I saw the wolf-rabbit-deer-eagle chimera twitch and then go still. My heart was racing up my throat as I heaved, my nerves firing in a high state of alert.
A notification from the System put me at ease.
> For killing level 47 Wolfertinger Alpha, you gained 17,879 Experience points.
> You gained two levels. Excess Experience discarded. You are now level 19.
> No, there's no more level cap achievements for you. Stop trying to get yourself killed and go fight things your own level.
Bloody hell.
Hector probably lost his opportunity to earn the level cap achievement, since he had help during the fight. Maybe he got it already but the higher you go, the harder it is to find something that high-leveled to kill solo. I checked the math. Legendary, thirty levels above mine, the Wolfertinger male should give me seventy thousand Experience points if killed solo. The System divided the award four ways.
The dead Wolfertinger fell on its side. Hector recovered his consciousness; He was screaming in pain and fumbling with a healing potion in his left hand. The right arm was rotated backward. I feared only his enchanted armor kept the limb attached to the body. A lot of blood seeped from under armpit through his armor.
Between the monster and me, the lieutenant laid on his back, a blackened star coming from his breastplate. Smoke poured out of the gaps in his armor. The tower shield glowed a bright red. I could smell braised flesh and skin coming from him.
No time to see if he was alive. I rushed past the officer and wrestled the healing potion from Hector's hand. He fought me but I had better leverage. If he squeezed the vial, it would break.
"Potion!" He screamed, his words barely intelligible.
"You need to set your arm right before healing. Or the flesh is going to remain locked in place!"
Hector was delirious with pain and the performance-boosting potion high he was experiencing. I grabbed his arm and twisted. I moved it like a well pump once, turning it back to its normal position and then pushing the arm bone back in the shoulder socket with a hair-raising grind and pop. Hector screamed and howled. I shoved the potion in his mouth with one hand while the other pinched his nose. Hector was forced to swallow the potion but it went I to the other pipe. He coughed and retched but it didn't matter. The potion didn't have to be digested by one's stomach. Just getting it inside the body was enough to trigger its magic.
It was a high-quality one, with a cost measured in dozens of gold coins. Way above my pay grade and unnecessary for someone our level. But it was what we had for dinner. Instant relief washed over Hector. With the stress gone, his eyes rolled to the back of his head as his eyelids closed. Hector was out cold in two seconds flat.
I spent a minute checking his vitals. Breathing and heart were stable. He would survive and maybe without any permanent sequelae. Meh. His dad could pay for most types of healing. I left Hector rest on the forest floor. May the fairies leave him alone.
I was left with the cleanup. First, I checked for survivors. The Lieutenant was breathing. After cutting his armor straps with a knife, I checked his condition. The shield arm was cooked. The leg was busted. He walked using the plate armor leg as a support. Damn. I had to align his bones and set his leg straight. Once it was in place, I fed him one of Hector's premium healing potions. The leg bones creaked and snapped in place as the flesh knit as if the wound was reversing in time. Maybe it was. Probably not. His burnt arm also recovered. It wasn't perfect but he wouldn't lose the limbs. Back in the city, the Physicians could operate and fix the imperfections. What was important now was to prevent decay and infection.
Then I went around looking for the rest of our party. The two mages were crushed. If not by the impact, then by slamming I to each other and then having a knight slammed on top of them. All the soldiers and two rangers were gone, too. I hoped the remaining four could distract the treant long enough to allow me to extract the two survivors.
I sat and rested for a while, feeling the vibrations and the sounds of the forest. I could still feel and hear the treant in the distance but it was very far away. Good job, rangers. Back to my survivors. I checked them for any critical injuries. The healing potion they drank was really of top quality. Seeing that they were under no risk of further injury, I took the two back to the wagons one at a time in a fireman's carry.
The support personnel took Hector from me and started to unbuckle the lordling's armor. I didn't wait and went back to get the lieutenant. On my third trip, I took several burlap sacks. I collected the bodies one in each sack.
While I felt tempted to loot the mages, I held my greedy goblin. No need to do that now. By the laws regarding this kind of expedition, I had salvage rights on the equipment of the corpses since I was the only one conscious after battle. Back in town, I would sell these rights back to their families. It was a way to make sure people would have an incentive to return the possessions of the deceased and receive adequate compensation.
Finally, I used Hector's discarded sword to chop the male Wolfertinger's head. As a poetic lie, I stuck the sword between the antlers at an angle as if Hector had delivered the killing blow. This would become important later on and also gave me a convenient way to carry the head.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
After many trips, the bodies were all back with the wagons. The drivers just watched me work. They offered help zero times. The day wasted away as I had spent hours ferrying the dead and the unconscious.
I went back one last time. No scavengers came to check the site of the battle. Maybe the fairies were keeping them away or they were scared of the fight and the treant. Speaking of the monster, I could no longer feel the vibrations. Nor have I earned a notification. Was it still alive? Did it kill the surviving rangers?
I butchered the Wolfertinger male's corpse and cut some choice chunks of meat. I offered some slices to the pup. The lazy bastard inhaled its own father's meat with a hunger that surprised and scared me.
Monsters had a high rate of cannibalism. They didn't suffer from any of the maladies from eating their kin's flesh as normal animals and people did. Monster meat was converted into energy quickly, allowing monsters to consume more than their own weight in a single sitting. What mattered was the magical energy infused onto the flesh. The kobolds that dragged their brethren corpses back into the mine were taking them to the kitchen, not the graveyard.
