Fist VS Shield

"...huh...? Wait, so you are just asleep...? Oh, for the love of..."

The guard waited a moment before lowering his shield and checking the situation just to be exposed to the back of the peacefully breathing young man with bloody-black hair.

The back to which the young man had strapped two massive femurs of some sort of really large monster.

Those bones were definitely the potentially dangerous objects that the guard was sent there for.

In the first place, the word potentially dangerous simply meant valuable in the guards' dictionary.

The prisoners without the soul artifacts aiding in crafting had no use for raw materials – especially the valuable ones – and prisoner Viria was in possession of the trash grade soul artifact, prison shiv.

To all available knowledge, he had no business withholding the materials that would fetch a good price in the outside world for himself.

"Tch. Stop wasting my time!" Wake up!"

The guard got angry seeing that he was wasting his time merely because some convict was tired, so he reached out and grabbed onto one of the femurs and pulled on it with all his might.

*THUMP*

"Ghu-huagh...!"

The disoriented Viria was slammed against the floor and ended up spitting out a mouthful of blood.

In complete disorientation, he felt the monster's energy dissipating from within his body, completely wasting the monster core he was holding on to.

The young man felt the crystal crumble into a shard trash within his palm.

"?!?!"

The flood of ecstasy was stopped so suddenly that Viria 's heart felt like a bottomless pit.

"You had it tied to you, what, did you use it like armor? Take it off."

"..."

The guard, unaware of the consequences, scoffed and reached out for the strips of mole-rabbit fur that kept the femurs strapped to Viria's back.

By doing so, he made it look as if he wanted to stop the young man...

"FUCK OFF!"

...and the void in Viria's heart was filled with seething fury...

"...!"

*DOOOON*

The guard stepped back and protected himself from the punch by pure subconscious reflex – the movement of the prisoner's fist barely registered in his vision, but the impact passed through his bronze shield was enough to make his hand numb.

*DOOOON* *DOOOON* *DOOOON* *DOOOON* *DOOOON* *DOOOON* *DOOOON*

As the guard was forced to retreat from the shack, frenzied Viria scrambled back up on his feet and lounged at him, barraging him with skill-empowered punches in a blind rage.

"FUUUUUCK!"

*DOOOOOON*

The guard growled, gritting his teeth as his arm felt as if it was about to fall off and activated his soul artifact's skill – the fist and the shield connected one more time and both the prisoner punching and the guard defending were pushed away by the unleashed force.

Viria's left hand was seriously messed up, his fingers were broken, there was barely any skin left, and even his knuckles were cracked open...

...while the guard's round bronze shield had clear punch marks and was bent completely out of shape...

Out of the two, Viria was obviously looser in the encounter...

"...report the damn bones and what you are going to do with them in the damn trading point...!"

Seeing that the young man stopped his assault and his face became pale as he slowly regained clarity of mind, the guard breathed out and stared at his messed-up shield for a while before looking up and declaring.

"...?"

Viria furrowed his brows, looking at the other man as if he could not believe his ears.

The warden clearly said that he would send him to lower floors the first chance he got, so this was it for him, right...?

"Go to that damn trading point, and if you say a word about what happened here to anyone, you will sorely regret it!"

The guard recalled his soul artifact and pointed his index finger at the confused young man before turning away and leaving as fast as he could without breaking into a run.

"...the fuck was that about...? Entire monster core wasted."

Viria scoffed, shaking his head and looking at his injured hand as if it wasn't a part of his body.

The only thing that interested him was the reddish granules that he was still gripping in his trembling palm.

The young man was honestly going to just go back to his shack and cultivate with the last monster core crystal in his possession, but the blood loss wasn't stopping and there was quite a big chance of him straight up fainting while trying to cultivate, so he decided to go see Bossac.

After all, the helpful guard assured him that he would not take the payment from him before – and with no bills on him, Viria was going to test whether the healer was serious.

With extreme hunger and the increasing pain radiating from his left arm, Viria had a hard time focusing, but he somehow manages to stumble his way into the clinic.

"Boy?! What in the world happened?!"

Once called by another guard, Bossac gasped in shock seeing Viria's state.

"Big rare spawn mole rabbit showed up, gave me a bit of a problem. I am taking those personally to the trading spot, but I thought it would be better to not stain their floor with blood."

The young man shrugged his shoulders and pointed at the femurs on his back with his thumb.

Not mentioning the more than weird and disturbing meeting with the shield-bearing guard and combining it with him just returning from the hunt was something he came up with in the flashes of clarity between fighting off the waves of pain, exhaustion, and hunger.

"I don't have any bills on me..."

"Don't mention that, boy! I would get in trouble if something happened to you while the lord warden is absent."

Viria said outright, but Bossac merely waved his hand dismissively, already reaching out his hand with the healing vine toward the young man.

"...?"

The healing took a bit longer than before, and the helpful guard certainly looked as if there was something bothering him from one point, but Viria had also realized something rather confusing.