Chapter 289: Giant Mouth, Engagement, and Broken Leg

Steward Irupachi hurriedly covered his mouth with both hands, but it was already too late.

The pitch-black giant mouth, which had been silently accelerating to bite the grazing goat, paused in mid-air and then immediately retracted upward.

Just as Steward Irupachi was feeling a secret sense of relief while looking at the campfire opposite him, Jier, in the pit right next to him, threw off the camouflaging withered grass covering his head and scrambled out of his pit as fast as he could.

Steward Irupachi was startled by the movement nearby on his right; he watched Jier's actions in astonishment, wondering what this young man was doing at a time like this, why he had picked up that strangely colored axe, and why he was leaping toward his side.

What is going on?

Jier had been watching the goat greedily eating grass by the campfire opposite with full confidence; with such thorough preparation, he was certain he could lure that unknown monster out.

After all, the scene at this moment was the same as the previous situation; if that monster had even a shred of brain matter, it should know that by a lit campfire in the wild, there must be prey available for it to eat.

Jier was certain that the monster had already formed a hunting habit. After all, he himself had once been a Hunter and knew that once a well-functioning hunting habit was established, hunters would not change it.

Sure enough, after only a moment, the white mist closed in from the surrounding darkness.

This time, after hiding, Jier had watched the entire process of the white mist appearing with full concentration. As expected, the white mist first appeared from above, then centered on the campfire, and finally surrounded it from all sides.

At the same time, after the white mist shrouded the vicinity, all the faint sounds from the surroundings disappeared.

Jier moved the ears inside his helmet; the helmet, which did not block sound, did not transmit the surrounding noises. It seemed this white mist was unusual; it also possessed the function of absorbing sound, though the principle was unknown.

Jier softened his breathing, trying his best not to let out the breathing sounds that were gradually becoming heavy due to excitement; he also hoped that Steward Irupachi not far away would follow what he had instructed that afternoon—no matter what happened now, stay quiet and do not make a sound.

Soon, through the sight of his helmet's faceplate, he saw what he wanted to see—three meters above the head of the ignorant goat, a pitch-black giant mouth was appearing, extending down from above.

Jier frowned in disgust; no matter how many times he saw this thing, it made one feel sick, and a sense of fear and repulsion stemming from bodily instinct emerged from within him.

He hoped Steward Irupachi was also watching this thing properly right now; anyone who saw it could no longer think this thing was some imagined entity, but rather a real monster, the very monster that randomly attacked and devoured pedestrians on the road outside their Cunzi.

In this way, although he did not know how Yinyulin Village would deal with this monster in the future, Jier had self-awareness; if he had enough understanding of this huge monster, perhaps he could find a way to set a trap to defeat this massive creature that currently only revealed a small part of its limbs.

But unfortunately, he did not understand this monster. Therefore, having obtained the truth about the disappearances on the road, he only needed to receive the commission fee for this part.

Anyway, having only been on the road for a few days, it was quite easy to earn a sum of money.

Just as Jier was watching the pitch-black giant mouth gradually accelerate as it opened to swallow the goat, a sentence came from Steward Irupachi in the pit next to him: "Is this the beast? No, is it a Magic Beast?"

Damn it!

Hadn't he said it many times, said it many times that afternoon? Do! Not! Make! A! Sound!

Jier widened his eyes, watching helplessly as the monster's giant mouth immediately retracted into the mist.

Jier's thoughts flashed like lightning; he immediately realized that Steward Irupachi was likely going to be attacked by the monster!

He grabbed the axe placed beside him, caught in a dilemma in an instant: should he protect Steward Irupachi, who was certain to be attacked by the monster?

He turned his camouflaged helmet, and his line of sight saw something moving rapidly above through the obscuring white mist; oh no, the monster was about to launch an attack!

Jier stopped worrying about much else, directly threw off the camouflage covering the pit, jumped out of the pit in one go, and took two quick steps toward Steward Irupachi's direction, then saw the pitch-black giant mouth opening straight and smashing toward the location of Steward Irupachi's pit.

It was too late! Jier leaped up, and the Great Axe in his hand performed a diagonal chop from bottom to top, heading straight for the top of Steward Irupachi's head.

