“Fuck!” Noah yelled in agony.

“Are you alright?” Antela seemed genuinely worried.

“Clearly fucking not, for fuck’s sake” Noah was pissed.

Antela was engaged in combat, along with all the other hunters in this party, aside from the healer.

On the ground, dragged over to a wall by the poor girl, Noah had stopped the bleeding as much as he could without alerting her of his abilities.

Even worse, the monster hadn’t cleanly cut his arm off with its pincers. No, it had just clawed down, crushed all the bones, then ripped the other bit off, along with a load of skin off the remaining bit of arm.

He was missing everything past his forearm, along with all the skin up to his shoulder. This happened to reveal his slightly shoddy muscle that’d been transfigured by him.

Thanks to Guildmaster Hyon though, it was a lot better. The skinny bastard had connection, even Noah had to give him that. For a little bit of coin, the bastard secured him a ton of books on biology and monsters; he didn’t even ask him about it.

After having a few drinks with the skeleton, he’d grown to really like the bastard Guildmaster.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t heal such a great wound.”

“Please, just fetch my arm. I haven’t told anyone this, but I have a healing ability. That’s why I’m rarely injured after tough battles,”

“R-Right…”

The poor girl weaved through hunters to fetch the disfigured arm. It was in awful condition, the flesh all mashed up by the pincers, but thanks to the hunters pushing the huge crab back, she was able to grab it, throwing it like a baseball over to Noah.

“Thanks,”

And he got right to it. With all the training he’d undergone, this was pretty easy, but he had to pretend to struggle so it could look like a healing ability.

‘What a life,’ he sighed.

Arm healed, he got up and walked up to the cute healer, whispering seductively in her ear.

“Can you keep a secret?” he smiled.

“I can,” she pushed him with her small hand.

‘Need to work on my seductive skills’

With haste, he got back into battle.

“Thanks, Amelia!” he shouted at the top of his lungs for all to hear.

‘So you’re pushing it onto me?’ she sulked.

Running back over, Noah witnessed the hunters in action. The big old crabby bastard was throwing hands like a street fighter, pincering hands clean off left right and centre; shattering blades at the bare minimum.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Facing the monster head-on was none other than Noah’s favourite Guildmaster Hyon. For a skinny bastard, he sure was strong. With a longsword in hand, small sparks flying off as he imbued it with magic, he dashed straight at the fucker.

It was insane. If a citizen saw this they’d think he wanted to become monster dinner, or be crushed by a pincer, but he didn’t. In fact, he didn’t get hit at all whilst he flew right at the crab’s right eye.

Despite its efforts, the crab couldn’t put up a good fight as its whole body writhed in pain from the hunters’ onslaught, its pincers being the only defence blocking two hulks slicing up its intestines.

Brutal.

Stab.

‘Ouch! Right in the eye. Hyon is a beast’

Lighting came lashing down along with Guildmaster Hyon’s blade, and its pincers lost strength, allowing two barbarians to begin carving up its guts.

Noah sighed.

‘No fun for me,’

Antela stood atop the crab, struggling to pull her blade from its back, all the shell around it crumbling as she tried jumping with the blade to retrieve it.

“You’re strong, old man,”

“That’s what it takes to be a Guildmaster,” Guildmaster Hyon laughed, jumping off from the falling monster, which almost crushed the two barbarians playing with its guts.

“Got your arm back,” he pointed at the perfectly healed right arm of the boy.

“Amelia is a Goddess,” Noah lied through his teeth. “I owe her my life,”

“I didn’t know she could perform such a thing,” Hyon looked at the girl, impressed.

This caused her to look away and cringe, realising Noah was shooting lies about her all around.

“You need to be more careful when you fight, Noah. Monsters are no joke,”

Noah sulked. He knew that. But, he didn’t care. Fresh off a solo hunt, lasting over a week, he was too used to just giving limbs away for quicker kills. He’d neglected to think about the audience when he charged in there like a lunatic.

If it weren’t for them, he’d have killed the bastard without breaking a sweat.

“Can’t have one of our dragon slayers dying now, can we?” Hyon smiled from ear to ear.

He knew Noah hated it. At the beginning, Noah was pretty happy with the title, but the more he heard it, the more he wanted to jump right into a vietnamese trap of spikes and shit.

It had not grown on him at all; it had died on him.

“No, we can’t” he feigned a smile so obnoxiously the Guildmaster took a step back.

“Let’s set up camp for the night,” he said. “We have a lot more fighting ahead of us,”

You’re probably wondering why the guildmaster was in this party. Well, this wasn’t some ordinary expedition; this was the expedition. Hyon had gathered the best of the best for this one, including the two dragon slayers.

Why? To wipe out all the newly-migrated monsters in the long tunnel that connected their country and the old territory that’d been overrun by these kinds of monsters.

The rest of it was covered by guards at the walls, but not many were willing to run through this tunnel, considering its history of high casualties.

Every few years, the guild would run an expedition to wipe out the monsters of the tunnel. That part wasn’t awful for a strong group like this. In fact, it shouldn’t warrant an awful amount of casualties for highly-trained hunters, if any.

But this year was different. With reports from the walls of an aberrant amount of monster sightings coming from the old territory, the King sent an order for Azmek to be explored.

That is to say, he wanted the guild to throw hunters at it until all the monsters were dead.

He had been given three years to do it. With the dragon slayers arriving, he saw hope in creating a team.

But he neglected to tell them about his history with Azmek, and a big reason as to why he joined the hunters guild, achieving the rank of Guildmaster.

He’d explored Azmek as a young hunter.

He returned as the lone survivor.

A failed expedition by all accounts.

‘I just hope some of us will survive this time,’