Chapter 20
In a small clearing in the forest, a man and a beast traced a circle between sparsely scattered trees. Their gazes crossed amid taut silence.
The man held a sword, but the beast held nothing. It had no need to, for its massive body, standing well over two meters at the shoulder, was already a weapon.
The man staring silently at the wolf already looked battered beyond recognition.
The mud smeared over him, the dried blood, and the cotton cloth wrapped around his forearm had long since been soiled. His breath grew ragged from nothing more than walking, and his eyes occasionally lost focus.
It would not have been strange if he collapsed at any moment. The beast had been waiting for this moment.
He was a human whose presence was faint to an uncanny degree. His breathing and heartbeat could barely be heard. If not for the ragged breaths and racing heartbeat he could sense now, it would have been impossible to tell whether he was alive at all.
Every one of the wolf’s subordinates had fallen to this man. He had picked them off one by one, and even when two or three attacked together, they had been unable to stand against him.
He must have been one of the stronger humans. Among all the prey it had hunted so far, he was the most formidable.
The sight of him spilling his intestines and sprawled on the ground would be quite magnificent.
The wolf, which had inherited an artistic temperament despite being a beast, felt rather pleased at the thought alone. Its breathing grew slightly uneven.
The man, on the other hand, remained calm throughout. At least on the outside. Inside, he was burning and mangled to the point of falling apart.
He had briefly lost his reason. The man—Ian—thought so.
No matter how he looked at it, his physical condition was abnormal. His muscles seemed to have reached their limit, screaming whenever he exerted himself. His stiff movements proved it.
And the beast before him seemed to be on an entirely different level from the enemies he had faced so far. It was probably some sort of leader; not only was it larger, it also seemed more intelligent.
That was why it was approaching so cautiously. The magical beasts he had turned into corpses until now had been incapable of such a thing.
They had either charged blindly, burning with hostility, or failed to notice him and died in an ambush.
One mistake meant death. Ian’s steps grew cautious, as though he were walking across thin ice.
It was an opponent that might kill him even if he made no mistakes. If he let his guard down for even a moment, death might come in the blink of an eye.
Emma’s killer stood before him. If he could not avenge her as a friend, he had no intention of sharing a gloomy reunion with her in the afterlife.
Ian’s golden eyes meticulously tracked every movement of the wolf.
He was trying to notice a ‘tell.’ The wolf was walking leisurely for now, but it was a beast. No matter how exceptional its patience, it could not overcome its innate wildness.
Soon, its patience would reach its limit, and the movement of its muscles would inevitably change.
That fleeting instant would be his opportunity. Ian’s body was in no condition to endure a prolonged battle. He had to strike an opening and finish it in a single burst.
And so the battle of nerves between Ian and the wolf continued for a while.
The wolf’s muscles twitched. An imaginary trajectory appeared before Ian’s eyes.
Now. The moment Ian thought that and twisted his body—
Thud. A dull impact traveled through his body.
It felt like being hit by a cannonball. No, it was the beast’s terrifying weight combined with acceleration so fast it left not even an afterimage. Calling it a cannonball itself would not have been an exaggeration.
“Ggh, ngh……!”
His eyes flew open, and blood burst from his mouth. His body was sent flying into a tree trunk.
With a boom, the tree struck by the mass of an adult man trembled and shook violently. Ian’s vision shook along with it.
“Gnnngh,” Ian groaned and instinctively curled up. Every joint in his body ached. Mana had protected his body, but even that had its limits.
At the last moment, he had not seen it.
More precisely, he had seen it. It had been like an afterimage. That was why Ian had at least been able to twist his body.
But that was all. Ian’s body had been far too exhausted to evade that charge.
His senses were absurdly sharp. Ian felt as though he had learned all over again how to perceive the world. He had never realized how intricate the world was, or how many different signals it sent him.
His senses were incomparably sharper than when he had sparred with Seria last time. But his exhausted body could not immediately carry out the commands of his brain.
That was why he had taken the blow. In his current condition, it was fatal.
Naturally, the wolf gave the man no time to catch his breath.
Perhaps because it had burst forward at such speed, it took some time to brake, but the wolf used that rebound as a springboard and charged again at high speed.
The wolf’s jaws flew open. Ian instinctively imbued the sword in his hand with mana.
