Chapter 124 Corpse

"Iron Hand" George.

An experienced adventurer, also from Rivervale Town.

Word was that in the early days, he had been a member of the Greenblood squad and teammates with Adeline for a while.

However, as his strength gradually improved, he no longer cared for the meager scraps that came from hunting goblins, unless it was a Hunting Day.

Following convention, he left the squad to strike out on his own.

Over the years, he managed to make a name for himself, earning the moniker "Iron Hand" among the low-level adventurers of Rivervale Town.

As for the nickname's origin, it naturally came from the silver-white metal bracer on his right arm.

Interestingly enough, this bracer had actually been damaged in battle many times. With George's rising wealth after leaving the squad, he was more than capable of buying higher-tier defensive equipment.

Yet, once the "Iron Hand" moniker spread, he had the blacksmith forge the bracer in its original style every time he upgraded his gear, even if it meant paying over a dozen extra gold coins in crafting fees.

In recent years, he had even tweaked the bracer's overall luster and color to make it more conspicuous, ensuring that strangers would notice the striking silver-white on his arm at a single glance.

Under George's deliberate promotion, his "Iron Hand" reputation grew increasingly prominent, attracting many capable adventurers to join his squad.

Coupled with his own solid strength and a relatively generous leadership style, his squad's scale and overall power had accumulated year by year until it far surpassed the Greenblood squad.

It was safe to say he was the most successful out of all of Adeline's former teammates.

Even after hitting it big, George hadn't become ungrateful, nor did he humiliate or belittle his old captain.

Instead, he maintained a good relationship with Adeline. Sometimes, he would even recommend decent rookies to her to help fill out her ranks.

Of course, once these rookies grew stronger under Adeline's wing, they often chose to leave her squad and join the "Iron Hand" squad.

So, to some extent, George had his own little selfish motives.

But Adeline didn't care about that. They would inevitably leave the squad sooner or later anyway, and she felt more at ease knowing they were following someone she knew.

Adeline gained teammates willing to hunt goblins with her, and George reaped fully formed members with solid combat capability and adventuring experience.

It was a win-win situation.

Xia Nan had met "Iron Hand" George once while waiting for quests at the Association.

He remembered the man jokingly inviting him to join, though Xia Nan had declined.

Other than that, his impression of George had been pieced together solely from the fragmented chatter of others.

"Silver-white metal bracer," "Adeline's former teammate," "pretty strong, with plenty of reliable squadmates"...

In the past, Xia Nan had no desire to get to know the man, nor did he plan to have any dealings with George.

Now, he wouldn't have the chance.

Because George was already dead.

The meticulously maintained metal bracer that symbolized his identity had been mercilessly smashed by a blunt weapon, reduced to a pitted, mangled, and useless piece of scrap iron.

The silver-white surface that cost a fortune to maintain was splattered with filthy mud and bright red blood, casually discarded on the ground like scrap metal and half-buried in the soil.

"Drip."

Viscous beads of blood, still holding residual warmth, dripped slowly down. They splashed upon the meadow already dyed a brownish-red, blooming into imperceptible little blood flowers.

His legs were off the ground, toes drooping naturally.

Under the fading twilight, the suspended shadow swayed gently in the wind, and the faint creak of strained fibers echoed in the air.

George—or rather, his corpse.

It was suspended from the branch of a towering oak tree, a blood-soaked hemp rope roughly looped around its neck.

His right arm was entirely missing below the elbow. From the wound, covered in gruesome bite marks, hung a bloody fringe of tendons and minced flesh. His left arm was twisted at an exaggerated angle, the skin and flesh around the fingers and forearm flayed away to reveal pale bone streaked with crimson, displaying the inhuman torture he had suffered while still alive.

A gentle breeze heavy with the stench of blood brushed past. As the branches and leaves rustled, the dim twilight previously blocked by the canopy silently filtered through, spilling over the corpse.

It illuminated George's face, revealing two terrifying, empty sockets where his eyes used to be.

His leather armor and undertunic had been stripped away, leaving his bare upper body clad only in a layer of dried, bright red blood scabs.

Only the grime on his chest had been wiped clean.

This exposed the center of his chest, where bloody, jagged cuts spelled out insulting words:

"Coward," "Scraps."

Following the blood trail and crushed vegetation, they had pushed aside dangling vines and tangled thorny shrubs.

