Nate's lips curled into a smile as he cradled his poor ears. The roars of triumph from the expedition members boomed across the forest, almost shattering his eardrums.

Ming somehow made it behind Nate, putting his arms around their leader. "Hey, good job out there! You took out pretty much all the orcs!"

"It's nothing," Nate smirked. "Easy-peasy lemon squeezy."

"Psh!" Ming scoffed, playfully pushing off the arrogant prick. "In case you were wondering, we don't have any casualties. Though, I'm pretty sure eight people won't be getting up for a few days."

"I see." Nate nodded, urging Ming to carry on.

"Included amongst the injured is the person who pulled the trigger too early. Some middle-aged fellow named Harold. He apparently joined last minute."

'That guy?'

It was the guy who tried to cozy up to Nate a few days ago, only to run like mad when he pulled his little prank on everyone. Harold had stopped trying to butter him up after that incident, likely a bit too embarrassed that he'd fled faster than anyone else.

"I see." Nate nodded as his face twisted in annoyance. "He's banned from coming with us from now on."

"Of course." Ming smiled wryly as he scratched his chin. "He almost got us all in trouble. We probably wouldn't have as many injured people if it weren't for him."

While the two talked, a beautiful woman with long black hair tied in a ponytail wobbled over to them, sporting a look of utter exhaustion. Her skin was pale and her eyelids looked as if they were about to fall any second now.

"I'm so tired..." Miyu stated the obvious.

"You still have to heal our wounded." Nate's eyes narrowed into crescents as he grinned.

"Are you an actual demon?" she gazed at him with a horrified expression.

"There aren't any demons this handsome."

"Wow."

"Wow."

Ming and Miyu remarked in unison.

"I was joking about the healing thing. You look like you'd keel over soon, so go get some rest first. Then please go and help the injured out. Just closing their wounds is enough."

"Roger..." Miyu replied dispiritedly as her shoulders drooped. She let her body fall, her buttocks colliding with the soft earth underneath. Leaning against the trunk of a tree, she closed her eyes and tried to recuperate her mana.

"As for you, get everyone to gather up our loot." Nate faced Ming while gesturing at the corpses all around them. "We've got plenty of weapons now, we won't be having any problems with armaments for a while... though I wished they had some armor we could use..."

Although all the hobgoblins had leather armor on, none of them could be used by humans.

It was truly such a waste.

Nate separated from Ming, leaving the man to his duties. He headed to where he last saw Pig's headless corpse. On his way there, he tried again and again to regenerate the undead servant's head, but it just wouldn't work.

Strangely though, their connection still remained.

"What're you doing?" Ari — her green cowl pulled down to hide her face — caught up with Nate and walked along beside him.

"Pig." he tersely replied, pointing at where the carcass should be. "I can't seem to revive him..."

"Oh, right." she nodded in understanding. "His head just got blown to smithereens, huh? Maybe that's why?"

Nate shook his head. "That's probably not it... I already tested some stuff."

When he'd just acquired his magic, Nate practiced using it all night long. Though he'd only had mosquitoes and flies to test it out on, he did try to cut off his tiny minions' heads off, just to see whether severing them mattered.

It did not.

Even without a head, he could still regenerate the pests' bodies to prime condition, as long as a large enough part of them remained.

Of course, perhaps it would be different for a humanoid zombie. Maybe slicing off the head was an irrelevant act for small minions. But he felt that that explanation was a bit off.

"Well, I hope you can get him back," Ari muttered with a hint of sadness. "I kinda liked him."

"I hope so too..." Nate mumbled back.

'I think he's a little stronger than the green-skinned ones after all. It'd be such a waste if I had to swap him out for one.'

Side by side, the two walked across the sea of trees.

----------------------------------------

When they finally made it to the red orc's corpse, its neck — bordered with black flakes of skin — was immediately noticeable.

Ari's nose wrinkled, no doubt catching a whiff of the burnt smell of flesh still lingering in the air.

Nate also found the smell unpleasant. Even though he'd seen plenty of dead people before, a crispy one wasn't among them.

