Chapter 37
The stench that had filled his nose vanished.
Only the wolves’ howls remained.
There was still one last thing left.
After delivering the finishing blow, Dohyun fell from the air and was thrown hard against the ground.
At first, his body would not listen to him.
The landing had failed.
His chest dropped.
His lungs refused the air.
His breath caught in his throat.
10 HP has been consumed.
As his weak regeneration kicked in, he forced himself to inhale.
10 HP has been consumed.
The broken bones in his chest knit together. The moment they locked into place, he drew in another breath. Then they slipped out of alignment again.
10 HP has been consumed.
He endured the suffocating pain and restored the broken bones once more.
60 HP has been consumed.
As the cost climbed, so did the strength of his recovery. Pure life force stored in the core coursed through his body, draining the blood pooled inside him and pushing dead tissue out.
As the severed nerves reconnected, pain arrived late.
Ugh...!
The pain he had nearly forgotten shook through his brain. He bit down on his lip and held it back.
With a grinding of his teeth, he forced himself through it.
"Hey, dragon. Hurts?"
Heok-o landed beside him as if nothing at all had happened.
At that, Dohyun looked down at his bloodied arm and, pretending nothing was wrong, shook himself harder to hide the trembling.
...The others.
"Well, you're not dead."
He ground his teeth.
So the pain is still severe.
Everything was because of the pain.
"Dragon, were you desperate enough to die or something?"
Heok-o stripped the amusement from his voice.
If the calculation was right...
"Calculation? Puhuhuhu."
At Dohyun's words, Heok-o burst out laughing.
"As expected, dragons are fun."
...
Dohyun turned away from the crow, who was laughing to himself.
He pushed himself upright.
With every movement, a dull ache shot through him, and it felt as if his body were breaking apart in several places.
Dohyun turned his eyes coldly to the corpse of the giant centipede.
It was a perfectly preserved trophy.
Toward it, he took one step.
His foot touched the ground.
A jolt of pain flared up, and a recovery window flashed into view before vanishing again.
The more he recovered, the deeper the pain became.
He hesitated.
Then moved again.
Slowly, bleeding all the way, he made his way toward the carcass.
When he reached it, he paused and let his gaze drift to the wolf sitting off to the side, watching the centipede's corpse.
He kept his discomfort hidden and asked, "The trophy?"
Gwiwolrang did not answer.
That look in his eyes.
It was not cold.
This centipede's name was Yun.
Dohyun had clearly heard it called that before.
Are you going to bury it...?That's inefficient.
At Dohyun's words, Gwiwolrang looked at him for a moment, then turned away.
"I have no intention of throwing it away."
Something felt strangely hollow.
Gwiwolrang took in one breath, then let it out heavily.
"Take it if you need it."
Even after giving his answer, he did not waver. He held the corpse in place and looked at it for a moment, then vanished before Dohyun even noticed when he was gone.
Auuuuuu!
Only when the howl rang out did Dohyun realize it. The giant form of Gwiwolrang was gone, as if he had been a ghost all along.
Far away, without looking back, Gwiwolrang disappeared into the distance.
The wolf pack that had followed him began to lift themselves from the ground one by one and move after him.
When the sounds of the beasts faded, the battlefield fell quiet.
What remained was the corpses, the wounded, and the trophies.
Heok-o sat on the dead centipede's head and said, "Dragon, does this have a core?"
...A core.
A great beast's core was supposed to be priceless.
Before that, Dohyun stepped toward the head.
Electric pain climbed through his nerves. His knees wobbled as if they might buckle.
He stopped to catch his breath.
Then moved again.
Watching him, Heok-o observed in silence, as if he found the whole thing interesting.
Kieek-
From behind, the hunter goblins who had been stationed at the edges of the formation ran over.
They wore pained, pleading expressions, as if they could not bear to watch him struggle any longer. Seeing them, Dohyun raised a hand to stop them.
It's fine.
The pain in his body was already, after all,
part of the calculation.
Staggering, he walked under his own power toward the centipede's red eyes, now dimmed and extinguished. He stood before the head, unable to look away.
The centipede was already dead.
One step.
...Confirmation.
He muttered it briefly.
Meaningless, and yet his hand moved.
Thwack.
He struck it again.
There was no reaction.
He hit it once more.
It was definitely dead.
It remained still.
A beat later, he exhaled.
His breathing was uneven.
Broken.
His chest moved of its own accord.
To have obtained the corpse of a great beast...
Efficient work.
He muttered that, but it meant nothing.
Only after he stood there in a daze and rapped the centipede's head several more times did it feel real.
The great beast was dead.
No one could laugh.
They had only survived.
That was all.
He felt as though the ground beneath his feet were collapsing.
As the world's sounds faded away, other noises reached him.
