Book 1 Chapter 19 Dramatic Retreat
…
Rowan felt a cold dread that transcended his usual phlegmatic demeanor. This was not a Level 1 skirmish. This was a proper boss battle. And the System, ever-helpful, immediately confirmed his worst suspicions.
System Notification:
"Hostile Entities Detected. The distance is too far to engage in battle."
[Han Rowan (Level 2). HP: 3/3/3/3/3/3. Qi: 5: Status: Normal.]
[Opponent: Crimson Mauler (Fierce Beast): HP: 50/20/50/50/20/50. Status: Bloodied, Enraged.]
[Opponent: Rock Viper (Demonic Beast): HP: 50/150. Status: Poisoned, Crushed Ribs.]
Rowan's mind went momentarily blank, then immediately crashed into a frantic, internal screech of why, why, why, why, why?
Fifty HP gauges? Six gauges? He stared at the Crimson Mauler's health display. Wait, why does the body have 20 HP, but the head and forelegs have 50? No, wait. The Body is 20 HP, the Left Hindleg is 50 HP. This HP distribution makes no sense! Who coded this? It's asymmetrical! It's a design flaw! If I hit the head with a max damage 4 from the Stone Knife fifty times, I'd still be 46 damage short of killing it! And the Rock Viper has 150 HP on its body! That's... that's 37.5 Stone Knife strikes! I'd be dead before the first cooldown was done!
The mortals around him, oblivious to the existential crisis triggered by poor game design, were weeping silently into the dirt.
The two beasts clashed. The Crimson Mauler lunged, a red streak of fury. The Rock Viper met it with a crushing tail strike. The sound was deafening.
CRACK!
The tail hit the Mauler's flank. The Mauler roared, the sound distorting the air.
System Notification (Estimated Damage): Crimson Mauler takes -25 Damage (Crushing). HP: 50/20/25/50/20/50. Status: Severe Trauma.
The Mauler didn't drop. It shrugged off the hit, a testament to its bizarre, highly fragmented HP pool. Instead, it countered, sinking its massive claws into the Viper's body.
System Notification (Estimated Damage): Rock Viper takes -30 Damage (Laceration). HP: 50/120. Status: Bleeding (Severe).
The battle was a horrific ballet of incomprehensible power. Every time they connected, the sheer shockwave was palpable.
BOOM!
A few grown trees—thick, hundred-year-old giants—snapped mid-trunk like twigs. The shockwave hit the hiding party.
The group of twenty-three mortals, hiding behind a few shrubs, was summarily sent tumbling backward in a pathetic, undignified wave. It wasn't an attack, just collateral air pressure from two high-level raid bosses trying to kill each other.
Rowan felt the familiar six-segment HP display flash, accompanied by minor yellow warnings. He had tumbled only twenty feet, but the impact against a small boulder was enough to trigger his low-level health bar.
[Han Rowan (Level 2). HP: 3/3/2/3/2/3. Qi: 5: Status: Bruised.]
I took fall damage! Rowan mentally shrieked. Two very high-level raid bosses are fighting to the death twenty yards away, and I'm hurt this badly? This is ridiculous!
He scrambled to his feet. The other men were scattered, groaning, many nursing sprained ankles or minor scrapes. Captain Gong had landed face-first in a thorny bush and was emitting a muffled, strangled cry.
"Retreat! Retreat! Move, you fools! This isn't a battle for us!" Rowan hissed, his voice surprisingly authoritative despite his internal meltdown. He knew the fight between the Crimson Mauler and the Rock Viper was a localized, high-threat event. Neither was likely to focus on a group of low-level insects unless they strayed too close.
"The... the wounded!" cried the blacksmith, whose pale face was now a greenish hue.
"The wounded are getting dragged!" Rowan snapped, already hoisting the half-fainted Guard Feng over his shoulder. "Captain Gong! Get out of that bush! We are moving, now!"
