"How is this possible?!"

Amid the heavy crash, the young man stepped back half a pace and stopped dead.

That sight cooled the Goblin King's boiling rage considerably.

Even at its current growth stage, the force behind that charge was nothing an ordinary adventurer could take head-on. Never mind absorbing it, even dodging the thing was considered a feat. The Goblin King had seen high-level human warriors before. Those who ate that hit straight-on rarely came out looking pretty.

"Taking that blow just to seem tough — that must have burned through quite a bit of your Battle Aura, didn't it?!"

"Battle Aura? What's that?"

"How dare you look down on me! Human!"

The Goblin King bared a mouthful of jagged fangs, drew a deep breath, and violently exhaled.

Dark green noxious aura surged from its pores and wrapped around its body like a living thing. Wherever it touched, moisture sizzled. Fine white foam bubbled up from the stone floor. Even loose pebbles were left with corrosive scorch marks.

Banxia didn't panic. He drew the blade at his waist.

He'd heard that goblin shamans usually knew a few minor spells and curses. A mutant variant like a Goblin King having special abilities on top of that was entirely within expectations.

While the two faced off, Roxy hurriedly cleared out of the center of the battlefield and found cover nearby, ready to provide magical support at any moment.

Banxia didn't waste any more time.

He watched the Goblin King continue venting its noxious breath, then stepped forward. His figure blurred into a dark shadow as he closed the distance, long blade slashing down with a piercing shriek of wind.

SLASH,

The strike came far too fast. In its juvenile stage, the Goblin King barely managed to twist aside.

It wasn't enough. The blade, weighted with tremendous force, tore diagonally across its torso, shoulder to abdomen, and split a massive gash through skin that had once turned away earth and stone.

In the next instant, dark green aura erupted from the wound, several times thicker than what coated the surface. It came rushing straight at Banxia's face.

The Goblin King bared its fangs. A vicious gleam crossed its eyes as both hands clamped hard around the blade lodged in its flesh. If it couldn't match his speed, it would trade injury for injury.

Banxia saw the situation turning ugly. He'd wanted a zero-damage clear, so he made the call without hesitation, released the hilt and sprang backward, clearing the spraying cloud of poison.

"..."

His beloved blade was now sitting in the enemy's belly.

Banxia didn't mourn it. He clenched his fist, no flashy moves, and drove a simple, full-force punch straight at the monster's head.

The Goblin King was still privately gloating over its opponent losing his weapon. The triumphant sneer didn't even finish forming before the fist slammed squarely into its face.

The impact was colossal. Thick flesh scattered, exposing the eerie dirt-yellow teeth underneath and half a mangled, bloody cheek.

That was only the beginning.

The first punch left the monster dazed. What followed was an unbroken downpour of heavy blows, relentless, like a storm breaking, and it quickly beat that dark green figure to the verge of death.

"Tough bastard! This feels great!"

The Goblin King worked its slack, leaking jaw and somehow squeezed out a trace of a triumphant sneer through its deformed face.

"Fool! My poison permeates my entire body. If an ordinary human so much as grazes it, their flesh rots on the spot..."

Its voice was hoarse, but the smug malice underneath came through clearly.

"Even if you're a seasoned adventurer, after brawling with me this long, those fists of yours should be rotted to the core by now!

Did you really think I couldn't react? That I was just sitting there taking your beating for free?!

Fool! Regret it now, you have no weapon, and you have no hands either—"

"What are you even babbling about?"

Banxia frowned and put another punch into the Goblin King's barely-recognizable head, then reached into the creature's abdominal cavity and wrenched his sword free.

The standard-issue longsword had already been on the brink of being scrapped before this fight. The corrosive aura had finished the job. When it came out, only a short stub of hilt remained.

Banxia stared at the bare hilt. He went quiet for a moment.

All those days together...

"..."

The Goblin King's gaze drifted to his completely undamaged fist. Its voice finally began to tremble.

"Your hand... how is that possible? Not even a scratch..."

Banxia surfaced from his thoughts and actually caught what it was saying this time.

"Oh, that."

He raised his right hand and pressed his fingers together into a hand blade. Driven by a specialized technique, his palm gave off a sharp, keen aura that rivaled a honed edge.

"Execution Hand Blade."

Before that terrifying pressure, the Goblin King's pupils shrank to pinpoints. Every last shred of ferocity collapsed into something far more primal.

"Spare me!"

Banxia ignored the cry.

He settled into the most standard slashing stance from the Basic Sword Technique, unhurried, and drove his hand blade cleanly through the Goblin King's chest.

[Killed Goblin King. Total lifespan: 105 years. Remaining lifespan: 101 years. Absorbed.]

[Current lifespan held: 224 years.]

With its master gone, the dark green aura drifted apart like stray wisps of cotton and dissolved into the air at the first touch of a breeze.

Across the battlefield, Roxy stood with her staff raised, ready to chant. Her lips had parted halfway. They slowly closed again.

The fight had ended far too quickly.

