Chapter 74 The Palm Bone

Crunch.

A mud-stained leather boot came down hard.

The fragile Skeleton skull burst apart instantly, scattering countless tiny gray particles into the air like a ball of dusty yarn exploding underfoot.

Xia Nan casually spun [Green Pine] once before sliding the now-cool wooden sword back into its sheath.

For all the dread those dozens of Skeletons had inspired when they first crawled out of the earth, their actual combat strength had been pitiful.

Some had emerged missing half an arm.

Others were missing an entire leg.

A few managed only two or three stumbling steps before falling over and never getting back up.

Xia Nan was beginning to think they had not needed the others at all.

With [Green Pine] in hand and the endurance granted by his powerful physique, he probably could have cleared the whole group by himself.

The only disappointing part was the cemetery keeper.

After blowing the bone whistle, the old man had taken advantage of the chaos and fled.

Xia Nan had wanted to chase him.

Ingram had stopped him.

The sheriff had looked completely confident, as though everything was already arranged.

So Xia Nan had stayed and waited.

Alton had already slung his lute over his back again.

Now the halfling stood on tiptoe beside a sparse patch of bushes near the hut, making a series of strange, superstitious-looking gestures.

Probably thanking some deity from his pantheon again.

Xia Nan looked away.

His gaze fell on the field of scattered bones.

His temples began to ache.

To a certain extent, the danger of an enemy determined the value of the loot it left behind.

These Skeletons were like Goblins who owned nothing except the rags around their waists.

Actually, they were worse.

Nearly thirty Skeletons.

And the only objects Xia Nan could honestly call spoils of battle were the pieces of equipment worn by the supposedly elite adventurer Skeleton.

Even those were in miserable condition.

No one knew how many years the corpse had been buried, but the leather armor was so rotten that even its inner lining had nearly disintegrated.

The small round shield had a hole through its face large enough to serve as a window.

The rusty sword had more cracks than the face of an old man sitting at the village entrance.

Even the general stores that adventurers praised for offering fair prices would probably refuse to take them.

Then Xia Nan suddenly remembered something.

He crouched beside the elite Skeleton and used his dagger to pry open the fingers of its tightly clenched left hand.

His brow furrowed.

The bone whistle the cemetery keeper had thrown onto the ground had somehow fused completely with the Skeleton’s palm.

It no longer looked like a separate object.

Instead, it resembled a malformed piece of bone bulging grotesquely from the hand.

Ugly was putting it mildly.

Xia Nan was still wondering what he was supposed to do with the thing when light footsteps approached from behind.

Alton seemed to be in a good mood after the fight.

He walked over humming a little tune.

One glance at the bones was enough.

“Keep it. That thing’s fairly rare.”

“You only need the palm bone. Might even make you a little money.”

Xia Nan’s eyes brightened immediately.

“How?”

“I’m not sure how to explain it.”

Alton adjusted the slightly messy hair beneath his soft cap.

“It’s sort of… a crystallization of negative energy inside an undead creature? A tumor? A growth?”

He waved a hand.

“Something along those lines. Once you get back to Rivervale Town, an apothecary or a general store should buy it.”

The halfling took the lute off his back, pulled a clean piece of gauze from his clothes, and began carefully wiping dirt from the instrument.

“Judging by the size of that bone, the market price should be pretty decent. If you happen to meet someone who urgently needs one, getting several times the normal price wouldn’t be strange.”

“But…”

Alton stopped wiping.

He looked up at Xia Nan, suddenly serious.

“I wouldn’t recommend holding onto it for too long just because you’re hoping for a better offer.”

“Why?”

“Think about it.”

Alton raised an eyebrow.

“What kind of person would urgently need something like this?”

Xia Nan glanced down at the glaringly pale skeleton in front of him.

His heart tightened.

“Exactly,” Alton said. “Sell it sooner rather than later.”

“People who spend all year dealing with sinister undead power tend to get a little strange themselves. Best not to have too much contact with them.”

Xia Nan nodded.

That made perfect sense.

By then, Ingram had also walked over.

His gaze flicked toward the wooden sword on Xia Nan’s back, and a broad smile spread across his handsome face.

“You’re pretty capable, my friend.”

“You can’t be far from gaining a class level, can you?”

Xia Nan raised an eyebrow.

He did not answer.

Instead, he looked at the one-handed flanged mace hanging from Ingram’s waist, swaying slightly whenever the sheriff moved.

Then he put on a puzzled expression.

“Aren’t you a class holder? I thought only people who’d gained a class could use holy light.”

“Hahaha!”

Ingram laughed openly.

“Almost. I’m not quite there yet.”

Beside them, Alton was wiping down his lute when he suddenly tossed out a question without looking up.

“You’re not a Paladin, are you?”

Ingram froze.

Only for an instant.

Then his expression returned to normal.

He waved a hand and smiled.

“That I can’t tell you. It concerns the church.”

Alton seemed to have asked purely out of curiosity.

He lowered his head again and began adjusting the strings of his lute.

“Aah! Don’t! Please! I’ll tell you everything!”

The atmosphere had barely settled after the halfling’s question when miserable wailing drifted across the cemetery.

Xia Nan turned.

Two guards were approaching.

Between them was the cemetery keeper who had escaped earlier.

Xia Nan glanced at Ingram.

The sheriff caught the look and smiled.

“The cemetery only has two exits. Anyone trying to leave has to pass one of them.”

“I arranged for guards to watch both before we came in.”

“He was never getting away.”

Compared with the gloomy, sullen old man from earlier, the cemetery keeper now looked like a completely different person.

The right arm Xia Nan had severed had been crudely wrapped in bandages, but fresh blood still seeped through and dripped to the ground.

His dry white hair was plastered to his cheeks with sweat.

The moment the guards released him, his knees hit the dirt.

“My lord! Lord Ingram!”

The cemetery keeper wailed.

“Please spare me!”

“I really haven’t hurt anyone! That book… that book… I only used corpses from the cemetery!”

Panic had scrambled his words.

His voice trembled, and half his sentences tumbled over the others until it was difficult to understand what he was even trying to say.

Ingram caught only a few fragments.

His brow tightened.

“A book?”

“What book?”

“Yes, yes! No, not a book!”

The cemetery keeper’s eyes widened.

“It was a gift! A gift bestowed by the merciful Lord upon His most devout servant!”

He lifted his head.

His cloudy, lifeless eyes fixed directly on Ingram, while an unnatural flush spread across his pale face.

Then, with the care of someone handling the most precious object in the world, he reached into his clothes and drew out a thin leather-bound book made from some strange material.

He held it reverently in his only remaining hand.

And offered it to them.

Xia Nan stood nearby.

From where he was, he could only make out one corner of the cover.

There was a symbol stamped into it.

A white human skull.