Chapter 32 Venom Glands

Whoosh!

The force of Wood’s high-speed movement sent the loose black hair across Xia Nan’s forehead whipping wildly.

A blur crossed his vision.

Then Wood was there, two daggers in hand.

“Young master, are you all right?”

His voice was tight with worry.

Wood’s eyes swept over Hai’an from head to toe, checking him again and again.

Only after confirming there were no visible injuries did some of the tension leave his face.

In truth, he already knew Hai’an had not been touched.

There had been nothing blocking his view as he rushed over, and he had seen the rust monster lose its head before it could reach the half-elf.

But knowing that and feeling reassured were two different things.

Wood had failed to notice the danger in time.

The thought of what might have happened left him blaming himself anyway.

[Thank goodness.]

[Thank goodness.]

Then he turned toward Xia Nan.

The young man was already holding his longsword and preparing to rush back into the fight.

Wood gave him a deep, sincere nod.

The battle was still underway, and Wood was never much of a talker to begin with.

But something had changed.

The young man he had once distrusted had just proven, with his actions, that he could be relied upon.

Whoosh.

Wood disappeared again like a shadow.

Only then did Hai’an finally recover from his brush with death.

“Huff… Huff…”

He sucked in breath after breath, his pale face drenched in sweat.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Thank you!”

The words came out in a jumble.

Xia Nan barely had time to hear them.

He was already moving.

On one hand, Hai’an and the others had been complete strangers only a few days ago.

But now Xia Nan had joined their party.

That made them teammates.

Even if he looked at it purely from the perspective of those one hundred gold coins, he still had a responsibility to do what he could.

And on the other hand…

One of the two remaining rust monsters had just crawled straight toward them.

“Skree!”

Its piercing shriek seemed sharp enough to tear through their eardrums.

The long fin-like tail behind it, covered in wavy yellow-brown plates, whipped through the air with enough force to scatter grass in every direction.

Unlike greenskin goblins, whose combat strength relied heavily on numbers, rust monsters rarely gathered in large groups.

They did not panic when their own kind died.

They did not fly into a rage, either.

These giant insects normally wandered through deep caverns with little interest in living prey.

But tonight, something had clearly set them off.

Even with corroded metal weapons lying right at their feet, the rust monsters ignored the food entirely and attacked the living creatures in front of them with maddened aggression.

Xia Nan held the iron-gray Decapitating Longsword across his chest.

He did not rush forward.

Instead, he circled.

His mind raced.

Everything that had happened since the start of the battle flashed through his thoughts.

First, the greatest threat was the rust monster’s corrosive saliva.

Whether it landed on his body or his sword, Xia Nan wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

Especially the sword.

Just imagining the blade being eaten away made his heart ache.

He had to be careful.

Second, the rust monster was covered almost entirely in thick carapace.

Larry’s hammer had already demonstrated how hard that shell was.

Xia Nan had no idea whether his longsword could cut through it in one strike.

And if it could not…

Without flesh to absorb the force of his swing, the recoil would travel straight back into his body and leave him momentarily stiff.

In a fight like this, one moment was enough to die.

The margin for error was terrifyingly small.

So Wood’s method was clearly the best one.

Aim for the gaps between the plates.

Find the weak points.

But…

A trace of hesitation flashed through Xia Nan’s dark eyes.

Only a few seconds ago, he had used [Spinning Slash] to cut off a rust monster’s head.

At the time, he had not thought about technique, timing, or angles.

He had simply seen a teammate in danger, copied the method Wood had used, and swung.

He had barely even aimed.

Yet the blade had slipped perfectly into a gap in the creature’s shell.

Was that just luck?

Or did he really have some kind of instinct for combat?

Xia Nan did not know.

And in a fight where his life was on the line, he was not going to trust a vague feeling he could not explain.

Bang!

The rust monster’s powerful tail slammed into the ground like an iron whip.

Mud sprayed everywhere.

Xia Nan barely slipped aside.

His longsword followed the motion and scraped across the yellow-brown carapace.

