328 Confirmation
“The entire vineyard? You can only be crazy. What kind of proposal is this?” The owner asked indignantly, stretching his back forward.
The half-wolf smiled briefly and replied, “That’s a fair proposition, for a liar. If you are sure that the monster in the region is a furious deer, there is nothing to fear.”
At that moment, Walley realized how far Luke was going with this matter, so Walley placed his right hand on his chin and nodded. “Yes, I believe this is a fair proposition as well.”
The old man gritted his teeth, noticing that he was against the wall in that situation. Seconds later, he finally gave in to the pressure and huffed.
“Okay, you beat me… The monster is not a mad deer, the monster is actually much scarier.” said the old man, opening the cigar box once more.
Luke took his feet off the coffee table, propped his elbows on his knees, and looked seriously at the owner. “Tell us everything you know.”
“After we found the woman’s body completely torn apart, we were immediately able to deduce that what killed her was very large. All over her body there were large scratches, not to mention the fact that she was missing half her skull.”
“Did anyone analyze the skull or did you just bury it?” Luke asked.
“The adventurers we called the same day to hunt the creature looked at the corpse, and they said that by the way the woman’s skull was cracked, it had certainly been a bite, because the teeth marks were still there…
” It is a big monster, after all I learned that most adventurers who accepted the quest did not return.” said Walley.
The old man was about to light another cigar, but he noticed the serious looks of the two adventurers on the sofa and changed his mind. Then he smiled nervously. “You also want to know why I kept the same contract description even though I knew I wasn’t a mad deer, don’t you?”
“It is not necessary… We know that you won this property from the Emperor a few months ago and that as one of the few vineyards in the entire nation you aim earn a lot of money in the next few years, and that having your crops destroyed by battle would be bad for you the business.” Luke answered him.
Walley thought the opportunity was perfect to complement the half-wolf’s response. “If you stated in the contract that the monster is actually high-level, gangly, powerful adventurers would show up and wouldn’t hesitate to destroy the entire property to kill the monster. Or even the army could show up to capture the creature.”
The understanding of the two adventurers helped the old man to calm down, and his wife, who was waiting on the stairs holding a dagger with trembling hands, put the dagger away and returned to the bedroom.
“Does that mean you are going to kill the monster for us?” the owner asked hopefully.
“Yes, we will kill your monster. Normally, which part of the vineyard did the missing adventurers start hunting for?”
With a huge smile on his face, the old man pointed from the door of his house to the region where the monster was supposed to be. The appointed spot was on a boundary between the forest, the mountains and the vineyard.
Luckily, Walley that same night had talked to Elster, a famous horseman from Stahurt, and Eslter told him that the monster was in a cave and that the monster roared whenever it heard anyone approaching.
Merging these two pieces of information, it shouldn’t be difficult to find the monster’s lair, and in fact it wasn’t, but the reason for their success wasn’t actually the information they had, but Luke’s sense of smell. In the woods beside the vineyard, the wind from the mountains had its force reduced considerably because the leaves on the trees were thick and because of the size of the trees, which allowed Luke to sniff out a strong odor of blood.
After the half-wolf warned Walley about the new lead, they began to follow the scent, which became more and more prominent as they got closer.
When the blood odor got so bad it bothered Luke, they spotted the cave.
The sight of the cave entrance reminded Luke of something that had happened a few months ago, he remembered the monster he had killed in Latgor. Furthermore, the current situation was also very similar to what was happening back then in the small northern town of Broteforge. In Latgor, people also disappeared practically without a trace at first, and there were demons in the city too.
Whether this was a demon pattern, having a mysterious local monster disturbing the peace, Luke couldn’t say, but he hoped this time the monster wasn’t as big as Latgor’s.
The moment Walley and Luke stopped in front of the entrance to the cave from which the scent of blood came, the monster inside roared loudly, and the roar of that thing was so powerful it threw back the half-wolf’s hood and long hair. from Walley too.
“Urgggh! What rotten smell is that!?” The corrupted expressed.
Luke pointed to a pile of human bodies that lay just beyond the entrance to the cave and replied, “This is his breath, he fed not long ago.”
Looking at the bodies the half-wolf pointed out, Walley could see even in the darkness that blood was still flowing. “Are these the guards you said the man mentioned to his wife?”
There were at least five corpses there, four men and a middle-aged woman. The men wore robes of different styles, levels of protection and durability, while the woman’s body wore a wizard’s cloak.
“I don’t know, probably. If word of this contract spread around town, there shouldn’t be many interested groups, so if these bodies are recent, it’s quite possible they’re the guards the landlord hired.” said the half-wolf as he entered the cave. “Stay out here, don’t let anyone in.”
“Hey! You don’t want me to try to control the monster!?” Walley asked.
Luke just ignored him, bent down to pick up the dead mage’s staff and headed towards the darkness of the cave.