Chapter 372

The crowd sees John Cabbage take out the Boar Person from the ring, and they notice that the one they killed is not the biggest Boar Person. It’s not a fully mature one. And so a few of the Hunters immediately say, “Well, that doesn’t count. It’s too small. What the hell is that?”

But the adventurers say, “Don’t try to get out of the bet, you cheap bastards. It’s still a Boar Person, so you owe us at least ten Adamantite coins.”

“We don’t owe you shit,” a Hunter starts saying. “That is clearly not—”

But before they can say anything, John Cabbage takes out two more corpses. This time, it’s two adult Boar People. They are fully developed, and one can still feel their residual aura at Peak Imperium Rank.

The torches around the encampment project dark shadows on the faces of the Hunters now. With those two, there is no doubt that this is a successful hunt — that John Cabbage and Talia Carrot, these two ridiculously named people, have indeed hunted at least three Boar People. And that means that all the Hunters here have lost, at the very least, thirty Adamantite coins each to the adventurers they have bet against.

Several Hunters are putting their hands in their hair when Yelena is the only one who walks forward and says, “Well, didn’t you say it was an army? You have just these three?”

“I didn’t wanna take them in and out of the Interspatial Rings,” John says.

And Talia walks beside him and adds, “Yeah, there are way too many. Are we even gonna be able to get them processed here? Are there butchers specialized in this?”

“There are several at Adamantite Rank,” Yelena says.

She had told the two that it was too dangerous to hunt Boar People, and now they were clearly trying to boast. They had probably gotten cleaned up after a gruesome fight where they had managed to somehow ambush three Boar People, and they were trying to sell it as if they had easily killed who knew how many.

“I mean, there’s not enough space here, but whatever,” John says.

And nine more Boar People come out of his ring, piling up. Each Boar Person is roughly seven feet tall and roughly one-third as wide, or a little more than that. They have large bellies, and they all only wear rough-made pants or loincloths.

Yelena is an expert Hunter and has been waiting on her promotion to Adamantite Rank Hunter. So the first thing that catches her eye is that there is no wound on any of those.

“Wait, have they died of natural causes?” Yelena says, and all the Hunters perk up.

“If they didn’t kill them, it doesn’t count,” a Hunter immediately says. “Yeah. Natural causes?”

John frowns. “No, I killed them.”

Everybody turns toward Talia Carrot, and now even the adventurers are looking a little suspicious. Talia is the one who had the easy version of the Mithril Rank Trap Master test, and that means nobody knows if she’s actually any good. They have seen John defuse extremely powerful Mithril Rank traps, but nobody has got a good read on Talia.

And so Yelena says, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to kill the Boar People? They are extremely powerful, and—”

“I mean, they’re not.” Talia shrugs. “It’s only their hides that are extremely tough. And the fact that they have organs that shift at birth — meaning that their weak spot, the gallbladder, is always in a different place — makes them a little tricky to kill. But as long as you can bypass the thick layer outside of their body, and send a shockwave inside in the right spot… Once you destroy their gallbladder, they die moments later, because that’s one of their most important organs.”

Yelena opens and closes her mouth several times. All that this Talia said is actually true. Everybody knows it. But the people below Peak Adamantite Rank capable of actually destroying a gallbladder without tearing apart the hide — and especially the people able to locate the gallbladder during a high-speed fight — can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand in the entire encampment. And if someone is able to do something like that, they’re probably hunting for much bigger game than Boar People.

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“Are you saying you can locate the gallbladder?” Yelena says.

“Of course. Want me to show you? I mean, they are pretty blown up, but I can show you where it was.”

Talia walks forward and points at a piece of a Boar Person’s belly.

“This one’s here. If someone wants to check.”

A Hunter at Intermediate Adamantite Rank comes forward and starts sawing away at the belly with some difficulty. The hide of Boar People is truly, incredibly resistant to attacks. Once he does, he does find greenish fluids and stones that used to belong to the gallbladder of this Boar Person. The man turns toward Yelena with a stunned expression as he extracts some stones from the innards of the Boar Person.

