The half eaten bugs dropped from the Grimshawls grubby little hands as it hunched over in pain. What Belladonna could see of its body started to twitch and convulse, while a large bulge slowly grew underneath its shawl.

It grew rapidly, starting at the size of a garish wart, to a melon sized swelling, to a beach-ball sized hunchback. The bulge grew to be the same size as the Grimshawl itself, and that is when it started to move.

It crawled down what could be called the creatures back until it reached the edge of the shawl, and kept moving. However the shawl itself started to extend, stretching along with the bulge as it separated itself from the creature before plopping onto the ground in a shawl wrapped blob of unidentifiable goop.

The existing Grimshawl let out a few more screeches as it crawled slowly across the ground, dragging itself away from the blob, stretching its precious shawl even more as the strange, elastic material was stretched thin before it finally snapped in half.

The Grimshawl stumbled from the sudden release of tension, collapsing to the ground as it panted heavily, whilst the shawl wrapped blob started to mimic that heavy breathing.

Arms and legs sprouted from the blob like branches of a tree, as they simply pierced through the shawl and wriggled their fingers as they first touched air.

The blob’s shawl started to shrink, which strangely enough made it looser around its body, as instead of tight around a blob it became open at the bottom and loosely draped around the thin, unidentifiable body of the newly born Grimshawl.

The last thing to grow was a pair of ears on either side of the head that was hidden within the pitch black shadows of its hood.

The original Grimshawl clambered to its feet and tilted its head at its newly born child, before simply crouching down and picking up the half eaten bug. As if giving birth was little more than an inconvenience, the Grimshawl stuffed the bug into its mouth and started to shuffle around looking for more.

The newborn Grimshawl did not take long to join its... mother? father? Uh... parent. It did not take long to join its parent, as they mindlessly dug around in the dirt together looking for grubs and bugs. The newborn barely got one of its grubby little hands on a small, worm-like creature when, instead of tasting delicious bug flesh, it tasted Belladonna’s [Blood Bullet] and its own brain matter as the bullet tore through its head from above and exited through its mouth.

The original Grimshawl raised its head, and let out a sharp screech of horror as its child collapsed to the floor. It dropped the beetle it was holding, fell onto its back and scampered away from it. Its head darted around quickly, searching for whatever had killed its child.

It did not think a single thought of sadness or pity for its spawn, and instead thought only of its own selfish preservation. But no matter where it looked, it couldn’t see what killed it or how it even died. However it soon figured that out for itself, when its back bumped up against something solid.

Whipping its head around and raising the black emptiness beneath its hood up, the Grimshawl stared down the hollowed out, blood dripping ’barrel’ of Belladonna’s finger-gun. It couldn’t understand what in the world it was looking at, but even the shield of ignorance couldn’t stop two more [Blood Bullet]’s from tearing through its head.

It’s body fell backwards, dragged back by the force of the bullets that tore twin holes in its precious shawl, however when the body hit the ground Belladonna couldn’t help but frown. Her head tilted and her brow creased, as the shadows beneath the shawl dispersed. However it did not show the body of the creature that she had killed.

Instead there was nothing but a tattered black shawl laying across the dirt, with a few shiny and useless objects laying on it like a merchants blanket. There was no body to be found at all, not even the legs or arms that had been sticking out from underneath that shawl when it was alive.

This case was not unique to this one either. The newborn was the same, although its shawl had nothing resting on it nor underneath it. It was just a useless black rag that danced slightly in the wind.

"Hmm... That might be an issue." She muttered to herself, nudging the rag with her foot just to check that there was nothing there.

"No body, No blood, no source. I mean It’s basically the loot drops that people would normally expect from a game monster. If this had been one of the basic monsters people first encountered instead of the Stonemunchers, it probably would have taken them much longer to get a hold of the combat. Hell some of them still can’t get a good grasp on it.

It might drop with the rest of the loot... but it might not. I might need to kill them in a special way to get it, but the question is what way?" Belladonna muttered to herself.

She crossed her arms over her chest, pacing back and forth as she tapped her chin in contemplation. The instructions that had sent her here had said nothing of this unique quirk of the Grimshawls, as the people of this world probably knew it already. It was like sending someone to get ice and not mentioning that it melted in the heat, it was assumed that you already knew something so basic.

The only information it did give was that the shawls themselves should be collected for the Tower as a crafting material as well as proof of kill. She was also to return as much loot to the people they had taken it from as possible and she would get a cut of the value of the items she returned.

Looking back on it now, it should have been a red flag that they never mentioned what they wanted to do with the bodies. Ears were usually better proof of kills. After all she could easily cut the cloak off of something and not kill it, but if you were in the position to cut somethings ear off it was usually a position in which you could just kill it.

No man or monster was just going to sit around and let you carve off their ear. Not even certain famous painters could do all of it.

It wasn’t as if her great and wise future guide had said anything either, although in her defence she couldn’t remember if she had mentioned anything about collecting sources. So it wasn’t entirely his fault, but he screwed so much up at this point it was easier just to call him useless and be done with it. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"Shit..." Belladonna eventually cursed to herself, after a few minutes of pacing. "I really have no choice. I either have to get creative, or get lucky. After everything I went through to get here, there is no way I am returning empty handed."

With a defeated expression, she crouched down next to the shawls and started to pick through the shiny trinkets that the Grimshawl had left behind. Some of it really was useless tat, like a bent spoon that caught the light well, or the broken shard of a mirror.

However there were a few random coins in there and some stolen goods. Tossing the useless tat away, she stuffed the coins and useful tat in her Bottomless bag, as well as the rolled up shawls, before scanning the ground again for signs of its previous movement.

Thankfully, this time she had something much clearer and harder to miss than footprints to follow. That being the little scratch marks and miniature holes it had made in the ground, as it dug around for bugs to eat.

Unfortunately, although they were much easier to spot, they weren’t as good of a trail of breadcrumbs than footprints. So when she followed them, it was more like she was wandering the forest, playing a life sized version of connect the dots.

Just zig zagging through the brush, doubling back on herself a few times and walking like a complete drunk. However eventually, after much cursing and doubling back, Belladonna followed the trail to its source.

A trail that was helped by stumbling across a few other Grimshawls that were out scavenging. She killed those just like the first one, using a mixture of [Blood Bullet] and [Shade Claw] in the hopes that one of them would work, but neither resulted in a source.

Her tracking attempts paid off, however, as she eventually found herself standing outside of the entrance to the Grimshawls lair, or nest. It seems they had made their dwelling in some sort of underground cave network.

The only issue, was that it was accessed by a hole in the sound of a small grass mound. A hole that was just big enough for the tiny Grimshawls to squeeze through. So small, that it reminded Belladonna of all the countless stories of cave divers climbing onto holes called delightful names such as ’Devil’s Anus’ where they became trapped and died a slow, miserable death.