Kays Translations

Chapter 68: The Newcomer Is About to Die

Besides Shin, Dansas now had one other novice adventurer.

His name was Rumeya. He was a large nineteen-year-old with dark eyes and long black hair tied behind his head, and he reached F- rank three days after Shin.

Rumeya had apparently been famous for his strength in his home village, which gave him a certain amount of confidence.

Perhaps because of that, he was hot-blooded. His first quest was to hunt a Unicorn Rabbit.

Afterward, he eagerly accepted quests to kill Killer Ants, kobolds, and other monsters.

He paid no attention to medicinal-herb gathering, the foundation of F-rank work, and seemed to look down on Tauro and Shin for doing it every day.

Tauro immediately sensed Rumeya’s attitude with [Presence Detection], but ignored it. Instead, he bought Shin a sword from the blacksmith and taught him how to wield it between herb-gathering sessions.

Although Shin possessed a sword-user skill, he had never trained with it and didn’t even own a sword.

Tauro, meanwhile, had studied almost every form of martial combat at the Adventurers’ Guild in Saisi and raised his proficiency in them.

As a result, he could wield most weapons as competently as an average practitioner.

Despite being eighteen, Shin felt no reluctance about learning from the younger Tauro.

On the contrary, he was remarkably eager.

As Shin explained it, he still knew very little, while Tauro knew a great deal. Since Tauro was teaching him, Shin was the one who should bow his head and learn; age had nothing to do with it.

One day, as the differences between the two newcomers became increasingly clear, Rumeya encountered goblins in the forest.

At first, [Presence Detection] merely told Tauro that an unknown adventurer had encountered a goblin. When the adventurer didn’t flee, Tauro assumed it must be someone of a higher rank and relaxed.

Then [True Eye] showed him the silhouette of the adventurer surrounded by several goblins.

The person’s movements looked amateurish.

Was the adventurer so confident that they could afford to ignore the danger, or was it something else? As Tauro considered the possibilities, he concluded that the silhouette probably belonged to Rumeya.

He told Shin, who was with him, that he needed to leave for a moment and ran toward Rumeya.

The silhouette of a goblin attacked Rumeya from behind.

It appeared to stab him with a knife, and Tauro watched Rumeya’s silhouette crumple to one knee.

There were five goblins!

Once he confirmed their number, Tauro burst through the bushes and saw Rumeya and the goblins directly.

He drove his shortsword through the heart of a goblin whose back was turned, killing it with a single thrust. Then he froze the others with [Majesty], weakened them further with dark magic, and struck them down one after another, starting with the nearest. The goblins had no chance to resist, and the battle ended in moments.

After confirming that every goblin was dead, Tauro immediately splashed a potion over the unconscious Rumeya.

He had a stab wound in his back and several blunt-force injuries across his head and body.

His right arm also appeared to have been broken by a blow from a club.

These injuries wouldn’t heal quickly with an ordinary potion alone.

“That’s right. I’ll try using that.”

He meant the intermediate potion he had finally managed to create after struggling with the recipe ever since arriving in the village.

It should be more effective than an ordinary potion.

Tauro immediately poured it over Rumeya.

The stab wound rapidly closed.

The bruises healed just as quickly.

The broken bone was beyond even the intermediate potion, however. After confirming this, Tauro returned for Shin, and together they carried Rumeya back to the village.

At the clinic, pain woke Rumeya while his right arm was being treated.

I’m alive?

Rumeya stared in shock.

His last memory before losing consciousness was a goblin stabbing him from behind and the excruciating pain driving him to his knees. He hadn’t even had time to prepare himself for death.

Apparently, a hard blow to the head had left his memories before and after the attack confused, and he remembered nothing beyond that point.

According to the doctor, Rumeya had suffered a broken arm, blows across his body, and injuries to his head, but a nearby adventurer had treated him with potions.

The place where he had been stabbed still ached faintly, but the wound itself was closed.

“A normal potion couldn’t have healed you like this. It must have been an intermediate potion. You should be grateful that someone used something so valuable to save you. Without that adventurer’s help, you would be dead by now.”

Rumeya shuddered. He had never seriously imagined that he might die.

He had believed he was superior to others and that dazzling success awaited him.

Now he was ashamed of the confidence that had made death seem so distant.

“Who was the adventurer who saved me?”

Rumeya had to thank the person who had rescued him. They had even used a precious intermediate potion; that adventurer had saved his life.

“The ones who brought you here were Tauro and, if I remember correctly, another newcomer named Shin.”

They were the very two people Rumeya had looked down upon.

The realization drove home just how conceited he had been.

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