That same ability to convert food into energy was what led to the explosive growth of the pup.
I didn't want to feed him too much, too fast. The Wolfertinger pup had yet to show any signs of affection. So far, my efforts were only met with placid indifference. I was missing something. I had to ask Melgart what it was when we returned to the city.
I had to pace the little guy's food intake and maybe use the high-energy meat as treats for its training. I knew how to make jerky and Wolfertinger jerky would make a legendary treat. Heh. Legendary.
*
*
When I returned to the wagons with the Wolfertinger meat chunks held on a grappling hook, the four surviving rangers had already returned. I didn't get any notification regarding the treant so I assumed they gave the wooden behemoth the slip.
We exchanged our stories and they confirmed that the treant made a hasty retreat toward the ancient woods all of a sudden.
I suspected it was being directed by the mischievous faeries. Once the Wolfertinger male perished, they didn't need the treant anymore. From what little I knew of them, treant's were rather peaceful and passive. One could walk right past one and not notice it or suffer anything if they weren't a threat to the forest. Yet, the enraged treant destroyed quite a bunch of trees.
I doubted that the Wolfertinger male wanted to eat the wooden creature. What did it seek I those woods, then? Experience? I bet he could win but all it took was one clipped wing to spell the chimera's doom. Whatever it was, I never learned about it. I had enough trouble understanding one infant monster, let alone a whole species.
The rangers took the warhorses, leaving Hector's stallion riderless. We turned the wagons around and made our way back to civilization. While we traveled, I used the provisions we didn't need to make my Wolfertinger jerky. Since we now had ten fewer mouths to feed.
The lieutenant woke up first. Having a higher level in a combat Class meant he had plenty of vitality and we're substantially tougher than Hector. He lamented the loss of life. It was clear that the blame for the massacre and Hector's condition was going to be pinned on his ass just like that cardboard donkey game.
He looked at the sword stuck on the Wolfertinger's head, then back at me. Wordlessly, I shrugged. He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. I nudged mine toward our unconscious lordling. His eyes went wide, then he nodded. I slid a finger over my lips in a locking manner. If Hector decided to claim the kill, I already knew what to say.
There was no such thing as a one-hundred percent reliable truth-telling power. The very wizard tasked with divining it could very well be lying. Outside the temple negotiation rooms, which was. Which was useless for public record because people could lie about what transpired inside when away from said rooms. You only piled layers of truth underneath the final layer which could lie about the whole thing.
Once my jerky was all cut and salted, I left the strips tied to dry under the suns between a tarp and a net on top of a supply wagon. We didn't need to fear the high-energy jerky attracting monsters. Not only we had cleared the area on our way in but we also had ten decaying corpses on the last wagon stinking up for miles and miles.
Hector woke up only after we reached old MC Donovan's farm. We made camp and a rangers went onward to deliver the news to the city.
*
*
Hector's arm and the lieutenant's leg both required specialized help to fully heal. The field first aid we performed couldn't set the shattered bones right but we needed to perform it anyway to avoid the loss of the limbs to gangrene or other infections.
The lordling remained in his tent sulking for two days. Meanwhile, the rangers and I prepared the bodies for cremation. We made liberal use of Mc Donovan's firewood stockpile to make the pyres.
With the ten bonfires illuminating the night and casting off Yolanthe's sinister influence, Hector finally came out to honor the men who gave their lives in the name of his own glory.
He came and stood right next to me. I had the Wolfertinger pup in my arms and was giving it scritches while the lazy critter growled happily.
"That monster will be a menace when it grows up," Hector said.
"To my enemies, milord."
He raised an eyebrow at that remark. I let him interpret that as he wished.
"If you can tame it."
"It is pretty tame already, Hector. You should have seen it's litter mates. The other pups came barking and biting at my legs with zero regard for their lives."
To push my point across, I poked the pup's snout. The critter made a cute chuff and shook his head, then settled down on the crook of my elbow.
"It's much bigger than when we set out on this hunt."
"These babies grow whenever we blink."
Hector laughed. I laughed.
"But enough about the monster you are raising. What will we tell them?"
Hector turned around to look south toward the city.
"What do you mean? It's your tale to tell."
He leaned closer. The cracks of the ten bonfires did a good job of masking our voices.
*I didn't kill the monster. Neither lieutenant Garrick nor the surviving rangers did either. It would be a disgrace to claim a trophy I did not slay. I know my measure, George."
"If you want an honest reply, look no further than the System notification. I was blinded by the lightning when it died. The System split the credit for the kill four ways. I believe it's the three of us and the treant. It might be my arrows who delivered the most damage but that was only because someone kept the monster from reaching me. Hector, I don't know if you are familiar with the way we do things at the Guild, but the credit for the kill goes to the party who helped deliver the kill."
He wasn't. "Even the help?"
"No. Only those who fought. Though a promise of hazard pay and some kind words of appreciation will go a long way to ensure loyalty."
Hector nodded. On that moment, I could see beneath the haughty facade and see a boy the same age as me, still unsure of how to walk on this floating continent, may the Dragon Goddess' mercy keep it so.
"Claim the trophy of you wish milord. It would be a repeated one for me anyway!" I winked.
"Perhaps I will," Hector mused. "I'm going to do a round and talk to my people. By your leave, friend."
He went to work on my advice and talk to the drivers and the surviving soldiers. He still felt pain on that arm. How long would it take for him to recover? The physicians would probably need to break the bone to set it correctly. But so long he had the funds and the limb was not dead, it would be a full recovery.