Chapter 102 Mad Dog

It was the height of summer.

The bone-chilling wind that swept in from outside made every patron in the tavern shudder.

Then they looked toward the massive figure standing in the doorway.

And just as quickly looked away.

The icy pressure rolling off the man made no one eager to meet his eyes.

The noisy, boiling atmosphere that still carried the lingering warmth of Midsummer froze almost instantly.

Only low, deliberately casual whispers remained.

At the center of the tavern, the men who had just been shoving one another stopped as if the cold itself had locked them in place.

Every filthy insult died on their tongues.

Without exchanging a word, they seemed to reach the same conclusion.

Enough.

No more shoving.

No parting threats.

No wounded pride.

The red-bearded dwarf had somehow lost a short section of his treasured braided beard during the scuffle.

The leading Calishite now sported a purple bruise around one eye.

Neither man so much as complained.

They quietly disentangled themselves and returned to their respective tables.

Thump.

A heavy footstep sounded from the entrance.

Then another.

Slow.

Steady.

Powerful.

Chapton stared at the barbarian in the wolf-fur cloak and forced a stiff, professional smile onto his face.

“What would you like to eat, sir?”

“Two slabs of raw meat.”

His thick Northlands accent blurred the words, as though they had traveled through a snowstorm before reaching the room.

His ice-blue eyes flicked toward the black-haired young man seated nearby.

“Certainly, sir. Please wait a moment.”

Chapton practically jogged to the kitchen.

Scrape…

A chair shifted.

The barbarian sat across from Xia Nan.

With the light behind him, the shadow of his massive body fell across the entire table.

Xia Nan looked at Forgan.

And the anxiety that had been gnawing at him for days vanished along with the sudden drop in temperature.

No obvious wounds marked the bronze skin stretched over Forgan’s marble-like muscles.

The deep eyes beneath his brow remained calm and clear, like frozen pools.

The only obvious injury was his left little finger.

It was gone.

A thin layer of transparent ice covered the clean stump.

Otherwise, he seemed almost untouched.

The thin iron chain decorated with bone and fang ornaments still hung around his neck.

But the center of the chain remained empty.

Xia Nan’s thoughts turned quickly.

Forgan had caused such a massive disturbance in the neighboring town, yet here he was, walking openly into Rivervale Town as though nothing had happened.

That probably meant he was not an enemy of the Adventurers’ Association.

Xia Nan opened his mouth.

Before he could say anything, Forgan spoke first.

“Learned it?”

Xia Nan paused.

It took him a second to realize what Forgan meant.

One glance.

That was all it took for the barbarian to notice that Xia Nan had already raised [Fang Hunt] to novice level.

Xia Nan had no idea how he could tell, but he nodded.

“I happened to run into a troublesome monster on the way back.”

The air around them turned frigid in an instant.

It felt like a predator on the ice fields catching the scent of blood.

Tiny points of frost condensed out of thin air, glittering faintly.

They drifted with strange purpose, circled twice around the decapitating longsword on Xia Nan’s back, then floated above the table.

The frost gathered.

A palm-sized image took shape.

A vicious monster with one broken wing.

Then it vanished.

“That spined devil?” Forgan rested one thick arm on the table, the silvery fur of his cloak shifting softly. “You were pretty lucky.”

Xia Nan stared.

Forgan had reconstructed the monster he fought two days ago from nothing more than the faint residual aura clinging to him.

Still, after hearing the barbarian’s assessment, Xia Nan had to agree.

His luck really had been ridiculous.

Maybe the [Coin of Fate] pressed against his chest had taken effect.

Maybe the Goddess of Fortune, Tymora, had truly glanced his way.

He had been only one step away from fully learning the combat technique when the sudden appearance of the mycelium interrupted his training.

Xia Nan had assumed that final step would be delayed for quite a while.

Instead, while fleeing for his life, he happened to run into a severely injured spined devil.

Perhaps Forgan had driven the creature off once before with his aura, and the cold energy infused into Xia Nan during training had caught its attention.

Or perhaps the dark-purple spores infesting its body had already damaged its mind.

Whatever the reason, while even Xia Nan was running from the shockwaves of a battle between Transcendents, the spined devil refused to flee.

Instead, it stubbornly locked onto him and dragged him into a fight.

Fortunately, it was already badly wounded.

Under normal circumstances, its challenge rating reached “2.”

But it had lost its most important advantage, flight.

