Chapter 290: The Road Outside the Gloomy Forest Village — First Encounter with a Magic Beast

Relying on a perception that had somehow been enhanced, Jier carefully observed the massive monster above his head.

The monster seemed to be observing the two of them as well—no, it was observing him more.

Jier fiddled with the axe in his hand and whistled at the monster in the White Mist overhead.

The monster stopped its murmuring, its entire massive body seemed to pause, and then a pitch-black giant maw shot out from the front of its huge body.

The target, of course, was the provocative Jier.

Jier used his uninjured leg to push off and dodge to the side, causing the monster's aerial strike to miss.

Boom!

The monster's giant maw slammed into the ground, triggering a massive tremor.

Jier spun his body around, swung the giant axe in his hand with full force, and slashed it horizontally against the side of the pitch-black giant maw that connected heaven and earth.

With a squelch, Jier gauged the axe's attack distance perfectly; he only let the axe blade slash a large, gaping wound into the side of the monster's giant maw, not burying the whole axe into the monster's body like before, only to be carried into the sky and dropped.

The axe blade of Jier's "Water-Crossing Skull" was at least ten centimeters long, and this blow dealt the monster a heavy wound. A large amount of translucent mucus sprayed out from the slashed wound, and finally, the monster above let out its first pained shriek beyond just murmuring.

"Squeak!!!" It was not the clearer animal roar he had imagined; he did not know what this monster was, but it emitted a hiss like an insect being caught.

Immediately after, the monster violently swung its giant maw, trying to use the long, threatening, swinging maw to strike Jier.

But Jier had seen through the opponent's attack method the moment it started moving; he had been guarding against this move all along.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whew.

The monster's giant maw swept wildly across the ground, kicking up a large amount of withered grass, stones, and dust, making the visibility, already obscured by the White Mist, even worse.

Steward Irupachi curled himself up tightly, covering his ears with both hands to resist everything loud and chaotic outside. He could not help, so he could only pray in his heart to the deity he held Faith in, asking the deity to bless the fighting Jier and himself as he hid.

"Lord of all things, sower of light, please protect Jier and let him win."

"Also, please let me return home safely. Expel the Magic Beast! Expel the Magic Beast!"

He shouted incoherently and wildly; although his words lacked logic, the meaning within was direct.

Jier also heard Steward Irupachi's messy shouting amidst the chaotic scene, and he moved his position to the side of the campfire while laughing.

The monster was indeed somewhat afraid of fire; although the campfire's volume seemed small beneath its massive body, presumably not wanting to be burned, the monster kept its giant maw away from the campfire.

With the campfire as an obstacle, Jier had a safe point to rely on for dodging. He kept his feet within a few steps of the campfire; whenever the monster's giant maw approached, he would endure the sharp pain in his right leg and quickly dodge to the side of the campfire, forcing the monster to change the trajectory of its maw's strike.

When the timing was right, Jier would attempt to swing his axe quickly, striking the base of the monster's giant maw.

After a few exchanges, the monster could no longer hold back, and it finally used other means.

Hearing the wind arrive first, Jier immediately realized that other attacks from the monster had arrived.

Looking up, he saw two identical pitch-black, slender limbs sweeping down from the sky.

Fortunately, under the illumination of the campfire, the White Mist scattered the campfire's light, lighting up the surroundings, and the monster's own pitch-black body was actually somewhat conspicuous.

Jier lunged forward, dodging these two attacks aimed specifically at him.

Clang!

A sound like metal colliding rang out after the two monster limbs crashed into each other.

Even behind Jier's back, where he could not see, the collision of the two new monster limbs sparked a large shower of sparks.

Standing up from his lunge, Jier looked behind him; they were two slender, monster legs as sharp and dangerous as the most lethal blades.

Seeing the fine, swaying hairs on the monster's pitch-black legs, Jier seemed to have a glimmer of insight into what this monster was. But because he had not looked directly at the monster's main body, although he had a bit of inspiration, he still could not tell exactly what this monster was.

After the monster's sneak attack missed, it retracted the two slender, sturdy legs back into the sky, wanting to find another opportunity to sneak attack.

Jier was somewhat puzzled; clearly, this guy had such a huge body, it only needed to simply press its entire body down from above to unexpectedly crush both him and Steward Irupachi to death.

But for some reason, this monster was like a shy girl, only cautiously using its long limbs to attack Jier from above.

Jier guessed that this might be the hunting habit of this type of monster; although it was already this big, it still relied on hunting methods presumably passed down by instinct to attack prey.

