Chapter 278 Spinning Slash and the Blazing Heat Wave

Pushed by an inexplicable force, the mountain dwarf Stonebelly's sudden step forward instantly made him the target of everyone's attention.

Even though he had no intention of moving, the two scimitars hacking toward him from behind forced him into a mad sprint toward the altar where the staff rested.

Under normal circumstances, if everyone present possessed enough intelligence and experience to maintain absolute calm, they could have set aside personal grudges and greed to objectively analyze the situation.

For Stonebelly and Ciri, to maximize their chances of leaving the valley alive with the loot, the best solution would be to temporarily join forces and eliminate the squad's strongest and most brutal member—their captain, Marcus—before fighting each other for the staff.

But they were not machines, and could not analyze the situation as comprehensively as they would under ideal conditions.

They didn't even have enough time to think. At the first sign of sudden change, their uneducated minds—minds that likely couldn't even recognize every letter—failed to keep up. Instinct and muscle memory took over, completing their actions before a single thought could form.

—The dwarf sprinted for the staff, and the ranger loosed an arrow at the dwarf closest to it.

Of course, they were both highly experienced Adventurers.

The second the arrow left her hand, the ranger Ciri instantly reacted.

Acting too late to prevent the disaster, she fired a second arrow at Marcus.

But it was too late.

Stonebelly—the teammate she might have temporarily allied with—was struck because of her initial attack, allowing Marcus to slice off half the dwarf's head with a single scimitar strike.

And her second arrow was easily deflected by him.

Clutching her longbow, her tall, slender figure went rigid, drawn tighter than a bowstring.

Ciri stared into the fierce, vicious eyes pierced by that hideous scar.

Her well-kept face paled further against the cold gleam of the scimitars.

In the blink of an eye, the situation had deteriorated into the worst possible outcome for her.

She knew perfectly well that at this close range, without teammates to run interference, her chances of surviving a fight against Marcus were practically zero.

At that moment, the terror of death completely eclipsed her greed.

She quietly took a step back and slightly lowered her longbow.

Forcing a stiff smile onto her face, Ciri said,

"Captain, I voluntarily forfeit my share of the loot from this expedition."

"Whether it's the staff up ahead or any other spoils in the ruins, it all goes to you. I won't take a single copper."

"We've worked together for a few years now. You know me. I keep my head down and never drag the Squad down during a mission."

"Besides, it's not easy to find a suitable ranger like me out there. Don't you agree?"

"..."

The woman said a lot, not daring to utter a single word of the mockery and sarcasm she usually wore on her sleeve.

Fueled by fear and panic, she babbled to prove her worth to the vicious man before her.

Marcus said nothing.

He just stood there, quietly watching Ciri.

Only when her voice trailed off and cold sweat drenched her forehead did he finally open his mouth.

"Oh, Ciri, my dear Ciri." He lowered his head slightly, his gaze sweeping over the arrow shaft he had cleaved in two on the ground. "Don't you think it's a little late to be saying this?"

"No, no... I didn't..." Panic-stricken, Ciri took another two steps back.

"Captain, I can explain."

"Compensation... Yes, compensation! Once this trip is over and we head back to town, you can have all the gold coins I've saved up over the years!"

"Also, haven't you been pushing the dwarf to use his clan connections to forge you a weapon? He told me about it a few days ago..."

Remembering this detail amidst her pleas, she hurriedly spilled everything she knew, and Marcus appropriately feigned a look of interest.

It was right then, the instant she keenly caught his attention wavering toward her words...

A flash of ruthless determination cut through the pale panic on the woman's face.

She violently hoisted her slightly lowered wooden longbow. Her right fingertips pinched the bowstring hard, though no arrow rested upon it.

Her forearm surged with power!

Her right hand viciously yanked the string back!

"Twang..."

It was the harsh noise of a bowstring stretched to its absolute limit, trembling violently.

Swish—

Ciri loosed the final arrow of her life.

The cost was the shattering of the Fine wooden longbow that had accompanied her for years, along with two of her fingers cleanly sliced off by the bowstring.

Invisible currents churned through the air.

