Chapter 37: I Don't Have Any Money
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 37: I Don't Have Any Money
"Huff...!"
Kicking the collapsing Orc's corpse aside, I lunged toward the weak point targeted by the Umbra Valkyrie's vision.
Crunch—
The second Orc's neck was torn apart as if crushed by my swinging machete. I pressed forward toward the next one, driving my war pick into its skull.
The Orcs' movements grew frantic as they gradually tightened their encirclement.
The Valkyrie's eyes quivered. Dozens of weak points pulsed within my vision, as if begging to be shattered. I dodged an axe swinging toward me and planted a kick squarely between an Orc's eyes.
Crack—
I pulled my foot back from the Orc's face and retreated. I hurled my machete at another one charging from the side.
—Krawaaakh!!
Drawing a sword from my ring, I drove the blade horizontally into the chest of an Orc that had closed the distance. A vertical thrust would have been too thick to slip between the ribs.
Squelch—
As I yanked the blade out, the sword—having pierced the heart—came away with a handful of viscous blood. I took a sip of the blood dripping from the sword held high toward the sky, then turned my head again.
"Tastes like shit."
There were four Orcs within a twenty-meter radius.
I flicked the sword through the air to clear the blood and simultaneously threw it at the furthest of the four.
In that brief moment, I sensed an axe swinging toward me. I quickly smashed the axe handle with my war pick, breaking it. However, the axe head, which hadn't lost its momentum, bit into my right shoulder.
"Urgh...!"
It was fine. I had plenty of blood left. I filled the wound with as much blood from the common Direwolves as possible, preserving the Ursus blood while waiting for the injury to heal.
I slammed the war pick into the face of the Orc with the broken axe. Leaving the pick deeply embedded, I swung my arm and smashed another Orc's eyeball with my gauntlet.
Blood flowed faster from my wound every time I moved, but it didn't matter.
If anything, my body felt lighter. I felt much better.
I yanked the war pick out of the fallen corpse, drew another sword from my ring, severed the arm of an approaching Orc, and delivered a shallow cut to its throat.
Sprinting toward a corpse, I stored the sword in my hand back into the ring, pulled out a sword that was already stuck in a body, and threw it at the nearest target.
Should I retrieve the sword? No, I threw it too far. What about the machete? I didn't even know where it was.
But I had plenty of weapons.
"Crude things."
I snatched an axe from a fallen Orc's hand and hurled it at the next one. I put the war pick in my right hand back into the ring and grabbed the axe head with the broken handle, throwing it with all my might.
Whish—!!
Every time the axe head flew forward and the sound of it embedding itself echoed, the Umbra Valkyrie's vision erased the glowing red weak points one by one, as if satisfied.
"Krawaaakh!! Human!!"
An Orc that had somehow gotten behind me swung a club.
Thwack—!!
I was hit so hard that my body flew through the air and tumbled across the ground. It felt like a lung had collapsed, but it was fine. Didn't I have another lung?
"Cough. You bitch. That's some incredible strength."
I spat out a mouthful of blood. My original lung was punctured by broken ribs, so I swapped it for the Ursus's lung.
"Whew. Better."
I stored the shattered ribs using my skill and forcibly fitted them back together by combining them with an Ursus femur.
I threw my war pick at the face of the Orc walking toward me as I lay on the ground. Springing up, I kicked its head, shattering it, and retrieved the war pick in the same motion.
Clubs weren't worth throwing. They were too heavy and not lethal enough.
In the end, it was a cycle of throwing and retrieving the war pick, snatching and throwing axes, and repeating the process until I was on the verge of being overwhelmed.
I would leap into the air, stomp on their heads, and retreat into the distance.
I reached the cliff where the Lizardmen lay dead. Using the dozens of spears scattered over the corpses as weapons, I threw them, retrieved them, and fled whenever I was surrounded.
My brain felt like it was burning hundreds of times. I bled dozens of times. I was sent flying by weapons several times.
I shattered hundreds of weak point targets and threw my weapons hundreds of times.
It felt like dozens of liters of blood had leaked from my wounds. Of course, the blood stored by my skill refilled my body and flowed through my veins once more.
By now, there wasn't a single muscle that wasn't fatigued. I had tried to pace myself, but eventually, every muscle I had consumed began to scream in exhaustion.
I was starving, and animalistic instincts kept invading my mind. Around the midpoint, I began to scavenge the Lizardmen's corpses to replenish my blood and muscle.
I gathered the dozens of spears lying around and hurled them at weak points. I scavenged the Orc corpses that had fallen with spears through their heads to replenish my resources, then pressed on.
Retrieve a spear, throw it, retrieve it again. As expected, spears were the most suitable throwing weapons. I didn't know if the Lizardmen's technology was just high, but they were quite well-made.
Orc corpses with holes in their heads were strewn across the forest. A few steps, another corpse; a turn of the head, yet another.
Dozens of hearts. Roughly the same number of lungs. Maybe dozens of liters of blood? Plenty of muscle, too. I ate it all.
Most of the Orcs that had crawled into the forest to kill me were dead. I wondered if fighting even when they knew they would die was a passive trait for these bastards, as they kept charging even when only a few of their kin remained.
Thwack!!
"0.5 Half-God Head."
I finished off the ones lying on the ground with spears in them by kicking their heads. There wasn't a single part of my body that didn't ache.
