Chapter 115 Kill Without Hesitation When Killing Is Called For

"Slash!"

A cold gleam flashed through the dense, fog-shrouded forest.

The tough, tangled shrub branches swayed violently as pale sap splattered, mixed with grass clippings and shredded leaves.

Two rather heavy Fine One-Handed Hammers, both from the Rockhammer blacksmith shop, hung at her waist. They thumped dully against her thigh armor with every movement.

"Greenblood" Adeline walked at the very front of the squad. Gripping a trailblazing machete in both hands, she hacked and sawed at the thorny shrubs blocking their path like barricades.

Her strength was close to that of a Class Holder, and her intended path was clearly a melee class like a "Warrior" or "Barbarian," granting her exceptional physical conditioning.

After more than half a day of this, she had only broken a light sweat and was breathing a bit heavily. She didn't seem to find it strenuous at all.

In contrast, Abi—who followed behind her with a shield in his left hand and a sword in his right, maintaining a state of high alert the entire way—was utterly exhausted.

Even though Adeline had cleared away eighty percent of the obstacles on their path, the sheer pressure of the highly dangerous Misty Forest, combined with his heavy equipment and supplies, had drained a massive amount of stamina from the rookie.

They hadn't even encountered a single battle yet, but his combat effectiveness was already nearly half depleted.

However, he still possessed some professional discipline. No matter how tired he was, he didn't utter a single complaint, simply fulfilling his squad role by keeping his shield raised and staying alert to surrounding danger while Adeline cleared the way.

According to the division of labor they had planned on the way here, Xia Nan took a position slightly further back. His Decapitating Longsword was already drawn and tightly gripped in his hands.

If they were truly ambushed by monsters along the way, after Abi blocked the initial wave of attacks for Adeline, Xia Nan would step up to pin the monsters down, buying time for his teammates to react.

His role in the squad leaned more toward "support."

At the very back of the squad, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Xia Nan and lagging only half a step behind, was naturally the ranged shooter "Berg," whose primary method of attack was the bow and arrow.

The fresh scent of plant sap and the earthy smell of the damp air flowed into his nose with every breath.

His chest rose and fell in a steady, relaxed rhythm.

He moved his feet, maintaining a distance of just a few paces from the two in front of him as they advanced.

Xia Nan devoted the vast majority of his attention to staying alert, watching the dense forest and tall grass around them.

By now, more than half a day had passed since they left Rivervale Town.

Their progress couldn't be called slow, but it certainly wasn't fast, either.

A four-person squad was obviously much stronger in overall combat power, but their travel speed was far inferior to when he operated alone.

Not to mention those days when he had been led around by a "big shot."

If the Barbarian "Forgan" had been the one leading the way, this little distance would have been covered in half a day—no, in just a single morning.

There would be no need to worry about running into any blind monsters; he would have just bulldozed straight through, freezing all the blocking shrubs and thorns into ice shards and crushing them.

Following behind him, aside from it being slightly cold, their speed would have been even faster than walking through town.

Of course, Xia Nan knew perfectly well that this was a special experience an ordinary Adventurer might not encounter in a lifetime.

Trudging along with difficulty like they were right now, forced to halt and stand guard at the slightest sound in their surroundings, was his current norm for adventuring—and would remain so for a long time to come.

"Rustle!"

Not far off to the squad's front left, a patch of dense bushes suddenly shook violently, shaking loose a shower of dead leaves.

The slowly advancing squad instantly froze, then rapidly shifted their formation.

Abi's forehead was beaded with sweat as he took a large stride past the others to the very front of the squad. He pushed his iron-studded wooden shield out before him, facing the direction of the noise directly.

At the same time, Adeline didn't hesitate to drop her trailblazing machete to the ground, freeing her hands to grab the two One-Handed Hammers at her waist.

She also took two steps forward to stand beside Abi, but she clearly kept most of her attention focused on the dense forest on the other two sides of the squad—guarding against an ambush.

Xia Nan held his Decapitating Longsword horizontally across his chest, his knees slightly bent, obviously ready to explode into action.

Meanwhile, at the very back of the squad, the archer Berg had nimbly scaled a towering oak tree nearby the exact moment the sound rang out. A metal arrowhead gleaming with cold light peeked out from the dense canopy.

"Rustle rustle!!!"

The bushes shook even more violently, faintly revealing the blurred silhouette of the creature within.

Hearts beat rapidly.

Xia Nan could even see Abi's arm trembling slightly from extreme tension at the very front of the squad, as well as the taut skin on his cheeks as he clenched his jaw.

