The Author's POV

Chapter 56: Hollberg [2]

"Thank you for coming"

At the reception of the monster processing plant, greeting us was a blond young girl with deep blue eyes. Her hair was tied in a bun, and she wore a grey suit that fitted around her body nicely.

"Thank you for having us"

Shaking her hand, Donna greeted the young lady with a smile. After sharing a couple of pleasantries with Donna, the young lady turned around and urged everyone to follow her.

"Please follow me…"

Heeding her words, we formed a long single line and followed her. Fortunately, because the other classes went to different facilities, it was not too crowded.

"A lot of procedures are taken into consideration when dismantling and processing monster and beast corpses. This plant right here is called Grüne Wiese and we are responsible for dismantling to ranked monster/beast corpses. As most of you know, the stronger the monster or beast, the harder it is to process. This is simply because their skins and bones become that much harder to remove and cut. Not only is their skin tougher, but they also tended to have poisonous properties that could instantly kill everyone present in the room. Therefore, we currently only have a license to process monsters and beasts between and rank. For higher ranked beasts and monsters, a special facility with top-notch equipment would be required."

Along the way, the young lady started describing the features of the plant and what they did. She did briefly talk about the history of the plant, but all that information went from one ear to the other.

I honestly did not care about the history of this place.

Stopping right before the door that led to the main processing plant, the young lady turned around and said.

"Before we enter, I would like for all of you to get changed into adequate clothing"

Following that, she signaled for a couple of individuals to enter.

Arriving before us students were five individuals all wearing white lab coats, glasses, and masks. As they came, they pushed a trolley hanger that was filled with lab coats.

Walking next to the hanger, the young lady looked at us and said

"As I briefly mentioned before, in here we handle highly toxic and poisonous materials. For your safety and the general public safety, we need you all to be wearing lab coats. If we don't take this precaution, we could potentially endanger people or even habitats, as some of the stuff here can be extremely lethal…"

As she continued rambling on how important it was to wear adequate safety equipment, I looked around the place.

Though we were not yet at the main processing facility, surrounding us were a lot of monster 'dolls' that had been stuffed with preserving materials allowing them to keep their original appearance. Because they were so well preserved, it looked like the real thing was here making it that much more intriguing to look at.

They had a wide display of monsters and beast dolls, and they each had a tag at the bottom briefly describing what type of monster they were. It was sort of like a mini museum.

"Alright, now get changed and come back here within ten minutes"

Finished with what she wanted to say, the young lady signaled for the five guys to distribute the coat.

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Lining up and taking the suit, I immediately went to the changing room to get dressed.

After completely changing and wearing my mask and glasses I headed back to the meeting place.

Along the way, I noticed a lot of students looking around at the monster dolls around the place.

I too was curious, and thus decided to look at the one closest to the meeting place.

Pausing in front of a beast that resembled an inconspicuous looking crow, I looked at its description

Black-feathered crow : Black-feathered crow, also known as 'Night reapers', are extremely dangerous beasts that are an evolved version of a crow. They are extremely cunning and can be extremely deceiving from their outer appearance, which looks like any regular crow, making them extremely hard to fight against. Due to their unparalleled speed, they are unmatched in the air and almost unstoppable if they decide to dive down to hunt their prey. Their beaks which are as hard as titanium yet less dense than it, are extremely sought after and…

"Tssss…"

Now, this was a beast I didn't want to encounter…

"Alright, since everyone is ready let's go"

Exactly ten minutes after the young lady dismissed us, wearing a lab coat and glasses she appeared before everyone and led us to the main door that led to the processing facility.

-Clank!

Opening the large metal door that led to the processing plant, I instantly felt a pungent smell invade my nostrils. My glasses clogged up, and the hot and humid environment made me want to leave the place immediately.

Next to me, several people showed similar reactions to me as they all frowned and made weird faces.

-Clank! -Clank! -Clank!

Taking a look at the facility, the first thing I saw was robotic arms that roamed around the facility freely. They were either cutting down monster and beast carcasses that were laying down on large metallic tables or were carrying them to different places.

Operating the machines were several individuals all wearing lab coats and glasses. They each alternated using the machines, and if one looked carefully, they could see a glow emanating from their body indicating that they were using mana to use the machinery.

This was a familiar scene everywhere, as not so far from them, several individuals were operating similar machines on a different monster or beast.

"As you can see, this is how we process monsters"

Smiling at everyone, the young lady led us to one of the areas in which a monster was being processed.

Stopping, she looked at everyone and pointed towards one of the processing tables

"This beast right here is a Steel-plated rhino, and just like its name may suggest…it has a very tough outer layer"

Looking in the direction where the young lady was pointing at, a large beast that was five meters in length lifelessly laid down on a large metallic table. The beast's body was humongous and looked to be extremely muscular judging from the size of its legs.