In that instant, as he slashed rapidly toward the pitch-black giant mouth, Jier's eyes caught the edge of the pitch-black giant mouth. He saw that, just as he had thought, there was indeed a circle of sharp, pointed teeth on the edge of the giant mouth.

However, unlike the tooth colors of ordinary animals, including humans, the sharp teeth on the edge of the monster's giant mouth were all strange teeth with a purplish hue.

They were short and thick, but the edges were quite sharp, making it clear at a glance that even a slight touch would lead to bad results.

The extension of his thoughts and the processing in his brain took only an instant.

In the very next instant, the axe and the giant mouth smashing downward collided.

Bang! Squish.

The sound of the collision was the giant mouth hitting the ground, while the "squish" was the sound of Jier's axe striking the outside of the giant mouth.

Fortunately, Jier had acted decisively; although his strike failed to harm the monster's giant mouth much, it at least caused the monster's attack to miss its mark, making its sharp teeth only bite into the mud beside the pit where Steward Irupachi was hiding.

"Ah! Ah! What's going on? What's going on?" Steward Irupachi shouted in panic; he hadn't understood the situation just now, but following the collision sound and vibration beside him, he turned his head to look, and something that made his heartbeat stop had bitten into the ground right next to him.

There was less than twenty centimeters between the two.

That solid, pitch-black giant mouth, over a meter thick, looked like a huge rock; looking at it up close, one could see that the surface of the giant mouth was covered in ring-shaped tissue bands, and a significant wound was gushing out a brownish, translucent tissue fluid.

That seemed to be the monster's blood.

Although Jier's axe strike just now hadn't used full force in order to be fast, it still relied on the sharpness of the axe to injure the monster a little bit.

"Hide, don't come out! Hide! Don't come out!" Jier shouted, telling the panicked Steward Irupachi next to him to shrink back into the pit; although he didn't know if it would be useful, it would be good if he didn't add to the trouble right now.

Just as Jier shouted, a grand and strange grumbling sound came from the white mist above them. Just by the volume of the sound, Jier knew that although he couldn't see it, the monster's main body must be quite large.

The giant mouth retracted rapidly into the air, spitting out some of the cold mud it had eaten into its mouth as it retracted.

Jier seized the opportunity, his axe and his rapidly lunging legs working together as he leaped up again, slashing the axe fiercely into the edge of the giant mouth as it retracted into the air.

Jier used his full strength for this axe strike; because the situation was urgent, he didn't hold back, and the entire axe blade slashed deeply into the edge of the giant mouth, causing a large amount of translucent substance—whether it was tissue fluid or blood—to spray out from the gash cut by the axe, drenching Jier's back.

Jier looked up, and then, illuminated by the roaring campfire not far away, he saw the inside of the giant mouth from beneath it.

The inside was filled with rows of sharp, short teeth; at a glance, he couldn't tell if there were three hundred or five hundred such tiny teeth in the inverted funnel-shaped cavity of the giant mouth.

Although the teeth inside were not as large as those on the outermost ring, there were too many of them; Jier only took one look and felt as if he were looking at a mountain of blades in Hell. Those short, tiny teeth were like countless inverted knives; anyone bitten by this giant mouth, unless they were wearing a full suit of iron armor, would likely be shredded and chewed to pieces by these countless sharp teeth immediately.

Jier's brain was buzzing; he stood stunned for a moment, and only came back to his senses when Steward Irupachi shouted his name loudly from below.

It turned out that in this one move, because his giant axe was stuck in the monster's giant mouth and he was gripping the wooden handle of the axe with both hands, his entire body had been hung in the air.

The giant mouth was still retracting, so the height was increasing.

By the time Jier came to his senses, he was already more than three meters off the ground.

No, if this continued, he would be finished. Jier realized he should return to the ground quickly; he just needed to let go.

But the axe in his hand was still stuck in the monster; this axe was his most powerful weapon right now, and he absolutely could not lose it.

Thinking of this, Jier decided to go all the way; after inhaling slightly to build up strength, he pulled his abdomen in and moved upward, swinging his legs forward and upward. Immediately after, his feet went over his head and kicked onto the surface of the monster's pitch-black giant mouth.