Sparks burst from the impact.

“Tsk. Almost.”

A rust monster was not some wooden dummy waiting for him to hit it.

Countless generations of survival had shaped these creatures around their own weaknesses.

The overlapping plates of their uneven, wave-like carapace left only narrow gaps between them.

And those gaps never stayed still.

The entire monster was constantly shifting, crawling, twisting, while its long tail screamed through the air behind it.

Unless someone possessed the kind of technique Wood had, the kind that came with being a genuine class holder far beyond an ordinary person, finding those tiny openings in the middle of battle was incredibly difficult.

Unless…

Whoosh!

A sharp whistle cut through the air behind him.

Xia Nan froze for half a beat.

Then he understood.

He jumped backward at once.

Whether he was retreating or preparing to strike no longer mattered.

He had created space.

A wooden arrow with white fletching shot past his side, humming through the mist.

Hai’an had recovered.

And he had immediately returned the favor.

This shot was different from the half-elf’s earlier arrows.

It did not seem nearly as fast.

But the fletching trembled so violently that the entire shaft spun through the air at high speed.

Like the wake left behind by an aircraft cutting across the sky, the arrow carved a clear path through the mist.

Thwack!

Perfect.

The metal arrowhead spun straight into the rust monster’s tiny eye, almost completely hidden beneath its shell.

The impact was so violent that half the creature’s face caved inward and twisted around the shaft.

“Skree!”

The monster screamed.

Pain made it rear up instinctively and thrash its head from side to side, trying to shake the deeply embedded arrow loose.

[Now!]

Xia Nan moved without hesitation.

His legs exploded forward.

His position was wrong for [Spinning Slash], so he did not force it.

Instead, his body followed instinct.

The iron-gray longsword thrust diagonally upward.

Schick!

Green blood burst across the air.

With the force of Xia Nan’s entire body behind it, the sword punched straight through the rust monster’s comparatively soft lower jaw.

Then through its neck.

Its spine.

Upward.

All the way through.

Boom!

The heavy monster toppled backward under the force of the thrust and smashed into the ground.

Its head, still pierced by Hai’an’s arrow, rolled across the grass.

Its clawed limbs twitched weakly.

Xia Nan did not relax.

The instant he confirmed that the creature was dead, he exploded into motion again.

He planted a foot against its abdomen and pulled.

Hard.

The Decapitating Longsword came free from the shell.

Xia Nan immediately held it up and inspected every inch of the blade.

[Please don’t let any of it be on there.]

[Please.]

He had not had time to care about corrosive saliva when the opening appeared.

He saw the chance, so he stabbed.

That was all.

He did not regret it.

But if that thing’s saliva had ruined his sword…

Just thinking about it hurt.

Fortunately, although several fresh scratches marked the blade and dark-green insect blood coated its surface, there was no sign of the rust monster’s corrosive saliva.

His precious metal equipment had escaped its natural enemy.

Circling.

A pause.

One thrust.

Real fights were often decided in seconds.

By the time Xia Nan finally pulled his sword free and began catching his breath, Wood had already killed the last rust monster on the other side of the camp.

The battle was over.

…

The attack had come without warning.

If an ordinary low-level adventuring party had been surrounded by four rust monsters like this, avoiding total annihilation would already have counted as good fortune.

Heavy casualties would have been almost inevitable.

Fortunately, Xia Nan’s party had an experienced class holder.

Wood’s traps around the camp had given everyone advance warning.

He had immediately identified the monsters’ greatest threat, then taken the lead and killed one cleanly while exposing the weak points in their armor.

After that, Xia Nan, Hai’an, and the others had been able to work together.

In the end, only Larry had suffered a minor injury after accidentally getting rust monster saliva on himself while retreating.

The other four came through unharmed.

Sizzle…

Larry flicked the corrosive fluid clinging to his one-handed hammer into the grass with a look of disgust.

“This thing should still be usable… right?”

He stared at the hammerhead.

The metal had been eaten away so badly it looked as though rats had gnawed all over it.

