The sight of the terrifying figure in front of her, who had just decapitated an E-Rank beast as if it were nothing, sent chills down the girl's spine.
For a moment, she forgot the pain in her leg and instead froze, petrified by the scene before her.
She wondered whether the person had come to save her or to finish her off, but as she thought it, the figure glanced at her briefly, then shifted its attention to the beast's corpse.
She assumed it wanted to take the beast's mana core, but in the next moment she found herself at a loss for words again as the entire gorilla's body vanished without leaving any trace behind, save for the blood already soaking into the ground.
'He... has a spatial artifact,' she thought, but immediately shook her head, considering that given the strength he had just shown, owning one wasn't that strange.
Spatial storage items were very expensive, but not completely impossible to obtain.
For long time E-Rank adventurers, or stronger ones, earning enough to have them wasn't a problem.
In fact, they could be obtained in different ways, and joining the Awakened Association was one of them.
Among many things, the Association also provided missions and adventurer ID cards.
These cards were imbued with some special runes, allowing them to store items within.
Getting that feature on the card cost a bit, and the space it provided was no larger than one cubic meter, but for most adventurers and the missions they had to handle, it was more than enough. The space did increase as your adventurer rank went up, though even then not by much.
Only spatial items dedicated exclusively to storage could hold a truly considerable amount, items that naturally cost anything but little.
That said, apart from this momentary surprise, her attention returned to the figure in front of her, and her mind began racing frantically, thinking about how to get out of this situation.
The arrival of this figure had given her a glimmer of hope of making it back alive, but in her current state that wasn't going to happen on her own, so she had to ask for help.
But what could she offer in return?
She thought about it, considering her meager earnings from the mission, which could now be considered a failure, and her financial situation, which was dire to put it mildly.
'Maybe I could...no, Luna, what are you thinking?' she shook her head, pushing away the fleeting thought that had crossed her mind.
No matter how desperate, that option had never occurred to her before, and she certainly didn't want it to now.
While she remained lost in her moral dilemma, Evan, who had taken care of the body, rejoiced internally at the substantial gain.
It wasn't every day you could earn that much ESS in one go, and now that he had, he was even more certain that he needed to start going after stronger prey, F-Rank targets simply weren't cutting it anymore.
Just today, with all the hunts he had done, he had earned about the same amount he had previously gained to reach E-Rank, yet that same amount now had only raised his progress percentage from 0.2% to 1%.
In other words, all the ESS he had gained today had given him a mere 0.8% of progress. Far slower than when he was F-Rank, a clear sign that the amount needed for the next rank had increased by no small margin.
Evan set that aside for the moment and looked instead at the girl lying on the ground, and he couldn't help but notice the strange expression on her face.
'Hey, why are you looking at me like that? I just saved you, and yet you're staring at me like I've wronged you somehow,' he thought, not knowing what to make of it as he watched her look at him as if he were some kind of monster.
'Ah, forget it. I'll never understand women,' he decided, choosing to ignore it as he turned around and prepared to continue his hunt, but just at that moment, the woman's voice rang out.
"Hey wai—, no, I mean, sir, could you please not leave?" said Luna in a panic, seeing the mysterious figure about to walk away.
Hmm?
Evan looked at her, waiting for her to continue. It wasn't that he didn't understand what she wanted from him, he could tell at a glance she had no way of getting out of this on her own.
But so what?
As far as he was concerned, saving her from certain death was already more than enough. Whether she made it out of here alive after that wasn't really his problem.
'Hmm, now that I think about it…, since I can't exactly walk into the city and heading to the nearest town isn't an option right now, why not have her help me?' he thought, remembering that, despite having a mountain of awakened beast corpses and mana cores, they were useless as things stood.
He needed to sell them, but to do that he had to enter a city, and without money or anything else to use, he couldn't pay the city's entrance fee.
For residents, it was free as long as they had proof of residency, but for outsiders it wasn't, they had to pay an entrance fee, and he, or rather his clone, was considered an outsider as things stood.
He could enter the city the same way he had left it, but that was risky, what if someone noticed?
He hadn't realized it before, but now he could sense a powerful presence in the city, and judging by its vitality, it was stronger than him, at least by one or two ranks.
He wasn't sure whose it was, but it was clear that attempting certain tricks here could put him in danger, so he didn't use that method for now.
Not to mention there was another problem.
Even if he managed to get in successfully, without a document or something identifying his residency or right to be in the city, he could end up under investigation.
Under normal circumstances that wouldn't be a big deal, but this was anything but a normal situation. This was a fortified border settlement at the edge of the kingdom. Surveillance here was strict in many respects, and monitoring who entered and left was one of them.
So if he could, he wanted to avoid certain methods for now.
With all that in mind, he turned his gaze back to her, a faint glint flickering in his eyes.
For some reason, Luna felt a shiver run through her body under that gaze.
'Could… could he be thinking of devouring me?'