Its stamina was also deteriorating rapidly under the spores’ corrosion.

By the time it fought Xia Nan, its combat ability was only a little above his own.

For someone trying to push a combat technique over the final threshold, it could hardly have been a better opponent.

“Sir, your raw meat.”

Forgan had not asked for any preparation, so Chapton personally arrived with the tray soon after the barbarian sat down.

Clink.

The metal plate touched the wooden table.

Two square-cut slabs of raw meat trembled on top, faint streaks of watery blood sliding down their sides.

Xia Nan frowned slightly.

Forgan might have been a barbarian from the Northern Icefields, but during all those days in the forest, Xia Nan had never once seen him eat raw meat.

Before he could ask, the smell of blood caught the attention of something else.

“Awoo…”

A soft, childish whine came from across the table.

The fur over Forgan’s chest wriggled.

Then a tiny, fluffy head pushed its way out.

Xia Nan blinked.

A winter wolf pup.

It looked barely born, its fur still soft and uneven.

The pup seemed half asleep at first. Its eyes were narrowed, and its pearly-black nose twitched faintly.

Then it caught the scent of meat.

Its eyes snapped open.

The pup sprang from Forgan’s cloak and landed lightly on the table.

The warmth outside the cloak seemed to bother it. Its tiny body shrank in on itself for a moment.

Then its tail started wagging furiously.

It pounced on the meat.

So that was who the raw meat was for.

Clearly, the pup was another change brought about by Forgan’s battle.

For some reason, the more Xia Nan looked at it, the more familiar it seemed.

It vaguely resembled the translucent wolf spirit that had searched the goblin nest with him in the Misty Forest several days ago.

Xia Nan even started to reach out and pat its head.

Then the pup hunched over its food, bared its tiny teeth, and growled possessively.

Xia Nan quietly pulled his hand back.

His eyes moved to the iron chain across Forgan’s chest.

The middle was still empty.

Remembering everything he had guessed about Forgan’s purpose over the past few days, Xia Nan lowered his voice.

“How did… the matter turn out?”

Forgan shook his head.

“I fell just short.”

His eyes remained as cold as ever.

There was no obvious regret on his face.

No frustration either.

He reached into the pouch at his waist, took something out, and placed it on the table.

Then he pushed it toward Xia Nan.

A bone-white wolf fang.

Xia Nan picked it up.

Cold seeped into his palm.

He looked at Forgan in confusion.

“I owe you a favor.”

The tracking effect of [Mourning-Frost Oathbound] had no distance limit.

But because of the nature of the mire druid Bartholomew’s class, Forgan had never been able to pinpoint his exact location.

If Forgan had not accepted the commission and brought Xia Nan into the Misty Forest to train, he probably would have needed many more days to discover the traces the druid left in the goblin cave.

And even if he had found those traces, he would have searched deeper into the Misty Forest.

That was the exact opposite direction from where the target was actually hiding.

He never would have discovered the druid’s true hiding place the way he had this time, while escorting Xia Nan toward the nearest town.

And he certainly would not have been able to catch the druid by surprise.

So although Xia Nan had never deliberately taken part in Forgan’s hunt, his presence had still provided considerable help.

Xia Nan himself had no idea what exactly had happened or what role he had played.

But if Forgan said he owed him a favor…

There was no reason to refuse it.

Xia Nan was about to put the wolf fang into his backpack when another thought suddenly struck him.

He had already learned two combat techniques.

Only one final step remained before he could gain a class level.

His eyes lit up.

The wolf fang went back onto the table.

“Can I use that favor now?”

…

…

Deep within the Misty Forest stood a vast, complicated goblin nest.

“Screeeech!”

Sharp cries rolled through the tunnels like waves, rebounding from the stone walls.

This tribe was led by a hobgoblin.

Its population had already reached three digits.

The hobgoblin’s natural military talent had transformed the goblins beneath it into something resembling a miniature army.

They traveled through the forest in groups, carrying all kinds of weapons looted from who knew where.

When they encountered beasts they could handle, they surrounded and killed them before dragging the carcasses back to the nest.

When they encountered powerful monsters, they no longer rushed mindlessly to their deaths.

Instead, they abandoned a few elderly or maimed greenskins as bait and retreated at once.

Goblins reproduced quickly.

Hobgoblins possessed intelligence far beyond that of ordinary monsters.

