Savage Ascension: Starting with God-Tier Plunder Ability-Chapter 107: The Beast Within

Pandevus had seen Doren's clumsy stance, wooden ladle with soup still on it pointed his way, and Espin's sharp defensive posture, so he chose to run. He had no idea where other soldiers might be.

Clang!

A throwing dagger whirled through the air with a metallic ring and thudded into the ground.

"You got eyes in the back of your head or something?"

Rowan muttered with a sneer, watching Pandevus knock the straight-shot throwing dagger away with the mace, dead on. It was hard to believe what Rowan had just seen.

'Three enemies. Take down even one and running gets easier.'

Naturally, Rowan, alone and dressed in mercenary gear, became the target. While a knight would have equipment far beyond their actual ability level, Rowan was the exact opposite—ability far beyond what the gear suggested.

Whack!

"!"

The grotesquely thick thigh muscles exploded with force. Dirt kicked up over a meter. Just the act of pushing off to run, and the leg strength was already unbelievable.

'Something's going on. A magic item?'

Pandevus closed the distance in the blink of an eye at an overwhelming speed. Rowan stepped one pace to the right and turned the upper body sideways. Reducing the body's profile visible to the enemy was basic stuff for any fighter.

With the sun going down and dinner being prepared, all Rowan had on hand was a longsword, a shortsword, and a throwing dagger carried out of habit. The round shield was over by the campfire, too big to have around.

'Trying to block a mace straight on is just dumb.'

With the same muscle power, a mace could put out anywhere from three to ten times more destructive force. The reason was simple: the weight wasn't distributed along the handle or spread across the whole weapon, but concentrated at the end, as far from the hand as possible.

For every arm's length away the weight gets, a person has to manage roughly three times the load. That's why you pull a rice sack tight to your body when lifting it. The mace's concentrated mass, sitting at the farthest point from the hand, was what made the damage so massive.

Whoosh!

The mace split the air. The way Rowan sidestepped the charge and precisely threaded through the mace's arc drew an involuntary sense of admiration. And at the same time, the counterattack landed.

Swish!

The longsword caught Pandevus just barely across the chest. Even though the gap between them had been close enough to warrant dodging the mace, the reason the longer longsword only grazed the chest came down to those bizarre legs.

'Stupidly fast.'

Pandevus, now feeling a warm sting across the chest, was genuinely surprised. The swordsmanship was something else. And he paid the price for locking his focus too hard on Rowan.

Thwack!

An arrow buried itself squarely into the thigh. But seeing it hadn't gone in very deep, Rowan's brow furrowed.

'Muscles like steel? Only the tip went in. That's not even a real wound.'

"Grrrr!"

The moment the arrow hit the thigh, the Second Disciple Pandevus did something strange. He opened his jaw wide like a wolf and let out an animal sound. All three watching flinched. It felt like they'd just seen something they weren't supposed to.

"Surround him! Doren, you too! Arrows aren't doing much on this one!"

Rowan shoved aside whatever that sight had just triggered and snapped back to the present. A encirclement formed in seconds. The most aggressive one moving in was, naturally, Rowan. Something was wrong with this guy, and that was exactly why Rowan, confident in close-quarters combat above all else, stepped in hard.

Clack, clack, clack!

'This is no ordinary guy!'

A mid-level thrust toward the chest, using the rebound to sweep low and target the belly, then a springing slash curving into the ribs—Pandevus blocked all of it with the mace. Those arms that looked scrawny only appeared that way because of those thighs. They were far from weak.

'He's stronger than me.'

While yanking his forearm back and deflecting Rowan's attacks without much apparent effort, Espin's shield came stabbing down at the knee.

Thwack!

"Ugh!"

A raw, bloody satisfaction mixed into the grunt. Espin's face twisted. Then Pandevus's left fist slammed into Espin's shield, and the shield caved in with a sickening crunch.

"Whoa! What the!"

The shield dented inward on impact, and a shudder ran through Espin's entire body, chest dropping out from under, a jolt of shock seizing everything.

Doren was landing small cuts with the shortsword in a frenzy, but Pandevus didn't seem to register them at all.

In this insane fight, what shone brightest was Pandevus's defense and ability to absorb punishment, but Rowan was also putting on a display of terrifyingly precise swordsmanship. Pandevus's decision to keep dodging the attacks while enduring the wounds was not without reason.

'Damn it.'

Eventually Pandevus's patience cracked and he threw himself hard to the side. Espin dove in without hesitation and body-checked him. Shield leading, slamming into the flank. They went down together, but the one who got up first was Pandevus.

The mace swung down at Espin's skull.

Clang, clang, clang!!

Rowan's longsword caught the mace before it connected, and a leather-gloved hand braced against the flat of the blade. The mace ground sparks as it rode down the edge of the sword and caught on the crossguard.

Rrrrgh!!

Tendons stood out on both their necks. Rowan's arms trembled.

'Insane. This isn't human strength.'

A firmly planted stance began to buckle at the knees. Pandevus suddenly let out a wild howl.

"KRAAAHH!!!"

Blood ran from his mouth, and then his teeth began popping out one by one, the raw red blood streaming down from his chin.

"Hiyah!"

Doren gripped the shortsword in both hands and brought it down at the forearm. Pandevus leaped back. The dirt cloud that erupted said everything about the strength in those legs.

