Xia Ya went down flat on his back at once, chest heaving, wheezing like a cracked bellows, his heart pounding like a war drum. Arms and legs limp and strengthless, sweat pouring off him in sheets.
Only after a long rest did he manage to sit up. The wounds on his back pulled, and he hissed in air through his teeth at the pain. He glanced back at the wolf — the body had already gone stiff.
"Haha! Hahaha!" Xia Ya laughed wildly. "You wanted to eat me? Hmph! I'm going to be the strongest demon hunter on the whole continent — how could I die here!"
He paused, and a savage look crossed his face. "You wanted to eat me, so today I'll eat you first."
The words were hardly out before his strength gave out completely. He struggled twice and still couldn't stand, so he hollered: "Hey! Poor wretch, are you a dead man? You didn't lift a finger during the fight, fine, but now you see I'm hurt and you won't even come help me up?"
Only then did the poor wretch poke his head out from behind a pile of rotting trunks, his face blanched white with fright. Seeing that Xia Ya was still alive, he let out a glad cry and ran to his side.
"Don't pull me up yet... there's herbal medicine in my bundle. Then help me put it on... the wounds are on my back, I can't reach them myself."
Xia Ya waved a hand feebly.
But very soon he regretted asking this fellow for help.
The poor wretch had clearly never bandaged a wound in his life. He took a strip of cloth and wound it around Xia Ya for the longest time, ending up with a crooked, cockeyed mess.
"Hey, what kind of knot is this you've tied on my chest?"
"Uh, to hold the cloth in place."
"I know it's to hold the cloth in place, but it's a weird way to do it. What is that thing? So complicated — you wasted so much of my cloth."
"...A bow."
"A bow? What use is that?"
"Uh... it looks nice."
Because of this sudden turn of events, both of them were wounded now, and they could only rest where they were.
Xia Ya rested a good while before getting a bit of his strength back. He had been smarting over the cloth the poor wretch had wasted, but then he spotted the wolf carcass beside him and his brows smoothed into a beaming grin.
"Hahaha, I'm rich, I'm rich!" Xia Ya scrambled over on hands and knees; from the look of him, he would gladly have hugged the carcass and planted two big kisses on it.
He had sneaked off to hunt magic beasts two or three times before, but he had only ever taken low-grade stuff that wasn't especially dangerous. The one time he'd caught a fire-tree raccoon, he'd needed a beast trap to help him.
But this bloodthirsty mad wolf in front of him was plainly a full-grown animal — powerfully built, its coat thick and glossy.
Low-grade or not among magic beasts, this particular animal counted as mid-grade. For one thing, Xia Ya hadn't chopped its head off this time; there was hardly a wound anywhere on the body, and the hide was intact. Skinned properly and hauled to Wildfire Town, it would fetch several silver coins!
Several silver coins — enough to keep Xia Ya fed for a month or two.
And there were the bones. An ordinary bloodthirsty mad wolf's bones might not be worth much, but the beast Xia Ya had killed was a sturdy, full-grown giant wolf. The mad wolf's demonizing effect was in fact a branch of earth magic, and its bones were well suited to earth-element magic as well; some shops were willing to buy wolf bones.
He did the sums: if he could carry the wolf back, hide and bones together, with a little luck it would sell for seven or eight silver coins.
Xia Ya's heart actually began to race. Why not just haul the thing back to Wildfire Town and skip the risk of hunting lion beast cubs? The money from the hide could repay the advance from that shop on Black Street; what was left would keep him for two or three months, and he could buy himself a real sword — and if his luck held, there might still be enough to pick up a decent set of leather armor.
Watching Xia Ya Leiming caper about in delight, the poor wretch was rather unimpressed.
A bumpkin is a bumpkin. Is one wolf carcass really worth getting this excited over?
But watching Xia Ya dance around hugging the wolf carcass, so worked up that he kept pulling his wounds — grinning and grimacing with pain all at once — the poor wretch found himself feeling a little sorry for the fellow.
"Hey..." the poor wretch called. When Xia Ya turned his face, the wretch was already red to the ears. "Um... thank you. You saved me again."
"Don't thank me. I wasn't saving you, I was saving myself — if I hadn't killed it, I'd have been finished too." Xia Ya waved it off.
That careless refusal of gratitude somehow made him look better in the poor wretch's eyes. The wretch smiled with pursed lips. "I'm actually starting to believe you're a demon hunter."
"Why?"
"You're very strong." The poor wretch flushed and made a few awkward gestures with one hand. "I know how strong a bloodthirsty mad wolf is, but you overpowered it. And the way you go at it when you're fighting for your life — it's scary."
The poor wretch's eyes suddenly lit up as an idea came to him. "So what do you plan to do now? You must have come out into the wild to hunt, right? Well, now you've got your quarry — are you going to head back?"
What the poor wretch really wanted to ask was: Could you take me back on your way?