Together, those advantages allowed the tribe to scrape out a living even in the dangerous depths of the Misty Forest.

Translated by Bcatranslations. Read it at bcatranslation.com

They had even dug out a sprawling underground habitat filled with traps and twisting passages.

Crackle!

An enormous bonfire built from countless branches burned fiercely.

The flames lit nearly the entire cavern.

Several robust humped oxen roasted above the fire.

Their thick hides charred and split beneath the heat, exposing tender, juicy meat underneath.

The smell of roasting flesh mingled with the cavern’s reeking mixture of excrement and blood.

The goblins’ frenzied shrieks rose higher.

In the firelight, their rough, pustule-covered green skin glistened with a greasy, nauseating sheen.

In any ordinary goblin tribe, the prey would never survive long enough to finish cooking.

Greedy, undisciplined greenskins would have swarmed the carcasses and torn them apart while the meat was still half raw.

But here, more than a hundred goblins sat around the bonfire in eerie order.

They restrained themselves.

Saliva streamed from the corners of their mouths until the filthy scraps of cloth around their waists were soaked.

Their emaciated bellies twisted and cramped from hunger.

Still, not one goblin broke ranks.

Not one lunged for the food.

Deep inside the nest, a hobgoblin sat on a stone seat padded with silk and cushions.

It wore a complete suit of armor.

A two-handed axe rested near its feet.

As it surveyed the orderly tribe before it, a distinctly human satisfaction appeared on its face.

The hobgoblin casually tossed aside a bone that had been gnawed nearly clean.

Then it rose from the padded stone seat and stepped forward.

Its foul-smelling mouth opened.

Air rose from its chest into its throat.

Its vocal cords began to vibrate.

In another instant, it would issue the command to eat.

Then…

Everything stopped.

The wild, fanatical shrieking that filled the cavern vanished at once.

The hobgoblin froze where it stood, still holding the final posture before speaking.

Blood from half-cooked meat dripped slowly from its yellowish-brown tusks and splattered across the metal armor on its chest.

Deep inside its mouth, behind crooked rows of decaying teeth, something dark purple flickered.

Rustle.

A tiny sound echoed through the suddenly silent cavern.

Like a tender sprout breaking through soil.

Like a moth tearing free of its cocoon.

Then came a crash.

The hobgoblin collapsed.

Its metal armor slammed against the ground with a piercing clang.

“Hrrk…”

Its head snapped backward.

Its mouth opened.

A dark-purple strand of mycelium crawled from its throat like a parasite that had been growing inside its body.

Thin tendrils clung to its mouth and throat, writhing as they spread.

They tangled together.

Merged.

Poured outward.

Faster.

Faster.

Within seconds, the thin tendrils had swollen into a mass that engulfed the hobgoblin’s entire body.

At the same time, its once-powerful frame began to collapse.

The flesh shrank visibly, as though all the air were being sucked from a punctured waterskin.

Still not enough.

The dark-purple mycelium spread outward from the hobgoblin in all directions, racing over the ground like a fungal carpet.

Excrement mixed with soil.

Metal.

Stone.

Gnawed bones.

Scraps of flesh.

And the hundred or more greenskins that had also lost consciousness and collapsed.

Everything disappeared beneath it.

Crunch… crunch…

At some point, the bonfire went out.

Even the last embers faded to black.

The cavern sank into absolute darkness.

Only one strange sound remained.

A wet, crawling noise that made the hair on one’s body stand on end.

Like a stomach slowly working as it digested a meal.

No one knew how much time passed.

Squelch.

Sticky footsteps dragged across the ground.

A vague humanoid shape emerged from the cave.

Its body was made entirely from intertwined strands of dark-purple mycelium.

It resembled a crude clay doll shaped by a child.

It had no facial features.

Its limbs were uneven in length, crooked and malformed.

Only three deep holes remained where its eyes and mouth should have been.

Awooo!

Far off in the forest, the howl of some unknown wolf-like monster echoed between the trees.

Birds and small beasts scattered from the treetops.

The fungal humanoid stopped.

Fleshy growths wriggled along its body.

Its head slowly twisted toward the distant howl.

It stared for a long time.

Then, with obvious difficulty, it turned its head back.

The creature shuffled toward the forest’s outer reaches, moving away from Rivervale Town in the opposite direction.

Behind it, only a dense, grating sound lingered in the air.

Countless tiny noises meshed together into two words.

“Mad… dog…”