One second, two seconds, three seconds...

"Thump!"

Carrying a spray of shattered leaves and specks of dirt, a fawn half the height of a man suddenly burst out of the tall grass.

Its four slender legs stopped dead in their tracks, its petite hooves touching down lightly on the muddy ground.

Its eyes, sparkling like black pearls, reflected the four Adventurers ahead who looked as if they were facing a mortal enemy.

Its gaze was clear and incredibly foolish.

...

"Crackle!"

Orange-red flames burned fiercely. Dead branches and firewood, visible everywhere in the forest, had been piled together to form a small campfire.

In the dimly lit air, aside from the increasingly thick fog, the mouthwatering aroma of roasted meat—oxidized fat and searing protein—wafted about.

The fawn that had been lively and jumping just moments ago was now hollowed out, skewered on a branch, and roasting over the blazing flames.

Xia Nan sat by the campfire, his back against a tree trunk, gently wiping his Decapitating Longsword with a piece of gauze.

Off to the side, Adeline had just finished setting up traps and returned to camp, giving him a slight nod in greeting.

On the other side of the fire, Abi and Berg were discussing something in low voices. Separated by the firelight and the mist, their voices were muffled and indistinct.

After spending the whole day with them, he couldn't say he knew them deeply, but Xia Nan had gained a general understanding of his temporary teammates' personalities.

"Greenblood" Adeline was almost exactly as Chapton had described her.

She didn't talk much but was highly meticulous in her actions. Despite being the squad leader, she took on the most dangerous and grueling task of clearing the path.

She never spouted any nonsense, and whenever unexpected situations arose on the road, she calmly and collectedly commanded them to change formations.

As for her strength, just walking in the toughest position in the squad for more than half a day and only ending up slightly out of breath was enough to reveal her abundant stamina.

The paranoid and obsessive personality others spoke of probably hadn't shown itself yet simply because they hadn't encountered any Goblins.

Overall, she was indeed reliable.

Abi was a rookie at a single glance.

An unquestionable greenhorn. Unless he was a Bard with master-class acting skills in disguise, there was absolutely no chance he was hiding his true strength.

It wasn't surprising.

After all, given Adeline's habit of only accepting Goblin-related quests, no veteran Adventurers would join her team outside of Hunting Day.

According to past precedent, if Abi managed to stay in her squad for a while and slowly grow, he would likely leave the team once he became a veteran Adventurer to seek out a squad with better payouts.

Worth noting was that Abi's personality was actually quite cheerful for an Adventurer; he had talked quite a lot along the way.

Yet, despite them being around the same age, he rarely initiated conversation with Xia Nan.

From the time they met until now, they hadn't exchanged more than a few words.

For some reason, Xia Nan always got the feeling that the other guy was secretly competing with him.

But whenever Xia Nan used the quest as an excuse to strike up a conversation, Abi would act a little timid and cowering.

It was as if he knew the gap between them and was terrified of exposing his petty thoughts.

Xia Nan didn't really care much about it.

They were just temporary teammates; they would disband once Hunting Day was over.

As long as it wasn't direct, action-driven malice, he didn't give a damn even if someone talked a little trash behind his back.

As for the archer "Berg"...

The impression he gave Xia Nan was somewhat similar to the old Maji, but with a much slicker personality, greeting everyone with a smiling face.

He had the demeanor of an old slicker.

But it was exactly this kind of character, whose true colors were unreadable, that put Xia Nan on his guard.

He felt like the type who, when faced with a powerful enemy, would abandon his companions without hesitation and turn tail to run.

Xia Nan couldn't help but recall Berg's entanglement with that skinny Adventurer in the Association hall, which brought to mind the "Gap-Toothed" Bennett the man had mentioned.

He couldn't help feeling a bit curious.

Right now, the squad was camped out and resting, with nothing going on.

Xia Nan turned to Adeline beside him and asked for information about the man.

Having stayed in Rivervale Town for many years, she had even earned the moniker "Greenblood" for herself.

Even though she didn't usually pay attention to such miscellaneous gossip, the constant exposure to the Adventurers in the tavern meant that Adeline knew at least a little something about the more famous figures among the town's lower-rung Adventurers.

Seeing that Xia Nan wanted to know, she didn't hide anything and directly recounted what she had learned over the years...

A person was the sum of their social relations.