From everything that had happened since yesterday, the poor wretch understood perfectly well that without someone to protect him, on his own he wouldn't last a single day out on Wildfire Plain!
Without protection, even if no magic beast ate him, he might run into one of those Black Tribes that were neither good nor evil, or some other ruthless adventurers, and they'd likely butcher him like a fat sheep.
And his looks, he feared, would only bring him worse misfortune still.
Sticking close to this bumpkin is probably the safer bet. At least he's got real skill — he killed a giant wolf single-handed. And he can't even tell a pretty woman from an ugly one, so traveling with him, I don't have to worry about him getting any wicked ideas about me.
Xia Ya thought it over, glanced at the wolf carcass, and sighed. "No. I can't go back yet. I... still have to find a lion beast."
"Why?!" the poor wretch cried at once. "Haven't you already got your quarry? A wolf this big will be hard enough to carry back as it is — you don't need to hunt anything else!"
What he really meant was: I am not spending another day wandering this dangerous Wildfire Plain with you. Better to sweet-talk this bumpkin into escorting me home.
"The wolf..." Xia Ya Leiming looked at his prize with longing. "The wolf's good, but... I gave someone my word. Ugh. I signed a contract — I can't go back on it."
At that he puffed out his chest. "The old geezer taught me. He said: don't say a thing you can't do! But once you've given someone your word, you see it through! A man's word is a nail — spit it out and it's driven in!"
Young as he was, and coming right after the ferocious fighting he had just shown, his chest-out declaration at that moment gave him a real touch of heroic spirit.
"But..." The poor wretch grew anxious. "But we're both hurt. And I need to get back and find someone to treat my injuries. You're hurt badly too... uh, couldn't you take me back to town first?"
"Absolutely not! This is a matter of a man's dignity!" Xia Ya Leiming shook his head firmly.
"But—" The poor wretch was getting angry, then suddenly recalled how this fellow had danced about hugging the wolf carcass, and his eyes shifted. "Then what if I pay you? Say I hire you to escort me back. How much is your manly dignity worth?"
"Pfft. You think I'm the sort who'd give up his ideals for money?" Xia Ya Leiming looked magnificently righteous.
"Fifty gold coins." What the poor wretch would really have liked to say was five hundred, but he was afraid of scaring a bumpkin who'd never seen the world.
Xia Ya Leiming's eyes lit up, and his face at once showed wavering. Fifty gold coins! Such a fortune — he had never even laid eyes on that much!
Fifty gold coins was enough to buy a top-grade demon hunter's outfit in Wildfire Town, to drink fine liquor, to eat at the most expensive restaurant in town. Maybe... he could even go see the legendary "Powder Street" and get a look at the wider world...
But Xia Ya thought it over and shook his head, putting on a scornful look. "Fifty gold coins? If you had fifty gold coins, you could hire a whole squad of warriors to guard you. The way you look, you're some down-and-out noble — maybe even a fugitive. I don't believe for a second you've got that kind of money."
The poor wretch smiled proudly, reached into his clothes, and drew out a deerskin pouch. The pouch itself was no common thing, embroidered with gold-thread patterns — clearly no ordinary item. He held it up and shook it twice; it jingled and clinked, and then he opened it and tipped it over, and out poured a great pile of bright golden things!
Gold coins!!
Genuine gold coins! Gold coins of the Byzantine Empire!!
Xia Ya Leiming froze. Then he lunged over in a couple of strides, snatched up a few, weighed them in his palm, and even bit down hard on one.
It was real — real gold!!
He raised his head and stared at the poor wretch — so this fellow is actually that rich?
"Well?" Seeing the bumpkin really had lost his head at the sight of gold, the poor wretch's face showed a flicker of contempt. "This money ought to be enough to buy that so-called manly dignity of yours!"
Xia Ya drew a deep breath, dropped the coins in his hand to the ground, and lifted his head to look at the poor wretch with a strange expression.
His eyes were very calm — there was even a hint of amusement in them.
"Honestly, you really shouldn't have pulled out that much money in front of me." Xia Ya Leiming's tone was dead serious.
"Wh-why?" Perhaps sensing something ominous in the bumpkin's tone, the poor wretch grew nervous.
"I forgot to tell you." Xia Ya Leiming smiled a tight-lipped smile, a curve rising at the corner of his mouth. "I may be a demon hunter, but... under special circumstances, I don't mind moonlighting in other professions now and then."
"What profession?"
Xia Ya grinned on purpose, baring a mouthful of white teeth. "A bandit!"
He sighed, his tone going lazy. "Especially when a fat sheep with no ability to fight back pulls out a pile of money right in front of me, and the surroundings just happen to be empty wilderness — call on heaven and get no answer, call on earth and get no help — kill the man, take the money, dig a random hole, bury the body, and maybe thirty or fifty years pass before anyone finds it..."
He dragged the words out very, very slowly on purpose, then laughed. "Whenever that happens, I don't mind taking on a little 'part-time job' now and then."