Chapter 55: The Wolves Behind the Fog

The boar slammed into a boulder with an heavy CRACK, its massive body flailing wildly as its strength ran out.

A small notification appeared on Lucian’s wrist watch.

[ +20 Points Registered ]

Before it could disappear, two Shadow-Mane Wolves lunged at him from behind.

Lucian ducked.

He intentionally let his foot slip against a slippery, moss-covered root.

He stumbled forward just enough for it to look authentic.

The surveillance drone captured it all in its sight.

From the drone’s view, Lucian had almost slipped at the worst possible time.

The two wolves flew over his head.

Lucian rolled underneath and slashed his blade in a clumsy upwards arc.

SHING!

The edge of the blade sliced the abdomen of the first wolf.

At the same time, Lucian drove his leather-clad left elbow into the snout of the second.

CRACK!

The wolf spun through the air and landed several meters on the ground.

Lucian staggered back.

For the next ten minutes, he continued to "struggle".

He gasped for breath

he stumbled over roots

he swung his sword in heavy, seemingly unrefined slashes

he narrowly avoided the beast’s claws and tusks by a sliver.

Each movement looked pitiful.

Each movement looked "desperate".

All but under the control of Lucian.

Whenever one of the beast made a lunge, Lucian always got out of the way.

Whenever his blade connected with an opponent, it would always hit the mark.

One by one, the frenzied beasts fell.

And not a drop of their blood stained Lucian’s clothes.

As the last Shadow-Mane Wolf crumbled onto the ground with Lucian’s steel blade piercing through its eye-socket, the forest finally fell silent.

Seven corpses littered the ground.

Lucian stood amidst them, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

He continued to pant deliberately.

The surveillance drone hovered fifty feet above him, its red lens fixated onto the scene before it.

After a while, another notification appeared on his wrist.

[ Total Accumulated Score: 160 Points ]

Lucian wiped his blade clean against a patch of wet grass.

His expression remained pained.

But as soon as the drone rotated away to survey another area, the fatigue on his face dissipated.

Complete stillness returned to his face.

Lucian crouched beside the largest Shadow-Mane Wolf.

His fingers delicately brushed over the creature’s crushed skull before trailing down to its neck.

His eyes narrowed.

The wolf’s body should have been totally limp by now.

Yet, the tension in the muscle along its neck spoke otherwise.

Lucian regarded the beast silently.

Something had not been right about the animal’s aggression.

"Interesting,"

Lucian’s voice was a mere whisper.

The Crimson Beast-Attracting Powder was potent.

It would cause surrounding beasts to go absolutely feral, stripping them of any higher intellect and leaving them with raw instincts and bloodlust.

But what he had just witnessed was not the result of a beast possessed by mindless rage.

During the ambush, two of the Shadow-Mane Wolves had remained atop the high ridge.

They did not charge immediately.

They waited.

They watched as the Blood-Eye Boars attacked Lucian before charging down together when his stance was disrupted.

The tactics of those two wolves had not been those of a feral creature.

They were calculating.

Lucian slowly raised his head.

The powder had indeed drawn the beasts to him.

There was no doubt about that.

But something else had been controlling the flow of attacks, something more subtle.

Something that had been subtly manipulating the beasts’ movement vectors from behind the scenes.

His gaze swept towards the dark canopy above.

A thick fog blanketed the area, hiding everything beyond a few dozen meters.

No drone hovered above this part of the forest.

"Something else is moving these beasts..."

Lucian muttered.

He pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders.

Lucian’s silver tinged eyes swept towards the north.

Three miles further, beyond the thick fog and dense trees, a dark ridge barely poked out from the treetops.

Lucian fixed his eyes on the structure for a few seconds.

"The wolves of this forest are active."

His voice was calm.

His eyes narrowed.

"And they are not the only ones hunting today."

=--

The towering canopy of Zone 3 felt less like a forest and more like a subterranean vault made of obsidian, ancient elder-oak timber and endless green twilight.

Thirty miles beyond the reinforced perimeter of the Outer Ring, the mountain mist morphed into something heavier.

Cold, damp clouds snaked through jagged limestone ravines and spilled into deep, black sinkholes, swallowing everything in their path.

Massive elder-oaks towered over the darkness, their gnarled roots tearing through the bedrock like petrified serpents and patches of dark, luminous moss clinging to their trunks.

Whenever the mountain wind passed through the high branches, the moss emitted a faint, sickly violet glow.

This was High-Risk Zone 3.

A region reserved exclusively for the academy’s strongest students.

Here, the food chain was brutal.

Every creature hunted or was hunted.

The deeper you went, the more dangerous the predators became.

And then,

the silence of a deep ravine shattered as a brilliant flash of cyan light tore through the darkness like a falling star.

CRACK-THOOM!

A wave of searing, bone-dry heat exploded throughout the gorge.

Within seconds, the thick fog across a fifty-yard radius had vanished, consumed into towering white clouds of steam.

Damp leaves scattered across the ground blackened and cracked into fine ash.

At the center of the ravine, a massive column of azure fire erupted forward with its flames taking the shape of an ancient avian predator’s outstretched wings.

A massive Iron-Claw Bear stood right in its path.

Nearly eight feet tall.

Its body was draped in thick stone-like hide reinforced with natural deposits of iron ore.

A First-Order Stage 4 beast.

The creature unleashed an earth-shaking roar.

Its powerful claws capable of tearing through light tank plating, desperately swung towards the approaching fire.

It was completely ineffective.

The moment the azure fire made contact with its iron-reinforced hide, the beast’s defenses began to liquify.

Its roar changed into a pained bellow.

And then the flames engulfed it.

The Iron-Claw Bear crashed onto its side with a tremendous impact, sliding nearly thirty feet through the scorched mud before finally coming to a stop.

The ravine fell silent once more.

The beast did not move.

Its core energy had been extinguished in terrifying precision.

Only wisps of steam and drifting ash remained in the aftermath.