Chapter 11: The End

Clatter.

The heavy two-handed axe dropped straight to the ground, its metal blade colliding with the cave floor to emit a crisp sound.

Phew—

Xia Nan panted heavily.

With the powerful enemy dead, the fatigue and pain that had been heavily suppressed by his highly concentrated focus now flooded forth like a tide.

Even though leveling up had brought him a two-point attribute increase, it could not alter the current reality of his body being thoroughly exhausted.

Unleashing everything to kill the bugbear by relying on the burst brought by the attribute increase had already been his absolute limit.

If another monster of the same level of strength were to arrive right now, given his current state, it was feared he would stand no chance of victory whatsoever.

Spitting out a mouthful of bloody phlegm, he felt his own chest.

That was the spot hit by one of the bugbear’s arms during the combat just now.

The pain lingering over his flesh and skin was gradually weakening with the passage of time.

“I shouldn’t have injured the bone, right?” Xia Nan rejoiced in his heart.

Otherwise, given the medieval-like technology level of this world, it was entirely unknown how one was supposed to treat it.

Then his thoughts shifted. This was, after all, a fantasy world possessing supernatural powers. Perhaps it held some kind of scroll embedded with healing magic, or there might be priests akin to those who wielded the Holy Light of healing?

“Xia… Xia Nan…”

A weak and powerless call suddenly drifted into his ears.

Having just detached himself from the combat state, Xia Nan finally realized that besides himself, there was another person alive on the field.

At this moment, Maji’s external appearance was exceptionally tragic.

One of his lower legs had been smashed into splinters, with bone shards piercing straight through the skin. His knee was left with a mere bit of flesh and hide, resembling the crude joints of those cheap puppets found in the marketplace.

His face was deathly pale, and his two opening and closing lips were completely devoid of color. Had it not been for the slight trace of spirit still remaining within his eyes, and his body which was trembling slightly due to the intense agony, he actually looked no different from those goblins next to him who had already turned into corpses.

“In the waist pouch… red potion… help me…”

As if even his consciousness had already begun to gradually scatter, Maji spoke with great difficulty, intermittently.

The other party was the only remaining official member of the bottom-of-the-barrel party, a teammate who had experienced a death match alongside him, and the old hunter who was the sole one to know the way out of the Misty Forest.

As a modern person who had undergone higher education, possessed relatively normal values, and maintained a certain level of morality, Xia Nan could not possibly stand by and watch him die, no matter from which perspective.

Thus, he squatted down and rummaged out a small bottle from Maji’s waist pouch according to the position indicated.

It was made of glass, with a shape resembling a test tube from a laboratory, and sealed at the top with a dark brown wooden cork.

Inside the glass bottle was roughly one-third of a red liquid. It had clearly been used multiple times, faintly emitting a shimmer when shaken with force.

Although the other party did not explain specifically what it was, the strong sense of déjà vu it brought allowed Xia Nan to guess its general effect with just a single glance.

“Health potion?” Xia Nan helped Maji pull out the wooden cork on the glass bottle. “Internal or external use?”

“Drink…” Maji nodded, opening his mouth. “All of it.”

Hearing this, Xia Nan ceased to ask further questions and poured the entirety of the health potion down the other party’s throat.

Unknown if his eyes had played tricks on him, he vaguely perceived that Maji’s gaze seemed to carry a bit of heartache.

It was as if this basic resource, widely distributed across various games and novels in his previous life, was incomparably precious.

And immediately following that, Xia Nan learned the reason why the other party displayed such an expression.

Almost the next second after Maji’s adam’s apple rolled and the potion entered his stomach.

His face, originally completely pale due to excessive blood loss, instantly grew flushed, and the focus of his pupils coalesced once more.

The wound stopped bleeding, and his chest, which had been rising and falling violently due to breathing difficulties, also gradually soothed.

A miraculous effect, just like filming a movie.

Yet just when Xia Nan thought Maji would be fully resurrected by relying on this small half bottle of potion.

Everything came to a screeching halt.

The broken bones did not return to their positions, and his lower leg still maintained its distorted state.

Clearly, although the effect of this health potion had immensely exceeded his expectations, it had not reached the level of regenerating severed limbs.

Roughly, it could heal the vast majority of light injuries, and could offer some mitigation toward heavy injuries?

“Alright, alright.” Maji, after drinking the potion, looked like a drowning person who had finally swum to the water’s surface, panting heavily for the turbid air in the cave. “Many thanks… many thanks.”

Though his face was packed with sweat brought by the pain, his voice was no longer weak.

“Go clean up the battlefield first.” He pulled out a few rolls of bandages from his waist pouch. “I can handle the rest myself.”

According to the unwritten rules of adventurers that Maji had introduced to him beforehand, when cleaning up a battlefield, except for parts like goblin ears that had a definitive killer, the rest of the gains belonged to the discoverer.

The other party telling him to clean up the battlefield was actually almost explicitly indicating—

The gains within the goblin nest all belonged to Xia Nan.

Despite understanding in his heart that without the assistance of Maji’s two arrows just now, he might not have been a match for the bugbear even if he made a breakthrough on the spot.

But since the other party had expressed it clearly, he would not act hypocritically.

Nodding slightly toward Maji, he walked toward the other side of the cave.

Unlike the mechanisms in games where a treasure chest would automatically appear after you cleared a dungeon, or where a large pile of items could be looted from a monster’s corpse with a light click of a mouse.

The collection of spoils in the real world was far more troublesome.

First of all, regarding those goblin corpses:

Bounties were only targeted toward adult individuals. Thus, he ruthlessly sent the five green-skinned cubs to meet their beast of a father.

Practically stepping on their heads, he cut off the left ears of the four goblins in sequence and placed them into the bag behind him.

Then came the detailed looting.

The cave was not large, and its internal layout could be taken in almost at a single glance. However, harboring a mindset of maximizing returns, Xia Nan still held a torch to conduct a carpet-style search for a round, obtaining a few gains.

Filtering out those things that were inconvenient to carry or possessed little value, the following were the spoils of war he collected from the goblin nest:

Three striped, light green, opaque gemstones; a small wooden round shield whose surface faintly showed signs of dampness and mold; and a small pouch of coins (weighing it, it had a bit of weight, but silver and copper coins made up the majority).

“Wonder if these few stones are worth any money?”

Xia Nan pondered in his heart.

At the same time, Maji had also treated his wound.

“How is it, all packed up?” Leaning against the wall, he stood up with some difficulty.

His lower leg, which had originally been distorted out of shape, had already been simply immobilized by him using wooden sticks and bandages. Although movement remained difficult, it would not lead to an aggravation of the injury.

“Just about, searched twice.”

Xia Nan replied.

“Twice? You managed to miss the most important thing.”

Maji’s gaze looked somewhat playful as he pouted his chin in the direction of the bugbear’s corpse.