Yelena looks at the mound of Boar People and cannot believe her eyes. Have these two actually killed a dozen?

Right when she’s about to finish that thought, John Cabbage makes five more mounds, and more than sixty Boar People appear all around them.

“I don’t really have the space to take out any more, and the rest are in Talia’s ring. Um, are you sure you guys want to see them all? There’s like a thousand of them.”

Yelena looks at the pretty girl and her cute smile, and then at all the corpses, and asks, “You killed all of them?”

“Yeah. John would take too long, and we were in a hurry. We kinda need materials, so we just made a rush for their encampment and killed them all.”

Yelena feels her ears ringing. She had just told these two that they shouldn’t be hunting Boar People — that they were soft adventurers who would just lose their lives if they did. And now she was facing the reality that, apparently, somehow, two kids at Intermediate Imperium Rank had killed the entirety of the Boar People population in the valley.

But more importantly, the crowd of adventurers were now the ones laughing. One was patting a Hunter on the shoulder — the man he had made the bet against — saying, “Well, you’ll have to work for a few thousand years before you’re able to pay me back, I guess.”

The Hunters finally remembered the terms of the bet, and realized that if they had to pay for a thousand Boar People, that meant they would have not just to bankrupt themselves, but to incur so much debt it would take decades to clear it up, even at their level.

But when John and Talia heard about the bet, they said, “I don’t think that’s fair. I think the Hunters should just pay the original fifty that would have gone to them.”

The adventurers were not looking too happy about that, but Talia made them see reason.

“You guys don’t want to create a blood feud against them, do you? We’re still all on the same side. It’s humanity against monsters and Primordial Gods. Let’s have a little grace in dealing with this.”

Some of the Hunters were crying at the benevolence of Talia Carrot, and would probably go back to their rooms, get to their knees, and pray in her name from now on. Sure, they would have to fork out all the week’s pay, but it was either that or a life of indentured servitude in order to pay back the massive debt they would have otherwise incurred.

John and Talia made the rounds with the butchers, and were being begged by everyone now to tell them how exactly they had done it. But they told the adventurers and the Hunters that they were a little too tired after such a long day, and that they wanted to rest. And so they were left in peace.

They went back to the only room they found at the camp, where a tavern had been hastily erected by a stonemancer.

- - -

Jacob went to wash his face, and then, turning, found Taya in front of him.

“Jacob, can you drop the disguises?”

“Uh, I guess. Why?”

“I was thinking it would be better to just sleep like this, you know, in case anything happens. I’ve secured the doors and the windows. And, I don’t know. I just want to look at you.”

Jacob doesn’t really understand what Taya just said.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to look at a stranger. And I don’t want to forget what you look like. I just want to look at you, you know. We’ve been wearing these disguises so much these days.”

“Oh.”

Jacob feels a knot in his throat and just nods. Then he clears his throat and says, “Of course, of course.”

He turns off the disguises and sees the real appearance of Taya. She’s smiling at him.

“There you go. Much better.”

Jacob goes to lie down on his bed and scratches his head. He still wanted to ask Taya about the kisses during the trap examination. But he isn’t really sure how to bring it up.

He stops looking at the ceiling and turns toward her. She’s on the bed as well, just staring at the ceiling, all clothed. He looks at her for a moment longer, before she notices and turns toward him, smiling. Jacob immediately whips his head back to stare at the ceiling again, and hears her laugh.

“What’s going on? Are you okay? I bet you must be tired. Today was quite the battle.”

“I mean, it was not that bad. With the Grimoire and your Skills, it was the easiest thing, really.”

“It was, actually,” Taya agrees. “We are a good team.”

“We are.”

After a beat, Taya says, “Good night, Jacob.”

“Good night, Taya.”

In the meanwhile, a band of extremely powerful men arrives at the gate of the encampment and says, “We have identified two extremely important targets. We’re taking over the camp.”