Then he threw it with a whoosh. His reaction speed was like a spinal reflex, bypassing the brain entirely.
The blade spun at a frightening speed and was sucked into the wolf’s open jaws with all its momentum. Once the wolf’s acceleration was added to the blade’s speed, its jaws could not even reach Ian.
The startled wolf clenched its teeth with a snap, barely stopping the blade. Yet the mana-infused blade continued advancing, scraping against its teeth as though defying that terrifying bite force.
With a horrifying grinding sound, pure-white tooth dust scattered through the air. That was when Ian drew the hand axe from his waist.
His hand axe came down on the wolf’s snout as it closed in before him. Blood spurted from the pitch-black muzzle with a sharp crack.
It would have been ideal if the wolf’s head had been driven straight into the ground, but its strength was incomparably greater than that of the wolves he had faced so far.
The beast merely howled and staggered backward from the sudden agony.
The sword fell from between its open jaws. Ian immediately charged into the wolf’s reach with the hand axe, but the wolf was no easy opponent.
Clack. The sound of the hand axe locking against a claw rang out. The wolf had instinctively swung its forepaw to block Ian’s charge.
The wolf leaped straight into the air and spun once. A backflip as perfect as something drawn in a picture. If he caught that bastard and sold it to a circus, it would fetch a decent price.
Ian quickly retrieved the sword from the ground while entertaining that absurd thought. Since they had already been separated by some distance, a follow-up attack was impossible anyway.
1 win, 1 loss.
The wolf crouched and growled low. Blood streamed from the bridge of its nose. Blood bubbles formed there as it breathed raggedly.
At the sight, Ian curled his lips in mockery.
“Huff, heh-heh… Huff, does it hurt?”
The wolf did not answer. It merely rumbled in its throat, its gaze more wary than before.
Ian wanted to shout, ‘I’m hurting more, you bastard!’, but he could not because he was too short of breath.
He merely panted with a faint smile.
It felt as though his lungs were being squeezed tight. The pain from the charge still had not faded. That was true even though he had twisted his body at the last moment to bleed off the impact and protected himself with mana.
A raw pain that felt like bone being scraped ran through his arm. It meant that at the very least, a bone had cracked. A stinging ache throbbed through him, and Ian’s arm trembled on its own.
He was at a disadvantage. Ian thought so.
His strength had already weakened. He was fortunate that the density of the aura coating his sword had continued to rise during the fight; otherwise, he would not even have been able to pierce the hide.
In fact, the hand axe had lodged itself only because the point of impact was as soft as the wolf’s nose. If it had struck thick hide, it would not have done a thing.
Of course, there was one way in which things had improved.
Hostility still burned fiercely in the wolf’s eyes, but unmistakable confusion and fear were mixed in as well.
It seemed not to have realized that opening its jaws to finish him might instead threaten its own life. From now on, it would likely be reluctant to show off those sharp teeth.
As its protruding muzzle proved, the deadliest weapons possessed by most predators were their teeth and the bite force that drove them into flesh. In other words, one of the wolf’s primary weapons had been sealed away.
That was manageable. The only problem was that Ian’s stamina had long since reached its limit, while the wolf had suffered only a single wound.
It was a clever creature. Now that its fighting spirit had been dampened by the injury, it would be foolish not to take advantage of that.
And Ian’s prediction proved exactly right.
The wolf kicked off the ground. It was the terrifyingly fast body slam it had shown at the beginning. Ian abandoned his counterattack and threw himself aside the moment he sensed its tell.
Ian’s body rolled across the ground. Then, just as he hurriedly rose with his sword in hand to prepare for the follow-up—
Ian found the wolf staring at him from a distance once more.
“……You dirty… ngh… bastard.”
The man spat out the blood pooled in his mouth and muttered. The wolf’s intention was obvious.
It meant that it wanted to drag this into a war of attrition. If that happened, it was obvious who would be the first to tire and fall.
The wolf had the advantage in speed. Even if Ian wanted to strike first, he could not catch it if it relied on its characteristic mobility. Nor did he have any proper means of attacking from a distance.
Throwing a weapon was one option, but it was far too risky. If he could not retrieve the weapon, it would be over.
Even Ian did not know why he was so skilled at throwing weapons when he had never practiced it even once.
