Chapter 28 The Reason

“Bang!”

The one-handed hammer came crashing down.

Metal struck flesh with a heavy, muffled thud.

The long green snake that had been coiled up with its head raised in warning instantly collapsed into a twitching lump of meat.

“Why are there so many snakes in this forest?”

Larry, dressed in a close-fitting short outfit, shook the drops of blood from his hammer and grimaced in disgust.

Several hours had passed since Xia Nan joined the party.

The Misty Forest was packed with thick bushes and tall grass. Traveling through such terrain was not quite a battle in itself, but it was exhausting enough.

Their stamina had drained quickly.

And since an unexpected fight could break out at any moment, none of them could afford to spend all their energy simply walking.

They needed enough strength left to fight.

So the group had found a relatively safe spot and stopped for a short rest.

Xia Nan sat in one corner of the temporary camp with his back against a tree.

His iron-gray decapitating longsword rested diagonally beside him, close enough that he could grab it in an instant.

He held a damp strip of gauze in one hand and used it to wipe down his leather armor.

He had not been injured in the desperate fight with the two men earlier.

Their blood, however, had gotten everywhere.

Xia Nan was not especially obsessed with cleanliness.

But the smell of blood could attract danger, and wearing sticky, blood-smeared armor was unpleasant.

Now that he finally had a few quiet minutes, he might as well clean himself up.

“Xia Nan, do you usually run into this many snakes when you’re out on missions?”

Larry casually tossed the snake, now beaten into a lump of flesh, into the nearby bushes.

Now that Xia Nan had joined the group, everyone had naturally introduced themselves.

Xia Nan looked up.

Then he forcibly suppressed the urge to rush over and dig out the snake’s gallbladder.

Thinking back on the journey so far, he did find the situation strange.

[We really have run into a lot of snakes.]

[There weren’t nearly this many when I was traveling with Bunch of Scrubs.]

Still, Xia Nan did not say much.

This was only his second mission.

When it came to the Misty Forest, he was not exactly more experienced than Larry.

“Maybe this particular area is unusual,” Xia Nan said. “You know what the Misty Forest is like. Strange things are everywhere. No one can predict what they’ll run into.”

“Oh? Strange things?”

The vague answer immediately caught Larry’s interest.

“Like rare magical beasts? Or giant plants that eat people?”

His eyes lit up.

“I heard from my cousin that at a major mana convergence point like this, there can even be ancient fortresses and underground dungeons left behind from ages ago!”

Larry’s voice rose unconsciously as soon as the topic turned to something he liked.

The blonde girl beside him also seemed to perk up.

Apparently, both of them were waiting for the newly recruited adventurer to share some thrilling forest stories.

Unfortunately…

They had picked the wrong person.

The conversation had already wandered far beyond Xia Nan’s knowledge.

His lips twitched.

“I’m a newcomer too. I don’t know much about any of that.”

“A newcomer!?”

Larry stared at him.

“You sure didn’t fight like a rookie earlier!”

“Why don’t you ask Wood?” Xia Nan said, somewhat stiffly changing the subject. “He obviously has a lot more experience than I do.”

At the mention of Wood, Larry immediately shrank a little.

He glanced furtively from side to side.

Then he remembered that Wood had already left the camp to scout the path ahead.

Larry leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“Him? Unless he’s talking to Hai’an, he always looks like he’s staring at a corpse. Who would dare ask him anything?”

“You can spend half a day trying to squeeze one sentence out of him. No matter what you ask, he just gives you a couple of cold looks. If it weren’t for…”

“Ahem.”

Hai’an coughed deliberately.

Larry stopped.

Hai’an looked helpless.

“Don’t listen to him. Wood is very competent.”

Xia Nan actually agreed.

He could clearly feel Wood’s vigilance toward him, but that did not stop Xia Nan from recognizing the man’s professionalism.

And since they were already talking…

Xia Nan’s mind returned to the wooden token.

They had been traveling earlier, so he never had a chance to ask about it properly.

Now was as good a time as any.

“Where did that token come from?”

“That?”

Larry immediately jumped into the conversation.

“I bought it last month while I was out looking for interesting goods. At the time…”

According to Larry, an adventurer had originally found the wooden token somewhere in the Misty Forest.

The man had assumed that such an exotic-looking item would fetch a good price.

Instead, not a single shop in Rivervale Town was willing to take it.

With no other choice, he eventually sold it cheaply to the owner of Griffin Department Store in Neum.

That was where Larry later spotted it and bought it.

“I originally wanted to hire that adventurer to guide us here,” Larry continued, “but he refused no matter what I offered. In the end, I had to spend a few gold coins just to buy the location where he found it.”

“Just the four of you?”

Xia Nan frowned.

“Why didn’t you bring any guards?”

That was the obvious question.

Even rich young masters taking a trip into the countryside would normally bring several personal guards.

And whether Xia Nan judged Larry by his clothes or his behavior, the man did not look remotely short on money.

Yet he had not brought a single guard of his own.

Xia Nan could not understand it.

If it were him, he might not even have come personally.

The location was only in the outer reaches of the Misty Forest.

Why not spend some money and hire a few dozen professionals?

It would be safer, and with more people searching, the odds of discovering something would rise dramatically.

Larry scratched the back of his head and gave an awkward grin.

“My dad has never liked… The bank accounts… Someone’s always watching… We slipped out…”

His explanation was so broken and disjointed that it barely qualified as one.

And while he muttered, his eyes unconsciously drifted toward the blonde girl resting nearby.

“Tch.”

Xia Nan clicked his tongue and shook his head.

Suddenly, he was no longer curious.

Whatever.

They had already come this far.

Whether it was Xia Nan or Larry, everyone here was living with the consequences of their own decisions.

“Then what makes that piece of wood so special that you’d come all the way from Neum for it?”

There was no need to explain why the token fascinated Xia Nan.

But these people were natives of this world.

They were not archaeologists.

Risking their lives to enter a monster-infested forest just to investigate a wooden token of unknown origin seemed completely unreasonable.

Larry stopped talking.

Hai’an let out a quiet sigh.

“I was the one who brought the group here.”

He raised his head.

His distinctly half-elven silver-gray eyes settled on Xia Nan.

“I can’t tell you the details, but I suspect this wooden token… may be connected to the disappearance of someone in my family.”

Xia Nan frowned.

He was about to ask something else when the tall grass beside the camp suddenly rustled.

He shot to his feet.

His hand had already closed around the decapitating longsword beside him before he consciously realized he was moving.

In an instant, he was ready to fight.

A figure emerged from the grass.

Black leather armor.

Wood.

His gaze swept across everyone before finally settling on Hai’an.

“Young Master.”

Wood’s voice was low.

“I found something.”