《Ironsnake》
Haroon couldn't spend more time watching Ko-M guild. Though he enjoyed looting the battlefield, he didn’t forget that he was here for a purpose. To utilize Brat's overpowered-ish abilities again, he had to focus on hunting an ironsnake.
"Where the hell on union do they live?"
He spent days in the mineral lands, searching for them, he couldn't even locate a trace of the ironsnakes. The closest he found was a few bell snakes that made some creepy sounds.
Kaltz said ironsnakes attack and consumes any moving thing that intrudes into their territory, but all Haroon noticed were mountains with fancy stones with barely any trees growing.
"When will I find them?"
With a deep sigh, Haroon looked up. Two moons were rising in the clear sky. To his knowledge, snakes were active any time during the day or night. But ironsnakes were not well known apart from to some herbalists, so their behavior and habits were largely unknown.
Haroon decided take a rest under a big boulder. In the daytime it would shade him from the hot sunlight. He couldn't let down his guard out of fear that one could appear at any moment, so he was very tired. Appeasing his hunger with few pieces of bread and jerkies, he took breather, leaning on the boulder.
'Where the heck is it?'
Indeed it was a large area, but there weren't many places that his places that he hadn’t searched. Though it would have been impossible without the Messenger Walking skill, it was still remarkable that he'd searched six whole mountains.
The open-air mineral lands had nothing but large boulders like the one he was leaning on. It was usual for snakes to live in caves or their pits, but there was no trace of neither.
His train of thoughts reached the point that he was at the wrong mountain. In fact, he'd seen some red rocky terrain in the distance on the journey.
He gently closed his eyes, then heard something strange. It sounded like wind, or air escaping through a small gap. He wondered where the sound was coming from, but he was too exhausted, feeling to lazy to open his eyes.
When he opened his eyes trying to put the laziness aside, he felt something cold touching his skin.
"What was th-hugh!
As soon as he opened his eyes, something blackish-red coiled around his body. Something as thick as his waist was smoothly wrapping around his body.
"Damn it!"
Haroon cursed at himself for letting his guard down in this territory, then tried escaping from it, pushing it with both hands.
But it was too late. His entire body was already coiled around by the ironsnakes' body.
"Oof!"
Great amount of pressure was applied to his whole body. His bones made some kind of cracking sound as if they would break any second.
"Aaagh!"
He shouted, trying his best to pull it off from his body, but it was like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Its clenching force was so great that it felt like his organs and bones would burst out of his mouth at any moment.
His head, too, was getting so much pressure that his eyes felt like popping out. His body twitched at the pain he couldn't endure. He couldn't think because of the pain.
His face distorted with pain, but he could see the ironsnakes' face.
It was a monster. Its' head was bigger than his body, and its eyes were as large as his head. Its yellow eyes were full of aggression, and its red forked tongue licking his face was horrifyingly cold. But that cold feeling woke him up.
"You bastard!"
Haroon shouted from his gut, and started resisting the pressure.
Though only his two hands were free to move, being nearly unconscious in such emergency activated his accumulated mana. Of course, it was still not enough to deal with an ironsnake.
His resistance couldn't last long, as his whole body was twisted out of shape by it. He couldn't do much as the fight began after the ironsnake had already coiled around him.
At last, his weak body lost to it.
With some cracking sounds, ribs were broken. Soon, a bone near his shin was broken as well. He used too much strength that his vision went red, though he hadn't realized it. The pain was too strong to think straight.
With more bone-cracking sounds, his strength escaped his body, then his eyes rolled back.
Soon, the ironsnake unclenched Haroon's body.
The tongue that licked Haroon's blood that flew out through his mouth sped up, then grasped Haroon's broken legs to swallow it. At a gulp, his lower body got sucked into its mouth, soon his upper body was swallowed whole.
"Kugh!"
Haroon woke up screaming at the pain of his legs touching its body. With indescribable pain, he glared at the inside of its body.
Haroon felt an instinct for survival seeing its smooth, light-pink colored insides as opposed to its iron-hard blood colored scales.