"Damn. That bastard really did a number on Pig..." he grimaced as he poked the scorched parts with a spear he'd picked up from nearby. A cracking sound — simlar to crumpling a piece of paper — followed every prod, as the butt of his polearm was stained with a charcoal color.

That was when he remembered a certain scene from a book he'd read. One where the protagonist fought a hydra — a many-headed monster who had monstrous regenerative capabilities superior to his own — by using fire.

By burning the wounds of the mythological creature, its restorative powers were hindered or outright nullified.

And Nate also remembered how the hydra had used another one of its heads' mouths to rip off the burnt parts, thereby allowing it to heal itself once again.

'Thank you, novel whose name I've forgotten...'

Not wanting to waste any more time, Nate pulled out a knife and started sawing off the bits of burnt meat, making Ari turn her head away in disgust.

"Ugh!" she gagged while covering her mouth. "Gross..."

Focusing on his work, Nate ignored her. Soon, he completed his task and stood up.

'Please work...'

As he took a step back, Nate poured as much mana as he could into Pig's body, hoping against hope that the trusted servant would get up.

And so it did.

Dark sludge oozed out of its neck as it rapidly formed the shape of a skull, then an orc's head. Gradually, the slimy substance solidified, changing into the color of red.

"What the heck...? Is this how it always regenerates?" Ari looked away from the sight, but her ears couldn't help but hear the vivid, wet sounds of flesh and bones being formed from nothingness.

Soon, Pig — with a newly regenerated head complete with empty eye sockets that had dark smoke coming out of them — sat up with vigor, before moving to stand up. Its hulking form towered over them all, just like it did before the battle began.

"Excellent," Nate muttered as he inwardly heaved a sigh of relief. As he ordered the newly arisen slave to pick up its fallen Dane ax, Nate saw Hugo walking towards him with the goblin mage's corpse hanging from his shoulder. Taking a peek behind the hulking man would reveal Brent, who followed along with a weary expression.

"Boss! I brought ya the ugly guy!"

"Good work."

After Hugo set down the sorcerer's carcass on the ground, Hugo extended his fist, urging Nate to do a fist-bump, which the expedition leader was all too happy to oblige.

"Nice work back there. You're made of tougher stuff than most of us." Nate clapped the large man's shoulders. He then sent Brent a look as he smiled. "You too."

"I didn't really do much..." Brent humbly spoke as his lips couldn't help but curl into a smile.

"Ahaha! Thanks, Boss!" Hugo scratched the back of his head and beamed. "You can count on me when it comes to charging at stuff!"

"I'm sure I will."

'I'll have to get you better armor, though.'

Nate then turned his attention to the goblin before him. If he could turn it into a zombie servant, it would be a tremendous force to be reckoned with.

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That was what he thought, until after multiple attempts to do so failed miserably.

'What the hell!' he cursed deep down.

"What's up? Why's nothing happening?" Ari leaned forward to look up at Nate's face as he looked down in frustration.

"It's not working. My mana won't even go inside..." he said through gritted teeth.

He'd temporarily released his control of Wolf in order to attempt zombifying the goblin mage. However, he couldn't find any success even after multiple tries.

"Oh..." Ari failed to hide the trace of disappointment on her face as she looked down and inspected the goblin wizard more thoroughly. Her eyes widened as she bent down to take some things from the body, albeit with a face twisted with repulsion. "Uh, it was wearing these..."

She presented both her palms to Nate. On her left hand was a silver signet ring with a glowing red rune carved into it, while a gilded amulet with an engraved eye was on her right.

The talisman, in particular, was pretty much a carbon copy of his Amulet of Might, if not for the different patterns etched onto them.

Nate picked that up first and put it on. Since the symbol on the amulet was that of an eye, and the goblin mage was wearing it, then the chances of its effects having something to do with magic were high.

Of course, the possibility that it improved vision or provided clairvoyance of some sort was also there, but Nate was willing to hedge his bets on the former theory.

Once the amulet was placed snuggly around his neck together with his other amulet, he gave zombifying the goblin mage again — just in case one of its magical items were responsible for jamming his attempts — but to no avail. The ugly little bastard still couldn't be raised from the dead.