She'd barely found a position with a clear line of sight, hadn't even gotten out the first word of an incantation, when she watched the young man put his hand blade straight through a Goblin King that was supposed to exist only in legend.

Even if it was just a juvenile, it was still a budding calamity. The kind that could level a city on its own.

Banxia gave his hand a casual flick. A line of foul blood traced a clean arc across the ground.

He slid the bare hilt back into its scabbard, dusted off his perfectly clean hands, and turned to walk toward Roxy with a satisfied smile.

Behind him, the Goblin King crashed to the ground like a collapsing boulder, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

...

The fight had ended clean. Clearing the battlefield proved considerably less so.

The cave interior had caved in badly and was flooded besides. Venturing inside without knowing what was in there would be gambling with their lives.

They settled for fishing out the goblin corpses floating near the entrance with magic and searching through them.

The haul lay before them.

A pile of mostly rusted scrap, plus a few silver coins corroded past the point of recognition.

Roxy looked at the pile. Then she looked up at Banxia.

Banxia looked at the pile. Then he looked down at the bare hilt in his hand.

"..."

They stared at each other for a long, silent moment.

Compared to the "treasures" they had imagined, reality had delivered a slap that was both loud and clean.

They'd defeated a Goblin King that existed only in legend, and this was what they had to show for it.

"You can have all of it," Banxia said first, his tone easy. "If it weren't for my idea, we wouldn't have wasted this much time looking for the Dusk Tree."

He hadn't forgotten that his official role on this trip was mercenary, and his actual job was to find a branch of the Dusk Tree for his employer. After all this, coming away with a haul this shabby was genuinely hard to justify.

Besides, the truly valuable prize had already been credited safely inside him.

Time was far more practical than any treasure.

"No, no, no, how could I—" Roxy shook her head quickly, small and emphatic. "We came up with the plan together. Even if the haul is poor, I can't take it all for myself. And besides... the entire fight was basically you alone, Mr. Banxia..."

Watching her go that earnest, face nearly flushed with it, Banxia couldn't be bothered to keep pushing back. A few more casual exchanges later, they split the loot according to the ratio they'd originally agreed on.

The money would have to wait, though. They'd need to return to town first and have it appraised at the Adventurer's Guild before any of it could be cashed out.

Chapter 16

The afternoon of the third day out of the city.

As agreed, the temporary adventurer party turned around and headed home.

Aside from the Goblin King ambush on day two, the trip had been uneventful. Boring, even.

They'd barely run into any goblins at all.

Banxia was openly disappointed. Roxy told him this was just how adventuring went most of the time.

As for the actual goal of the expedition, that Twilight Branch that existed only in merchants' idle gossip, they'd come home empty-handed.

The girl had already made peace with that possibility before they left. She'd set out on a "let's see" basis, so there wasn't much dejection to speak of.

If the trip had any real prize, it was probably the heap of scrap metal divvied up after taking down the Goblin King.

Banxia rode with his eyes shut, swaying gently to the fiery steed's rhythm, his mind quietly replaying the fight.

The Goblin King had been a juvenile. Its physical stats were at most half of his.

And somehow, that fight had still been grueling.

When he really broke it down, the problem was straightforward: no real offensive tools, and no proper weapon. He'd need to look into Battle Aura when they got back, the Goblin King had mentioned it.

lv.1 Basic Sword Technique and Basic Dodge kept him undefeated. As long as the power gap wasn't absurd, no one could put him down.

The flip side was that he couldn't put anyone else down either.

Quick kills. That was what he was missing.

For someone who grew by harvesting monster lifespans, that was completely unacceptable.

He didn't need balanced duels. He needed the kind of efficiency that turned enemies into cut grass.

Neigh,

Passing through the forest on the way back to the city, the mixed-blood fiery steed suddenly reared, front hooves cutting the air, a sharp and uneasy whinny tearing through the quiet.

The jolt snapped Banxia out of his half-drowsy state entirely.

Both of them swung off their saddles at once. Roxy steadied the agitated horse with soft, low words. Banxia frowned and scanned the trees ahead.

His senses picked up nothing. No unusual presence anywhere in the forest depths.

But this steed had monster blood in its veins. If it reacted like this, something ahead was wrong.

"Hm?" Banxia swept his gaze around and felt a flicker of recognition. These woods looked familiar.

"Mr. Banxia?" Roxy noticed his expression and stepped over, reins still in hand.

Before he could say anything, the ground to the right shifted.

A hand punched through the soil. It rose like a new shoot breaking surface, sudden, deliberate, fingers splaying wide in what looked almost like a silent celebration of its own rebirth.

Then a second mound bulged on the other side.

Two figures climbed slowly to their feet, damp earth and dead grass still clinging to their clothes.

Banxia stared at their faces for a long moment.

"..."

No question about it. These were the weakest undead, the two he had buried with his own hands.

No stitching on their heads, either. So what exactly was happening here?

Roxy, standing beside him, wasn't particularly shocked. She let out a quiet sigh and watched the pair work the stiffness from their joints, her tone the flat sort people use for unpleasant common knowledge.

