Chapter 402: The Swamp Orc Clan
The temporary Adventurer camp called Black Tide was always bustling with people.
Some came from elsewhere, using it as a stepping stone into that chaotic land full of danger and opportunity.
Others returned from the former Blackwater Town region, weary from the road and bringing back more or less supplies and men. Of course, not everyone who returned was alive. Some came back with corpses wrapped in shrouds.
When the adventurers who had yet to set out caught sight of the bodies piled on the carts, their excited expressions suddenly vanished, as though they had glimpsed their own future.
That was the cruelty of adventuring. Every day, people died without a sound.
People only sang the praises of great adventurers who had achieved fame and success. These corpses weren't even worthy of a few lines from a Bard.
And yet, even so, they were still lucky. Compared to their companions who were left exposed in the wilderness, reduced to nothing but bones, eaten by monsters, or even tortured and abused before they died, keeping their bodies intact and having a chance to return them to their families was itself something to be grateful for.
There were people who wandered the wilderness specifically to collect corpses.
These wilderness corpse collectors weren't philanthropists who spent their own money and risked their lives to bring back adventurers' remains for free.
They did it because collecting corpses gave them the right to loot the victims' spoils.
Of course, some might wonder: if they came across a corpse in the wilderness, they could already take any unclaimed possessions at the scene. Why go to all the trouble of hauling the body back to town?
There was a reason. Many adventurers didn't carry all their assets with them, but kept