37. I Have No Money

“Huff..!”

As I kick away the fallen orc’s corpse, I simultaneously charge towards the weak spot targeted by the Umbra Valkyrie’s sight.

Crack-

The second orc’s neck was shattered as if torn apart by the swung machete. I advance towards the next orc and drive the war pick into its head.

The orcs’ movements become urgent, and they gradually tighten the encirclement.

The Valkyrie’s eyes flicker. Dozens of weak points glimmered within my sight, as if begging to be destroyed. I dodge the axe swung at me and plant a kick into its forehead.

Crunch-

I pull my foot out of the orc’s face and dash backward. I throw the machete at the face of the one charging at me from the side.

—Roar!!

I draw a sword from the ring and thrust it horizontally into the chest of the one that got close. The vertically held sword is too thick to wedge between the ribs.

Squelch—

As I pull out the sword, it comes out with a handful of sticky blood, having pierced the heart. I take a sip of the blood dripping from the sword raised to the sky and turn my head again.

“Tastes like shit.”

There are only four orcs within about 20 meters.

I swing the sword in the air to shake off the blood and throw it at the one farthest away among the four.

Noticing the axe swung by the approaching figure, I swiftly smashed the axe handle with my war pick. However, the axe blade, which hadn’t lost its momentum, dug into my right shoulder.

“Ugh..!”

It’s fine. There’s still plenty of blood left. I fill the blood lost from the wound with that of a regular direwolf, preserving Ursus’s blood and waiting for the wound to heal.

I thrust the war pick into the face of the one whose axe was broken, and leaving the deeply embedded war pick as it was, I swung my hand to strike another’s eyeball with my gauntlet.

Every time I moved, blood flowed more quickly from the wound, but it didn’t matter.

Rather, I felt lighter. My mood improved significantly.

I pulled the war pick from the fallen corpse, took another sword from the ring, and cut off the approaching figure’s arm and shallowly slashed its neck.

Running quickly towards the corpse, I stored the sword in the ring, pulled out the embedded sword, and threw it at the nearest figure again.

Should I retrieve the sword? I threw it too far. The machete? I don’t even know where it is.

But I have plenty of weapons.

“Crude.”

I snatched the axe from the hand of the fallen orc and threw it at the approaching figure. I also put the war pick I was holding in my right hand into the ring, grabbed the broken axe blade with my hand, and threw it forcefully.

—Swoosh!!

Every time the axe blade advanced and I heard the sound of it embedding somewhere, Umbra Valkyrie’s vision erased the glowing red weak points one by one, as if saying “well done.”

“Roar!! Human!!”

At some point, an orc that had gotten behind me swung a club at me.

Thud—!!

I was hit so hard that my body flew through the air and rolled. It seemed like my lung was crushed, but it was fine. Didn’t I have another lung?

“Cough. Damn. That strength is incredible.”

I spat out a mouthful of blood, and replaced the shattered ribcage and the lung pierced by bone fragments with Ursus’s.

“Whew. Good.”

I stored the shattered ribs with a skill and forcibly combined them with Ursus’s femur.

I threw a war pick at the face of the guy striding towards me as I lay on the ground, then sprang up and kicked his head, shattering it while pulling out the war pick.

Clubs are not for throwing. They’re too heavy and not lethal enough.

In the end, I threw the war pick, retrieved it, grabbed an axe, threw it, and when I was surrounded by orcs and on the brink of death.

I leaped into the sky, stomped on their heads, and fled far away, repeating the process.

I came to a cliff where lizardmen lay fallen, used the dozens of spears scattered on the corpses as weapons, threw them, retrieved them, and fled when surrounded.

The sensation of my brain burning hundreds of times. Bleeding dozens of times. Being struck by weapons and sent flying dozens of times.

I shattered hundreds of weak points, threw weapons hundreds of times.

It felt like dozens of liters of blood flowed from my wounds. Of course, the blood stored by the skill filled my body again and flowed through my veins.

Now, there were no muscles that weren’t fatigued. I tried to control it as much as possible, but in the end, all the muscles I had consumed complained of fatigue.

I was so hungry, and the beast’s instinct kept invading my mind. Around the middle, I devoured the corpse of a lizardman to replenish blood and muscle.

I collected the dozens of spears scattered around, threw them at weak points, devoured the orc corpses that had fallen with spears in their heads to replenish blood and muscle, and advanced again.

I retrieved the thrown spears, threw them again, retrieved them again. After all, spears seem to be the most suitable weapon for throwing. I don’t know if it’s because of the lizardmen’s high craftsmanship, but they were quite well-made weapons.

The forest was littered with the corpses of orcs with holes in their heads. One step forward, another corpse, turn my head, another corpse.

Dozens of hearts. Similar number of lungs. About dozens of liters of blood? A lot of muscle. I ate them all.

Most of the orcs that crawled into the forest to kill me were dead. These b*stards kept charging even though they knew they would die, as if it was a passive trait, even though there were few of their kind left.

—Thud!!

“0.5 Chukshindoo.”

I kicked the heads of the ones who had fallen with spears in their bodies, finishing them off. There wasn’t a part of my body that didn’t hurt.

But for some reason, strength surged through my body. The sensation of my feet crushing the ground and moving forward was distinctly different from before. The more blood I shed, the stronger this sensation became.