As such, Nate gave up without a second thought and turned his attention to the nearest green-skinned orc corpse. He tried to raise that, tempering his expectations in case it failed, but thankfully he succeeded.

A minute later, he had a new undead servant by the name of...

"Piggo." Nate smiled as he uttered the name. He honestly thought it was a wonderful name, but someone was there to rain on his parade.

"You're horrible at naming things..." Ari curled her lips and looked at him like he was an idiot. "I pity the person who has to have a kid with you."

He shrugged picking up the nearby ax using a tendril of dark energy and giving it to Piggo. "I'm sterile, so I'm not having any kids. Ever."

"Wha-- uh..." she spluttered, her mouth opening and closing like a fish's.

"You don't have to react like that." Nate chuckled, finding her reaction amusing. "It's not like I ever wanted kids. So I'm not particularly upset about being sterile."

"I see..." Ari heaved a sigh of relief, but still looked a bit guilty. She must've found it awkward to end the conversation there, so she tried to keep it going. "I guess you don't like kids very much...?"

"It's not that I dislike them..." he scratched his cheek while pondering.

'It's just that I don't wanna leave any of them behind when I die or something.'

Even if he'd never die from old age, it's not like old age was the only way to go. He could get shot in the head, die from a traffic accident, or... have a steel beam fall on him, crushing his body into meat paste.

The idea of leaving someone behind when something like that happened was... in a word, unpleasant. He didn't want to make another Nate Spencer, a kid who got forced into fending for himself.

That was why being unable to make children was perfectly fine with him.

"That sounds tough, Boss..." Hugo snapped Nate out of his thoughts when one of the large man's massive hands clamped down on his shoulder. "I jus' wanted to let ya know, you aren't any less of a man even if ya can't get it up."

"..." Nate's eyes widened as he stared, speechless.

"Pfft." Ari turned away, holding down her mouth as her shoulders shook.

"Uhm... I don't think that's..." Brent tried to say something, but his voice was overpowered by the big man's sheer volume.

"Besides!" Hugo continued, not noticing the atmosphere at all. "With all this magic hoo-ha going on, there's gotta be a cure for your condition! We'll get it up in no time! Then you'll be banging hoes left and right, Boss!"

"Hugo..." Nate massaged the bridge of his nose as he thought of what to say. At the back — at the very back — of his mind, he felt touched at the big lug's goodwill, despite how little time they've spent together. But on the other hand... he was a dumbass. "I'm sterile. That doesn't mean I can't get it up. It just means my sperm cells don't do shit. What you're thinking of, is called impotence."

"Oh, yeah? Gahaha!" the hulk of a man guffawed. "My bad!"

Not wanting to deal with him any longer, Nate shook his head in exasperation. He took off the talisman and then gave it to Pig. After he gave it a mental command to give the item to Miyu, it ran off to complete its task.

"What was that about...?" Ari raised an eyebrow at him.

"I roughly know what the goblin's talisman does now..." Nate cleared his throat before beginning to explain. "It basically just increases your mana regeneration and reduces the mana costs of your magic."

He wished the item did something along the lines of strengthening his magic, that way, maybe he'd be able to control more undead servants.

But truly, wishes very rarely come true.

It was easy to tell its effects. Nate practiced his magic quite a lot, so he knew just how much something should take from him. He also had a good grasp of how fast his mana was restored.

He didn't know if the amulet had any other effects, but in any case, those two were the only ones he knew.

The item had very little use for him, with his superpower, and it naturally wouldn't have any use for someone who didn't know magic.

As such, Miyu was the best candidate to use it.

It would certainly be a boon for Nate, since he could use bigger spells, but not by much.

Hence, it was better placed in Miyu's hands.

'Moving on...'

"The ring." Nate gestured to Ari.

"Catch."

After deftly snatching it out of the air, Nate put on the signet ring.

Only for it to repel his finger.

"Huh?" Nate grunted in bewilderment.

He tried a couple more times, but it just wouldn't work. It was his finger and the ring repelled each other like magnets of the same polarity.

"What's happening? Just put it on!" Hugo, watching the entire thing, shouted in frustration.

"I think he can't... maybe there's some sort of magic on it," Brent meekly posited. "Maybe goblins are the only ones able to use it...?"