Silent sneak attacks naturally succeeded repeatedly in places where the opponent's magical power and ordinary people would not think of; if one could not see through the method, the monster's sneak attack technique was indeed very excellent, and every person or animal ambushed had not realized their death was imminent when attacked.

Jier felt the rope and fixture forcibly tied to his right lower leg beginning to loosen; he could not continue to circle with this monster, as the opponent's body mass was there, and he estimated that even if they fought until dawn like this, the monster's stamina would not run out.

But he could not; even when his legs were intact, his stamina could not support him in dodging the monster's attacks like this. Every time he dodged, he had to focus his attention on that pitch-black giant maw with its disordered movement trajectory, and coupled with the sneak attacks just now, it made him have to keep part of his energy on the changes above.

Being swept and knocked away by that pitch-black giant maw, he estimated that under the protection of his armor, he would only suffer minor injuries. However, once struck by those two sharp legs, his hard cowhide armor would likely be of no use, and he would be like a large rat cut into two pieces by giant iron shears.

This could not go on; he felt he had to fight back.

Utilizing the fact that the monster did not want its limbs to touch the flames, Jier began to circle around the campfire. The monster's subsequent attacks indeed became timid; although it kept trying to find an angle to sweep Jier, it could never get its wish.

And Jier seized the opportunity; after dodging the giant maw's strike that swept up mud and withered grass once again, Jier did not retreat but advanced instead. He forced himself to take a step, chasing after the swept-away pitch-black giant maw, and the axe in his hand, amidst the slow-motion world, caught up to the monster's pitch-black giant maw bit by bit.

Almost, just a little bit more.

Jier lunged forward with all his might, his arm gripping only the end of the axe's wooden handle, just to make the axe head reach out as far as possible, but the monster's main body above seemed to have seen through Jier's plan.

Its predatory mouth was still in pain and it did not want to eat another attack from Jier's sharp axe.

The monster accelerated the swinging force of its pitch-black giant maw, causing Jier's strike to miss.

Jier's eyes turned red; he was unwilling to let his long-charged strike miss like this. Hardening his heart, Jier loosened his fingers gripping the end of the axe's wooden handle, letting the axe fly out of his hand.

It spun and accelerated, slashing onto the surface of the monster's pitch-black giant maw.

"Squeak! Squeak!" The monster felt pain again, and this time it let out a shrill shriek that shook the wilderness.

In the sound, besides pain, there was more of an annoyance at having its pride shattered.

Jier fell to the ground, rolled, and then lunged forward again; his ears were filled with the monster's shrill shriek. This greatly increased his thinking ability; the intense cry seemed to want to shatter his body and brain.

Since it was difficult to think, Jier gave up thinking. After this series of lunges, he approached the monster's pitch-black giant maw, which was constantly swinging in small motions in place; it looked like the monster wanted to shake off the human weapon on its predatory mouth.

But the human weapon was extremely sharp and deeply embedded in the outer skin of its giant maw.

Jier did not even look at the monster's giant maw, which was swinging in a small, disordered range, and lunged at it with his whole body. As he lunged, his right hand took the opportunity to draw the Long Sword from his waist, and with a straight thrust, the entire blade pierced into the interior of the monster's giant maw with a squelch, thrusting in half the length of the blade.

His other hand went straight for the axe's wooden handle exposed outside; the slimy monster tissue fluid could not stop Jier's determination to grip the axe tightly, and he firmly connected his left hand to the axe's wooden handle.

The monster above saw the human using a weapon, clinging to its predatory mouth.

This made it extremely angry; what was different about this human? Clearly, humans all looked exactly the same to it, yet it never expected it to hurt it again and again.

It angrily lowered more of its legs and feet, determined to hack this Human into chunks of meat!

The Monster stopped its sharp hissing, and Jier finally let out a sigh of relief. His mind was incredibly chaotic at this moment, unable to perform any more useful thinking, but he had not forgotten what he had been thinking about in his heart just now.

"Watch out for the sharp Monster legs in the sky, watch out for the sharp Monster legs in the sky, it all depends on this one moment, it all depends on this one moment." Jier kept muttering this phrase to himself. Although his spirit had not yet recovered from the Monster's loud hissing, as soon as the Monster stopped hissing, he subconsciously followed his own plan, swinging his two weapons left and right; one side was to cause trouble for the Monster, while the other was to continuously widen the wound broken by the weapon, attempting to pull the weapon out.

Meanwhile, his eyes followed his head as it swayed left and right, keeping watch on the constantly shifting sky above, watching for when the Monster's sharp legs would arrive.

It's coming!