"I wonder which one did this. Did they have a grudge? Couldn't even let these two rest in peace."

Banxia: "?"

He turned to her with a baffled look. She turned back just as puzzled. A long beat passed before it seemed to click for her.

"Mr. Banxia... don't tell me you've never heard of the King of the Undead?"

"Ah? Isn't that just a legend people tell children?"

"..."

The girl's speechless expression said everything. Banxia turned the thought over.

In Alterna, there had always been a nursery rhyme about it: a great demon called the King of the Undead had cursed this land. Anyone who died here, unless their body was fully purified by fire, would crawl back out of their grave and kill anything that moved.

Banxia had always assumed the Church made it up to keep the gullible in line.

"So it's actually real. Then that great demon business is also—"

"No, Mr. Banxia." Roxy shook her head. "A hundred years ago, there was no rule in Alterna requiring cremation. And the 'great demon' part really is just to scare children."

"Someone did this with magic?"

"Yes. Though not a human." Roxy paused, in the tone of someone correcting a mistake beginners make all the time.

"It's a Great Demon whose true name no one knows. We all just call it the King of the Undead. In adventurer circles, it's old news."

"I see..."

Another new piece of knowledge for the rookie adventurer.

Now that he had the full picture, Banxia looked at the two figures and sighed.

He pressed his fingers flat into a knifehand, walked up to both of them, and beheaded them cleanly, no ceremony, no extra suffering.

"Miss Roxy, do you know any fire magic?"

"I do know a bit..."

"Then I'll leave the cremation to you."

"Mr. Banxia, you really are a kind person."

"..."

---

Dusk spread thick and grey over the border city of Alterna.

Banxia wandered through the streets with thirty silver coins and no particular destination.

The thirty silver was the three-day hire fee. The Goblin King's loot would have to wait until the Adventurers Guild ran an appraisal tomorrow.

"Nothing going on. Might as well find a brothel."

That was the plan, anyway. But when he drifted into the inner city, a familiar silhouette caught his eye.

It was dusk and the streets were thin on foot traffic, which was the only reason he picked her out so easily.

"That's the inn proprietress who robbed me blind. What's she sneaking around for?"

He had been keeping a mental tab on anyone who'd taken roughly half a month's lodging from him under dubious pretenses. The debt hadn't been forgotten.

A gentleman always settles his accounts.

The scene in front of him looked suspicious from every angle. Banxia pocketed his coins and followed her.

She wound through the streets, seven turns, eight bends, until they reached a neighborhood with noticeably finer architecture.

"Isn't this where the city lord housed the beastfolk?"

He had heard of this place. It had been specifically renovated for the beastfolk who settled in Alterna. Not only rent-free, but better appointed than the homes of most wealthy residents. Back when the renovation was announced, the townspeople had protested for quite a while over how much was being given away.

The city lord had shut it down. Plenty of veteran adventurers had left Alterna over it.

The proprietress stopped at a door on the second floor, knocked twice, and slipped inside.

"What's she doing in there?"

Banxia waited a few minutes. She didn't come back out.

He looked around, no guards posted anywhere. He jumped to the window on the side.

"..."

He took a few seconds to take it in. His expression shifted into something quietly strange.

Apparently the proprietress's tastes were broader than advertised. She was getting along quite happily with a group of gorilla beastfolk.

As best Banxia could remember, back when he was staying at the inn, the neighbors had frequently mentioned what a devoted couple the innkeeper and his wife were.

Turns out a lot was happening behind closed doors.

She didn't look coerced. Banxia found himself feeling genuinely sorry for the innkeeper.

The man had spent his whole life building up to an inn in the inner city. Traveled constantly as a merchant just to chip a little off the operating costs. A man in his late forties, nearly fifty, who had found himself a charming front-of-house wife to run the shop, and she turned out to be this.

"If you hadn't come after me, I wouldn't have touched this."

He shook his head, made his decision, and jogged back to the market district first. He bought a strange mask, put it on, and only then climbed through the window.

---

---

He gave none of them time to react. Banxia measured his force carefully and hit each one, one slap per person, and an extra for anyone who wasn't down yet.

A few rounds of that and every beastfolk on the floor was staying there.

"Wha—?! Who are you?!"

Not a chance. Not under these circumstances. Not if she paid him.

Any brothel worth a copper had priests check the girls' health on a regular rotation, that was the baseline for keeping clients coming back. A woman like this was a thousand times more hazardous than anything behind a proper establishment's doors.

"..."

He didn't answer her. He shoved the window open and bellowed into the street below: "Guards! Guards, over here — there's a human harassing the lord beastfolk!"

Right on cue, boots hit cobblestone from somewhere down the road and grew louder fast.

The noise reached both floors at once. Banxia kicked the window frame off its hinges, left the splintered wreckage behind him, and was gone before anyone reached the stairs.

➤ Next: Wine and Women Have Wounded Me So, My Willpower Has Withered to This Degree