“Here. Eat it.”

Perrin handed me the freshly made, warm, and... moist orb.

The confidence in their expression was so radiant that, had I not witnessed the production process firsthand, I might have expected a heavenly delicacy and swallowed it down without a second thought.

I hesitated, recalling the last orb I had consumed.

What exactly was that glossy liquid trickling down its surface?

Even though I had no interest in bizarre "rewards," I found myself desperately hoping it was saliva. Anything more... and it was just too much.

Ah, wait.

This wasn’t the time to be obsessing over such things.

“Perrin, are you okay?”

“What’s there to be wrong about?”

“You know… the orb. Is it really fine to keep making them like this?”@@novelbin@@

Perrin looked at me as if I’d just said the dumbest thing imaginable, their expression dripping with patronizing indulgence.

Damn. This is infuriating.

If worrying about someone actually resulted in financial loss, I’d be bankrupt right now.

Is this really just some kind of fancy hairball?

I harbored doubts about the orb’s nature, but they didn’t last long.

What I’d seen and felt made it impossible to dismiss it as mere waste.

Trying to steer the conversation back on track, I brought up the topic of "spirit cores."

Given the circumstances, I had a particular possibility in mind.

Perrin, an artificial spirit abandoned by their kin and raised by elves, might lack fundamental knowledge about spirits.

Maybe they were unwittingly producing these cores, unaware of the potential danger to themselves.

“What, are you an idiot? Are you trying to teach me, a spirit, about spirit cores? Or is it that you think I’m some defective reject who doesn’t know basic things because my own kind treated me like trash?”

Well. That possibility was off the table.

Not only that, I’d unintentionally hit a sore spot.

Perrin, sensitive as a wounded cub, had a remarkably low threshold for anger.

Misinterpreting my words spectacularly, their rage steadily escalated, culminating in a sharp display of fangs.

I spoke calmly, careful not to provoke the fragile, angry wolf further.

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