The fired "arrow" lacked a physical body, yet its trajectory was visible—a spiraling void churning the thick fog and dust into a blur.

Its speed was incredible!

As if teleporting, the invisible arrow vanished from its origin before its piercing, violent shriek finally tore through the air.

Enduring the agonizing pain in her right hand, she had no time to bandage the wound.

After firing the most powerful arrow of her life under the influence of her desperate will to survive, Ciri didn't even bother to check if it hit. She turned decisively and sprinted frantically toward the Church doors.

As her long, powerful legs pumped beneath her tight clothes, visible vortexes of wind coiled around her calves, boosting her speed even higher.

In a mere breath's time, she was about to cross the doorway and plunge into the dense fog outside.

But right at that moment, an extremely thick stench of blood, accompanied by the shriek of parting air from behind, flooded Ciri's nose with a breath.

Sensing something, stark terror warped the woman's face. While still sprinting forward, she twisted her body and forcefully ducked low.

It was too late.

A second later, a spinning scimitar cloaked in a thick aura of blood sheared right through her body.

From the outside in, it first severed the long hair swaying behind her back, then sliced through her practically defenseless light leather armor, down into her sweat-drenched undershirt, tearing through skin, muscle, bone, and internal organs. The blade finally burst out her front abdomen, repeating the destruction in complete reverse.

Driven by residual nerve signals, her legs took one final step.

However, momentum tore the woman's upper torso entirely away from her lower half.

Boiling blood sprayed through the air as her intestines spilled across the floor.

Cleaved in two by the scimitar, her bisected corpse tumbled to the ground.

Pain far exceeding the body's threshold was subconsciously blocked out.

Ciri's upper half rolled across the ground a few times before coming to a rest on her back.

Her pupils dilated. Her mind went blank, her consciousness slowly dissipating as her senses faded into numbness.

She had no epic saga to call her own, nor any memories worth reliving in her final moments.

Just like the dozens of other Adventurers across the Aifala Continent suffering the agonies of death at this exact moment, she slipped away in silence.

"Thud."

The sound of slightly stumbling footsteps echoed from deeper inside the Church.

Viscous blood dripped from fingertips, slowly oozing down the hilt to stagnate in the grooves at the base of the blade.

Marcus slowly approached, gripping his other scimitar.

Compared to just moments ago, he was in terrible shape.

Ciri's last strike had not been in vain.

A desperate strike unleashed by a Level 2 Class Holder at the cost of two fingers and her own weapon was not something that could be simply blocked or dodged.

Like a pancake bitten by a naughty child, a perfect semicircular chunk was missing from his side.

It was an unmistakably severe wound.

Even chugging an entire Healing Potion couldn't mend it. He only retained the ability to move thanks to the potion and his Constitution Feats.

He was already lucky.

If his combat instincts hadn't compelled him to twist his body slightly out of the way just now...

He would have been the one lying on the floor, cleaved in half.

"Ciri, your petty little tricks... haven't changed since the day we met."

Marcus muttered, but the scimitar in his hand showed no mercy, plunging straight into her heart.

Sending his dying teammate of many years straight down to hell.

Only then did he stumble forward a few more steps to retrieve his other scimitar from the ground and slide it back into its sheath.

Then, a long-lost smile surfaced on his hideous, sweat-drenched, blood-spattered face.

For the vast majority of Adventurers in this world—from mighty existences at the Transcendent Tier and Legendary Rank Tier, all the way down to the bottom-feeders brawling with green-skinned Goblins in the forests and plains—

—looting the battlefield after combat was always the most exhilarating part of any mission.

The profound sense of reward after hard work, the anticipation of searching a corpse for loot, and the occasional thrill of an unexpected discovery...

...were experiences that no hard-working Adventurer could ever resist.

Marcus was no exception.

Even though his painstakingly assembled Squad was now reduced to just him, and his severe injuries would likely keep him recovering in town for quite some time...

Compared to his haul from this trip, it was all worth it.

Retaining a hint of viciousness, his cloudy eyes peered deep into the Church, locking onto the staff bathing in the light spilling from the dome. An orange-red gemstone sat atop it, pulsing with a strange, ember-like glow.

