Chapter 414: Meat Mountain
After leaving the grave, we returned to the village. Before we even entered, we saw a small mountain had appeared at the village entrance. It looked like countless pieces of flesh stacked together, forming an unspeakable corpse mountain.
“Wh-what’s going on?” I asked, looking at the corpse mountain in surprise. Sebastian and Claire, holding me, ran to the village entrance.
It turned out to be a corpse mountain built from several bizarre and unspeakable giant monsters. Many of the villagers who had woken up were already gathered around, discussing it.
The key thing was that one or two of these monsters were decapitated, their ferocious heads placed nearby, with blood flowing like small streams. The scene was permeated with a smell of blood.
What was happening? Just as we were filled with doubt, we suddenly heard the sound of something heavy being dragged from a distance, and even the trees not far away were constantly shaking from being hit.
When we looked in that direction, a packhorse emerged from around the corner. Jayad was riding on its back, seemingly dragging something with him.
Then, the object being dragged behind revealed its full form. It was a monster as large as an elephant, but its appearance was somewhat similar to a rhinoceros or a hippopotamus.
It was dragged all the way by Jayad, flattening the road. Moreover, because it had already been disemboweled, blood flowed all over the ground. Not only this one, but all the monsters that were previously on the corpse mountain should have been dragged over by Jayad like this. The road in front of the village was dyed red with blood, looking exceptionally terrifying.
But the villagers were not scared at all. They had all learned from Sherris that this was the meat they would rely on for the winter. The ferocious monsters that would normally make people’s legs tremble were merely corpses being paraded here.
What felt even more out of place, however, was how Jayad, riding such a small packhorse, could pull such a giant monster. Looking from afar, the contrast was too stark.
Then, the rope Jayad was using to drag the monster was not visible. This was because he was using his sleeve dart’s grappling hook to drag the monster. It was a testament to the extremely high tensile strength of spider silk that it could drag such a large monster without any effort.
But the problem was, while the spider silk could withstand it, the sleeve dart’s structure might not be able to. Wouldn’t it deform if he pulled like this?
Moreover, Older Brother Jayad particularly liked using the grappling hook I modified, and hardly used the sleeve dart’s original assassination function.
Such a youth, riding a packhorse, dragging such a giant monster with a line so thin it was almost invisible – this scene, with its great contrast, filled the villagers with awe. Even though they had seen it several times already.
Jayad dragged the monster next to the small mountain and, seeing Sebastian and Claire, and me in Claire’s arms, he smiled. “Parul, are you out? Did you guys get anything?”
“Let’s not talk about that for now. Are all these… from your hunt?” I quickly asked. Claire also looked at him with curious eyes.
The monsters making up the small mountain included black wolves, fierce-looking dinosaurs, centipedes as long as trains, toads as large as tanks, and monsters with human forms and wings, like gargoyles or demons.
“Yes, that’s right. I hunted them all. Hunting is really fun. I’m starting to understand why those noble lords like to go out hunting all the time,” Jayad said with a smile. It was evident he genuinely found hunting fun and was excited.
“No, how long have we been inside, and you’ve already hunted so many monsters? How did you find them?” I asked, somewhat unbelievably.
“And these, Sand Hunter Bugs, Black Striped Wolves, Devouring Demon Dragons, and Bako Drakes – they are all very ferocious monsters. How did you kill them in such a short time?” Sebastian also asked incredulously.
Logically speaking, their difficulty to deal with was not necessarily lower than Moore’s, and some were even more troublesome. It was hard to imagine how Jayad found them all by himself in such a short time, let alone killed so many, and in such a way that he sustained no injuries.
“That, it’s not difficult. I turned my Evil Perception to the maximum, and found monsters everywhere in the forest. Then I just picked the ones with strong auras, stealthily approached them, and directly attacked their vital points with Evil-Shattering Slash. I could often kill them with one blow. It’s very simple,” Jayad said.
“Very simple?” Sebastian was speechless upon hearing his assessment. They were the elites among monsters that constantly fought in the wild; their alertness was extremely high, and they could enter a state of vigilance at the slightest disturbance. Jayad was able to sneak up on them to launch a surprise attack, which was unbelievable.
But looking at the惨状 of these monsters, either disemboweled or beheaded, we understood how powerful Jayad’s attacks were when he didn’t need to consider others. It was a Strength that could easily kill a monster in an instant.
This was practically cheating. First, he had a full map view, even marking the prey’s positions, then he found the monsters with the strongest auras, and then used a one-hit-kill cheat to finish them off. It was completely unreasonable.
“By the way, Young Man Jayad, why did you choose to focus on those with the strongest auras? Wouldn’t it be easier to deal with weaker ones?” Sebastian asked.
“But, the strong ones are usually very big. They need to be big to have enough meat. Otherwise, if I killed small monsters one by one, how long would it take to gather enough food for the villagers? Actually, I did see a monster with a very strong aura in the middle, but it looked like a small dog, so I didn’t waste time killing it and found another target instead,” Jayad said.
Oh, so Older Brother Jayad’s criterion for judging whether a monster was worth killing was solely based on how much meat it had? And by “wasting time,” did he mean that killing small monsters and killing big bosses were essentially the same difficulty for him?
But that seemed to make sense. Since it was a one-hit kill anyway, the time taken would indeed be about the same.
“Your choice is correct, Young Man Jayad. Generally, a monster’s size is proportional to its aura because a larger body can contain more Magic Power. But when there’s a monster with a similarly strong aura but a very small size, you should be careful,” Sebastian reminded him.
“This indicates that it no longer needs to rely on the primitive and barbaric method of accumulating Magic Power through sheer size. A smaller size makes it easier to fill its stomach, reduce consumption, and minimize danger. Such monsters are generally very dangerous, so never provoke them.”
Ah, I’m familiar with this. It’s a common trope in games from my previous life: the smaller the size, the stronger the boss.
“Thank you for the reminder.” Jayad humbly accepted Sebastian’s experience.
“By the way, Older Brother Jayad, were you not counter-attacked by the monsters? Was it all so smooth?” I still worriedly asked, because I saw that Jayad’s clothes were torn.
“Ah, there was one time. I didn’t manage to kill it with one sword strike, and it counter-attacked. My shoulder was scratched, but the Holy Light healed it quickly,” Jayad said with a smile.
