A Highly Valuable Little Thing

After Reece spoke, he fell silent as well.

Ryan leaned against the broken pillar, motionless for a long time.

He activated 【Eagle Eye】, sweeping his gaze over Zhou Yi's severed lower half, then letting it fall onto Damon's severed right arm and shattered shield.

Finally, he saw Su Xiaoman and Xu Zhiheng, who were tangled together.

The two corpses were nearly inseparable.

Their flesh had been squeezed into the crevices by the tree roots, with only a few scraps of clothing still hanging on the outside.

Ryan's throat bobbed, the color draining from his face bit by bit.

He suddenly asked, "Where's Severn?"

Ryan took another half-step forward, his eyes darting frantically among the roots.

"I'm asking you, did you see Severn?"

Reece frowned. "Ryan."

Ryan whipped his head around, his eyes terrifyingly bloodshot.

"He didn't even leave a body behind?"

Reece's grip on his sword tightened, but he said nothing.

Ryan's gaze finally landed on the staff in Rena's hand.

A fine crack split across the staff's surface, and the light at its tip was on the verge of dying out.

Just moments ago, Severn had been holding it when he was dragged away by the death caravan in the mist.

Ryan looked at the staff and suddenly let out a laugh.

"Incredible," he said, wiping his face with his hand. "Just fucking incredible."

In the next instant, he suddenly drew an arrow, notched it, and aimed straight at the central ancient tree.

Reece's expression changed. "Don't!"

But the arrow was already flying. The sound of tearing air cut through the mist as it shot straight toward the cracked bark of the ancient tree.

Rena raised her hand, sweeping the cracked staff across to deflect the arrow slightly.

The arrow pinned into a nearby withered root, its tip prying open a small piece of the dry, black bark.

Almost at the exact same moment, another spray of blood erupted from Ryan's shoulder.

He let out a muffled groan, forced backward by the force of the backlash.

Reece grabbed him by the back of his collar and dragged him back to the center of the stone path.

"Do you want to die?"

Ryan shook off his hand, his breathing heavy. "It ate them like that, and I can't even shoot a single arrow at it?"

Reece said coldly, "You already know that attacking anything off the path triggers a damage backlash."

"I know." Ryan panted a few times, then suddenly turned to look at Rena.

"And she knew it too."

Rena didn't understand his implication and didn't respond.

Ryan, on the verge of a mental breakdown, stared at her as if he was only truly seeing her for the first time.

"You sure blocked that fast."

Reece said in a low voice, "Ryan, that's enough."

"Am I wrong?" Ryan let out a harsh laugh, his voice extremely hoarse. "When Severn was about to use his Firelight Mark, why didn't you stop him?"

At those words, Milo, who was standing by the cargo chests, whipped his head up.

His face was already pale, but now it looked as if the last drop of blood had been drained from it.

"Right..." Milo's voice trembled as he raised his hand and pointed at Rena. "You definitely know something."

"You always stand on the sidelines, watching others march to their deaths."

Ryan glanced at him. Milo's breathing grew increasingly erratic, and his voice became more frantic.

"I've seen light in her hand before. And Rena belongs to a martial class; she shouldn't be skilled in magic at all."

"She's not Rena. She definitely isn't! This is proof!"

Milo's voice trembled violently in the mist.

Ryan didn't speak, but his bow remained in his hand.

Reece's expression darkened as well.

Kolo stood slightly ahead and to the side, her axe blade lowered slightly, motionless.

But Rena knew that the moment she showed even a hint of threat, that heavy axe would strike faster than Ryan's arrow.

Kolo was not Milo.

Milo was merely afraid.

Kolo was truly capable of hacking her to death.

Isolde's fingers tightened slightly around the staff.

Expose herself voluntarily?

The thought arose for only a fraction of a second before she suppressed it.

No.

The moment she admitted she wasn't Rena, the issue would become far more complicated than a "suspicious Guide."

An impostor—a woman who possessed a high-grade item far above her level but had kept it hidden until now.

If all these factors were piled together, it would be enough for the remaining survivors to target her next.

Kolo was the biggest threat.

If they truly came to blows, Isolde did not have a hundred percent chance of winning.

Thus, she couldn't let Milo continue dragging the conversation toward "whether she was Rena."

She had to pivot to an explanation that was easier to accept—and far more dangerous.

"I did hide a highly valuable little thing."

Rena raised her right hand, unwinding the threads wrapped around the Radiant Ring.

A ring set with a pale blue gemstone was exposed to everyone's view.

Ryan's pupils contracted, and Milo froze.

Kolo's nose twitched slightly, her brow furrowing deeper beneath her mask.