When Xia Nan saw the gruesome scene before him, he could clearly feel Abi tremble violently beside him. The fragment of the bracer slipped from the rookie's grasp and fell to the ground.

The newly debuted rookie's face turned ashen white. His Adam's apple bobbed as he looked ready to vomit.

Xia Nan himself was far less composed than he appeared on the surface.

Although he had slaughtered no fewer than a hundred goblins and stained his hands with the blood of his own kind, it had only been a short time since his transmigration, and he hadn't fully desensitized yet.

When the sight of a fellow human corpse—one that had clearly been tortured—entered his vision, those bloody, hideous wounds inevitably caused phantom pains to flare up in the corresponding spots on his own body.

Add to that the dead-silent, dangerous forest they were in, along with the horrifying atmosphere deliberately orchestrated by the perpetrators, and the sheer terror of the scene was amplified to a whole new level.

"George..."

Adeline's face darkened drastically.

Even though he had left her squad a long time ago, the two had remained friends.

She had originally planned to grab a few drinks with him after returning, never expecting to stumble across his corpse on the journey back from their quest.

She subconsciously took two steps toward the corpse, seemingly wanting to go forward and cut George's suspended body down from the tree branch.

But as if suddenly remembering something, she stopped in her tracks.

Abi didn't think too deeply. He stepped forward to follow, but just as he was about to pass Adeline, she reached out and grabbed him.

"Wait."

Ignoring his panicked and slightly confused gaze, her eyes carefully scanned the leaf-strewn ground around the corpse before suddenly pausing.

She found a rock nearby and tossed it into a patch of grass directly beneath the body.

"Thwack!"

A hidden trap instantly triggered. Several crude bone arrowheads shot out from the nearby bushes.

Tearing through the air with a whistling screech, they pierced George's corpse and lodged into his flesh, simultaneously snapping the hemp rope wrapped around his neck.

Thump—

It was the muffled thud of the corpse hitting the ground.

Abi shot a lingering glance of terror at Adeline beside him, his chest heaving as he took a deep breath.

If she hadn't stopped him, he probably would have been skewered right through by those bone arrowheads.

"There shouldn't be any more."

Maintaining the most dangerous position at the front of the squad, Adeline stepped forward to inspect the corpse.

Xia Nan didn't possess the relevant knowledge, so he simply stood a short distance away with Abi, keeping watch and guarding against any potential threats in their surroundings.

As for Berg...

He had already been deeply unsettled by the appearance of a half-orc Class Holder. His anxiety had barely eased when they encountered this horrifying scene on their journey back.

His expression grew even gloomier; compared to how he was in Rivervale Town, he seemed like a completely different person.

But since this was a matter of life and death—affecting not only the whole team but his own personal safety—he somehow managed to suppress his wildly fluctuating emotions.

He joined Adeline, crouching down to carefully examine George's corpse, which was riddled with wounds from torturous agony.

Xia Nan knew very well that this wasn't a pointless detour.

For an ordinary squad made up of low-level adventurers to stumble across two human corpses in a place like the Misty Forest within such a short timeframe—with one of them even being an acquaintance...

It was absolutely not a coincidence.

They were still nearly a three-day journey away from exiting the forest. It was entirely possible they would encounter the same danger.

Whether it was humans or monsters.

They at least needed to figure out exactly what was lurking around their squad, and what they might have to face in the near future.

Take the provocative act of torturing George to death and hanging his corpse from a tree, for instance.

These cruel beasts had absolutely no intention of hiding their identity.

The wounds on the corpse, the gouges on the armor, and even the footprints and scattered hairs on the nearby ground had been left behind with utter contempt.

Because of this, it took barely over ten minutes for Adeline and Berg to reach a final conclusion.

"First, judging by the degree of decomposition and the types of wounds on the corpse, George and the body we found on our way here died around the exact same time."

"In fact, that dead adventurer we found was likely a member of the 'Iron Hand' squad."

Xia Nan silently agreed.

George wasn't a lone wolf like himself; the "Iron Hand" squad had quite a few members. Unless there was internal strife, there was no reason for George to face danger all alone.

If George, the strongest member and captain of the squad, had ended up in such a state, their entire squad must have suffered heavy casualties and a devastating blow, if not a total wipeout.