“Looks like we’re screwed.”

Even sitting down, the massive orc, nearly 2 meters tall, was waiting for me in a cross-legged position in the flower field.

He wore a necklace made of skulls, had strange tattoos, and two enormous axes were stuck into the ground on either side of him.

“An orc… leader? Like an orc chieftain?”

My blood-soaked hair began to dry and crumble. As I swept my bangs back with my right hand, powdered blood fell away.

I took off the gambeson, heavy and suffocating from being soaked in blood. Seeing the many torn places, it was clear it had done its job. With blood trapped inside the thick gambeson, there was no way the undergarment I wore underneath could be intact.

As I threw off the blood-soaked top, the still chilly spring evening breeze coolly tickled my body.

I felt very refreshed, like I could do anything. My body was overflowing with strength. Overflowing and spilling over.

“Human…!”

“Yes, I’m human.”

As he stood up, he looked at least 3 meters tall. His dark green skin had a reddish tinge, clearly showing he was truly pissed off.

“Warriors… dead…!! Must kill…!!”

He pulled out the two axes stuck in the ground beside him and shouted loudly. The entire tenth floor echoed with his roar.

“Roaaarrrrrr – !!!!!!!!!!!!”

The sky was full of stars, and the moonlight was bright. Beautiful flowers emitted a mysterious and beautiful light, a mix of strange purple and blue hues.

I took out a lizardman’s spear from the ring on my left hand and held it in my right.

“Hissss…”

I filled my lungs with air, supplying oxygen to all the muscles in my body.

After accurately pinpointing the weak spot of the creature my right eye was targeting, I firmly planted my left heel into the ground.

Turning my hips along with my knees, and my shoulders along with my waist.

These are the muscles gifted to me by the strong orc warriors. Finally, as I released the grip that held the spear with great force from the end of my right arm, which had lashed out like a whip,

ㅡBBoooM!!!

The tip of the spear, tearing through the air, precisely pierced the orc chieftain’s skull.

SPLAT-

The head split open and shattered into pieces. Then the massive body collapsed onto the flower field.

“Huh, how many pretty flowers are under that ugly body.”

Dragging my seemingly broken body, I headed towards the corpse. I pushed the heavy body with all my might, flipped it over, took its axe, and smashed its chest, breaking the ribs and opening the thorax.

“Yoshi, is it mealtime?”

A very large lung and heart. Let’s eat them deliciously. Whether it’s the body or whatever, right now, it feels like I could even chew bones.

CRUNCH-

I completely tore off the severed peritoneum, sat cross-legged on the soft intestines, and chewed and swallowed all the useful-looking organs. I don’t even know what I’m eating.

Chewing, tearing, tasting, and enjoying the whole body of the orc chieftain, my head is too dazed from the prolonged battle. My body is full of energy, but my vision is slightly blurry, and my senses are vague. It’s a better environment for eating raw.

“But I have to finish eating this. Oh.”

I sensed a presence. Is it a person? It is a person. They aren’t coming to steal my food, are they?

“Who is it?”

I stood up from where I was sitting and looked to the side. Hmm.

“I can’t see well.”

My vision is blurry, so I can only see that there is a person.

“If you’re here to steal my food, get lost quickly.”

“…You’d better be careful.”

“What should I be careful about?”

“It seems you’ve acquired a new skill. Return to the surface and properly verify your abilities. If you deem it safe, then continue your exploration.”

“Ha, that’s… true.”

But I can’t give up on this. It’s the 10th-floor boss I’ve finally caught.

I can’t give up.

I can’t give up.

“Damn… I’m so sleepy…”

* * * * *

“Ugh…”

A strange ceiling.

It’s the first time I’ve smelled such an artificial and pleasant scent since entering this world. Is it a diffuser? My whole body feels like it’s been shattered. Such intense muscle pain.

‘Is there any muscle I haven’t used?’

The muscles I’m using now are Ursus’s. Through the skill, I swapped muscles here and there, finding ones that hadn’t been used and were intact.

“These are the muscles of an Orc Chief.”

Finally, my limbs can move a bit. The strength I feel in my grip is on another level. The surroundings are draped in white curtains, like a hospital, but I have no idea where this is.

I get up from the bed and reach out to pull back the curtain. Next to me, there’s a drawer, a sofa, a table, and all sorts of things.

“A hospital..? Is there such a modern hospital?”

It feels like an expensive private room in a hospital. No matter how generously I look at it, this world is stuck in the medieval era, except for the magical parts. Is there really such a well-maintained hospital?

As I completely get off the bed and look around, I hear someone approaching from outside the door.

ㅡCreak

“Oh my..! How did you get up?!”

“Huh? Well, I just got up.”

With a look like a mother seeing her baby stand on two feet for the first time, an unknown woman looked at me and exclaimed in surprise.

“You, your… all your muscles were completely collapsed…”

“Oh, that. Well, it just happened. But where am I?”

As if realizing it only then, the woman cleared her throat and introduced the current location.

“Ah, this is Room 4 in the main building of the Meyerbridge Union Clan.”

“Meyer… Why am I here?”

Knowing the location only made it more confusing. What is this? Why am I here?

“Uh, I have no money. I can’t pay for the hospital bills.”

Damn, I’m screwed.