The wolf did not give Ian much time to think. It charged again.
Ian’s body rolled across the ground. It was an unavoidable choice. Then, just as he panted and began to show the slightest sign of slowing—
The wolf’s claw, which had closed in before he knew it, slammed into the ground with a smack. If Ian had not rolled at the last moment, that claw would have been embedded in his body.
Ian tried to raise his sword in response, but he could not generate proper force from a position on the ground. Before mana could even gather on his sword, the wolf had already stepped backward.
He needed time to coat the sword with mana—to form aura. Ian gritted his teeth and staggered to his feet.
Several exchanges passed like that.
Several times, Ian rolled across the ground to evade, and several times he raised his sword to block the claws. The wolf never hurried.
Like a hunter driving its prey into a corner, the wolf relentlessly hounded Ian.
The more it did so, the more labored Ian’s breathing became.
With oxygen failing to reach his brain properly, his mind grew hazy. His vision blurred, and the focus faded from eyes that had always held a cold light.
His body no longer obeyed him properly. His muscles had stiffened like lead and could not properly carry out his instincts’ commands. The wolf took pleasure in watching him like that.
The excitement of the hunt heated the magical beast’s brain. As pleasure chemicals flooded its system, its eyes grew bloodshot and its breathing grew rough.
The beast sensed it instinctively. The moment the man took one more blow, it would be over for him.
He was the opponent who had scratched its body. When the blade had entered between its open jaws, the wolf had felt fear for the first time in its life. That had simultaneously fueled its excitement and wariness.
It wanted to kill that human quickly and prove its strength. The wolf’s instincts writhed, urging it to bite the man to death right then and there.
But the wolf endured. It believed the fruits of its patience would soon reveal themselves.
It soon became clear that the wolf’s judgment had been correct.
The utterly exhausted Ian finally failed to evade the wolf’s charge. With a thud, the man’s body flew through the air. No.
In fact, ‘was launched’ was a more fitting expression than ‘flew.’ The instant the wolf’s massive body shot forward at tremendous speed, its momentum surpassed all imagination. Ian had been struck head-on.
With a thud, the man’s body slammed into the tree trunk again and slid down. The sword hilt he clutched until the very end looked pitiful. The trees trembled from the shockwave and shed their leaves.
The man’s faint breathing grew weaker. Even his heartbeat could no longer be sensed. It was an unmistakable sign of death.
The wolf’s heart pounded. Had it finally won?
Yet the beast remained cautious until the very last moment. As though afraid it might be a trap, it kept its body lowered and circled around the spot.
Even so, the man’s breathing did not return. Neither did his heartbeat. The wolf’s patience had now reached its limit.
The wolf strode over to admire the corpse it had made. Beautiful.
The wolf, gazing at Ian with ecstatic eyes, carefully extended its sharp claws, like an artist afraid of damaging its work even slightly.
If I slash open his belly with these claws, his intestines will spill right out.
The impact might have ruptured his organs. That was unfortunate, but it was still the finest trophy the wolf had obtained so far.
And just as the wolf raised its claw and carefully began bringing it toward the man’s belly—
Thunk.
A sound like a blade piercing flesh rang out. The wolf had not even brought its claw down yet, so why—
The wolf’s puzzled gaze dropped downward. There, a man with a cold smile—
“……Ta-da.”
He was stabbing the wolf’s neck with a sword that had somehow gathered dense mana around it.
The wolf’s thoughts came to a halt. The man should have been dead—it had checked several times. It had sensed neither his breathing nor his heartbeat. Had he not even been completely motionless?
Yet the burning pain in its neck, the air that would not enter its lungs no matter how it gasped, and its body gradually ceasing to obey it—
All of them told the wolf that the scene before its eyes was real. Its pitch-black eyes stared blankly back and forth between the man and the blade piercing its neck.
The man continued smiling as he clenched his teeth and tightened his grip on the sword hilt.
“Actually, I’m still alive.”
And then, with a wet plunge, the blade dug a little deeper into the back of the wolf’s neck.
Blood spurted out like a fountain. Only then did the beast let out a belated howl, its voice as tremendous as its bulk, echoing throughout the forest.
It was the pitiful scream of a dying beast, prey brought down by a hunter.