He instinctively tried to draw the steel sword he wore on his waist, but his shoulders were so messed up that he couldn't move the upper parts of his arms. So instead, he took out the katrat knife and tried his best to stab the inside of its mouth.
It painfully hissed, and he could feel its body twitching. Unspeakable pain came from his broken legs, but he firmly gripped the knife. The inside of the ironsnake was so soft that he could easily cut it with the blade.
It gagged as if it was trying to spit him out, then his broken legs escaped its throat. He hit his head on its giant fang waking up completely.
'Only death awaits if I get spit out like this.'
He found out its weakness, and got a chance to attack it that he couldn't miss. It was fortunate that he could still move his arms.
Enduring the pain that felt like his shoulders would fall off, he threw anything he could grab from the slots on his arm sleeves.
He even threw the artifact of the Legendary Throwing Knife Master, but he had no idea. He couldn't know, as the situation was beyond his recognition, as the ironsnake was wiggling its shaking body and head hard from the pain.
Before he knew, its movement were weakened. He realized the front end of its tongue was long gone. His body was wet with its blood and his own.
Its big body convulsed.
With a banging sound, which he assumed was the sound of its tail falling, it stopped moving.
'Is it dead?'
More time passed, but the ironsnake was't moving any longer.
Haroon tried to open his eyes, but he couldn't. He tried to breath, but he couldn't. His entire head was under some cold liquid, but at that moment he thought his entire body was.
Through his nose and mouth, large amount of blood flood in. It was cold and sickening, but there was no time to feel it.
He had to swallow great amounts of it several times to be barely able to breath, with his lips sticking out of the liquid.
Coughing, he spat out the blood that flew into his lungs, then he had to drank another large amount of blood to be able to breathe again, and open his eyes.
It's long, sharp fangs were penetrating his body. But thanks to that, its mouth was open so that he could see the moonlight.
After a while, he could see blurry surroundings
The first thing that came into his view were throwing weapons that were stuck deeply into its palate. Its blood was still dripping off from them. There were knives, daggers and shurikens. It seemed that he threw everything he had.
"Hehehe."
Then he knew he survived. He knew he killed an ironsnake with only throwing weapons.
It was so sudden that he couldn't even think of summoning his spirits. Though he went all but one step away from dying, it proved that he could deal with great monsters using his own strength, without Brat's help.
He turned his head to see the other side.
"Aagh!" He screamed
His body was so messed up that just trying to tilt his head a bit was truly painful. It took awhile for him to calm down and open his eyes. Only then He saw how messed up his body was.
Its' mouth was full of blood. Its wounds were pumping out blood, and half of his body was submerged in its blood. Especially where his head was, it was lower than any other places so even his ears were in the blood, but he couldn't tell if an ironsnake's mouth was shaped like that, or if he messed that part up with blades.
[Your H.P. is below 5%. If not treated soon enough, your character may die.]
It was the U.I. sound.
Though it was cruel to hear, he could tell that he was still alive.
'I can't die like this.'
He clenched his teeth.
"Kugh! Hugh!"
He tried his best to move his hands. But as if the shoulders were broken, he felt the pain of his dislocated shoulders, and he couldn't move his arms easily.
After screaming enough to be tired from it, Haroon barely took out a potion from his inventory. But he couldn't open the stopper so instead he ate the entire bottle.
He clenched his teeth to break it. He felt the glass cutting the insides of his mouth, but he drank the potion. The death count was at seven.
He heard something very strange and yet special.
He opened his eyes with great difficulty, then he saw an old knife stuck in the corner of the ironsnake's palate. Interestingly enough, it was illuminated with blue light, and was making a strange sound.
'I-is that the legendary throwing knife master's knife?'
He tried his best to stay awake, but his eyes were slowly closing.
End of Vol.4, To be continued…
Translated by Channy
Edited by Kmatt
Editors' notes:
Channy: It was a rough volume, wasn't it? Our schedules all messed up… delays and everything. xD Thank you for spending time with our works and we'll return with volume 5. We'll update ToC for chapter 5 fairly soon.
Kmatt: We made it! Thanks for reading guys and hope you're also looking forward to the next volume.