Chapter 182: Dealing with Fortified-level Monsters

“MICCC!!” They rushed to him, some even crawling because their stamina was already down to near zero.

Reesa immediately kneeled down and raised her hands over him. However, Finn stopped her. “Do it inside a room to amplify the effects.”

“Oh! Yes, yes,” Reesa said, and the ambulatory adventurers carried Micc up, making sure to angle his cut legs properly.

They chose one of the rooms with recovering members. Since their bleeding had stopped, they were asked to leave for a few moments, so Micc didn’t have to share the room’s full regeneration effects.

They placed him on the soft bed, and Reesa immediately started healing him. Finn also gave one healing potion to Micc and a mana potion to Reesa. This was the best condition he could offer to ensure his survival.

Before leaving them alone, he couldn’t help but look back at the guy’s state, feeling angry in his heart.

He saw that the rest of the injured stayed in the living room or the dining room, taking advantage of the bonuses there, too. However, while they were healing well, their hearts certainly were feeling heavy, and he could not blame them.

Accidents like these were not unusual for adventurers. However, encountering fortified-level monsters in Level 1 was something they really did not expect, and the losses would’ve been unimaginable if they hadn’t been lucky enough to be close to the Inn.

Finn knew the momentum had taken a hit. He was about to get the goblins to get materials from the Cellar, except his peripheral vision saw something hanging at the side of the monster’s large mouth!

He gasped.

“The legs! They’re still hanging!”

“What?”

At this, the people next to him took a look, staring at the three monsters relentlessly attacking the barrier.

Sure enough, there really was a bleeding leg, stuck between the lower teeth of the monsters. It didn’t seem like it was noticed yet, and the angle hid it from the other monsters, too.

They could probably smell it, but there were far more people bleeding inside the barrier that must’ve masked the blood from the appendage right next to them.

“Can…we recover it?” Finn asked, and everyone looked at him, but mostly with puzzlement, as if wondering why he would ask that.

He then remembered this world wasn’t the modern world, and there was a lot of modern medical common knowledge they probably did not know. Although Finn wasn’t that knowledgeable, he had heard quite a few things about these things.

Even with healing magic, it could only have so much effect. Maybe reattaching limbs wasn’t something they had done before.

Although it felt like forever, in reality, it hadn’t been several minutes since it was bitten off. So, maybe, with the extra recovery and sterilizing functions of the inn, they could try.

He whipped his head to the nearby moving person, who happened to be Ranran, who was running around trying to assist whom she could.

“Ranran! Tell Reesa to slow down her healing. Keep her healing just enough, so he didn’t bleed to death. Let her heal the other team’s healer first!”

“We’re trying something for Micc!”

“Y-Yes, boss!”

…

BANG!

BANG!

[-1 Defense Point]

The team decided to separate each one, luring one monster to a different part of the barrier so that it was easier to gang up on them. Finn was teamed up with Durgan along with Leiah.

Finn looked at the monster. It happened to be the one he fought against earlier, and also the one with the leg.

He used [Assessment] and determined its weaknesses were, unsurprisingly, its massive mouth. The risk was that it also chomped very quickly. One wrong move and he’d be eaten instead.

After retrieving the legs, it would probably end in a battle of attrition, which they could afford precisely because they had the barrier.

It would be an extremely different story if they were outside, but now that they could beat it without risking their lives—even if it would take time—why wouldn’t they do it?

That said, Finn made sure to study its movement patterns well, its habits, as well as its openings. For example, it seemed to have bad vision. It would attack wherever it felt like it was getting attacked. It would also be based a lot on movements around it—and it was extremely fast too.

Durgan had tried to imbalance it and go out the barrier for a second, but the damn thing reacted immediately. In retrospect, perhaps the only reason he was still alive from the earlier attack was that he used a long-range attack. If he had attacked close ranged, maybe he’d have been eaten by monsters, along with Victor or at least had a detached leg like Micc.

Finn mused that all that hair must have some sensitivity functions, and he could feel the air around it.

That said, he looked at Leiah. He wrapped a piece of jerky around her arrows. Her arrows were made of magic, but they were naturally solid when condensed. Instead of targeting the monster itself, he asked her to target a direction not far from it.

Whoosh!

The monster followed the scent, and Finn and Durgan immediately took advantage and attacked it while it was distracted. Leiah also continued doing so, shooting arrow after arrow in whatever weak spot she could access.

At the same time, a few other team members jumped in. Only Victor was at the fortified level among them, so going against a monster at that level would require most of them to mobilize. The skill should also be less of a problem now that they are separated.

Finn took the jerky, which was stuck on a tree trunk, and used it to get the monster’s attention while his teammates landed damaging shots at it.

[Feather Step] He rushed over then. While it was bleeding, injured, and completely distracted by the jerky and the attacks, Finn finally got the chance to grab the leg hanging.

He had to use his whole weight to pull it out, and he then used the remaining few seconds of the [Feather Step] to rush to the barrier.

While he ran to the inn, the rest handled the monster. Now that they knew its skill, it was less of a problem. When it raised its muscular arms, they would just run back to the barrier. All they had to do was weaken it bit by bit, until it finally succumbed.

[Killed! Gorethack (Fortified)]

…

Inside the inn, Finn carried the morbidly detached leg of their friend. “Can it be reattached?” he asked.

“I can try…” Reesa said. Ranran had already told her of the plan so she had been mentally preparing herself.

They had never tried attaching legs before. It wasn’t that it was unheard of, there had been talks among the guild, but it was an exceedingly difficult procedure and only a handful of people in history had done it.

However, there were scrolls about it, and she happened to have read it.

The root cause of failure was always either because of infection or the connection between the main body and the detached part was not able to recover fast enough. In the latter case, the body part still ended up dying in the end, and in the former, the person himself could die.

In the Inn, that was not a problem, so in theory, there really should be a chance.

The two healers would be working together this time, one was healing the leg (which was half-mangled), while Reesa was doing the actual connections.

Their hearts beat fast and loud in nervousness.

Hopefully, a miracle could happen.

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