Ethan glanced at his panel.
【Life Energy: 4,588】
"Not bad. I can unlock four more passives now."
Raymond opened his mouth to say something, but in the end, only a single sentence came out: "Are you... alright?"
Ethan shook his head and wiped the blood from his face with his sleeve. His gaze swept over the corpses before he suddenly asked, "Are these bodies worth anything?"
The four of them were taken aback.
Carl swallowed hard, carefully stepping around a wolf corpse that had been torn in half. He walked over, knelt down, and examined the ears and teeth of one of the Human-Faced Wolves.
"They're alright," he said, looking up. "A live Human-Faced Wolf can sell for 0.1 to 0.2 magic stones. Dead ones... well, you need twenty of them for one magic stone."
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "That cheap?"
"That's just the market price for these things." Carl stood up and wiped the blood from his hands. "The fur is worthless, and so are the bones. The only thing of any use is the trace of essence blood in the heart, but you only get a few drops per wolf. It's a struggle just to fill a single bottle. The only people who buy these are alchemy apprentices looking for practice material."
Raymond picked up the conversation. "There are buyers, but you have to transport them back. The academy's logistics department takes them, but the price is fixed."
Ethan glanced at the wolf corpses littering the ground. "Two magic stones each if you help me bring them back."
"Brother," Raymond gave a bitter smile. "It's not that we don't want to help or that we don't want the magic stones, but we simply don't have the means. Our storage Wizardry Tools can't fit this many, and we certainly can't carry them by hand."
Carl shook his head as well. "Yeah, I could take one at most. But the academy's teleportation array is affected by weight. Bringing back this many wolf corpses is impossible; it wouldn't even cover the teleportation fee. It already costs five magic stones just to send the five of us back. If we tried to transport all these corpses, how many times would that fee multiply? It's just not worth it."
Leah and Cedric remained silent, but their expressions made it clear they agreed.
Ethan had no choice but to give up on the idea.
He knelt down, drew a dagger from his waist, and began cutting off the wolves' ears.
The blade sliced through the base of the ears, severing the cartilage. One by one, the furry ears were tossed into his storage ring.
Raymond and the others stood nearby, unsure for a moment whether they should help or just keep watching.
After finishing the wolf in front of him, Ethan looked up at them. "What happens if the academy's intelligence doesn't match the actual numbers?"
Raymond raised an eyebrow. "Nothing much, just a double reward."
"That much? Not bad at all." Ethan didn't stop his movements.
"Yeah. The mission said there were about a hundred, and we prepared for a hundred. But then over four hundred showed up. Think about what would have happened to you if you weren't who you are."
The four of them fell silent.
"How about this? One magic stone each if you four help me harvest the ears."
Raymond was the first to react. "Sure! It's better than nothing. Even one magic stone is still money."
Carl and Leah exchanged a look and nodded.
Cedric didn't say a word, but he had already knelt down, pulling a short knife from his waist to begin cutting.
Raymond grumbled as he worked, "The last time I did this kind of work was three years ago. I was processing demon beast materials for a senior student. I made one magic stone after three afternoons of work and was as happy as could be."
Carl let out a laugh. "One magic stone? The first time I worked, I swept floors for seven days to earn a single magic stone, and I got scolded by the supervisor twice."
Leah didn't join the chatter, but her hands were quick. With a few swift strokes, an ear was off and tossed into the cloth bag Ethan provided.
With four people working, the task was indeed much faster than one.
In less than half an hour, the ears from the sea of wolf corpses were completely harvested.
Raymond handed the final bag of ears to Ethan and slapped the blood off his hands. "All done. You want to count them?"
"No need."
Ethan casually tossed the ears into his ring. "I don't have enough magic stones on me. I'll pay you once we're back at the academy."
"No problem."
Ethan stowed his dagger. "Alright, the mission is complete. What's next?"
Raymond kicked the corpse of a Human-Faced Wolf at his feet. "Normally, we'd just head back, but I feel like something is fishy here."
"Yeah, how could the academy's intel be so off? Over four hundred when they said a hundred?" Carl chimed in.
"Yes, this is not normal. Not normal at all," Leah said, standing to the side with her arms crossed. "The academy's intelligence system doesn't make such amateur mistakes. Unless..."
Before she could finish, Ethan's legs suddenly exploded with power. He launched himself like a projectile, leaping to the side.
In that instant, the ground where he had been standing suddenly cracked open.
A metal spear as thick as a man's fist lunged out from beneath the earth, its tip glinting with a cold, ghostly blue light. It pierced through the very spot he had occupied a second ago. Had he remained there, the spear would have entered through the sole of his foot, skewered his entire leg, and thrust straight into his abdomen.
While Ethan was still in mid-air, a second spear erupted from another point on the ground, thrusting precisely toward his landing spot.
He strained his core, forcibly twisting his body in the air and using one hand to brace against the ground as he rolled to dissipate the momentum.
A third spear.
A fourth.
A fifth.
The spears lunged from the earth one after another with startling speed, each one precisely cutting off his path of retreat.
Ethan dodged and rolled continuously, his movements so fast he became a blur of afterimages.
After thirteen spears had finished their assault, the ground finally fell silent.
Ethan knelt on one knee, his chest heaving violently. His gaze swept over the thirteen metal spears protruding haphazardly from the stone floor. The shafts were still vibrating slightly, emitting a low, humming sound.
He stood up and turned his gaze toward the location of the other four.
And then he saw it.
Raymond lay in a pool of blood three meters away. His entire body had been charred into a blackened mass, his limbs curled into grotesque positions. His skin was cracked, revealing the dark red muscle tissue beneath. The stench of burnt flesh hung heavy in the air. His mouth was wide open, as if frozen in a silent scream.
Leah was slumped against a pile of rubble, her chest impaled by a massive ice spike. The spike had entered through her front and exited through her back, its tip embedded in the stone wall behind her. Her head hung low, her black hair falling forward to hide her face. Blood trickled down the ice spike, collecting in a small puddle at her feet.
Carl lay face-down near the edge of the teleportation array. Only a thin strip of flesh still connected his head to his body. The cut was terrifyingly clean, as if he had been decapitated by an incredibly sharp blade in a single stroke. His eyes were still open, his face frozen in a final moment of terror.
Cedric was leaning against the low wall of the castle, his body scorched black with small electrical arcs still crackling across him. His blonde hair had been burnt away completely, and his skin was covered in root-like lightning patterns. His lips were purple, his eyeballs bulging—a wretched death.
Four people, four different ways to die.
Fire, ice, lightning, and decapitation.
Ethan stood where he was, his gaze lingering on each of the four corpses.
Someone had set an ambush here.
It wasn't for the wolf pack; it was for whoever completed the mission.
"Oh? You managed to dodge my Multiple Metal Pierce. Not bad at all."
A lazy voice drifted over from the direction of the castle.
Rate on N.U.