Rowan, with his strange burst of adrenaline and his internal system efficiency guiding him, became a machine of triage and extraction. He dragged one guard, pulled another, and directed the least injured to help the most injured. The chaotic retreat was fueled by sheer, life-preserving panic. They moved not with military precision, but with the frantic, scrambling speed of rats escaping a house fire.
They stumbled for a hundred yards, the sounds of the titanic battle slowly receding behind the noise of their own ragged breathing.
"A cave!" yelled one of the farmers, pointing to a dark, narrow opening in a sheer cliff face hidden behind a waterfall of vines.
It was salvation. They poured into the cave mouth, collapsing onto the cool, dusty floor. Rowan immediately began applying his 'salves.' He worked his way through the moaning, bruised men, administering the single, precious Healing Salve dose to the most critical injuries (sprains, deep cuts, potentially broken ribs).
Although many were wounded in that incident, most of them were dragged to the cave, and Rowan quickly made his miracle spread throughout those in need.
Rowan did not know where he had gotten the strength, but he was able to save everyone as if he were possessed by a ghost. Everyone once again shows their admiration towards him. A few merchants quickly began to discuss with him about a possible cooperation with regards to his healing salve. They could tell that the medicine was a precious item that could save lives in a very quick but unconventional manner.
"This is incredible," Captain Gong whispered, his face now miraculously clean of thorns and his color returning to normal. "That salve... It's a gift. You saved us, Master Han. You truly did."
"I merely mitigated the collateral damage from the area-of-effect ability of two unstable raid bosses," Rowan muttered, then quickly amended, "I mean, it's good medicine. Just... rest."
He looked back toward the entrance, the distant, muffled BOOMs of the beast battle still vibrating in the rock. The group was safe, for now. The wounded were stable. His primary objective (keeping the cannon fodder alive) was successful.
Now for the secondary objective, Rowan thought, his phlegmatic curiosity taking over. We need to hide, and I need to know what's in the deep end of this dungeon.
He could not help but be curious about what was inside this thing. While he was mending the wounded, he already noticed that the cave was actually deep. They were just in panic when they took shelter in this place. Now that Rowan is feeling a bit better, he decided to explore it.
…
Rowan grabbed his sackcloth and his backpack and left the resting, terrified group in the main cavern, which was dry and stable. He told Captain Gong he was scouting for water, a lie that was easily accepted given his role as the esteemed 'healer.'
He walked deeper into the cave system, guided only by the faint light filtering from cracks in the ceiling and the mysterious glow of his own internal systems. The tunnels narrowed, the air grew stale, and then, the passageway opened into a massive, multi-tiered grotto.
The grotto was like the forgotten treasury of a dead kingdom. It was colossal, shimmering with light from dozens of veins of crystal embedded in the rock walls. The entire space was filled with objects haphazardly piled on top of each other, suggesting this was the hoard of either a truly powerful creature or a very, very old civilization.
Rowan's eyes widened, not with awe, but with the sheer excitement of a system user finding a max-level loot drop.
Gold. Silver. Piles of it, tarnished but undeniable. Rare Herbs, glowing faintly, were likely worth a fortune even in the outside world's coins, let alone his own internal coin system. And then, the weapons and armor.
He started at the first pile. He didn't bother analyzing; he just used the System's quick-select function to grab everything that triggered a 'Mysterious Vibe' description.
A legendary, gold-inlaid battle axe?[Item Stored: Unlimited Storage]A suit of scale mail that seemed to absorb the light?[Item Stored: Unlimited Storage]A tiara that looked suspiciously like a Queen's crown?[Item Stored: Unlimited Storage]
He walked around the grotto like a high-powered vacuum cleaner, indiscriminately hoovering up millennia-old artifacts.
This is fantastic, he thought, shoving a rusty-looking Qi Condensation Manual (likely one of the 'trinkets') into the vast void beneath his 9x9 grid. The conversion rate for these items is insane. Even at 0.5 coins, I could buy hundreds of basic weapons, finally get a Skull Cap (20 Defense!), and start the long, painful grind to Level 3.
He even found a small jade statue of a turtle. It didn't have a 'mysterious vibe,' but it was heavy and looked expensive. [Item Stored: Unlimited Storage]. Maybe I can sell this on the outside for real money, though I doubt it.
