“How much longer are you going to lie there?”
The girl's sweet voice drifted down from above, carrying a trace of a barely perceptible smile through her exhaustion.
Lu Mao rolled over onto his back, gasping for air.
The dark purple light of the magicules seeping through the cracks in the altar's domed ceiling fell across his face, looking as if it had cast a bizarre filter over him.
Misha stood beside him, leaning heavily on her staff to keep from collapsing as her body swayed.
Her white robe was mostly soaked with sweat and blood, her knuckles white from gripping her staff, and her lips completely devoid of color.
Yet she was still smiling—a faint curve of her lips that carried the relief of surviving a disaster and curiosity toward the strange “slime” before her.
“Even though this might not be the best time to ask, don't you think you should explain why a slime was clinging to a Giant Goblin's back and stabbing it?”
“Save your companion first. He looks like he's about to kick the bucket.”
Misha followed his gaze toward the beastkin thief slumped beside the altar's stone platform.
The latter's face was already as gray and pale as a piece of pork liver left out for three days. The blackness around the edges of his right leg's wound was spreading toward his groin, his lips were purple, and the whites of his eyes were bloodshot with dark red veins.
“...Oh no.”
Misha stumbled as she turned, walking unsteadily toward the beastkin thief.
She squatted in front of him and reached out to check the temperature of his forehead, pulling her hand back sharply the moment her fingertips touched his skin.
“He's hot enough to fry an egg.”
The beastkin thief squeezed out a weak, grimacing smile before his head slumped to the side, losing consciousness completely.
Misha's expression immediately shifted. Disregarding her depleted mana, she forced herself to raise her staff, attempting to cast a purification spell.
But the light at the tip of her staff flickered once before dying out. Her body swayed, and she nearly fell headfirst.
A hand reaching out from beneath a cloak steadily caught her shoulder.
“Your magicules are completely drained. Don't force it.”
Lu Mao pushed back his hood, revealing an incredibly young face.
Misha stared at his face in a daze—she had expected some bizarrely shaped demi-human or magical beast to be under the cloak, but out popped a boy who looked even younger than her.
“You're... a human?”
“It's a long story. Save him first.”
Lu Mao fished out the bottle of Low-Grade Antidote Chen Jiu had given him from his ring, pulling the stopper. A pungent herbal scent immediately wafted through the air.
He handed the potion to Misha. “Pour this down his throat. It can neutralize most toxins below Mid-Tier. He's likely suffering from the rot poison goblins coat their blades with; this should work.”
Misha took the potion. Instead of immediately pouring it down her companion's throat, she brought the bottle to her nose to sniff it first. A flash of surprise crossed her eyes.
“Black-leaf grass, silver moss powder, and... what is this ingredient? I've never seen an antidote with this kind of formulation before.”
“Stop sniffing and just give it to him. If you drag this out any longer, your friend will be signing up for disability benefits.”
The moment the words left his mouth, Lu Mao realized he had spoken too fast again—where in this godforsaken place would anyone find disability benefits?
But Misha clearly had no time to question the incomprehensible terms coming out of his mouth. Prying open Gerak's mouth, she poured the potion inside.
Less than five seconds after the potion went down his throat, the gray paleness on the beastkin thief's face began to recede at a visible rate.
The blackness around the edges of the wound stopped spreading, slowly receding like a low tide instead.
A few more seconds passed, and his tightly furrowed brow gradually relaxed as his breathing stabilized.
This speed of efficacy was not something an ordinary antidote could achieve.
“It's working.”
Misha let out a long breath. Feeling as if her very bones had been turned to jelly, she slumped directly to the ground beside the beastkin thief.
She turned her head, looking Lu Mao up and down with a complex gaze filled with both scrutiny and gratitude. “Thank you. If you hadn't stepped in to deal with that Giant Goblin...”
“Can you let me retrieve my dagger first?”
Lu Mao pointed to the dagger embedded in the back of the Giant Goblin's neck not far away. “A friend of my employer gave me that. It'll be hard to explain if I lose it.”
He walked over to the corpse, gripped the hilt, and pulled hard.
The blade slipped out from between the neck vertebrae with a grating screech that set his teeth on edge, dark green blood splattering across his hand. He wiped the dagger twice on his cloak before sheathing it back at his waist, then looked at the silver helmet on the Giant Goblin's head.
Now this was the real prize!
Quietly slipping it into his ring, he had the system perform a token sweep of the battlefield before turning back toward the altar.
Just as he was about to turn around, the system's notification chimed in his mind once more.
【High-density energy residue detected—analyzing...】
【Scan target confirmed: Golden broken sword held by the hobgoblin】
【Name: Hero's Sword Fragment (???)】
【Original Vessel: Hero's Sword (???)】
【Current Status: Severely damaged. Approximately two-thirds of the blade is broken, the sword core is shattered, the enchantment circuits are completely collapsed, and the original holy attribute has entirely dissipated.】
【Residual Traits: Near-indestructible—The blade material is an alloy of meteoric iron and holy relic crystals, which cannot be smelted or reforged by any means currently known to this world. Even without any holy enchantment capabilities, its physical hardness still exceeds standard measurement limits.】
【Effect: A one-time injection of an Overlord-tier monster's entire magicule pool can summon a phantom of the sword's previous owner for ten minutes. After use, the fragmented Hero's Sword will completely disintegrate.】
【Remarks: This is not a weapon; this is a grave. It buries the final strike of a Hero who sought to perish together with the Demon King, and it buries a sword that was meant to become a legend. By the time the goblins got their hands on it, it was already like this—】
【They used it to chop firewood, pry open chests, dig up rocks, and occasionally bash a few adventurers' heads. If the sword spirit still possessed consciousness, it probably would have self-destructed in humiliation for the eight-hundredth time.】
Why is a goblin carrying the Hero's Sword?
Speaking of which, the phantom of the sword's previous owner... isn't that the Hero?
Doesn't that mean as long as he could gather enough magicules to rival an Overlord-tier monster, he could summon a Demon King-level existence for ten minutes?!
Void Helmet, you're merely a commoner born in an era without the Hero's Sword.
Lu Mao's feet glued themselves to the spot.
He looked back at the hobgoblin's corpse. The broken sword lay quietly at the edge of the pool of blood, its blade covered in dark green grime and gravel.
He quickly retraced his steps, bent down to pick up the broken sword, and wiped it twice on his cloak.
“I'll hold onto this for now.”
He stuffed the broken sword and the cloak into his ring, shifting things around to make room for the former.
The items inside the ring automatically cleared a small space for it—the Slime Cloak shrank back, the small pouch of Revealing Dust rolled half a turn to the side, and even the Emergency Escape Scroll nudged an inch closer to the edge.
He wasn't sure if it was just his imagination, but Lu Mao felt like they all seemed a bit afraid of this broken sword.
Only after doing all this did he quietly turn back and walk toward the altar once more.
Rate on N.U.
