Chapter 420 Demise

Xia Nan's Class Level severely mismatched his actual combat power.

Under normal circumstances, a steady, well-grounded Level 3 Warrior would be the backbone of a veteran Adventurer Squad. Their position in the team would sit right in the middle—occasionally exceeding expectations when the situation suited them, but mostly fighting around the squad's rear-line damage dealers.

Take this Fishman Cave for example.

They were facing a swarm of enemies led by a Challenge Rating 2 Sahuagin Priest and comprising nearly twenty Challenge Rating 0.5 Sahuagins.

Even a well-balanced, fully prepared four-person Adventurer Squad with an average Class Level of 3 would not necessarily finish the battle without taking injuries.

After all, the enemies were simply too numerous, and they even had a Spellcaster among them. Level 3 was merely the beginning of the professional path. At that stage, an adventurer's Feats, combat techniques, and even base physical attributes were still lacking; they had not yet achieved the qualitative change required to "ignore numbers."

They could only achieve a flawless victory if they formulated a comprehensive plan in advance—accounting for the terrain, battle flow, decapitation strikes, and mob clearing—and executed it without a single accident, matching their exact vision.

Otherwise, taking some injuries during the fight was inevitable.

But toss an equally Level 3 Xia Nan into that Adventurer Squad, and the situation would be entirely different.

The absurd mobility granted by [Fang Hunt] allowed him to break through the enemy mobs in the blink of an eye and slice into their backline.

Stacking the combat techniques of [Spinning Slash], [Gravity Etching], and [Heavy Tide] pushed his instantaneous burst power far beyond what his Class Level should possess. Never mind archers or mages in light leather armor and robes—even a proper heavy-armored Warrior might not survive taking one of his sword strikes head-on.

He was the perfect executioner for a decapitation strike.

Coupled with the area-of-effect intimidation granted by the [Night Mother's Gaze] Feat, he became an absolute meat grinder in low-level group battles.

The moment the wolf howl rang out, nearly half the enemies would lose their will to fight and scatter in panic, like cockroaches scurrying from under a trash can.

Just like right now.

"Galu!!!"

The terrified shrieks unique to the Sahuagins, mixed with the angry roars of the few individuals who had passed the check, echoed through the cavernous rock cave.

The Sahuagin Priest's headless corpse, cleaved into three segments, lay quietly on the altar. Blue blood gushed, and the muscles around the severed wounds could still be seen faintly twitching and spasming.

The nearly twenty Sahuagins that had originally been kneeling before the altar were now a complete mess.

Some fled in sheer terror, while others angrily snatched up their weapons to attack the enemy who had already vanished from his original spot.

Xia Nan naturally was not foolish enough to stay on the altar and wait for the fishmen to swarm him.

Knowing his mobility far outstripped enemies of the same level, he had summoned the phantom wolf beast the very second after dicing the Sahuagin Priest, peeling away from the center and sprinting to the other end of the cave.

Though the remaining two members of the Silver Claw Osprey squad were far weaker by comparison, they were still veteran adventurers with decent experience.

They saw Xia Nan charge straight in for a decapitation strike—just as he had during the pirate attack—slaying the enemy core and plunging many foes into deep fear.

Without a shred of hesitation, they launched their own attack on the fishmen.

Their efficiency was quite impressive.

The squad leader wielded two short swords, swinging them like the wind. Amidst the whistling blades, he occasionally let out sharp, rapid shouts, sending "X" shaped cross-slashes that left gruesome gashes on the fishmen before him.

Cyan winds swirled around the Half-Elf Leda's feet. Moving swiftly, she fired custom wooden arrows fletched with tail feathers that seemed to possess some sort of tracking ability, precisely picking off the fleeing Sahuagins one by one. Her killing efficiency was even higher than Nick's.

Compared to those two, Alton gave the illusion that he was slacking off. First, he hid at the back of the formation, brought out his Lute, and leisurely played a short tune to buff the squad's morale. Only then did he draw his two miniature curved blades and dive into the school of fishmen. With his short stature and light footsteps, a single pass was often enough to sever the calves and tails of several fishmen, leaving them writhing in agony on the floor.

To some extent, the outcome of this battle had been sealed the moment Xia Nan chopped off the Sahuagin Priest's head in front of the horde, before anyone else could even react.