"That's..." Ari paused, thinking about it for a moment. "not impossible."

'Don't jinx it, guys...'

Like oil and water, they just wouldn't mix no matter how hard he tried, so he gave up. He tossed the ring back to Ari.

"Try putting it on."

"Sure..." Ari caught the glowing ring and endeavored to wear it, but even after trying to do so with every finger, she failed.

"Hugo." Nate closed his eyes in prayer.

"Alright, Boss," Hugo replied.

Waiting in silence, Nate eventually got the answer he expected.

"It's a dud, Boss-man."

"Fuck." he couldn't help but curse. When he opened his eyes, he saw that Hugo had already transferred the ring over to Brent.

Who also quickly failed.

'Damnit. Is it really a goblin-only item...?'

He had Piggo try to wear the ring next — regardless of the fact that it was simply too small for the orc's thick fingers — but the ring repelled it as well.

Even though it was a pain in the ass, Nate strained himself to momentarily make a third servant out of one of the hobgoblin corpses, but this didn't work either.

He released the hobgoblin from his control and kicked it with all his might out of sheer frustration. He was still wearing the Amulet of Might, so the poor corpse was sent flying far into the distance, splattering blood everywhere when it smashed against a tree trunk.

'The only other possibility is... that.'

Red Magic.

Since the goblin mage kept throwing around fireballs, Nate assumed that it knew Red Magic, which obviously had something to do with fire.

After all, Miyu's Blue Magic had water and ice abilities. And his Black Magic had curses and necromantic abilities.

The red rune on the signet ring added to his theory.

'So only someone who knows Red Magic can wear it?'

If that was true, that meant nobody on their side could utilize it at the moment.

Of course, he could be wrong, but he didn't want to go to the trouble of passing the ring around and seeing if it would get repelled by everybody else in the expedition group.

With that said, Nate put the silver signet ring into his pocket.

"I'll keep this for now. Until we find someone to wear it, that is."

"Sure." Ari shrugged indifferently.

"Works for me, Boss!" Hugo beamed as he gave a thumbs-up.

"I-I also think that's for the best..." Brent bobbed his head with a smile.

Nate nodded in satisfaction when everybody around him agreed.

'Red Magic, huh... I should probably go for that next.'

Those fireballs looked quite lethal, albeit a bit simple. Perhaps because its user was simple-minded as well.

But what if he had it?

'Come to think of it... Miyu almost chose Black Magic instead of Blue...' Nate thought back to when he'd nudged Miyu into picking Blue Magic. 'Since the goblin mage was immune to Black Magic... if both Miyu and I had it, we would've been fucked.'

Well, perhaps they would've still won, seeing as Nate would probably outlast the enemy's mana supply. But it would've been significantly harder without Miyu's very versatile spell work.

'Hmmm... hopefully this speeds up the pace of this trial.'

Just as he was having that thought, a game-like semi-transparent screen suddenly popped into his vision, causing him to stop and gawk. From his peripheral vision, he could see the other three near him halt in place, staring at the empty air in front of them as well.

Congratulations!

You have participated in the slaying of the 2nd Area-Boss!

The First Trial's Phase#2 is complete!

You have gained access to the Dungeon's System!

Separating the "Wheat" from the "Chaff" is necessary!

You are prohibited from passing through the Misty Valley!

You are prohibited from re-entering the Starting Vilage!

You have gained access to your status page!

Would you like to view your Status?

[Yes] [No]

"What the fuck...?" Nate spat in disbelief.

"Wait... then where the hell are we supposed to sleep, man!" Hugo grabbed at his head and yelled, looking not unlike a crazy person.

"That's what you're worried about...?" Ari murmured, looking at the big man like he was a moron. Hidden from view, however, she was holding onto the edge of Nate's sleeve.

"Wh-what do we do..." Brent sent Nate an anxious look, hoping their leader would have a solution.

He frowned in thought. If these messages were to be believed, then there was really only one path forward.

Nate looked in the direction where the goblin horde came from. And everybody followed his gaze with uneasy expressions.

'Looks like we gotta go slay more goblins...'