Yet, for some reason, strength was surging through me. The sensation of my feet crushing the earth as I moved forward was entirely different from before. The more I bled, the more intense this sensation became.
"Well, this looks like trouble."
An Orc so massive he stood two meters tall even while sitting was waiting for me in a field of flowers, sitting cross-legged.
He wore a necklace made of skulls, bore strange tattoos, and had two enormous axes driven into the ground at his sides.
"An Orc... leader? Like an Orc Chieftain?"
My blood-soaked hair began to dry and crumble. When I ran my right hand through my bangs, powdered blood fell in heaps.
I stripped off my gambeson, which had become heavy and stifling from all the blood it had absorbed. Seeing how it was torn in various places, it was safe to say it had done its job. With blood trapped and flowing inside the thick gambeson, the undergarments beneath couldn't possibly be intact.
As I threw off my blood-drenched top, the cool breeze of a chilly spring evening tickled my body.
It was incredibly refreshing. I felt like I could do anything. Strength was overflowing from my body. It was spilling over.
"Human...!"
"Yeah, I'm a human."
As he stood up, he looked to be at least three meters tall. His dark green skin seemed to have a reddish tint for some reason—I could tell he was absolutely livid.
"Warriors... dead...!! I will kill you—!!"
The Orc Chieftain grabbed the two axes embedded beside him and let out a massive roar. It was loud enough to ring through the entire 10th Floor.
Krawaaaaaaaakh—!!!!!!!!!!!!
The sky was full of stars, and the moonlight was bright. Beautiful flowers glowed with a mysterious, lovely light—a blend of purple and blue.
I pulled a Lizardman spear from the ring on my left hand and held it in my right.
Inhale...
I filled my lungs with air, supplying oxygen to every muscle in my body.
After pinpointing the weak point my right eye was indicating, I slammed my left heel firmly into the ground.
I rotated my hips following my knees, and my shoulders following my waist.
These were the muscles the strong Orc warriors had gifted me. Finally, as my right arm lashed out like a whip, I released the grip of the hand that had been holding the spear shaft with immense power.
BOOM—!!
The tip of the spear, tearing through the air as it advanced, pierced the Orc Chieftain's skull with perfect precision.
Splatter—
His head didn't just split; it shattered into pieces. Soon after, his massive frame collapsed onto the flower bed.
"Hah, how many pretty flowers did that ugly lump of meat just crush?"
Dragging my battered body, I walked toward his corpse. I pushed his heavy frame over with all my strength, then took his axe and smashed his chest, breaking the ribs and prying open the thoracic cavity.
"Alright, meal time."
His lungs and heart were enormous. I decided to enjoy them. Whether it was my body or something else, I felt like I could even chew through bone right now.
Rip—
I tore the severed peritoneum completely open, sat cross-legged on his soft intestines, and chewed and swallowed every organ that looked useful. I didn't even know what I was eating anymore.
I chewed, tore, tasted, and enjoyed every part of the Orc Chieftain. My head felt hazy from the prolonged battle. My body was full of energy, but my vision was slightly blurred, and my senses were dull. It was a better environment for eating raw meat, though.
"Still, I should finish this before I go. Oh."
I sensed a presence. A person? It was a person. Surely they weren't coming to steal my food.
"Who is it?"
I stood up and looked to the side. Hmm.
"I can't see well."
My vision was so blurry I could only tell that a person was there.
"If you're here to steal my food, get lost."
"...You should be careful."
"Careful of what?"
"It seems you have acquired a new skill. Return to the surface, properly verify your abilities, and only continue your exploration once you've determined it is safe."
"Ha, that... makes sense."
But I couldn't give this up. This was a 10th Floor boss I'd managed to take down.
I couldn't give it up.
I couldn't give it up.
"I'm so... sleepy..."
* * *
"Ugh..."
It was a strange ceiling.
An artificial, pleasant scent—the first I'd smelled since coming to this world. Was it a diffuser? My entire body felt like it had been pulverized. The muscle pain was incredible.
'Is there any muscle I didn't use?'
The muscles I was currently using belonged to the Ursus. As I cycled through different muscles using my skill, I found some that were perfectly fine because they hadn't been used.
"Ah, the Orc Chieftain's muscles."
Only then did my limbs start to move. The strength I felt in my grip was on a different level. The area was enclosed by white curtains, much like a hospital, but I had no idea where I was.
I stood up and pulled back the curtain. Beside me were drawers, a sofa, a desk, and various other things.
"A hospital...? There's a hospital this modern?"
It felt like an expensive private room in a hospital. Even being generous, this world was stuck in the Middle Ages, aside from the magical elements. Was there really a hospital this cleanly maintained?
As I stepped off the bed and looked around, I heard someone approaching from outside the door.
Creeeeak—
"Oh my...! How are you awake?!"
"Huh? No, I just woke up."
An unknown woman looked at me in shock, her expression like a mother seeing her baby stand on two feet for the first time.
"Y-You... every muscle in your body was completely collapsed..."
"Ah, that. Well, things happened. But where am I?"
Only then did the woman seem to remember herself. She cleared her throat and introduced the location.
"Ah, this is Patient Room 4 in the main building of the Mayerbridge Union Clan."
"Mayer... No, why am I here?"
Knowing the location only made me more confused. What was this? Why was I here?
"Uh, I don't have any money. I can't pay the hospital bills."
Shit, I'm screwed.