Soon, just seconds after the Monster stopped hissing, as many as four sharp legs swept over in arcs from behind the White Mist-filled sky above, cutting in from different angles.

"Ha!"

Jier let out a shout, exerting his maximum strength through his arms to swing the two weapons deeply embedded in the Monster's giant mouth backward. At the same time, he pushed off with his legs, ignoring the sharp pain coming from his right leg, and threw his body backward with a hair's breadth of distance.

The Monster's four sharp, slender legs crossed past Jier's body, nearly hacking Jier and his armor into several pieces. But in the end, it missed by just a tiny bit.

Immediately following, the Monster's legs, which had not retracted their force, converged together and severed a large portion of the Monster's own pitch-black giant mouth.

The Monster also did not expect that it would miss, and at the same time, cut off its own predatory mouth. Although it would be very inconvenient for it to hunt if its predatory mouth were broken, it would grow back—as if!

The Monster's subsequent movements were completely chaotic; its four slender, sharp legs flailed about randomly. Some wanted to completely cut off the nearly severed predatory mouth, since it would grow back in a few days anyway. Others were nimbly tucked under the pitch-black giant mouth, attempting to prop up the broken half of the predatory mouth, since its body's recovery ability was very strong; if it pieced a giant mouth broken like this back together, it might even be able to grow back directly.

The chaotic movements clearly reflected the Monster's current mental confusion, because its body was very large, so when controlling the extended limbs, strange actions where the previous movement and the next movement were diametrically opposed would sometimes occur.

Of course, Jier, who had been lying on the ground since just now, could not grasp the Monster's current thoughts. He stood up with difficulty, saw the Monster's movements were chaotic and uncoordinated, and knowing it was a good opportunity, he found the right timing, stood in place, and aimed the axe in his hand at the Monster's pitch-black giant mouth that had been broken in half.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—the spinning giant axe made a cheerful sound as it tore through the air, and without Jier noticing, it adjusted its posture, hacking off a large chunk over a meter long from the lower half of the Monster's giant mouth that had been broken in half.

The Monster, which had been in chaos, finally no longer had to worry or be confused about whether to keep the predatory mouth or grow a new one.

The lower half of its predatory mouth had indeed been hacked off by the Human. It grumbled again, fruitlessly poked at the Human with its four sharp legs for a while, but all of them were blocked by the high-temperature scorching campfire the Human used.

It retracted its four slender legs, pulled them all back up, and then, grumbling to itself, it lifted its entire body and ran off, waving its many legs.

Today's hunt was very unsuccessful; it should not hunt Humans here in the future. This place was still too close to where Humans lived. Indeed, its friends were right; being close to where Humans lived was very dangerous.

"Huff, huff, huff." Jier panted with heavy breaths, the pain in his right lower leg making him pull at the corners of his mouth, and the teeth inside his mouth caused his gums to bleed from clenching them so hard.

The Monster's grumbling sounds faded away rapidly.

The White Mist above also retreated at an extremely fast speed.

After a while, the pitch-black sky flooded back into Jier's line of sight.

He had never felt that this pitch-black sky, hung with many strange celestial bodies, looked so good. Although the night sky was the same everywhere, at this very moment, he only felt that the ordinary sky was just fine.

The Three Moon Goddesses in the sky also seemed to be smiling at him; they emitted a glowing light, shrouding the distant mountains and the Forest in a hazy, silvery-white radiance.

Jier looked toward the Forest on the north side, and under the moonlight, he vaguely seemed to see a large mass of white Mist drifting away over the top of the Forest.

And high above his head, something seemed to be faintly hanging, but because the night was too dark and that thing did not reflect much light, it was not very clear.

Just as Jier concentrated his attention, looking at what that thing hanging across the sky in the deep night was, that thing went "whoosh" and was pulled away from south to north by something, and it disappeared very quickly.

"What on earth was that thing?" Jier muttered to himself in a low voice.

If he could figure out what that thing was, if there were a next time, he would be able to learn more intelligence about that Monster.

Perhaps he could think of a way to deal with that Monster by relying on this.

"Jier? Jier? Are you there?" From a pit not far away, a muffled voice of inquiry came.

Spitting out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva, Jier replied to Steward Irupachi: "I'm here, it's fine, that was close, the Monster is gone."

"I heard the Monster's grumbling! It can speak! Are you really Jier?? Please, may the gods protect me, you must be Jier." The voice in the pit became a bit louder, but not as loud as before.