"Second, although the recovered armor has obvious marks of being smashed by blunt weapons, the extent of the damage shows that the attackers' weapons weren't of Fine quality. They purely relied on raw physical strength to damage the defensive gear."

"Furthermore, the wounds on the body show clear signs of being bitten, and insulting words in Common were deliberately carved into his chest."

"Therefore, we can deduce that the attackers most likely aren't adventurers like 'Gap-Toothed', but rather some sort of humanoid monsters possessing a degree of intelligence. They harbor deep hostility toward humans, can use weapons, and even know how to set up crude traps."

As for the possibility of human adventurers deliberately leaving these traces to frame monsters...

It could only be said that in a place like the Misty Forest, even if you killed ten thousand people the exact same way and left them alone, there would likely only be piles of bleached bones left by the next day.

There was absolutely no need to cover one's tracks.

"So... was it those goblins? But if it was them..."

After listening to Adeline's analysis, Abi ventured a guess.

His face was still pale, and his eyes darted toward the sky as he spoke, seemingly afraid to look at the mangled corpse on the grass.

"Not a Goblin," Berg said, his face dark as thunder. He turned his head to stare into the shadows of the dense bushes surrounding them.

It was as if he could spot something lurking within that profound darkness.

If one were to wind time back to the ancient era, before the war of the gods, the naturally violent goblins might have actually done something like torturing their prey.

But ever since they disappeared alongside their main god, Maglubiyet, and later returned to this continent...

These idiotic green-skinned rats had become "machines" driven entirely by physical instinct, dominated by desires and destructive urges.

They would absolutely never allow a complete human corpse, full of fat and muscle, to quietly rot out in the wilderness.

Not without dragging it back to their nest to fill their bellies.

Much less possess the skill and patience to suppress the churning hunger in their guts just to torture a piece of delicious meat that had already lost the ability to resist.

Eating their prey alive while it still retained consciousness was already the cruelest form of torture these greenskins were capable of pulling off.

"But what if there are hobgoblins? Isn't their intelligence..."

Recalling the knowledge about goblins he had learned from the others after joining the squad, Abi offered his own thought.

He wasn't wrong. After all, the goblin subspecies known as hobgoblins did indeed possess an intellect rivaling that of highly intelligent creatures.

However...

Adeline shook her head, having already locked onto the true culprits in her mind.

Her gaze shifted not far from George's corpse, landing on a patch of crushed and snapped shrubs that clearly bore the tracks of a creature passing through.

She had already gone over to check it during her earlier inspection.

It was a string of footprints identical to the ones they had found beside the corpse suspected to be a member of the "Iron Hand" squad.

They were the same five to seven cun in length, with the exact same parallel toe prints that were wider on the outside and longer on the inside. Even the stride length was identical to before.

"Deep hostility toward humans," "humanoid monsters that use weapons and set traps," "unique toe-shaped footprints," "insulting words left on the corpse's chest"...

Combined with the rumors recently circulating among the low-level adventurers in Rivervale Town—

The sharp, bizarre howls resembling a hyena echoing from afar while camping; the eerie green eyes and the hunched figures standing silently in the woods deep in the night; the adventurer squads vanishing without a trace during simple quests...

And the several high-bounty quests that had suddenly appeared on the Association's quest board.

The answer couldn't be any clearer.

"It's... gnolls!"

Beside her, Berg practically ground his teeth together, suppressing his voice into a low growl.

His face was cloaked by the shadows cast by the canopy overhead, making his expression indiscernible. Only a deep, deathly darkness remained on his features.

"We can't stay here any longer. We have to leave immediately!"

Adeline's expression was grave as her eyes rapidly swept through the surrounding woods, seemingly worried that enemies might be ambushing them at this very moment.

Abi knew little more than the name when it came to gnolls, but seeing the two veterans acting so tense, his entire body couldn't help but tense up as well.

Xia Nan had recently crammed a massive amount of monster-related knowledge back in town, so he fully grasped the urgency of the situation.

In just a few seconds, the entire squad retreated into the gloomy, dense forest, swiftly leaving the area.

The twilight grew murky, and the air was dead silent.

Only an expanse of cold, bloody gore remained in the woodland.

The silver-white bracer lay quietly on the ground, surrounded by mud and grass stems.

Its faintly gleaming metal surface reflected the mangled, bloody corpse nearby.