Everything that followed was merely a matter of how long the cleanup would take.

Altogether, it probably took only a dozen minutes.

A battle that should have been incredibly difficult for ordinary adventurers came to an abrupt and messy end.

And the entire price Xia Nan's group paid was a few extra specks of minced meat splattered across his already filthy, unwashed armor, along with two minor scratches on Nick's shoulder.

"Huu..."

Nick panted heavily, the hot breath escaping his mouth condensing into mist.

A faint ache throbbed from his left arm, where a wound could be seen beneath his torn shirt.

It was left behind during the fight by a Sahuagin that had ambushed him from the side.

Earlier, with his blood pumping and his pain dulled, he had not noticed it much. Now that the battle was over, the sting was growing increasingly sharp.

He moved his arm slightly to test it and determined it was only a superficial injury that would not hinder his movements. A simple bandage later would suffice. He breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

As he stood there, the ground beneath his feet was littered with fishmen corpses.

A rare trace of bewilderment washed over the middle-aged man's face.

Whether against other adventurers, pirates, or the myriad monsters of the Southern Archipelagos, he had experienced plenty of pure combat.

But this was the first time he had ever encountered a fight like this—one that began and ended so cleanly, leaving him utterly baffled.

They had clearly formulated a battle plan before entering the cave, yet the moment that obvious Spellcaster of a Sahuagin Priest had its head lopped off by the black-haired adventurer in their party, everything devolved into chaos.

Even now, Nick did not quite feel like it was real.

Even though he had contributed to the fight and killed quite a few fishmen himself, he felt absolutely zero sense of accomplishment or satisfaction from the victory.

The whole process had seemed a bit too easy, leaving him feeling somewhat empty.

"Squelch."

A pale, slender hand gripped an arrow shaft and yanked it out of a corpse.

The Half-Elf Leda walked past, patting her captain on the shoulder.

Nick snapped back to reality. As if remembering something, his gaze darted to the altar, and he rushed toward Guka's corpse.

There was no such thing as "feigning death."

Their half-orc teammate, who had nearly half his body chewed off, was completely dead.

And that meant the Silver Claw Osprey squad had entirely lost its competitive edge in the Southern Archipelagos—at least until they could recruit a trustworthy and adequately strong replacement.

With only two people, they could not even scrape together the basic framework of an Adventurer Squad.

Rather than a "squad," they were more like a makeshift, temporary duo.

They could not even accept quests at the Association under the name of an Adventurer Squad anymore. They would have to scrape by on low-difficulty, low-paying mundane commissions.

Without a doubt, losing a capable teammate they had fought alongside for years, with whom they shared perfect synergy, was a massive blow to the entire Silver Claw Osprey squad.

If their luck was poor, they might not recover from this for years.

For a moment, Nick's eyes grew slightly red.

Perhaps a fifth of that was grief over his fallen comrade, while the remaining four-fifths stemmed from anxiety and dread regarding his own future.

Staring at Guka's corpse on the altar, Nick suddenly turned his head to look at Xia Nan on the other side.

'If... if I could recruit him into the squad, even if I have to yield the captaincy to him, I'd...'

Nick violently shook his head, throwing out those unrealistic thoughts.

He had not spent much time with Xia Nan, but he had somewhat grasped the temperament of this outstandingly strong young adventurer.

Judging by Xia Nan's attitude and style, the chances of successfully recruiting him were barely one percent.

The sheer chasm in their power levels meant they were no longer in a purely cooperative relationship.

Take the battle just now. To put it bluntly, Xia Nan was completely carrying them.

Under those circumstances, what price could Nick possibly pay? Or rather, why would Xia Nan ever form a permanent squad with them, splitting quest rewards he could easily monopolize on his own?

At that thought, Nick let out a silent sigh.

His mind was already dwelling on where they should go from here.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the cavern, Xia Nan had no clue what Nick was thinking.

Of course, even if he did, he would at most praise the man for being sensible and knowing when to retreat.

Right now, his attention was focused entirely on any lingering clues regarding Morton inside the cave.

Ellison had not lied to him.

Just as the fisherman had said, Xia Nan did find numerous traces of human habitation deep inside the rock cave.

Moreover, these traces were very old. By his rough estimate, they roughly matched the timeframe when Village Chief Steven claimed Morton had lived on Cliff Rock Island.

