Chapter 11: The End

“Clatter.”

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

*Hoo—*

Xia Nan panted heavily.

The formidable enemy was dead, and the exhaustion and pain that had been suppressed by his intense focus now surged forth like a tide.

Even though leveling up had brought him a two-point increase in his attributes, it could not change the fact that his body was utterly drained.

Relying on the burst of strength from the attribute increase to kill the bugbear with everything he had was already his limit.

If another monster of the same strength level were to appear now, there was no way he could possibly defeat it in his current state.

Spitting out a mouthful of blood, he touched his chest.

That was the spot where the bugbear had slammed its arm into him during the fight.

The pain lingering on his skin and flesh was gradually fading as time passed.

“I hope it didn’t break any bones,” Xia Nan thought to himself, feeling a sense of relief.

Otherwise, given the near-medieval level of technology in this world, he wouldn’t know how to treat it.

On second thought, this was a fantasy world with supernatural powers; perhaps there were scrolls containing healing magic, or priests who could command holy light to heal?

“Xia… Xia Nan…”

A weak, powerless call suddenly reached his ears.

Having just emerged from the combat state, Xia Nan finally realized that there was someone else alive on the scene besides himself.

Maji looked absolutely wretched at this moment.

One of his lower legs had been smashed to pieces, with bone fragments protruding; the knee was reduced to nothing but a bit of skin and flesh, resembling the crude joints of a cheap puppet from a market.

His face was deathly pale, his two quivering lips devoid of color. If not for the faint glimmer of spirit still remaining in his eyes and his body trembling slightly from intense pain, he would, in some respects, look no different from the goblins lying dead nearby.

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

As if his consciousness were gradually fading, Maji said with difficulty, his words intermittent.

The man was the only remaining official member of the "Stinky Fish and Rotten Shrimp" squad, a teammate who had survived a life-and-death battle together, and the old hunter who was the only one who knew the way out of the Mist Forest.

As a modern person who had received higher education, possessed relatively normal values, and held a certain level of morality, Xia Nan could not stand by and watch him die, no matter how he looked at it.

So, he knelt down and, following the location Maji indicated, fished a small bottle out of his waist pouch.

It was glass, shaped like a test tube from a laboratory, with a dark brown wooden stopper sealing the top.

Inside the glass bottle was about one-third of a red liquid; it had clearly been used many times, and it emitted a faint glow when shaken vigorously.

Although the other party didn't specify exactly what it was, the strong sense of familiarity it brought made Xia Nan guess its general purpose at a single glance.

“A health potion?” Xia Nan helped Maji pull out the wooden stopper. “Do you drink it or apply it externally?”

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

Hearing this, Xia Nan didn't ask any more questions and poured the entire health potion into the man's mouth.

He didn't know if he had seen it wrong, but he vaguely sensed a hint of heartache in Maji’s eyes.

It was as if this basic supply, widely distributed in various games and novels from his past life, was incredibly precious.

And immediately after, Xia Nan understood the reason for the man's expression.

Almost the second Maji’s Adam’s apple bobbed and the potion entered his stomach, his face, which had been deathly pale from excessive blood loss, instantly flushed with color, and his pupils refocused.

The wounds stopped bleeding, and his chest, which had been heaving violently due to difficulty breathing, gradually calmed down.

The magical effect was like something out of a movie.

And just as Xia Nan thought Maji would be fully restored by this half-bottle of potion, everything came to a sudden halt.

The broken bones did not reset, and the lower leg remained in its twisted state.

Clearly, while the effect of this health potion far exceeded his expectations, it hadn't reached the level of regrowing severed limbs.

Perhaps it could heal most minor injuries and provide some relief for serious ones?

“Alright, alright.” After drinking the potion, Maji breathed in the turbid air of the cave deeply, like a drowning man who had finally surfaced. “Thank you… thank you.”

Although his face was covered in sweat from the pain, his voice was no longer weak.

“You go clear the battlefield first.” He pulled a few rolls of bandages from his waist pouch. “I can handle the rest myself.”

According to the unspoken rules of adventurers that Maji had introduced to him earlier, when clearing a battlefield, except for parts like goblin ears that had a clear killer, all other spoils belonged to the finder.

The fact that the other party told him to clear the battlefield was almost an explicit indication that—

The spoils in the goblin nest belonged to Xia Nan.

Although he understood that if it weren't for Maji's two arrows, he might not have been a match for the bugbear even with his breakthrough, since the other party had made it clear, he wouldn't be hypocritical about it.

He nodded slightly to Maji and walked to the other side of the cave.

Unlike the chests that automatically appear after clearing a dungeon in games, or the mechanism where you can loot a pile of items from a monster's corpse with a click of a mouse, collecting loot in the real world was much more troublesome.

First, for the goblin corpses

The bounty only applied to adult individuals, so he mercilessly sent the five green-skinned runts to meet their beastly father.

He skillfully stepped on their heads and cut off the left ears of the four goblins one by one, putting them into the pocket behind him.

Then came the meticulous search.

The cave was not large, and its interior was almost entirely visible, but with the mindset of maximizing his gains, Xia Nan still held his torch and searched the area thoroughly, with some success.

Excluding the items that were inconvenient to carry or had no value, these were the spoils he collected from the goblin nest

Three striped, opaque light-green gemstones, a small wooden round shield that was slightly damp and moldy on the surface, and a small bag of coins (he weighed it in his hand; it had some heft, but it was mostly silver and copper coins).

“I wonder if these stones are worth anything?”

Xia Nan pondered in his heart.

At the same time, Maji had finished dressing his wounds.

“How is it? Is everything cleared?” He leaned against the wall and stood up with some difficulty.

His lower leg, which had been twisted out of shape, had been simply fixed with wooden sticks and bandages. Although movement was still difficult, it wouldn't cause the injury to worsen.

“Just about, I searched twice.”

Xia Nan replied.

“Twice? You’ve missed the most important thing.”

Maji’s gaze was somewhat playful as he gestured with his chin toward the direction of the bugbear's corpse.