Then, hanging upside down like that, he used his feet to push off with force, pulling his axe through the monster's flesh and breaking apart a large piece of tissue before detaching from the monster.

With nothing left to hang onto, Jier fell from the air.

Fortunately, he spread his limbs as quickly as possible; although he couldn't regain his body's balance in the extremely short time it took to fall, he at least wouldn't let his torso hit the ground.

Good luck accompanied Jier; although his feet were above his head, after he rotated half a circle, one foot found the ground first.

Unfortunately, he was too heavily burdened; if it were just his own body, he might have been able to use one foot to absorb the impact after cushioning the fall. But at this moment, he was wearing warm clothing, covered by a full suit of armor on the outside, and he also had at least three metal weapons on his person.

This heavy weight crushed his right foot, and accompanied by a sound of folding and snapping, Jier's right leg bent backward at the calf; the tibia and the entire muscle tissue of the lower leg were broken.

The hard cowhide armor, following the deformation of the lower leg, stubbornly maintained its shape; after Jier fell to the ground, it slowly returned to its original form.

Although Jier's leg and foot looked the same, the right lower leg inside was completely broken.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!" Jier screamed in intense pain, his voice sounding somewhat distorted through the faceplate of his helmet.

Hearing Jier's screams, Steward Irupachi was also panicked beyond measure; he gripped his Iron Sword, wanting to stick his body out of the pit, but he didn't dare, so he could only keep repeating the words Jier had just said to keep him from coming out, repeating them over and over.

But the constant trembling of the Iron Sword held upright in his hand revealed his panic completely, without missing a single detail.

Jier gritted his teeth to keep from screaming out loud, and with a roll, he forced himself from his fallen position into a half-crouch. The broken leg was already of no use, so he had to bend the knee of his right leg and touch it to the ground to barely maintain his balance.

Jier hurriedly raised his head and looked into the air.

Fortunately, the Monster did not take the opportunity to attack while his leg was broken; it seemed that the axe blow from earlier had also wounded the Monster quite severely.

A strange muttering sound came again from the White Mist in the air, which was impossible to see through; the sound was complex and grand, seeming like the choir groups that the churches organized to hum hymns during the Harvest Festival.

It was just like the random humming of those amateur groups organized by believers of all ages.

For some reason, this was Jier's first impression.

Although the situation was extremely urgent at this moment, the muttering sound emitted by the Monster was still somewhat funny.

Jier gripped the axe handle tightly with one hand and drew the Long Sword from his waist with the other, barely using the two weapons as crutches to support himself as he quickly moved toward the pit where he had previously hidden.

Regardless of the intense pain coming from his broken right leg with every movement, Jier gritted his teeth and quickly moved to his pit in a few strides. His Backpack was here, and inside were things that could change the situation at a critical moment.

With his helmet raised, Jier kept shifting his gaze, scouting for the timing and position from which the Monster might launch another attack.

Needless to say, compared to Steward Irupachi cowering in the pit, he, the Human who had caused the injury, was more dangerous and would certainly be attacked first.

He stuck the Long Sword into the ground to stand it up, and reached his free hand into the Backpack in the pit to search carefully.

A bag containing liquid—no, this was the fresh water he was carrying.

A small Wooden box; he took it out and looked—no, this was the Wooden box where he stored his Frozen Meat.

A small, tightly sealed bag—no, this was the bag containing the Pure Elemental Crystal Fragment to be traded to Knight Kela.

Another small Wooden box; he took it out and looked—yes, this Wooden box had a pattern of a Mushroom drawn on its surface.

If someone else saw it, they might think it contained dried edible Mushrooms. In fact, it did contain dried edible Mushrooms, but the Mushrooms inside were different from ordinary non-poisonous Mushrooms; these were Mushrooms discovered at the skull Altar of those Red-eye Goblins during the final confrontation with the Goblin tribe.

After eating one, without many severe side effects, one's nerves and reaction capabilities could be greatly enhanced within half a day.

Jier fumbled to open this Wooden box and, panting, took out a piece of dried Mushroom that he had named Red-eye Mushroom.

He quickly opened the Faceplate, put the very dry dried Mushroom into his mouth, and then closed the Faceplate.