It had a huge horn on the top of its nose, and despite it being closely related to a rhino, the steel-plated rhino looked much more fearsome.

They were incomparable.

Around the body of the steel-plated rhino, metallic arms that shot thin laser beams continuously worked on dismantling the outer layer of the beast.

Takin notice the student's interest in the lasers, the young lady quickly explained to them

"What we are using is a highly powerful laser that shoots a single beam of 12 petawatts of energy that lasts five seconds per shot. Thanks to how advanced technology has become, we are now able to use laser technology to directly cut extremely tough and durable materials such as monster parts and even diamonds. Because of how tough the outer layer of a steel-plated rhino is, we can only resort to using lasers to remove its skin"

Pointing at the laser machine she continued

"The cylinder that is used to shoot the laser is made of titanium-doped sapphire that can perfectly withstand the power coming from the laser. If not for the fact that anything beyond it would be clas…"

Whilst she was speaking, I made sure to note down everything she said. This information was extremely useful for my tasks.

Looking around, it seems like I wasn't the only one with this idea as almost everyone was taking notes of what the young lady was saying.

"Over here is where we sort and store the different types of materials that we remove from the beast's body. Once we managed to remove their skin, we will leave it out to dry and rest for at least 24 hours before bleaching it with a relatively strong acid."

Arriving in front of a large warehouse, lots of monster skin and bones were neatly sorted into different piles with labels on them.

Next to them were large circular white buckets containing a transparent liquid. Every minute, a worker wearing rubber gloves would soak the monster's skin for a good minute before hanging it and letting it dry in the air.

Seeing the confusion on everyone's faces, the young lady smiled and explained

"The bleaching process is extremely important as guilds love to use these materials for their suits and hence like to customize them."

Pausing slightly, she winked at everyone and said

"There's a reason why there are different designs for armors and equipment"

Hearing her joking remark, everyone lightly chuckled.

What she said was true. People loved to wear specially designed suits when entering dungeons. Part of it was due to having an extra layer of protection, but the main reason was its design. It was sort of like wearing clothes.

When I roamed Ashton city in my free time, I noticed many shops with different suit designs. Most notably, I remember seeing a suit in full pink which pretty much screamed 'I am here'. It was so over the top that I wouldn't be surprised if all the monsters decided to attack the person wearing the suit. They were like a walking target.

…well, who was I to judge right?

Just like that, we followed her around the facility as she explained different things. Sometimes some students would ask questions and she would promptly respond to them, but most of the time she was recounting useless information.

From time to time, however, she would talk about the things that I needed for my assignment. If she did do so, I would immediately take note of it.

However, two hours into the tour, I started to get extremely bored. She started rambling on which monsters were selected, who was in charge of making decisions, and other useless nonsense that I honestly couldn't care less about.

Moreover, the hot and humid environment caused me to be extremely uncomfortable. It was to the point that I was starting to feel extremely lethargic…

Finally, after who knew how long, the young lady stopped and said

"Alright, I think I've said enough for today. Thank you very much for coming"

I wasn't the only one who was rejoining about the fact that the tour had ended as pretty much everyone around me looked reenergized.

"Thank you very much for this experience"

Thanking the young lady, Donna looked at her watch and said

"Alright, we will take a ten-minute break before going back to the hotel to rest for the day"

Taking off her mask and glasses, Donna threw them in a nearby bin and proceeded to say

"Meet me where the bus previously dropped us in ten minutes' time. If you need to go to the bathroom or stretch, make sure you take care of it now as the ride to the hotel will take approximately 20 minutes. That is if there is no traffic which I honestly doubt"

After saying her piece, Donna left in the direction of where the bus was.

"Hey bastard, did you take note of everything?"

Just as I was about to follow Donna back, I heard an annoying voice coming from behind me.

Turning around, I could see Donald making his way towards me.

"How many times did I tell you that my name is Ren and not bastard?"

"I don't care, did you take notes or not?"

Rolling me eyes at him I responded

"Yes, I did"

"Good, after you settle in your room meet me later so that we can get this thing over with"

As soon as he finished what he wanted to say, Donald left. As he was leaving, a weird look appeared on my face as I couldn't help but say

"Oh? Surprisingly you're the serious type"

Without turning around, Donald irritably responded

"Shut it scrub. Unlike you, I'd like to keep my ranking"

"Yes, yes"

Shaking my head I followed him back to the bus. Somehow, people cared too much about their ranking.

…well it was understandable as it dictated which guild they could join in the future, but it somehow seems to be like some kind of obsession here.

Looking at the blue sky that was turning dark, I lightly murmured

"Well, it's not like I don't care either"

I too wanted to climb up the ranking, but even if I wanted to, I'd have to do it slowly and unnoticeably, else people would think I was hiding some sort of secret.

Sigh

Letting out a sigh, I entered the bus and sat next to Donald like I had done previously.

Maybe I'll increase my ranking in my midterms, who knows…