Whether it was a bottom-tier Adventurer who constantly faced the risk of death and couldn't even fill their belly, or a mortal of Legendary rank praised by the world whose name was passed down through Epic tales for eternity.

As long as one lived in this world, it was inevitable that they would interact with others, forming various small circles that overlapped to varying degrees without being completely identical.

In Rivervale Town, centered around the White Chickadee Tavern, those Adventurers who had not yet obtained a Class Level but weren't entirely at the bottom naturally had their own "small circles" as well.

Take Adeline, for instance, who had a peculiar habit of only targeting green-skinned Goblins when adventuring out. This led to her returning to town covered in Goblin blood every time, thus earning her the name "Greenblood."

The origin of "Gap-Toothed" Bennett's name naturally stemmed from his mouthful of jagged, yellowish-brown rotting teeth.

But on the other hand, even if no one ever said it aloud, it acted like an unspoken rule among bottom-tier Adventurers.

If someone could earn a widely circulated "nickname," it served, on some level, as proof of their recognition by the surrounding Adventurers.

Even if that "recognition" was completely negative.

Unlike Adeline, whose origins were a mystery, "Gap-Toothed" Bennett's history was practically an open book to the town's Adventurers, thanks to his frequent drunken bragging in the tavern, coupled with disclosures from some of his former teammates.

Word had it that he came from some godforsaken, remote little town in the western part of the Servia Kingdom. He started as a street urchin, but a kindhearted carpenter took pity on him and took him in, and Bennett spent a few years learning the trade.

When he was fifteen, he got into a conflict with a local thug in the village and used a woodcarving chisel to smash in half the guy's head.

The carpenter who had taken him in then pulled some strings to send him to Cloudclimb Province. He wandered all the way, finally arriving in Rivervale Town and becoming a "glorious" Adventurer.

No one knew what he had encountered on that journey, and it was entirely possible that a drunken Bennett had embellished his own youthful temperament.

Regardless, by the time he actually carved out a reputation for himself around Rivervale Town and made people know his name, this man with a mouthful of rotten teeth was already one of the most notorious figures among the town's bottom-tier Adventurers.

In truth, for Adventurers, anything that could possibly affect their so-called reputation boiled down to only two things:

"Money" and "Life."

Regarding the former, "Gap-Toothed" Bennett's earliest rise to prominence relied entirely on targeting weak rookie Adventurer Squads with garbage gear.

He would lie in wait near the town. If his targets managed to come out of the forest alive, they had usually suffered heavy losses and had no combat strength left.

Bringing a few accomplices, he would surround them. Under coercion and threats, they would obediently hand over their loot.

He even had a bit of brains about it, only forcing the unlucky rookie Adventurers to hand over two-thirds of their harvest. He always left a little leeway so he wouldn't drive them to fight to the bitter end.

Later, as the number of victimized Adventurers grew, the matter reached the ears of a certain Class Holder, who yelled about it in the tavern. Bennett subsequently stopped running that kind of business.

But by this time, he had already acquired a massive amount of gold coins by harvesting scores of bottom-tier Adventurers. Using this as a foundation, he traded them in for Fine equipment, decently strong teammates who shared his foul tastes, and some channels to climb the ladder.

Then, he transitioned from "Money" to "Life."

His moves were clean. Not a single Adventurer had ever stepped forward to identify him as the one who had ambushed them during an expedition.

Yet, after every quest, the massive influx of secondhand equipment recycled to the general store, the monster loot that fell outside his quest objectives, and the Adventurer Squads that left town and simply never came back all practically screamed of the filthy, unseen deeds he committed deep in the shadows of the forest.

In recent years, the reputation "Gap-Toothed" Bennett had slowly built up even caused some of the more cautious Adventurers to wait until his quests were over and he was physically spotted back in town before they dared to head out safely on their own.

"Tsk."

Listening to Adeline finish, Xia Nan smacked his lips, but his face showed no great amount of worry or anxiety.

Without an authoritative regulatory body, and leaving Adventurers to develop under the principle of "survival of the fittest," he had actually anticipated this kind of incident in his heart long ago.

There was nothing to be surprised about.

He just thought that if he ever fell out with the man in the future, he absolutely could not hold back. If he could finish it on the spot, he shouldn't drag it out.

Otherwise, given the man's troublesome personality, who knew how much trouble it would bring later.

And with their loose relationships built entirely upon a foundation of "gold coins," as soon as Bennett died, his underlings would immediately scatter to the winds. No one would dare stick their neck out to avenge him.

—Kill without hesitation when killing is called for. Just make it clean.