For low-level adventurers like the members of the ragtag party, appearance alone was often enough to give a rough estimate of someone’s strength.
A thin, frail-looking man usually was not hiding some terrifying amount of combat power.
Likewise, if your opponent was a barbarian covered in muscles as hard and massive as stone, then he obviously possessed strength to match.
An adult bugbear stood roughly seven feet tall, around 2.2 meters.
Add in the hulking body packed with heavy muscle and thick fat like a brown bear, and from a distance it looked less like a humanoid creature and more like a small mountain of flesh.
Gagu, by comparison, was not particularly imposing.
He possessed a faint trace of orc blood, but his height and build only exceeded those of an ordinary adult human by a little.
Even after stirring his bloodline and entering his combat state, he barely came up to the bugbear’s shoulder.
Standing together, the difference between them looked almost like that between an adult and a child.
The actual gap in combat ability was worse.
During the previous twenty seconds, Xia Nan had been completely absorbed in fighting the goblins.
He had no attention to spare for anything else.
So he had no idea what had happened on the other side of the cave.
All he saw was what remained.
Compared to the previous night’s ambush, Gagu’s body looked strangely clean.
There was some dirt and dust on him, but almost no blood.
He was also quiet.
No incomprehensible orc curses.
No deafening roars.
Of course, that was not because the half-orc had suddenly discovered human manners.
It was because he could no longer speak.
Jagged white bone had punched through flesh and protruded from his abdomen.
The center of his chest had collapsed inward into a deep crater.
His eyes had rolled back. His mouth hung open without purpose. Blood-streaked foam dripped from one corner of his lips.
Like a broken toy, Gagu dangled upside down from one ankle in the bugbear’s hand.
Beside him, the massive black spiked mace waited in the cold air.
For reasons Xia Nan himself could not explain, the sight suddenly reminded him of the night watchmen from ancient times, walking through dark streets and striking their gongs.
The next moment, the mace vanished.
The gong rang.
Crack-splat!
A hard object screamed through the air.
Then came a strange sound, like an egg being smashed apart, shell and viscous liquid bursting together.
Gagu’s body swung like a pendulum.
A smear of red-and-white sludge appeared across the mace head.
And in the most literal possible sense, Gagu lost the ability to make another sound.
“Thud.”
The headless corpse was tossed aside.
Blood sprayed from the severed neck like a fountain, quickly pooling beneath the body.
“Die!!!”
The instant Xia Nan watched the bugbear completely destroy Gagu, a hoarse roar filled with desperate hope rang out nearby.
Gagu had died horribly.
But he had fulfilled his role.
He had bought time.
Maji’s bowstring was pulled taut.
The bow itself had bent so far that it looked ready to snap.
Between his fingers rested an iron arrow with a metallic sheen. Its arrowhead carried a faint purple tint and pointed directly at the bugbear’s head.
[Precision Strike]
It was one of the prerequisite skills for taking the ranger class.
It was also the only offensive combat technique Maji had managed to master throughout his years as an adventurer.
At higher levels, [Precision Strike] was mainly valuable because it allowed a class holder to accurately target an enemy’s vital points even in complicated combat situations.
For someone like Maji, however, the story was different.
By the standards of powerful class holders, the technique only provided a “slight” increase in force.
But for a low-level adventurer, even that slight increase was enough to deal with most threats.
Even against a bugbear, a creature known as a “rookie killer,” Maji had placed enormous hope in this one shot.
If the arrow pierced the eye socket and entered the brain, the bugbear would die instantly.
If it struck the skull instead, the force behind it should still leave the creature critically wounded, weak enough for Maji to finish off.
And even in the worst-case scenario, if his aim went slightly wide, [Precision Strike] should still guarantee a wound.
That was when his real trump card would come into play.
The special metal arrowhead had cost him a large amount of gold.
Its surface was coated with horned snake venom.
The poison could rapidly paralyze a bugbear’s body, sharply reducing its speed and slowing its reactions.
Once that happened, the choice would return to Maji.
Press the advantage.
Or turn and run.
Either way, he would have options.
All those thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant.
Maji held his breath.
Aimed at the vital point.
Released.
Whoosh!
The arrow tore through the air.
The bowstring snapped back with enough force to leave his fingers and forearm tingling with numbness.
And the instant the arrow left the bow, decades of experience in the forest told Maji one thing.
[This shot is perfect.]
Under crushing pressure, he had produced the finest shot of his life.
Every movement had been nearly flawless.
Several strands of white hair at his temples stirred in the faint breeze left behind by the arrow.
Confidence surged through him.
He could almost hear the arrowhead punching through the eye socket and grinding into the skull.
He could almost hear the bugbear’s scream cutting off mid-roar.
Then a flash of reddish-brown shattered every expectation.
As though sensing the fatal attack about to strike, a translucent barrier suddenly appeared in the air before the bugbear.
It glowed with a dull reddish light.
It was neither light nor gas.
Some kind of free-floating energy seemed to have been forcibly gathered together, creating an unstable reddish-brown force field.
The iron arrow carried all the strength Maji could put behind it.
Yet the instant it touched the barrier, the strange energy dragged its path aside.
The force behind the shot did not weaken.
Only the target changed.
Instead of the bugbear’s head, the arrow flew toward the wall behind it.
Whizz-thud!
The metal shaft buried itself deep in the cave’s mud-and-stone wall.
Only the feathers at its tail remained visible, trembling violently.
Maji stared at them.
His face had gone white.
“How… how is that possible?”
His lips trembled.
So did the rest of him.
“My arrow…”
For the first time since appearing before them, the bugbear spoke.
“Your little tricks. Magic.”
Its voice was rough as gravel scraping stone.
The broken Common made its exact meaning difficult to understand.
But by then, what it meant no longer mattered.
Because in the next instant, a monstrous shadow filled with the presence of death had already reached Maji.
And swallowed him whole.