Spoils of War

"Shock, disbelief, incredulity..."

Watching the stone spear pierce clean through her own chest, Sheris's eyes couldn't hold back a flood of emotions...

She had anticipated many reactions from Ul, but never in her wildest dreams had she expected this kind of ending.

This script was all wrong!

Even setting aside Sheris, Jelka herself, upon seeing Ul's spear impale both Jeris and Sheris in a single thrust, felt her pupils contract sharply, her face a mask of utter disbelief.

The scene fell into dead silence.

The sound of Ul's footsteps treading across the ground rang out with an unnerving clarity at this moment.

"Why?" Jelka still couldn't believe it, especially when she saw Jeris's figure lying on the ground. Her gaze went blank, tears gradually welling up in her eyes, and she couldn't help shouting at Ul in accusation: "Why would you do that? He was your comrade!"

Jelka's tone carried anger, along with a disappointment she could barely conceal.

Ul blankly lifted his head to look at Jelka, her face streaked with tears, and then, utterly bewildered, uttered his first words since the battle began: "Who told you he was my comrade? That guy was just a thief I captured while completing a mission."

Sheris: "!!!"

Jelka: "!!!"

With those faint words falling.

Ul could clearly sense that the expressions on Sheris and Jelka's faces instantly stiffened.

Especially Jelka. After hearing Ul's words, the look on her face was caught between crying and laughing. For a moment, she stood frozen in place, her mouth hanging wide open, tear tracks still fresh on her cheeks, looking both adorable and pitiful...

As for Sheris, her heart was utterly shattered at this moment.

If she still had the strength to roar, she would have furiously cursed Ul out: Do you have some kind of sickness, carrying a severely wounded thief around on a battlefield for no damn reason!

Too bad!

Sheris no longer had any strength left to speak.

Ul's strike had been aimed directly at her vital point. The only reason she had managed to stay standing until now was by forcibly sustaining herself with her Magic Power. But after hearing Ul's words, the last breath of willpower inside her instantly dissipated.

Feeling the life force rapidly fading from her body, Sheris forced herself upright and suddenly called out to Ul: "Kid!"

"Hm?"

Hearing someone call out to him, Ul lifted his head slightly and glanced at Sheris.

And at that moment, Sheris opened her mouth and spat out the final words of her life at Ul, before her entire body crashed to the ground with a thud.

As for Ul, after hearing Sheris's words, his face immediately darkened.

Because if Sheris's final words to Ul were roughly translated, they meant something along the lines of:

"Go to hell..."

Being cursed out by an enemy right before their death left Ul in a rather peculiar mood.

At first.

Ul felt quite aggrieved. After all, if a living person had cursed him, he could at least curse back. But facing a corpse, he couldn't exactly go desecrate it.

Even if the corpse did have a decent figure and face.

But when a surge of immense Magic Power suddenly poured in from Sheris's body, that little bit of resentment in Ul's heart instantly vanished!

Sheris was nothing like the small fry before.

Her strength, even within "Devil's Fang," ranked among the high-tier combatants. Her Magic Power was infinitely close to—if not already at—the critical threshold of an S-rank Mage.

Even if only a tenth of this vast Magic Power remained.

It would still be an absolutely astonishing boost to Ul's strength.

The sudden increase in Ul's Magic Power didn't escape Jelka's notice, but although she was deeply puzzled, she didn't voice the question.

After all, her relationship with Ul wasn't close enough for that.

Having already learned his lesson once with Erza, this time, after killing Sheris, Ul immediately walked over to start "looting the corpse."

People in this world weren't in the habit of carrying everything on their persons—after all, not every Mage mastered spatial magic.

So at first, Ul didn't really expect to find anything on Sheris, whose body was "completely exposed" from head to toe.

But to Ul's surprise, Sheris had actually hidden some good stuff on her.

Looking at the rolled-up parchment he had pulled from Sheris's body, a faint glint of curiosity flickered in Ul's eyes.

This parchment didn't record just anything—it contained the very "White Fire Magic" that Sheris herself practiced.

Ul took a brief glance at the contents inside the parchment, then tucked it into his robes.

Although he hadn't gotten the money he wanted from Sheris's body, obtaining such a rare and powerful magic was still a pretty good haul.

Ul was actually a very easy person to satisfy.

When it came to spoils of war, he was never picky—he accepted whatever came his way.

After stowing away his loot, Ul finally turned his gaze to Jeris, who had already lost all signs of life.

Jeris was dead through and through.

There was no doubt about it.

When Ul attacked, he hadn't deliberately avoided Jeris's vital points. On the contrary, he had even intentionally aimed the Rock Spear at Jeris's heart, because only then could he justifiably and reasonably swallow up all those gold coins.

With Jeris dead, it meant Ul's mission had already failed!

But after obtaining those gold coins, whether his mission succeeded or failed no longer mattered much to him.

Ul couldn't very well carry a corpse out of there.

So after dealing with Sheris and Jeris, Ul walked straight up to Jelka, ignored her resistance, scooped her up in his arms, and quickly left Moya City...