Chapter 11: The End

“Clatter.”

The heavy double-headed axe fell straight to the ground. Its metal blade struck the cave floor with a crisp ring.

Huff—

Xia Nan was breathing heavily.

The formidable enemy was dead, and the fatigue and pain suppressed by his intense concentration came surging back like a tide.

Even though leveling up had raised two of his attributes, it could not change the fact that his body was utterly exhausted.

Drawing on the burst of strength brought by those increased attributes and expending every ounce of his power to kill the bugbear had already pushed him to his limit.

If another monster of comparable strength appeared now, he would have little hope of defeating it in his present condition.

Spitting out a mouthful of bloody phlegm, he rubbed his chest.

That was where the bugbear had struck him with its arm during the battle.

The pain lingering in his flesh and muscle was gradually fading with the passage of time.

“I don’t think it broke any bones, at least,” Xia Nan thought, feeling relieved.

Otherwise, with this world’s technology hovering somewhere around the medieval level, he had no idea how he would be treated.

Then again, this was a fantasy world with supernatural powers. Perhaps there were scrolls containing healing magic, or priests capable of wielding some form of sacred light?

“Xia... Xia Nan...”

A feeble voice suddenly called from beside him.

Only after emerging from the battle trance did Xia Nan finally realize that someone besides himself was still alive.

Maji looked particularly horrific.

One of his lower legs had been smashed to pieces, with splinters of bone jutting out. At the knee, only a little flesh remained, resembling the crude joint of one of those cheap wooden puppets sold in markets.

His face was deathly pale, and his trembling lips had lost all color. Were it not for the faint spark still lingering in his eyes and the slight trembling of his body from unbearable pain, he would have looked little different from the goblins lying dead nearby.

“In my belt pouch... red potion... help me...”

Maji spoke with difficulty, his words broken, as though even his consciousness were gradually slipping away.

He was the last official member of the Rotten Fish and Shrimp Party, a companion who had fought alongside Xia Nan through a life-or-death battle, and the only old hunter who knew the way out of the Mistwood.

As a modern man with a higher education, a relatively sound moral compass, and a basic sense of decency, Xia Nan could not possibly stand by and watch him die, no matter how he looked at it.

So he crouched down and, following Maji’s directions, rummaged through his belt pouch until he found a small bottle.

It was made of glass, shaped like a laboratory test tube, and sealed at the top with a dark brown wooden stopper.

Inside was about a third of a bottle of red liquid. Clearly, it had been used several times, and when shaken vigorously, it gave off a faint glow.

Although Maji had not explained what it was, the powerful sense of familiarity it evoked allowed Xia Nan to guess its general purpose at a glance.

“A life potion?” Xia Nan pulled the wooden stopper from the bottle. “Do I drink it or apply it externally?”

“Drink...” Maji nodded and opened his mouth. “All of it.”

Xia Nan asked no further questions and poured the entire bottle of life potion into his mouth.

Perhaps he was mistaken, but he thought he caught a trace of heartache in Maji’s eyes.

It was as though this basic item, so ubiquitous in the games and novels of Xia Nan’s former life, were an incomparably precious resource.

A moment later, Xia Nan understood the reason for that expression.

Almost as soon as Maji’s Adam’s apple moved and the potion entered his stomach, his face, previously blanched from massive blood loss, flushed with color. The focus returned to his pupils.

The wounds stopped bleeding, and the chest that had been heaving violently from difficulty breathing gradually calmed.

The effect was astonishing, almost like something out of a film.

Xia Nan had just begun to wonder whether Maji might make a full recovery after drinking that half-bottle of potion when everything came to an abrupt halt.

The broken bones did not realign, and the lower leg remained twisted out of shape.

Clearly, although the life potion’s effects far exceeded his expectations, they were still nowhere near the level of regrowing severed limbs.

Perhaps it could heal most minor injuries and at least alleviate serious ones?

“All right, all right.” After drinking the potion, Maji breathed deeply, like a drowning man who had finally reached the surface. “Thank you... thank you.”

His face was covered in sweat from the pain, but his voice was no longer weak.

“You go clean up the battlefield first.” He pulled several rolls of bandages from his belt pouch. “I can handle the rest myself.”

According to the unwritten rules Maji had explained to him earlier, when adventurers divided up the spoils, anything with a clearly identified killer—such as goblin ears—belonged to the person who had earned it. Everything else went to whoever discovered it.

By telling Xia Nan to clean up the battlefield, Maji was practically making it clear that—

All the spoils in the goblin lair belonged to Xia Nan.

Xia Nan knew perfectly well that without the support of Maji’s two arrows, he might not have been able to defeat the bugbear even after breaking through at the critical moment.

But since Maji had made his intentions explicit, Xia Nan saw no reason to put on a show of modesty.

He gave Maji a slight nod and walked toward the other side of the cave.

Unlike in games, where a treasure chest automatically appeared after clearing a dungeon, or where a few clicks of the mouse allowed one to pull a heap of items from a monster’s corpse, collecting loot in the real world was far more troublesome.

First came the goblin corpses.

The bounty applied only to adults, so Xia Nan unceremoniously sent five green-skinned brats to join their beastly fathers in the afterlife.

Then, with practiced ease, he stepped on the goblins’ heads and cut off the left ear of each of the four adults, placing them into the pouch at his back.

After that came the thorough search.

The cave was not large, and nearly everything inside could be seen at a glance. Still, intent on maximizing his gains, Xia Nan made a systematic search of the entire place with a torch and found a few things.

After discarding the inconvenient and worthless items, these were the spoils he had collected from the goblin lair:

Three striped, pale-green opaque gemstones; a small wooden round shield whose surface showed faint signs of damp and mold; and a small pouch of coins. When he weighed it in his hand, it had a little heft, though most of the contents were silver and copper coins.

“I wonder whether these stones are worth anything.”

Xia Nan pondered the question.

By then, Maji had finished treating his wounds as well.

“How is it? Have you finished gathering everything?” he asked, leaning against the wall as he struggled to stand.

His lower leg, which had been twisted into an unnatural shape, had been crudely splinted with a stick and bandages. He still had difficulty moving, but at least he would not worsen the injury.

“More or less. I searched the place twice,” Xia Nan replied.

“Twice? You missed the most important thing.”

There was a playful glint in Maji’s eyes as he jerked his chin toward the bugbear’s corpse.