The excitement on Marcus's face grew increasingly obvious.

'How much will it sell for?' he wondered.

'Five thousand gold? Eight thousand?'

'Maybe even five figures?'

At this moment, he was already blissfully planning how to spend the gold once it was in his hands. Should he buy a country estate and live like a so-called "noble lord," or stay in the big city and enjoy its conveniences?

Suddenly, from deep within the fog behind him, an unhidden set of footsteps echoed abruptly.

Alarmed, Marcus whipped his head around, his hands instinctively dropping to the scimitar hilts at his waist.

Then, he saw the pitch-black silhouette faintly visible deep in the dense mist, and the massive, twisted monstrosity looming behind it, its mane rippling in the churning air.

The intense danger that erupted in his heart, and the lethal aura that made his scalp prickle, compelled his hands to grip his hilts, on the verge of drawing both his scimitars.

The next second—

Awooo—

The long wolf howl from deep within the fog slammed into his brain like a tolling brass bell, instantly freezing and obliterating all his thoughts.

Nothing remained but a profound, sourceless terror that sprouted like wild weeds, instantly choking his heart.

Severely wounded, mentally drained from the rapid string of life-and-death gambits, and tortured by agonizing pain, his fragile and exhausted psyche was instantly crushed.

His ears rang. His mind blurred.

By the time Marcus's consciousness snapped back to his brain, all he saw was a fleeting, razor-sharp flash of sword light that left an iron-gray afterimage in his vision.

And a headless torso standing stiffly in place, a geyser of blood erupting from its neck.

He hadn't even processed what was happening.

Immediately after, the intense vertigo of a rapidly spinning perspective and an inexplicable weakness flooded his head.

Darkness surged like a tide, swallowing Marcus's consciousness.

"Thud."

The spinning head and the mutilated corpse hit the ground together.

Xia Nan casually flicked his wrist in a sword flourish, shaking the blood droplets from the blade of his Decapitating Longsword.

He glanced at the corpses on the floor, his face betraying no visible emotion.

Inwardly, however, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of inexplicable sentiment.

Thanks to physical attributes that far exceeded those of Class Holders at the same Level, as well as high-quality combat techniques and Feats, he possessed combat power far beyond his actual Class Level.

But if he had truly fought this four-man Adventurer Squad head-on, even if he won, it certainly wouldn't have been easy. He likely would have had to reveal a few trump cards or suffer moderate injuries.

Yet here they were—four dead enemies—and he hadn't even broken a sweat. His biggest expenditure of stamina during this entire trip had been trying to find a suitable hiding spot for that steel flail he had taken from the fat knight.

Only two of them had actually traded blows with him. The green-skinned half-orc had already been at death's door, and he had simply finished him off. The dual-wielding leader appeared slightly better off, but not by much; he hadn't even retained a tenth of his strength.

[Fang Hunt] + [Spinning Slash]. Paralyzed by terror from the wolf's howl, the man possessed no ability to resist and was instantly decapitated.

It was so easy that Xia Nan himself was surprised, even making him consider deepening his mastery in stealth if the opportunity ever arose.

Although he was more accustomed to grand, sweeping attacks and swift, roaming combat styles, pulling off an ambush like today was a unique experience.

Without sheathing his sword, Xia Nan's gaze swept over the corpses of the man, the ranger, and the dwarf, confirming that all three were completely dead.

Only then did he cast his eyes toward the staff on the altar ahead.

He stepped forward, but after only two paces, abruptly halted.

Frowning deeply, his eyes darted over to the desiccated corpse clad in tattered Cleric robes—the very one the ranger had pinned to the ground with an arrow at the very start of the battle.

He didn't need to step closer to carefully perceive it.

The wooden sword [Azure Pine] strapped to his back was radiating a scorching heat that practically ignited the air, blasting waves of scalding heat against the back of his neck.

Along with an unprecedented, fiery glow so intense he could see it out of the corner of his eye even with the weapon resting behind him.

It clearly indicated the unseen threat still lurking within the shriveled corpse.