A Trash Novel's Only Reader-Chapter 30: Mystery Man

The brute’s grip tightened around Shu’s ankle while the second one raised both arms over its head, making the clearing feel smaller all of a sudden.

He yanked hard and felt nothing but pain shoot up his leg. The thing stuck in the sinkhole did not budge, and the one in front of him was already bringing both fists down.

’Well fuck,’ he thought, twisting his body and raising the bat anyway. ’This is what I get for being a little too confident.’

A silver flash cut across his vision before the hit landed, making the brute’s arm slide off first.

For a second, the monster did not seem to understand what happened. Then dark sap burst from the cut, and the entire arm crashed into the ground while the rest of its body staggered sideways with a roar.

Shu was frozen in shock, then looked up just in time to see Raniel step through the fog.

She did not waste a word, her sword moving again before the first brute finished screaming, and this time the silver line carved straight through its neck, cutting off its head.

The huge body stayed standing for a second, then folded and crashed into the ground hard enough to shake the roots under him.

He stared at the corpse, his brain going empty for a beat before the brute holding his ankle suddenly yanked, dragging him half toward the sinkhole.

"Tch-" He twisted at once and slammed the bat down toward the thing’s wrist, but before the hit could land, Raniel crossed the distance in one burst, drove her sword into the brute’s arm, then twisted so cleanly that the whole hand came off with Shu’s ankle still trapped inside its grip.

The pressure vanished all at once, making him jerk free and roll across the ground while the severed hand bounced once beside him.

By the time he pushed himself up on one knee, Raniel was already on top of the brute’s shoulder, her sword flashing twice before the monster could even finish turning toward her.

The first strike tore through bark and vines, while the second opened its throat so deep the whole upper body jerked back, losing balance and crashing into the broken ground with a heavy choke.

Silence dropped over the clearing right after, broken only by Shu’s rough breathing and the wet sound of both bodies leaking dark sap into the ground.

’...holy crap,’ he thought, staring at the two corpses while his heartbeat slowly came down. ’No wonder people make a big deal out of her.’

She flicked the dark sap off her blade and turned toward him, her face calm enough to make the whole thing feel even more ridiculous.

"Are you insane?" she asked, walking over with her brows pulled together. "What are you even doing this deep inside a place like this?"

He opened his mouth, then shut it again when she got close enough to actually see his face through the dirt and blood.

Her steps slowed, "wait," she said, her eyes sharpening. "You..."

’Ah, shit.’

That was enough for him, so he grabbed his bat, forced himself up, and bolted into the fog before she could finish whatever she was about to say.

"Hey!" She snapped, immediately taking a step after him, "stop running!"

’Nope,’ he thought, forcing his sore leg to keep moving while branches slapped against his arms again. ’Absolutely not. I am not standing there and explaining why an F-Rank is running around inside a mid-tier corrupted dungeon alone.’

The trees swallowed him fast, and the fog helped more than he deserved, because by the time Raniel reached the edge of the clearing, all she caught was the sound of roots snapping somewhere ahead and the brief outline of his back slipping between the trees.

"You have got to be kidding me," she muttered, gripping her sword a little tighter as she stared into the fog.

She could have chased him, but the moment she looked back at the dead brutes and then at the broken clearing around them, her thoughts started tangling up on their own.

’Was that mystery man?’ she thought, her brows drawing together. ’No way... right?’

Her eyes moved to the corpses again, then to the marks all over the clearing, and that answer only got harder to deny. He was clearly fighting before she arrived, and unless there was another hunter who wields a bat, there really was only one answer left.

’Don’t tell me he was the one who got here first,’ she thought, looking back at the fog one more time. ’Why is he here in the first place? And how the hell did he even get inside before us?’

The more she thought about it, the more annoyed and curious she got at the same time.

"Seriously," she muttered under her breath, still staring in the direction he vanished. "What is your deal, mystery man?"

The question stayed in her head longer than she liked, because the more she replayed what she had just seen, the less she liked the idea of turning around and leaving him alone in a place like this.

’If that really was him,’ she thought, still looking into the fog, ’then what the hell is he doing running around in a dungeon this dangerous by himself?’

She clicked her tongue and tightened her grip on the sword, because no matter how strange he was or how much he kept making her question what she thought she knew, this was still a mid-rank corrupted dungeon.

Even if he was stronger than a normal F-Rank, that only changed so much. A place like this could kill people far more qualified than him, and the thought of him running deeper into it alone sat badly in her chest.

’Tch, this feels bad,’ she thought, her brows pulling together. ’If he runs into something worse than these two, he is finished.’

"Raniel!"

She turned at the shout and saw the white-haired hunter forcing his way through the trees, his expression already dark by the time he stepped into the clearing.

"What the hell was that?" he snapped, stopping near the bodies and looking from the dead brutes to her face. "Why did you run off on your own?"

She looked at him, then jerked her chin toward the corpses.

"I heard monsters fighting nearby, so I came to check it out," she said. "Obviously, I wasn’t about to stand there and ignore that."

Leo’s jaw tightened, though this time it was not just anger making him look at the clearing harder.

His eyes moved over the bodies, then to the broken ground, then farther out to the trees near the edge where bark was smashed apart and roots had been torn up in a messy path.

Raniel stayed quiet.

She had already decided she was not telling him about Shu. Explaining that some strange F-Rank with a bat had been deep inside the dungeon before them would only create more trouble, and worse, Leo was exactly the kind of person who would make Shu’s life a living hell.

’No point saying anything,’ she thought, watching his face, ’I can let him know about mystery man, for his own sake.’

Unfortunately, Leo was not stupid.

He crouched beside one of the corpses, studying the cuts for a second, then looked back at the broken clearing.

"This wasn’t just you," he said, standing back up while his eyes narrowed, "this looked like it was done by a brute force fight, which you are not."

Raniel still said nothing.

He pointed at one of the smashed trees near the edge of the clearing. "Those impact marks aren’t from a sword, and neither is that path through the roots," he said, turning his gaze back to her. "Something else was here before I arrived."

Her face stayed calm, but inside she was annoyed,’ dammit,’ she thought. ’He noticed faster than I expected.’

"So?" she asked, folding one arm across her stomach. "That just means the monsters were already fighting something before I got here."

He stared at her for a second, clearly not buying how casual that sounded.

"Raniel," he said, his voice dropping, "do you take me for a fool?" He asked, his aura flaring and making her take a nervous step back.

"Who else was here? I will not repeat myself again," his aura was making covering the whole area into a chilling, making Raniel instinctively go into a fighting stance.

’What do I do now?’ She thought, thinking if maybe running was the best course of action.