"Grrrr! Krrr!!"

He shook his head like a madman, then dropped the mace and clutched his own skull.

"Ugh, ugh! No, no!"

Both nostrils were gushing blood, and his nose and jaw were starting to push forward. Espin and Doren were staring at that grotesque sight when Rowan charged in without hesitation, and they had to run after.

Rowan, longsword in both hands, went straight for the throat. Pandevus, turning more and more into a beast, tried to grab the longsword with one hand, but Rowan stepped back smoothly and instead sliced clean through that wrist.

Slash!

Blood sprayed. The spot between hand and forearm—the cartilage. Exactly there. Bone density and muscle didn't matter at that point.

Espin and Doren were hammering in from every angle with their weapons.

Rowan severed the tendons in both hands, dodged an attempted kick, yanked the dagger from the belt in one motion, and drove it deep into the nearest thigh. Didn't stop there—pressed in further, forced the already-raised leg to spread wider, and brought the whole thing crashing down. The left hand stayed locked tight around the dagger, pressed firm against the body, since Rowan had tackled the target down.

The breath of something turning from bandit into beast was rough and hot. The longsword's blade slid flat between the gaping jaws.

"Huff! Huff! Huff huff!"

Espin had thrown the shield aside entirely, gripping the shortsword in both hands and smashing it down at the skull. Blood flew, but the bone didn't crack at all.

"KRAAAAHHHH!!!"

Even with all that raging, Pandevus didn't last thirty seconds. Being cut open by the dagger, having Doren's full body weight crash down on top, and the bleeding from the wide-open wounds did him in.

"Huff! Huff!"

When Pandevus stopped moving, Rowan stepped back. The severed artery in the thigh and the wound that had been wrenched wide open during the takedown were what killed him.

"Do you know what that was?"

At Rowan's words, Espin and Doren both made uneasy faces.

"A human turning into a beast... I've heard of it, but..."

"Like a werewolf, or something like that?"

"But there's no fur..."

There was more than one or two strange things about this. But one thing was certain: this was not a pure human.

'No fur for a werewolf.'

It didn't add up.

The Second Disciple Pandevus had a muzzle jutting forward like a wolf, and the teeth were no longer human, but the fangs of a beast. The eyes had gone entirely red.

Rowan cut the head off. Just to be safe. Then went through the pockets.

'Not a single coin on him.'

Money. Currency. That most important thing—he didn't have any. But he did have several unusual scraps of parchment. They were folded in half and tied together, three sheets in total.

"Hm..."

Rowan unfolded one. Something vaguely queasy hit, like the mild motion sickness you get on a bus. Nothing too intense.

'A magic item?'

It seemed a bit different from the scrolls in novels. Strange symbols, written in blood. And the smell of that blood was intense—so intense it was almost impossible to keep the parchment open. Something with a special kind of power had gone into it.

Rowan set the parchment down and rummaged through the rest. Another find: a small wooden case, tightly bound. Opening it brought the smell of tobacco.

Moist and unmistakably proper cigars. Not dried-out bottom-tier stubs either, which made it genuinely puzzling how someone like this was carrying them. Most common folk bought leftover tobacco leaf scraps packed into a jar and smoked those, pressed down and stuffed in.

'Well-rolled.'

The moistness you felt just touching them spoke to quality. There were only about five cigars, and they ran a little thin. While Rowan was checking the cigars, Doren picked up the folded parchment Rowan had set on the ground and unfolded it.

"Urp."

Doren dry-heaved immediately, dropped the parchment, spun around, and proceeded to throw up spectacularly.

"BLEEAAGGH!"

"Ugh! What the!"

The vomit launched forward with the momentum of the head turn and splattered across Rowan's cheek. Rowan jumped back. Doren raised a hand and waved frantically. Trying to make clear it wasn't on purpose, and still in the middle of that, heaved out stomach acid on top of everything else.

"That thing, ugh... I looked at it and suddenly..."

"I was fine with it..."

Rowan's eyes drifted to Espin on their own.

"I am not looking at it. You already saw it."

Caving under Rowan's glare, Espin picked up the parchment Doren had thrown and stared at the strange symbols. Espin couldn't hold back the nausea either. Rowan wiped a face with a cloth, then carefully cleaned off the parchment.

'A nausea-inducing parchment? Still might sell for a lot!'

The mood lifted on its own. It was clearly a magic item. But those symbols written in raw blood were not what you'd call typical magic goods.

'There's a wizard at Torch Fortress. Worth making a trip out there.'

"Captain. This was in the waistband."

It was an order slip with writing on it. Rowan read it through.

[Pandevus, a plan comes together the way small twigs bundle into one. Be careful, and more careful still, so nothing goes wrong. Everything is for that moment.]

'What is this?'

A loaded little note. The top and bottom were torn off, which suggested it had been kept as personal motivation. Rowan wanted to read the missing parts, but there was no way to.

It didn't feel like robbing a bandit outfit's back pocket was going to tie into some massive grand scheme.

The corpse of Pandevus, human skin with a wolf's muzzle, obviously had to be reported. It was strange enough that it was a matter of course. Rowan had at least a basic sense of civic duty, so it was decided to show the soldiers one of the three nausea parchments.

The rest were, naturally, Rowan's to keep. Espin and Doren, having already experienced the gut-wrenching effect, had zero interest in anything to do with them.