It was highly likely they were left by the Duke.

But precisely because of that—the vast gap in time and the fishmen usurping the nest—most of the traces had faded. Even with Xia Nan's Perception, he could not discover anything, let alone find any relics related to the [Dream Weaving Corridor] key.

Though the trail ended here, Xia Nan was not too discouraged.

This was just unexpected intel picked up midway through the quest. Finding something would have been ideal, but finding nothing merely meant returning to the main objective and continuing their progress toward attending the Lunar Tide Banquet.

As he pondered, a somewhat noisy argument suddenly reached his ears.

Xia Nan frowned and looked toward the source of the noise.

He saw the Half-Elf Leda arguing heatedly with her captain, Nick. Amidst their shouting, he could faintly catch keywords like "corpse," "bury," and "can't leave him here."

Xia Nan naturally had no desire to involve himself in another squad's private affairs.

He simply felt that now was not the time to be discussing such things.

Those two seemed to have forgotten the massive pile of fishmen corpses they had encountered along the way.

The wounds on those bodies definitely were not made by the Priest he had just slain.

The monster that attacked the village might have only been temporarily driven back by the fishmen, retreating into the seawater outside the cave.

It could return at any moment.

The crisis was not completely resolved yet.

Their top priority should be hurrying to clean up the battlefield and returning...

Suddenly, as if realizing something, Xia Nan's gaze froze on the altar where the two were standing.

"The powerful aquatic monster that attacked the village," "the Sahuagin Priest conducting a sacrificial ritual"... Various clues surfaced and linked together in his mind.

Though he could not piece together the full truth immediately, Xia Nan's sharp Perception picked up on the anomaly.

Something felt wrong.

And at that exact moment—behind the altar, at the deepest end of the cavern—a single bubble quietly breached the calm, pitch-black surface of the deep pool with a faint gurgle.

A sudden surge of danger exploded in his chest.

Xia Nan reflexively shouted a warning, "Watch out!"

But the very moment his voice rang out...

Boom—

A massive, muscular shadow violently erupted from the pool, pouncing straight toward the two people on the altar.

...

Unlike her mixed-blood appearance, Leda was extremely conservative and traditional at her core.

Of course, much like the arrogance she displayed toward others in her daily life, the traditions she adhered to stemmed from the quarter of her bloodline that belonged to the elven clans.

They had nothing to do with humans.

She had adventured in the outside world for years, coming into contact with adventurers of many other races, and had even picked up vices like gambling and alcoholism.

Yet, from the bottom of her heart, she still took immense pride in the elven blood flowing through her veins. It was to the point that whenever someone called her a Half-Elf, the word "half" always felt like a piercing sting.

It was somewhat contradictory. Her mixed heritage made her deeply unwelcome in the Elf Kingdom, but it was precisely because of the discrimination she faced that Leda yearned for the true "Elf" identity all the more.

Ultimately, this developed into behavior that was even more rigid and stubbornly bound to tradition than some of the old scholars within the elven race.

The half-orc Guka was also a mixed-blood, but his inherently low intelligence and boorish personality had always drawn Leda's open disdain.

But after spending so many years together, he had become a teammate she acknowledged. She could not possibly just let his corpse rot on the altar.

Following the elven custom for burying family and friends, Leda wanted to take Guka's body back to his homeland and bury him under the witness of his birth tribe's elders and kin.

Nick, on the other hand, was completely opposed to this.

He knew full well how much trouble awaited him if he—the man who had once sworn to the half-orc's elders that he would give Guka a bright future—returned to the tribe carrying the boy's corpse.

Burying him was fine, and bringing the body back to Barracuda Bay was acceptable, but they absolutely could not return to Guka's homeland.

Because of this, the two had broken into an argument.

In truth, it was not a huge deal. They both knew each other's temperaments, and after venting their emotions a bit, they would soon reach a solution.

For example, having the Half-Elf take Guka's body back alone while Nick waited outside the tribe to rendezvous, or something similar.

Unfortunately, this argument was destined to remain unresolved.

Because the very second after Nick finished laying down his harsh ultimatum...

The stubborn and arrogant tall Half-Elf standing right in front of him had her lower half bitten clean off by a massive black shadow that lunged from behind.