The rough breathing of goblins.
The cries of the injured.
When he turned, he saw Geoung's broken legs and Gyetoo, who had not regained consciousness. Gyetoo was breathing very weakly.
His wing bones seemed to have been damaged and twisted, and the claws on his red legs were broken.
Geoung's face was still intact, as though he might wake at any moment and say, "Geoung... want food," but he was unconscious, and both legs had swollen after being forced to move on broken bones.
The green skin around the swollen legs had taken on a bluish tint.
It was a serious injury.
Beside Geoung, the orcs were also gasping for breath.
Some had broken arms.
Some had crushed shoulders.
At the sound of other groans, Dohyun turned his head and saw one goblin warrior having his broken arm fixed in place by a companion.
It was the arm he had kept holding his spear with until the very end.
Another goblin warrior had a broken leg that was being splinted, while one who had suffered internal injuries was spitting blood from his mouth.
The leader goblin's face was covered in blood, along with scratches all over his body. It looked as though the two long scars that had once run across his forehead had torn open again.
His breathing was ragged.
He seemed to have taken internal injuries as well.
Thump.
And yet, when his eyes met Dohyun's, he weakly struck his own chest.
Victory.
But not for them.
When Dohyun looked into their eyes, he saw them bow their heads.
The warrior goblins were clenching their jaws so hard it looked like they might cry.
Pain mattered, yes.
But they were suffering like fools.
Dohyun did not ask why.
Whether the body was injured or the heart was wounded, there was not a single one among them who was truly intact.
The hunter goblins ran back and forth everywhere.
Boiling water.
Carrying bandages and moving from place to place.
They had no real medical knowledge, but they knew how to stop bleeding, and they had makeshift bandages, so they wrapped the wounds.
Blood smeared the hands of the working goblins.
Seeing it, the goblins hurried even faster.
Stopping the bleeding came first.
The hands wrapping the bandages trembled.
They were slow.
But they did not stop.
As they worked, the hunter goblins' expressions shifted one after another.
Some clenched their teeth.
Some closed their eyes.
Their hearts were wounded.
There were no voices.
Only breathing and groans remained, harsh and ragged.
After the treatment had gone as far as it could, Dohyun ordered them to make stretchers from leather and wooden poles.
They tore apart the prepared leather bags and broke a nearby ancient tree.
Their movements were clumsy.
Even so, they had to get the wounded back to the Dungeon as quickly as possible.
This was a situation where stretchers were absolutely necessary.
It looked as though almost none of the unit could make the journey on foot.
For a moment, Dohyun considered using his jade spiritual energy.
But once qi began to flow through his body,
crack...
10 HP has been consumed.
Even a slight use of his energy overloaded parts of his body until they seemed ready to break apart. He could feel the system draining HP again.
...An inefficient method.
A jammed, blocked sensation spread through him. His meridians felt hot, as if swollen.
Dohyun's eyes swept over the battlefield again.
Even amid the noisy treatment efforts, the centipede's head, which had seemed mountain-sized, lay toppled beneath the sunlight and did not move.
The black ground was slowly fading away.
Watching that, the strength drained from him, and he thought, It's over.
The core absorbs sufficient experience.
The core levels up.
Just as he decided it was over, an alert appeared. Dohyun called in the remaining personnel from the Dungeon with the system's help.
There were too many wounded. It looked as though the hunter goblins alone would struggle to guard this place and haul everyone back.
Even after ordering the rotation of troops and additional support, he still could not bring himself to leave.
"Dragon, are we going?"
I think... I'll stay a little longer before going.
"Hmm, is that so?"
As he watched the cleanup, more goblins arrived to reinforce them.
Herb gatherers came carrying medicinal plants that were not quite proper medicine but could still stop bleeding and restore strength, and they began crushing them finely or making emergency paste to feed the wounded.
The orcs who had arrived as support started preparing to carry their fallen comrades on stretchers.
"It's over now."
Heok-o watched quietly.
...With interest.
The corner of his mouth lifted, just barely.
Right... I should go now.
It would be more efficient, after all.
Or so he ought to say.
But it did not mean anything.
The wind passed by.
Only the smell of blood remained.
In the end, Dohyun...
stepped forward.
In the darkness, atop a tree made of old, twisted trunks, a blurred shadow lay sprawled out.
Its gaze was fixed on the place where the formation had collapsed.
"So it broke."
The voice was low.
For a moment, it said nothing else.
It simply looked at the forest.
Very slowly, among the green yokai, there was one existence that did not belong.
"That dragon."
The corner of its mouth rose.
"How far... can he go?"
A short silence.
Its gaze shifted deeper into the forest, toward the center.
"And how much longer can that side... hold out?"
It sounded interested.
"...Worth watching, I suppose."
It muttered that to itself.