His arm, meanwhile, was wrapped in a thick layer of bandages.

“Larry, what are you doing over there? Hurry up and help!”

Doris called from behind him while packing their things.

“Coming!”

The fighting had made too much noise.

Worse, the stink of insect blood had spread through the area.

This campsite was no longer safe.

They needed to move before night fully settled in.

On the other side of the camp, Xia Nan stood beside one of the rust monster corpses.

His Decapitating Longsword had already been wiped clean and returned to his back.

Now he was frowning at the [Adventurer’s Handbook] in his hands.

“Rust monster… rust monster…”

“Why isn’t it in here?”

After going through all that trouble to win the fight, there was no way Xia Nan wanted to leave the spoils behind without checking their value.

His knowledge as an adventurer was still shallow, but the thick chitinous plates covering such a large monster had to be worth something.

The problem was weight.

There was no practical way to carry the carapace back with them.

Even burying it and marking the location would probably be useless.

By the time they returned from the mission, something in the Misty Forest with a sharp nose would almost certainly have dug it up and eaten it.

So Xia Nan wanted to know whether rust monsters had any smaller, valuable parts worth collecting.

Unfortunately, the [Adventurer’s Handbook] did not mention them at all.

[This is a little troublesome.]

He was still brooding over it when Wood silently approached.

Unlike before, the man in black leather armor did not keep his distance.

He spoke first.

“The most valuable part of a rust monster is the venom gland in the upper-left side of its abdominal cavity.”

Xia Nan looked up.

“It’s dark purple and about the size of your thumb. Easy to spot once you move a few things around. The membrane is tough, so it won’t rupture easily. You can keep it in any cloth bag.”

Wood paused.

“Just don’t put it near metal. It may corrode it.”

Xia Nan listened carefully.

“As for the carapace, I’d leave it. First, it’s too heavy. Second, things decay quickly in the Misty Forest. Once the rust monster dies, the shell won’t last long unless you brought preservation materials.”

Then Wood added, “If you ever reach a town near a dwarf settlement and run into rust monsters again, take the antennae too.”

“Like cutting off a goblin’s left ear. Dwarves will pay an extra bounty for them.”

This was the first time Xia Nan had heard Wood say so much at once.

He immediately understood what the man was doing.

“Got it. Thank you.”

Xia Nan drew a dagger from his waist and was about to start cutting into the corpse when Hai’an walked over.

“Here.”

Xia Nan turned.

“I already removed the venom glands from the other three. Altogether, they should be worth a bit of money.”

Hai’an’s pale hands were covered in dark-green insect blood.

Three oval, purplish-black organs rested in his palm.

Xia Nan stared.

“You…”

“Consider it compensation for this mission.”

Hai’an put the venom glands into a cloth bag and pressed it into Xia Nan’s hand with a smile.

“We agreed we’d only be moving around the outskirts of the Misty Forest, where there shouldn’t have been much danger.”

“Now we’ve run into something like rust monsters. I can’t exactly pretend that never happened.”

His smile faded slightly.

“Besides, you saved me just now… About that, once this mission is over and we return to Neum…”

“We’ll talk about it then.”

Xia Nan waved a hand and cut him off.

He was not the kind of person who helped others just so he could demand repayment later.

Back then, he had only acted because the situation demanded it.

They were teammates.

And Xia Nan had not been in any serious danger himself.

What was he supposed to do, stand there and watch Hai’an die?

So Xia Nan did not care much about any so-called debt of gratitude.

The three venom glands, though…

Those were different.

[I wonder how much they’ll sell for.]

Before leaving town, Xia Nan had only twenty-four gold, two silver, and seven copper coins left to his name.

A little extra income sounded very attractive.

Beside them, Wood stared down at the rust monster corpses scattered across the grass.

The fighting was over.

But his expression had only grown more serious.

“Rust monsters normally live in the caverns of the Underdark.”

His gaze swept over the bodies.

“So why did so many suddenly appear in the Misty Forest?”

“Did something drive them out of their habitat…”

“Or did something here attract them?”