Holiness, and not just ordinary holiness.

That aura was so clean and pure; there was no way an ordinary mercenary like Rena could possess it.

Rena quickly wound the threads back around it, and the holy aura vanished along with them.

"Seen enough?" She lowered her hand, her tone calm. "You all know about the bounty on the Grey Oak Village noticeboard."

"Abnormal holy fluctuations, light-attribute items of unknown origin."

"Discover an accomplice of the heretics, bring back their belongings, and exchange them for ten thousand gold coins and a gold-grade skill scroll."

She looked at Milo, her gaze solemn. "I happen to have such a ring. Is it really that strange for me to hide it?"

Milo was instantly left speechless, but Ryan stared at her hand.

"So the white light on the staff earlier was because of this ring?"

"Yes," Rena replied quickly. "Severn's staff was about to go out, so I merely used it to bolster the magic."

Ryan gritted his teeth. "Why didn't you use it before?"

Rena looked at the blood on his shoulder.

"Do you think if I openly wore it on my finger, people would just praise me for my good luck?" She let out a small, mocking laugh.

"If I didn't hide it, should I have waited for you all to ask where it came from? Or waited for someone to slit my throat in the middle of the night, chop off my finger, and take it to claim the bounty?"

At these words, several of them fell silent.

Xu Zhiheng had been willing to watch Damon get dragged to his death just for a few crates of cargo.

If the party members had known from the start that Rena was hiding a bounty item, there was no telling what might have happened.

Yet Milo felt an even greater terror in his heart, because the anomaly he had witnessed was real.

But this anomaly had been spun by Rena into another plausible explanation.

He suddenly realized that what he had grasped was not proof.

It was a flaw that Rena had willingly let him find.

He gritted his teeth and pressed on, "But you aren't Rena..."

Rena looked at him, her voice calm, as if she were casually chatting with a friend.

"Milo, you've been trying to prove I'm a fake this entire journey. Aren't you tired?"

Milo's mind descended into chaos once more. Rena's voice remained soft, like a casual murmur.

"Do you think what they care about most right now is whether I am Rena?"

Milo's breath caught, but Rena seemed to have already seen through the silence of the others.

"What they are thinking about right now is how to survive."

"And..."

She raised her ring, wrapped in fine threads, and gave it a gentle wiggle.

"...whether they can take this thing for themselves."

Milo looked at the other survivors and suddenly felt a wave of absurdity.

He had tried so hard to prove that Rena was an impostor.

Yet at this stage, what the others heard was not "she might be an impostor."

It was "she has a light-attribute item worth ten thousand gold coins."

He wanted the truth.

But the truth he had been shouting about the entire way was not even as valuable as that ring.

Kolo stood nearby, looking at Rena through her mask.

This person wearing Rena's identity was far too adept at exploiting the cracks in people's hearts.

Kolo did not like people like this.

They were too dangerous.

But she knew even better that there was no point in acting now.

Rena had the holy ring, potions, and the staff. More importantly, she was the one who could lead them out.

In a place like this, whoever killed the Guide first was simply asking for a swift death.

Kolo hoisted her axe handle onto her shoulder and remained silent.

Seeing her silence, the last speck of light in Milo's eyes faded.

Ryan seemed to have realized something as well. He lowered his bow and reached out toward Rena.

"Potion."

Rena glanced sideways at him.

Ryan gestured to his injured shoulder. "You're the Caravan Physician now. I need healing."

Rena didn't waste any words either. She pulled a bottle of mid-grade healing potion from her waist pouch and tossed it straight to him.

Ryan caught it instinctively. As the bottle settled into his palm, he actually froze for a moment.

"Mid-grade? You're quite generous."

"You are the Lookout," Rena said calmly. "We'll still need your eyes for the next stretch of the road."

Ryan stared at her. "Aren't you afraid I'll steal your ring once I've recovered?"

Rena looked at him and let out a somewhat disdainful laugh. "We'd have to make it out alive first. Besides, whoever ends up with it becomes the new target of the bounty anyway."

Ryan's fingers tightened around the bottle. After a brief silence, he popped the cork and gulped the potion down.

Once the liquid trickled down his throat, the bleeding on his shoulder quickly stopped.

The edges of his wound began to itch, and the torn flesh slowly knitted back together.

His face was still pale, but at least his hands were now capable of drawing his bow again.

Rena withdrew her gaze. She knew that by doing this, she had planted some dark thoughts in certain minds.

But so what?

She had no intention of being buried here alongside them.

Nor did she believe they had the ability to steal what was in her hands.

If anyone actually tried to reach for it, she wouldn't mind letting the treants have another decent source of nourishment.