The Spoils

"Shock, disbelief, sheer incredulity..."

As she stared at the stone spear that had pierced straight through her chest, all kinds of emotions surfaced uncontrollably in Sheris's eyes...

She had anticipated many of Ul's reactions, but never in her wildest dreams had she expected things to end like this.

This wasn't how the script was supposed to go!

Even Jelka, let alone Sheris, had seen Ul run his spear through both Jeris and Sheris at once. Her pupils had contracted, and her face was full of disbelief.

The scene fell silent.

Ul's footsteps as he walked across the ground sounded especially jarring in the stillness.

"Why?" Jelka still couldn't believe it. Especially when she saw Jeris lying on the ground, her gaze grew vacant, tears gradually welling in her eyes. She couldn't help shouting at Ul, "Why would you do this? He was your companion!"

There was anger in Jelka's voice, along with unmistakable disappointment.

Ul looked up blankly at Jelka, her face streaked with tears. Then, looking utterly bewildered, he spoke his first words since the battle began. "Who told you he was my companion? That guy was just a thief I captured while carrying out a mission."

Sheris: "!!!"

Jelka: "!!!"

As the casual words fell, Ul could clearly see Sheris and Jelka's expressions stiffen in an instant.

Jelka especially looked as if she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. She stood rooted to the spot, completely dumbstruck, her mouth hanging open. The tears on her face hadn't even dried. She looked both adorable and pitiful...

Sheris, meanwhile, was utterly devastated.

If she still had the strength to yell, she would have given Ul a piece of her mind: Were you out of your damn mind? Why the hell were you running around the battlefield carrying an injured thief?

Unfortunately!

Sheris no longer had the strength to speak.

Ul's attack had been aimed squarely at her vital points. She had held on this long only by forcing her magic to sustain her, but after hearing Ul's words, the last of her fighting spirit vanished.

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

"Hm?"

Hearing someone call him, Ul glanced up at Sheris.

At that moment, Sheris opened her mouth and spat out the last few words of her life. Then her body crashed to the ground.

When Ul heard what Sheris had said, his face immediately darkened.

Because if you translated those few words she'd said to him, they roughly meant:

"Son of a bitch..."

Being cursed out by an enemy on her deathbed left Ul feeling rather conflicted.

At first,

Ul had been pretty aggrieved. If a living person had cursed him out, at least he could have cursed them back. But when faced with a corpse, he couldn't exactly go and desecrate it.

Even if the corpse did have a pretty nice figure and face.

But when a tremendous surge of magic suddenly flowed into Sheris's body, the little bit of resentment in Ul's heart vanished in an instant!

Sheris was nothing like the underlings he'd dealt with before.

Even within the Devil's Fang, her strength ranked among the high-tier combatants. Her magic power was practically boundless, bringing her close to—or perhaps even right up against—the threshold of an S-Class Mage.

Even if Ul gained only a tenth of that tremendous magic power,

the boost to his strength would still be astonishing.

Jelka noticed the sudden increase in Ul's magic power, but although she was puzzled, she didn't ask him about it.

After all, she and Ul weren't close enough for that.

He'd already learned his lesson once from Erza, so this time, immediately after killing Sheris, Ul went over and started "looting the body."

People in this world didn't have a habit of carrying everything on them. After all, not every Mage knew space magic.

So at first, Ul hadn't really expected to find anything on Sheris, whose whole body was "on full display."

But to his surprise, Sheris really did have some good stuff hidden on her.

Ul's eyes glinted strangely as he pulled a scroll of parchment from Sheris's body.

The scroll contained no ordinary information. It recorded the White Fire Magic that Sheris herself had practiced.

Ul glanced over its contents, then tucked it away inside his clothes.

Although he hadn't found the money he wanted on Sheris, getting his hands on a rare and powerful form of magic was still a decent haul.

Ul was actually an easy person to satisfy.

When it came to spoils, he wasn't picky. He never turned anything down.

After putting away his spoils,

Ul turned his attention to Jeris, who had already lost all signs of life.

Jeris was dead!

There was no doubt about it.

When Ul attacked, he hadn't avoided Jeris's vital areas. In fact, he had deliberately aimed the Rock Spear at Jeris's heart, because only then could he take those gold coins without raising suspicion.

With Jeris dead, Ul's mission had failed!

But after getting his hands on those gold coins, whether or not his mission failed didn't matter nearly as much.

Ul couldn't exactly run off carrying a corpse.

So after dealing with Sheris and Jeris, Ul went straight to Jelka. Ignoring her protests, he scooped her up in his arms and quickly left Moya City...