such things, since she was repeatedly warned that if she cut too deep she could tear open the guts and ruin the meat. But under the Butcher’s supervision such a thing never happened, and by the end of the dozen rabbits Belladonna was starting to get a hang of it.

She couldn’t do it with oiled precision like the Butcher could, but she could at least remember the steps and how deep to cut to not ruin it. When she had placed her knife down and hung the final carcass, the crystal in her hand pulsed with a bright light and let out a cheerful tone.

[Quest Complete!]

[New skill acquired!

Skill - Basic Butchery]

"Ye done good work today girly. Here, you earned this."

The Butcher patted her shoulder and placed a small leather pouch in her hand, its contents jingling softly. She pulled it open, double checking the contents which caused the Butcher to laugh softly, and was happy to find five silver coins and seven copper coins nested within.

When she looked up at the Butcher with a confused frown, the burly woman simply shrugged.

"Think of it as a little bonus for giving me such good pelts. Next time I see you, I expect you to be selling me nice, clean meat. Got that?"

"Yes Ma’am!"

She gave a small salute, which gained another hearty chuckle from the heavy built woman, before Belladonna left the butcher shop. Her bag no longer bulged with loot, instead only slightly rattled with the jiggling of coins - although the final amount was less than she had been promised as her stomach had urged her to buy some rabbit jerky. Alongside the coins and her food, there was also the clinking of loose, metallic marbles.

The ’Loot balls’ from the Stonemunchers. She had managed to collect twenty of them in total, mainly from one especially fat rabbit.

But the sound of jingling coins was able to attract far more attention than a bulging bag.

As she made her way to the blacksmiths, hoping to sell or trade the extra loot to hopefully afford a new weapon, Belladonna glanced over her shoulder once again. Checking behind her, out of the corner of her eye, just as she had done ever since she left the hunting grounds.

She turned suddenly weaving her way through a few twisting roads and ended up walking right back in the direction she had come from. Sure enough, when she glanced over her shoulder once more, there they were, still following her.

Just as they had been, ever since she left the hunting grounds.

One would have thought that in a beta test like this, filled with famous faces, reputable journalists and true professionals that there would have been some sort of respect when it came to the act of thievery.

Apparently not.

At the very least, judging by their sloppy stalking attempts and their basic gear, they weren’t one of the professionals. The pros wouldn’t be wasting their time with such things, they would probably be trying to figure out a way to hunt the wolves or searching for secret quests.

But that was a good thing for Belladonna. She might have been good at games and had her fair share with VR games, even if they weren’t on this level of realism. But there was a large margin between good and professional.

However, since these weren’t pros... she actually had a chance of beating them.

At this point she had circled right back to the butchers. So, with a wicked smirk on her face, she glanced over her shoulder one last time to make sure they were following, before ducking into an alleyway and disappearing from sight.