"Let me take a look."
Noah crouched down and grabbed one of Maris's hands.
'Appraisal.'
Her condition was stable.
The missing leg wasn't going to just magically grow back out of thin air, but the rest of her cuts and bruises were mostly healed up.
Technically, he did have something in his inventory that could regrow a severed limb: the "Root of Life."
He tried to use it as a bargaining chip with Amid a while back, but she turned his deal down, so it was still just sitting in his storage.
He made the stuff by accident using his Weaver, but since he wrote the formula down, he could whip up a fresh batch whenever he wanted.
The problem was the price tag.
It cost around forty million valis to make. The price of raw materials bounced around all the time, but either way, a broke rookie like Maris couldn't afford it.
And unless a sponsor stepped up to foot the bill, Noah wasn't about to hand out miracle cures for free.
A potion that regrows limbs sounds awesome, but bringing that kind of heat and attention down on himself wasn't worth the headache.
That's why he tried to pawn it off on the Dian Cecht Familia in the first place.
"My leg..." Maris brushed her fingers against the stump.
The bleeding had stopped, but a dull, throbbing ache kept her wincing.
"I'll carry you," Noah said, hauling her up onto his back.
...
Halfway up the tunnels, Maris finally let her guard down and passed out cold against his shoulder.
Since Weaver didn't need any hand signs or spoken chants, Noah just controlled it with his thoughts.
Even with a girl strapped to his back, he cleared out the upper-floor monsters without breaking a sweat.
Not to mention his sniper was still floating right beside him, blasting anything that got too close.
Once they hit the Fifth Floor, he unsummoned the gun.
The monster spawns were super thin up here, so keeping the weapon active was a waste of energy.
As they walked, Noah noticed a shift in the shadows.
Two guys were jogging down the tunnel, heading right for him.
Appraisal showed they were both Level 1 rookies. It also showed they were packed with nasty, hostile intentions aimed right at him and Maris.
But on the outside, they slapped on big fake smiles and ran over.
"Oh man, Maris is alive!"
"Thank the gods! This is great, just great." One of them actually wiped a fake tear from his eye.
Give the guy an award for acting!
"Did you save her? Thank you so much, man. How is she? Why is she knocked out?"
Noah just stared at them.
He didn't need to ask for their names or check their Guild tags. Coming at him with killing intent was all the proof he needed.
"She passed out," Noah said, keeping his voice flat. "I patched her up. She'll wake up when we get back to town."
"O-oh, really? That's... awesome."
"Hey, mind handing her over to us? We're her party members."
'Oh. I get it.'
"So it's you two," Noah smirked.
He figured out their game pretty fast. Eina probably posted the emergency rescue quest the second she got back to her desk.
These two cowards likely jumped on it first, claiming they wanted to "recover the body" so they could rush back into the Dungeon without anyone asking questions.
But they didn't come to save her.
They came to silence her.
If Maris lived, she'd tell the Guild how they used her as monster bait.
They came down here to finish the job.
Noah's cold smirk made the two guys squirm.
Noah dropped the polite act. "Let's get one thing straight. I'm Level 2. You guys probably know that. So let me spell it out for you—you don't stand a chance against me. Think real hard before you do something stupid."
Since Maris was still breathing, and now there was a high-level witness standing in their way, they only had one play left.
Kill them both.
The two guys froze, then dropped the nice-guy act as their faces twisted into ugly scowls.
"So that bitch already talked, huh? Well, tough luck, kid. Blame yourself for sticking your nose where it doesn't belong!"
One of them ripped off his heavy cloak and threw it right at Noah's face to blind him.
Noah didn't even blink.
An invisible blade of wind sliced the thick fabric clean in half.
Behind the falling cloak, two glass bottles spin through the air.
Throwing the bottles behind a visual distraction was a pretty solid, layered trap. Hard to dodge if you couldn't see it coming.
'Interesting.'
A whip of water shot out from Noah's hand, snagging both bottles in midair.
The water swirled around them, forming a tight sphere that locked the glass inside.
Noah floated the water ball in front of him and watched the liquid inside the bottles change color.
He didn't even need Appraisal to know what it was.
Poison.
The nasty, fast-acting kind.
Whoosh!
A crossbow bolt zipped out of the shadows, aimed right at his chest.
Without looking, Noah cranked up the gravity around the bolt, crushing the wood and iron into splinters mid-flight.
Seeing both their traps fail, the two cowards started sweating.
"Dammit! Is this what a Level 2 is like? He's a freak!"
"Shut up and fight! You know what the Guild will do to us if he talks!"
Backed into a corner, they drew their weapons. One guy held a cheap wooden staff, and the other gripped a loaded crossbow and a hunting knife.
Surprisingly, they both knew magic.
Not many adventurers bothered with crossbows. They packed a decent punch, but the reload time and range made them pretty useless in a real fight.
But mixing a crossbow with magic? That was a different story.
The guy with the crossbow muttered a quick chant. The bolt loaded in his weapon started glowing with a faint light.
Noah stomped his boot on the stone floor and a thick wall of solid earth shot up in front of him.
Bang!
The magic bolt hit the dirt wall and blew a fist-sized hole right through it. But the bolt lost all its momentum and got stuck in the rock.
Looking at the tiny crater, Noah figured he went a little overboard with the defense.
Even with magic, a Level 1 rookie with garbage stats could only do so much damage.
Boom!
Noah dropped the earth wall.
It collapsed with a heavy crash, reshaping itself into a cluster of jagged rock spikes.
The crossbow guy felt a chill run down his spine.
He turned to run, but he wasn't outrunning magic.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Three heavy stone spikes punched right through his back, leaving massive holes in his chest.
"AAAAAH!"
Seeing his buddy get dropped in two seconds flat, the staff guy lost his mind.
He stumbled backward, totally panicked. His boot caught on a raised chunk of stone, and he fell flat on his back.
He scrambled to get up, but his shaky hands kept tangling in his own robes.
Noah raised his hand, ready to finish the job.
But right as he was about to strike, a strange voice rang out in his head, making him freeze in his tracks.
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