A Cautious Water Ghoul

After confirming they would proceed with the commission, everyone grabbed a simple meal at the tavern and rested for a while.

Once the sun had lost some of its intensity, they set off to search the riverbank for clues.

The afternoon sunlight shone on the river, its rippling surface shimmering with a warm golden glow. A gentle breeze swept along the bank, swaying the colorful aquatic plants.

The group had only just arrived at the riverbank, but the beautiful scenery left them speechless for a long while. For a moment, they nearly forgot why they had come.

"This is where the tavern owner said the fight took place, right?"

Gauss bent down and spotted a few dried, dark-brown smears of blood on the stones along the riverbank. He beckoned the others over.

According to Harvey, the fat tavern owner, the sailors had fought the water ghouls here.

"This must be the place." Leven and the others came over.

"There's the smell of human blood, and a really awful fishy stench." Meva leaned closer and sniffed. The corner of her eye twitched briefly before her face returned to its usual impassive expression.

Even so, Gauss had caught that fleeting change in her expression. He couldn't help chuckling to himself.

He had only recently learned that Meva, a Rogue apprentice, had the skill [Perception].

The skill let its user detect hidden enemies, clues, traps, and other traces through sight, hearing, or the other senses.

Especially since she had some Elf blood, her five senses were already sharper than most. Her Perception skill worked better than that of other Rogue apprentices.

If anyone on the team besides Gauss had the greatest chance of advancing to a full-fledged class—and doing so the fastest—it was most likely Meva.

Of course, Perception could not only help the team find clues but also amplify the sensory stimuli she received. That was why Meva had unconsciously grimaced.

The fishy stench had clearly come from the water ghouls, their target on this expedition.

Gauss recalled what he knew about water ghouls.

Water ghouls were one of the more common monsters in this world. They had gaunt, humanoid bodies, sunken eye sockets, long, thin limbs, and prominent joints. They often moved hunched over, their gray-green skin covered in a layer of thick, rotting slime.

Because they looked so much like humans, folk tales claimed they were the spirits of people who had drowned.

They mainly lived around rivers, lakes, marshes, and other bodies of water, relying on those environments to hunt. They weren't picky eaters; they ate whatever they could get—animal carcasses, rotting meat, human refuse, mud, dead leaves, fruit, and more.

At times, they also attacked people who ventured near the water, such as fishermen, washerwomen, and anglers.

They mimicked human voices to lure their prey. Once their target reached the riverbank, they dragged them into the water, drowned them, then gutted and devoured them.

Water ghouls rarely acted alone, but they didn't gather in especially large groups, either. They usually moved in groups of ten to fifteen. More than twenty, as there were this time, made for a fairly large band.

"Wonder where the hell they're hiding." An impatient Doyle picked up a pebble and hurled it hard into the water.

The stone splashed up a huge spray, but it was quickly swallowed by the rushing current.

Ordinary water ghouls were excellent swimmers, but they couldn't stay underwater forever; they had to surface from time to time to breathe.

Besides, unless they had a reason to hide in the water, they usually preferred shallow areas like shoals, marshes, or muddy riverbanks.

So where were the water ghouls hiding now?

"If all else fails, we can wait until sundown and see what happens. They're more active then."

Since the team had accepted a water ghoul job, they had prepared for a situation like this.

If the water ghouls were determined to swim out into the river, their underwater mobility would make them impossible for most low-level adventurers to deal with.

Fortunately, they weren't especially intelligent, so they could often be lured out of their hiding places by other means.

"Good thing we brought this." Leven took out two decaying gray rabbit carcasses that reeked. "We'll set the bait later."

With no other clues to go on, everyone worried they might scare off the water ghouls, so they decided to leave for now.

A few hours passed in the blink of an eye.

When the group returned, they carefully hid themselves after setting the trap.

They had laid out bait and made the other preparations along a different stretch of riverbank.

The two gray rabbit carcasses, crawling with maggots after being left to rot for so long, had become even more pungent after they added an odor catalyst.

That powerful stench of decay was exactly what water ghouls loved.

With everything ready, the group could only hide and wait in silence.

The sun sank in the west and finally disappeared below the horizon.

Night deepened. Fortunately, the riverbank was fairly open, and the moonlight still cast enough light to illuminate the shore.

They had waited for a long time and were starting to think there would be no catch that night. They were about to pack up and head back to rest when—

The sound of water churning came from far away, growing closer and closer.

In the bright moonlight, one after another, gray-black figures parted the reeds at the shallow riverbank. Their pitch-black toes stepped over the stones as they crawled toward shore.

A dozen slick, dark figures silently crawled out of the water together, making for a chilling sight.

The water ghoul in front cautiously scanned its surroundings. Only after confirming there were no other creatures nearby did it lead the rest of the group out of the water, though they didn't venture far from the shore.

"They're this cautious?" Leven frowned.

The water ghouls' behavior didn't match Harvey's description, nor did it fit Leven's impression of them.

They seemed more like creatures on edge, wary of some Natural Enemy lurking out of sight.

But the trap was already set, and the water ghouls had appeared as expected. Leven had no choice but to set aside his doubts for the moment and focus on the coming fight.

"Grrr! Grrr!"

After pausing and hesitating for a long while, the water ghouls began to growl softly, making hoarse noises. In the end, they couldn't resist and headed for the bait trap the team had prepared.

To the water ghouls, the specially treated, extra-stinky corpse was like a delicious feast suddenly laid out after a day or two of hunger. It was almost impossible to resist.

Everyone watched the water ghouls draw closer, but still didn't make a move.

Gauss silently counted their numbers.

He was just ten kills short of triggering the next-stage reward, so naturally he cared about the count more than anyone.

Seventeen water ghouls.

That seemed fewer than expected.

The job briefing had said there were more than twenty. Even if the sailors had killed two, shouldn't there still be around twenty?

Where had the rest gone?

Were a few hiding somewhere else instead of coming out with the main group? Or had something else happened to them?

Just as people faced unknown dangers in the wild, monsters also faced all kinds of threats.

They might be the result of uncontrollable accidents, like slipping and falling to their deaths, being swept away by a raging underwater whirlpool, or, in rare cases, being struck by lightning. They might also be caused by attacks from other large beasts or monsters.