Jier endured the intense pain in his leg and crushed the dried Mushroom in his mouth with effort, struggling to force down the fragments of the Mushroom with the saliva he secreted. At this moment, he could still let his mind wander, thinking that using the dried Mushroom in such an emergency was really too inconvenient; after returning later, he would have to find a way to grind these dried Mushrooms into powder and mix them with things like Honey to make them into dumplings or candies so they would be easier to consume. For one, the dosage would be easier to control; after all, an actual battle would not last for half a day, but would mostly end in a few minutes or ten-odd minutes.

After making them into candies, he could better master the duration of use and could also make these Mushrooms, which he didn't know if he could obtain again, last for a longer time.

Furthermore, swallowing the fragments of the dried Mushroom directly like this was really too uncomfortable; compared to the pain of a broken leg, Jier felt that dry-swallowing this stuff was no less painful than the broken leg.

The two were evenly matched, so to speak.

Closing the Faceplate, Jier dragged his broken leg back to Steward Irupachi's side; he sheathed his Long Sword, gripped the axe again, and crouched half-way on the open ground of the path.

"Jier, how are you? Your leg?" Steward Irupachi poked his head out of the pit slightly and saw that Jier's leg was not touching the ground, and he was crouching in a strange posture. He realized that Jier's leg was broken; the young people in the Cunzi who fell off roofs while repairing houses looked just like this.

Once a leg was broken, one had to be well-fed and cared for at home for at least half a year to recover; for those who were truly serious, they could only sell a bit of their family's land to exchange for money to go to the city and find Priests to perform Divine Arts to set the bones and heal them.

Jier's situation was not considered serious, but at this moment, they were not in a safe Cunzi; right above their heads, there was a terrifying monster, no! A Magic Beast!

There was a terrifying Magic Beast eyeing them covetously, wanting to attack them.

It was all his own fault for not covering his mouth, letting everything that was originally safe disappear.

Thinking of this, Steward Irupachi slapped himself in the face; why did he have to come this time? Wouldn't it have been enough to arrange for a taciturn young man from the Cunzi? If others thought the young man wasn't reliable, couldn't he have just assigned a friend of his own generation?

He just had to play the hero, slap, he just had to play the hero, slap.

"Alright, save the self-reflection for when we go back tomorrow and you can do it slowly in your own home." Jier glanced at Steward Irupachi, who was slapping his own face.

With a self-deprecating smile, Steward Irupachi shrank himself back into the pit: "That leg of yours? Do we even have a tomorrow?"

Jier's breathing gradually quickened, and his eyes under the Faceplate gradually filled with bloodshot veins; he fiddled with his broken right lower leg and said to the Steward: "I feel like I'm gradually getting better, it's quite good. By the way, did you bring any Rope? Throw it over to me."

"Getting better? What does that mean? Never mind, here is the Rope, catch it." Steward Irupachi didn't understand how Jier could say he was getting better in his current state, but he still threw the Rope he was carrying to Jier.

Jier didn't catch it, not for any other reason, but simply because he couldn't spare the focus or attention to look, to notice, and to catch the thrown Rope; that Monster could come to attack at any time, and he could not reveal a single flaw.

Picking up the Rope from the ground, Jier used one hand to remove the Dagger from his waist along with its sheath, tied it to his broken lower leg, and then used the Rope to bind the lower leg, the armor, and the Dagger all together, binding them firmly.

Throughout the entire process, he didn't look down with his eyes, but did it by feel. Once there was a certain amount of support on the lower leg, even though it was painful, Jier slowly stood up; he unbuckled the Helmet and took it off.

There was no need for extra protection for his head; his feeling at this moment was excellent, his entire spirit was extremely excited, and at the same time, everything around him was moving in slow motion.

The sparks flying out from the crackling of the campfire were, in his eyes, glowing burning particles with clear trajectories. The goat crouching on the ground and trembling—the small movement trajectory of the horns on its head as its body trembled was incomparably clear.

Above, the things hidden by the sound-absorbing White Mist also seemed vaguely discernible amidst that muttering sound.

It was a huge monster that, for some reason, was suspended in the air, with eight slender limbs stretched toward the sky; the main body was composed of two parts, and that pitch-black giant mouth was a type of predatory 'organ' extending from the front main body part?