He spent what felt like five glorious minutes in a frenzy of acquisition, his internal thought process a rapid-fire inventory management session:
This two-handed sword looks too big for me. Unlimited Storage.
A stack of scrolls written in a language I don't recognize. Maybe a Golden Core technique? Unlimited Storage.
A pair of genuinely pristine, but very dusty, leather boots. Must be +5 speed. Unlimited Storage.
An entire ceremonial flag. Why? Who knows. Unlimited Storage.
He paused, finally sated. The floor was significantly clearer, though still covered in less valuable detritus.
He had gathered at least two hundred kilograms of historical, magical, and monetarily invaluable artifacts. All safely tucked away in the void of his Strange Bag's Unlimited Storage, sitting next to a half-eaten loaf of peasant bread and his only set of spare socks.
Rowan finally noticed the object that had been at the corner of his perception. Tucked into a narrow fissure in the back wall, almost hidden by a large, crystalline shard, was a single, peculiar item.
It wasn't a sword, or armor, or gold. It was small, no bigger than his fist, and it was glowing with a faint red color, pulsing rhythmically. It looked almost like a perfect, polished ruby heart.
Ah, an Epic or Legendary item, Rowan mused, his hand reaching out. Must be a key item. Maybe a source of infinite Qi, or a permanent stat boost.
He was about to grab it when the subtle tremors that had been background noise suddenly intensified into a violent, sickening shake.
The entire grotto groaned. Loose crystals rained down. The ceiling above him split with a loud, grinding sound.
"This is not a good time for a cave-in," Rowan grumbled, already pulling his arm back, ready to sprint. "I haven't properly cataloged the rarity of that heart-shaped ruby yet."
He turned to run back toward the main cavern, toward the frightened, injured mortals he had sworn to protect.
But before he could take a single step, the shaking intensified one last time, reaching a chaotic crescendo, and then abruptly stopped.
Silence. A horrible, heavy silence, broken only by the distant drip-drip of water.
From the tunnel entrance—the very entrance Rowan had just used—the shadows seemed to deepen, condense, and then shift. The air pressure changed; it wasn't a wind, but the displacement of a monumental body.
Rowan's system, still in its high-alert mode, didn't bother with a friendly greeting. It only displayed the critical, final, and utterly terrifying status update.
System Notification (Critical Threat):
[Opponent: Rock Viper (Demonic Beast): HP: 10/50. Status: Poisoned, Severely Wounded, Seeking Shelter.]
The massive, wedge-shaped head of the Rock Viper slowly, deliberately, poked inside the cavern.
It wasn't an aggressive entrance, not at first. The head, larger than a carriage, was scraped and bleeding, its obsidian-like scales fractured in places. Its massive, unblinking yellow eye, the size of a dinner plate, was clouded with pain and exhaustion, scanning the small chamber. The Viper had likely escaped the Crimson Mauler and, seeing the cave as a potential sanctuary, was checking for residual threats.
And now, its weary, battle-scarred eye fell directly upon Han Rowan, the Level 2 man standing among a vast pile of his own stolen possessions, his hand hovering over a glowing, red, heart-shaped item that pulsed with the exact same faint, red light as the blood seeping from the Viper's massive, crushed ribs. The Rock Viper was clearly wounded and was looking for a place to hide, but the sight of a mortal near its possible greatest treasure, or perhaps the cause of its pain, was enough to override its exhaustion.
Rowan stared at the giant, exhausted face of the serpentine demigod.
He's low on HP, Rowan thought with a final, insane burst of clinical assessment.
He had an army of weapons, a mountain of magical gear, and the ability to heal a hundred mortal men. But he was Level 2, his real weapons were invisible, and he was currently standing face-to-face with a creature whose HP gauge was still several points higher than his own.
Rowan's body started to shiver along with his bladder.
Rowan didn't even have time to release a single drop of pee before the Viper's massive head began to lower, its jaw unhinging with a slow, deliberate motion.
"Mommy!"