Rolling his eyes, Jier half-knelt down and re-tied the support on his loosened lower leg. Then he walked over to his Helmet, picked it up, patted the dirt off it, put it on his head, secured it, and used the Helmet's Faceplate to cover the color of his eyes.

"Then you can just stay in the pit like that, and come out when it's daytime."

Steward Irupachi heard this mockery, which instead put his mind at ease; after all, no matter what the Monster was thinking, it would have no interest in mocking or ridiculing him.

Carefully sticking his head out of the pit, he saw at a glance that pitch-black giant mouth lying on the ground not far away. Steward Irupachi screamed and immediately shrank back into the pit: "That Monster is still there!! It's right over there! Watch out!"

Listening to the screaming warning coming from the pit, Jier shrugged, walked to his own pit, took out a coil of rope, and tied the rope to the lower half of the Monster's giant mouth on the ground.

Retrieving his axe from the wound on the Monster's body, Jier hung the axe on his belt, then wrapped the rope around his waist, used his uninjured leg to push off, leaned his body backward, and used his weight to drag the heavier Monster tissue to the side of the campfire.

The visibility was better here.

By the light of the campfire, Jier carefully examined this piece of tissue left behind by the Monster.

Unexpectedly, a goat came over. This guy actually hadn't died during the previous strike of the Monster's giant mouth; it was good luck indeed.

After this goat came over, it stuck out its tongue and licked the translucent tissue fluid flowing from the wound on the Monster's tissue.

He didn't know what was so delicious about this stuff, but it made the goat lick it so fast that it didn't even have time to bleat.

Seeing the goat's appearance, Jier finished drinking the water from a Water bottle in his Backpack, and then filled the empty bottle with the Monster's tissue fluid.

There was movement behind him. Jier turned around to look, and it was Steward Irupachi approaching with a sheepish look on his face.

"Sorry, Jier, you aren't hurt, are you? I never imagined I would scream out like that before." Steward Irupachi leaned over and patted Jier's shoulder. "Look at this, the leg is broken." Jier pointed to his right lower leg, which was wrapped in something or other.

"I will be responsible for the corresponding medical expenses later, please rest assured, the priests are very experienced in treating this kind of fracture." Steward Irupachi promised repeatedly. Jier couldn't say anything, so he just pointed to the body tissue left by the Monster and said: "Take a look, this is a piece of body tissue I just hacked off the Monster. According to its use, it should be the Monster's mouth?"

Steward Irupachi seemed somewhat resistant to looking at this thing, but his expression also held the desire to take a closer look. He corrected him: "It's a Magic Beast! This thing must be a Magic Beast. You saw the Mist that thing released; what kind of ordinary Monster can cast spells? Although I don't know if Mages can release spells like heavy fog, this guy definitely can. It is a rare Magic Beast!"

He paused, then continued: "I must report this matter to Kendall City as soon as possible to inform the Baron. We must ask them to send Knights to exterminate that Magic Beast!"

Jier shrugged; he was also afraid of that Magic Beast. If it hadn't been for eating the Red-eye Mushroom earlier, he estimated he would have already been knocked down and swallowed by that Monster—no, Magic Beast—with the giant mouth in front of him.

Of course, Steward Irupachi definitely wouldn't have survived either. That pit could hide from a Magic Beast whose location was unknown, but once it knew a human was hiding inside, the Magic Beast would definitely dig the human out of the ground and swallow them, just like humans liked to eat river snails or clams.

"Sigh." Jier let out a deep sigh.

"What's wrong?" Steward Irupachi had been keeping an eye on the situation of this young warrior Jier. He never imagined that this young warrior had really done it single-handedly—no, he didn't even use a spear or a horse—and had incredibly defeated and driven away a Magic Beast.

Could it be that the Magic Beast wasn't as powerful as the rumors said? How could that be? The huge pile of meat in front of him now was only a small part of the Magic Beast's mouth. The entire Magic Beast was hidden behind the Mist in the air.

Then there was only one other explanation: this Jier was really as powerful as he himself had said. It seemed that the warriors who could make a name for themselves in Kendall City were truly capable people.

Even if it was just someone so young.

"It's nothing, it's just that I never want to agree to bring others to see or verify whether a dangerous Magic Beast exists again." Jier's voice sounded somewhat muffled through the Helmet.

And Steward Irupachi, with a flushed face, explained awkwardly: "It was my first time seeing a Magic Beast from the stories of my elders, I really couldn't control myself."

Jier shrugged, he took out his Dagger, looked at the rows of circular-arranged large and small sharp teeth inside the Monster's giant mouth, and began to rack his brain.

He had seen this thing before, and it seemed to look quite useful.