RMGCFW — Chapter 102
"Mushroom girls! Here I come!"
Meanwhile, Banxia had already put considerable distance between himself and Alterna, sprinting flat-out toward the Mushroom Forest.
He'd spent the last stretch of days recuperating at home. Tsubaki Rurikawa had seen to his every need, but a young girl's body was ultimately too delicate, and a mortal human frame needed its rest.
The result was the opposite of satisfaction. It had only fanned the flames higher. He'd been burning with restless energy ever since, half-mad with it, longing for nothing more than a battlefield where he could cut loose and let it all out.
Battle! Let me forget the madness!
"Help! Someone save us, "
Mid-sprint, Banxia stopped dead.
Not far ahead, on the main road, a fight had broken out. From the sounds of it, this wasn't humans brawling among themselves.
Monsters, most likely.
He hesitated for exactly one beat, then changed course and shot toward the screams.
An eyeblink later, he was on the road.
A mob of goblins had a merchant caravan surrounded on all sides. Guards lay scattered across the ground in every direction, from the look of the wounds, most of them had walked into a trap.
Banxia's brow creased. It brought back unpleasant memories.
"Cut."
He didn't need to raise his hand anymore to release a slash. But doing it himself still felt better, somehow. Besides, the follow-through motion might trick the monsters into thinking they had an opening.
A torrent of slashes tore into the goblin horde like a downpour of blades.
The merchants, who had already given themselves up for dead, watched in stunned silence as the goblins were hit from nowhere, limbs sheared clean off in an instant. The creatures collapsed, writhing and wailing, helpless.
"What... what just happened?" The man at the head of the caravan was middle-aged. He'd come from a nearby town, hoping to open a new route south. He hadn't expected to run into this many goblins on the main road, hadn't expected to lose most of his guards either.
"Father." His eldest daughter grabbed his arm, eyes bright with sudden relief. "Someone's coming over there."
A figure was walking through the blood mist toward them, unhurried, presence unmistakable. One look was enough to know he was the one who'd just done that.
"Um, adventurer, sir, "
The merchant leader started to get the words of gratitude out, and then he saw something that made his blood run cold.
The young man's slashes could have killed every last goblin. He had chosen, precisely, not to. Every cut had taken only the limbs.
It had been deliberate.
"Rejuvenation."
Banxia pressed one long hand firmly to the top of a goblin's head.
The creature shuddered. Then, visibly, at a pace the naked eye could follow, it began to regress, shrinking back toward infancy.
"Still too weak," he murmured.
THUD
Just before Rejuvenation's side effect could reduce the goblin to raw essence, Banxia moved first. He closed his hand and crushed its skull.
Blood sprayed outward. It was about to reach his clothes.
His expression didn't change. Countless tiny slashes erupted from his body in the same instant, forming a seamless barrier of blade-light, an inviolable field. Every droplet of blood and fragment of bone hit that perimeter and stopped.
Ding, Monster slain: Goblin. Total lifespan: twenty-one years. Remaining: eleven years. Absorbed.
Even small gains added up.
The system's chime faded. Banxia's gaze drifted across the other goblins still on the ground.
They were all still moving, limbless, squirming in the dirt, letting out broken, intermittent wails. Like a field that had been plowed through.
"Cut."
When the one-sided slaughter was over, Banxia's monster-time reserve had climbed to five thousand years. This goblin pack alone had contributed five hundred.
"Please — adventurer, lord — don't kill me and my daughter! Everything the caravan's carrying, it's all yours!" The merchant leader, who had been watching all of this, finally broke. He dropped to his knees, forehead pressed into the dirt, shaking from head to toe.
"Hm?" Banxia glanced around at the terrified faces.
As expected. Ordinary people will never understand the loneliness of the strong.
"I'm not interested in your caravan." He looked away. His tone was flat.
"Th, this, "
"Father, " The daughter caught her father's eye, and something resolved in her expression. She stepped forward. "Great adventurer, sir. Please spare my father. I, I'll submit to whatever you wish to do with me."
"Kanae..." her father choked out.
Banxia cut in before the moment could get any more dramatic.
"You're not even as pretty as my maid at home." He sounded genuinely baffled. "What were you expecting?"
"..."
"For clearing out the goblins, pay me with a martial skill or magic tome worth having. That's all I want."
He said it like it was nothing.
The father and daughter were still processing that when someone else in the caravan, someone who recognized that particular request, shoved through the crowd with a face full of delighted shock.
"Hero, sir! You're alive!"
Banxia stared at him. "Was that a curse?"
"No, no, I meant, so you weren't buried under the Lova Labyrinth after all!"
"A labyrinth at that level?" Banxia gave him a flat look. "Why would that be a problem for me?"
He peered at the man. Something nagged at him. "You're..."
"I'm the merchant who received the Interspecies Review Guide you gave me that time!"
"Oh, right." It came back to him. No wonder the face felt familiar. "Sorry. I'm not great with men's names."
"No, no, don't worry about it!" The portly merchant waved both hands. "Receiving a gift from the Hero himself, that was already the greatest honor imaginable."
"How did you end up here?" Banxia recalled this man having his own small caravan.
"It's a long story, "
"Then skip it."
"..."
Under the bewildered stares of the merchant leader and his daughter, the portly man gave a short version anyway.
The Interspecies Review Guide had been extraordinary. He'd felt it was too good to keep to himself, so he'd set about copying it by hand, spreading it wherever he went. The response in city after city had been tremendous, and it had made him a considerable amount of money.
Eventually he'd set his original trade aside entirely. His new purpose was to carry the Hero's wisdom to every corner of the world.
This trip south had started with news out of the Central Kingdom, that the strongest hero in the south, a man named Banxia, had been swallowed by the Lova Labyrinth and was unaccounted for. Among adventurers and merchants alike, unaccounted for was more or less a death sentence.
Grief-stricken, he'd decided to make the journey south, to see the Hero's homeland, and to ask around about any other copies of the Guide that might be out there somewhere.
As for why he'd ended up in this particular caravan: southbound groups were rare these days. He'd had to pay handsomely just to hitch a ride.
"Sounds like you've had quite the journey." Banxia sounded genuinely approving.
"Hardly, hardly, nothing compared to what you've been through, Hero sir, " The portly man rubbed the back of his neck, flustered.
"In that case, I'll leave this with you." Banxia's expression settled into something easy and certain.
The onlookers watched, many of them still terrified, as he pulled his outer clothes aside, opened a spatial rift along his abdomen, and drew out a fresh manuscript.
"This is the latest Mushroom Girl edition of the Interspecies Review Guide."
"Wha?!" The merchant's eyes went wide. He grabbed it with both hands. "Hero sir — you, you've already conquered the Mushroom Forest?!"
His expression was more stunned than it had been when he'd heard the Hero had defeated Xiaoyan.
He held the manuscript with the delicate care of someone cradling a relic capable of reshaping the geopolitical order of the continent.
Then he stopped. He bowed, deep, unhurried, sincere.
When he raised his head, his eyes were red.
"Hero sir... you really are still alive. I'm so glad." His voice had gone rough. "I knew it. Someone like you, you'd never fall somewhere like that."
"Of course not."