"Was I really that cool just now?"
Hemet bashfully rubbed his bald crown.
"Wow! That Flying Immortal move was insanely cool..."
"Wasn't it called Heroic Leap?"
The old dwarf asked in confusion.
"Same difference, it's all the same. You didn't see how that beast collapsed in terror just now, foaming at the mouth and twitching all over."
"Wasn't that because my Thunder Clap electrocuted it unconscious?"
"Why do you keep interrupting? Do you want to hear me praise you or not?"
Al lay on the ground without a care, a happy expression on his handsome face streaked with black and red.
Beside him lay the old dwarf, wrapped head to toe in bandages. A close look would reveal that the horrific wounds beneath those bandages had already healed, and the remaining minor injuries were nothing more than trifles.
"All right, Lord Al, I won't interrupt again."
"Huh? Why are you insulting me, you old fossil?"
"My lord, what's a fossil?"
The two lay on the ground chatting leisurely, without the slightest hint of tension before a great battle. The youth recounted the old dwarf's recent heroic deeds, while the old dwarf occasionally cracked jokes. It was an utterly cheerful scene.
Time went back one hour.
With a deathly blank expression, Al held the dwarf's corpse. In his arms lay his friend, his first follower in this world, both a subordinate and a brother.
"I shouldn't have left him on his own... It's all my fault..."
The light had gone out of the youth's eyes, and he kept repeating those words.
After a long while, a gleam began to return to his eyes. He quickly laid the dwarf's corpse on the ground and carefully took a low-grade Titan-forged core from his bag.
The core had originally been pale gold, but after its titan power had been extracted, it had long since lost its original luster and become utterly dull.
"Please... please..."
Staring intently at the core in his hand, the youth began pouring a continuous stream of divine earth power from his body into it.
A moment later, the core in his hand erupted with a dark brown glow. This was the power of the earth. Without hesitation, Al pushed the core into the dwarf's heart.
Something unbelievable happened. Upon touching the core, the heart that had stopped beating began slowly fusing with it.
"It's working!"
Overcome with excitement, the youth carefully straightened the dwarf's ribs, which had stabbed backward into his chest cavity, then began pouring divine earth power into the dwarf himself.
His flesh-and-blood body slowly hardened, and a light gray color spread over his entire body...
His shattered skin also slowly healed under the nourishment of the divine earth power. The enormous cracks gradually shrank, and even his stone heart began to beat faintly.
Feeling the divine earth power within him nearly run dry, Al gritted his teeth and continued pouring it into the dwarf without hesitation.
"Cough... cough, cough."
A cough startled the youth, who was still pouring in divine power. Utterly exhausted, Al stared at the old dwarf who had returned from the dead, tears streaming down his face.
[Small amount of divine earth power]: depleted {slowly recovering}
Ignoring the system notification that appeared on the transparent screen, Al threw his arms around the dwarf, who was about to awaken, laughing and crying at once.
"Can't you hurry up, Hemet?"
The youth hovered impatiently in the air, a headless Devilsaur moving slowly behind him.
"I'm-al-rea-dy-go-ing-full-speed."
The dwarf's voice rang out beside the youth's ear, but he was nowhere to be seen.
"Man, Old He really is lame..."
Hemet: You used to call me Sweetie, and now I'm Mrs. Ox?
Hemet's short frame, barely over a meter tall, carried Mosh's enormous corpse. The massive body pressed down on him so heavily that he could barely breathe, but what choice did he have? It was Lord Al's order, after all.
"Marshal's Refuge is just ahead. I wonder if that crazy woman Holly is there?"
Al spoke as he flew, still shaken.
Fortunately, Holly was not there. Williden was the one who welcomed them.
The two entered the camp amid the adventurers' rising exclamations, while the dwarf dragged Mosh's corpse to the workshop entrance.
The enormous corpse hit the ground with a boom, giving the gathered onlookers quite a fright.
"Heavens! Holy Light above, is that... Mosh? Is that Lord Al's trophy? What terrifying power!
"Joey, isn't that bald guy Hemet? How is he so strong? He can actually carry Mosh's corpse!"
An adventurer covered his mouth and spoke with a shocked expression.
"Ha, you don't know, do you? Hemet is actually one of those Vrykul from the north.
"Lord Al later subdued him. Look how short he is. He must have been squashed down from carrying Lord Al's trophies all year round. Tsk, tsk, poor guy."
Hemet: I've got a big treasure called Avatar that I'd like to show you.
Ignoring the whispers around him, Al left the dwarf with a few instructions, returned to the alchemy workshop he had been away from for so long, and fell asleep as soon as he hit the bed.
Two days later, the long-shuttered Sarona Biological Alchemy Workshop reopened. When the adventurers swarmed over, however, they found only Hemet standing outside. He raised a thumb and pointed behind him.
Only then did the adventurers notice the banner hanging above the storefront.
"Buying... mithril ore... thorium ore. One bottle of Jinkela for one piece of mithril ore, one bottle of Jinkela 2.0 for one piece of thorium ore. Limited quantities, first come, first served..."
Will Heavyfist read the words on the banner one at a time. As a Tauren, he was still not particularly familiar with human Common, so he stumbled over the words. But when he came to his senses, he discovered that the fellow adventurers who had been packed around him a moment ago had long since vanished.
"Goddammit..."
Slapping his enormous horn, Will Heavyfist immediately activated his racial skill-Running Wild-and charged out of the camp like a little electric motor.
Standing at the second-floor window, Al watched, dumbfounded, as the adventurers vanished in a flash, then sank deep into thought.
Al: Should I have sold mining picks first and made a killing off them? I feel like I just lost a hundred million.